BishopAccountability.org
	My Brother, the Priest By Megan Nix Denver Post August 29 2010 http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_15906273 My oldest brother was ordained a priest this year. My friends and family and I strung banners, made wax paper luminaries, ordered 95 pizzas. We found a pinch-hitter when the bartender bailed an hour before the 300-person reception, and reconfigured the Christmas lights that burnt out after an hour of taping them to the ceiling and walls. When a friend's nine kids needed something to do, a coyote appeared just in time for them to chase him off the property towards the mountains. Details are always distractions, though. Between the food and the decorations and the kids screaming after the animal, I considered the implications of my brother's calling — solitude, obedience, poverty — and I thought about what other people think of priests right now: prayerful, lonely, inclined towards abusing children. In a recent article, "The Myth of a Catholic Crisis" a Penn State non-Catholic, Philip Jenkins, explains just how extreme (and misplaced) this mindset and anti-clerical propaganda have become. "Sexual abuse by clergy is a reality, and a real problem demands a response," Jenkins writes, "But the problem is vastly different from that described so enthusiastically by the media, and most of the critical measures have already been taken." Based on the results of the John Jay Criminal Research Study conducted in New York in 2004, Jenkins summarizes that "the documented evidence for clerical crime is far less extensive than is widely believed. Even in the overheated and litigious atmosphere following the Boston scandals, the Jay study reported no allegations against 24 priests out of every 25." "Most tellingly," he continues, "We can say one thing quite confidently, however strongly it goes against prevailing wisdom: There is no credible evidence that Roman Catholic clergy abuse young people at a rate different from that of clergy of any other denomination or from members of secular professions who deal with children." What most people don't realize about Catholic priests in the U.S. is that very few of the cases brought to recent public attention regard acts that have occurred later than 1990. I'm not here to exonerate the ordained men who have brought immeasurable pain into others' lives, and I do believe that change and acknowledgment of these crimes needs to continue. I know of families that have been broken by Catholic priests, and those men betrayed the lessons I learned as a young woman trying to find a good way to live. But to keep seeing priests as molesters is the same disservice as labeling minorities as criminals or athletes as idiots. Those associations should rile you up because they're wrong; when we see a group of people as one misshapen monster, we stop relating to and understanding individuals as individuals. Growing up Catholic, my choices were guided by compassion and acknowledgement of others, by repetition and a sense of experience coupled with mystery. Maybe it was being raised Catholic that made me want to be a writer — to have many questions, but to understand that I'd never be able to answer all of them. I can't answer why I never inherited my brother's devotion, and I can't explain why some priests turn towards evil rather than good. But I do know that I steadied myself on the foundation of a value system that could be shaken by infidelities, but never completely break. When we suffered, we were taught to "offer it up" — that some semblance of acceptance and hope might half- heal the world's brokenness. When I was little, Father Sam took us for Sunday bike rides, other priests kept their distance and left when they were called to another parish. And some left my school with no explanations in their wake, just whispers and the residue of secrecy. Catholic priests presented themselves to me on a spectrum: mean, grouchy, creepy, warm, friendly, fatherly. On the fatherly end of that line of robed men, I add my own brother — or Father Brother, as I now like to call him. David left a medical career and a beautiful girlfriend behind to pursue a life of a different kind of commitment. If you met my brother in a bar, you could cover such subjects as gunshot wounds, mountain biking, church history, and how to get a running start, leap off one leg and kick an 8-foot-high ceiling. He reveres women, mothers and children, and has been my protector since childhood. In David and those ordained with him (Father Mike, a skateboarder who smokes cigarettes, and Father Matt, a once frat-boy, both in their early 30s), I have seen a gentle firmness, a quiet prayerfulness, and a fierce love for families that grows out of their decision to remain childless. Oddly enough, the best priests model what fatherhood — a weakened role in so many communities today — can be. My brother's orthodox Jewish friend, Libby, flew in for his ordination and shared my sense of wonder at his vocation. A squat elderly woman with dark eyebrows, Libby carried around a tattered maroon briefcase and spoke with a sharp, hoarse voice. "Have you ever heard of a mensch?" she asked. "Literally, it translates to 'man.' But it means any person who has decency. My father used to tell me to be a mensch. What he meant was to act always with integrity and decency. Decency. You either have it in you or you don't. Your brother? Your brother is a mensch." At the post-ordination party, we did what Catholics do: We ate and drank and steeled ourselves through conversation against hours, days, years of missteps. A seminarian showed up with three kegs. The Little Caesar's on Federal donated 10 pizzas. When my brother showed up, he had a slice of pizza, a beer, and he blessed his friend's nine kids. Megan Nix (thenixionary@gmail.com) of Denver is youth program director at Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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