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	Jaime Castillo: 'One True Church' Should Start by Cleaning Its Own Dark Closet Express-News July 18, 2007 http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071807.1B.Castillo.32214e8.html Thankfully, my early experiences with the Catholic Church were less painful than the 500-plus victims who will share in a $660 million settlement over clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The worst my two older brothers and I had it was being ferried across El Paso by my mother to attend Mass in my grandmother's parish: Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. It was there that I had probably my most memorable encounter with a priest. I was about 7 years old and studying for my First Holy Communion. After catechism class let out, I did what I always did: I waited in the courtyard for my family to emerge from Sunday Mass. One day, the parish priest came walking up to me. He was a distinguished figure; a balding man, who was blessed with a booming "voice of God" that most people, oddly enough, typically ascribe to radio and TV newscasters. "Are you going to go home and fight with your big brothers?" the priest intoned. "No, father," I stammered. "Chicken," he said playfully. In later years, after we began attending Mass in our own parish at St. Pius X Church, the priest there also had a gift for making light of the strict orthodoxy of the Catholic faith. During football season, he would often say something like: "Folks, I'm going to cut the sermon short today, so everybody can get home in time for the (Dallas) Cowboys game." It wasn't until years later I came to my own conclusion that there were two distinct parts to the Catholic Church. There's "the Church" in Rome where the pope makes grand pronouncements and sets a conservative tone for the faithful. And then there's "the church" in the neighborhood where the priest is a tangible, often less rigid, part of the community. In my experience, the Church hierarchy, whether in the Vatican or the archdiocese, was the serious, conservative — even detached — patriarch of the Catholic family. By comparison, the individual priests were more like laid-back uncles. But, then, the priests I encountered in my youth didn't violate the trust bestowed upon them in the manner that has sadly unfolded in courtrooms across America. Monday's $660 million settlement of abuse allegations by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is only part of the more than $2 billion paid out nationwide. At least as disturbing as the abuse itself is the apparent lack of aggressive action by the Church hierarchy against those priests with shaky pasts. The Los Angeles settlement reportedly calls for a judge to review and release previously confidential documents, including priests' personnel files. According to the Los Angeles Times, reports and documents released during the litigation showed that Cardinal Roger Mahony "left 16 priests in ministry for periods up to 13 years after parishioners raised concerns about their inappropriate behavior with children." The settlement's timing couldn't be any worse. Last week, the Vatican, with Pope Benedict XVI's approval, reasserted its claim that the Catholic Church is the one true church established by Jesus Christ and that other Christian denominations are defective. It goes without saying how hypocritical it is to claim the spiritual high ground at the same time more than 500 victims of abuse were waging a war against Church obfuscation in the country's largest Catholic archdiocese. It also comes at a time when the pope is making other controversial moves, such as calling for greater use of the Latin Mass. This has ignited a fear that the Church will move away from the Vatican II reforms of the mid 1960s, which allowed Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular of the local community. Speaking for this Catholic only, I know that individual priests and nuns do great works every day. But, it's at times like these that Rome seems even more distant than ever. To contact Jaime Castillo, call (210) 250-3174 or e-mail jscastillo@express-news.net.
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