" the Black and White Code of Silence Is Broken"

By Robert M. Hoatson
Voice from the Desert
March 30, 2012

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One would hope the three Philadelphia Archdiocesan priests who testified on March 28, 2012 at the trial of Msgr. William Lynn and Fr. James Brennan voluntarily offered their services to the prosecution in the cause of truth and justice and were not forced under threat of sanction to describe the depravity of rectory and church life that permeates the Catholic clerical life. What they described in court was the clerical culture, a culture so depraved that shutting it down immediately should be reviewed by independent agencies. The porn, the stalking of high school boys, the abuse of children inside and outside of rectories and churches, the sadomasochistic and sexually stunted behavior of priests, the alcoholism and drug use; it was all testified to in open court. The black and white code of silence was shattered. The clerical culture was out in the open for the public to see. These stories were not unusual and sadly are the norm in most United States Catholic dioceses.

Does anyone think for one minute that the Philadelphia clerical culture is any different than the culture of any diocesan clergy or religious order anywhere in the United States or the world, for that matter? Should prosecutors throughout the United Stated choose to convene grand juries to investigate the clerical culture in their regions, the same results would occur, and invariably more bishops and their henchmen would be prosecuted. I know because I existed (not lived) in that culture for nearly forty years. I had to seek voluntary laicization to get away from it. I no longer work in or for "that company."

In 1969, I was placed against my will into the honors' English class of a serial religious brother pedophile. That so-called religious man abused boys in every school to which he was assigned. His best friend, another religious man, abused my first cousin. Both of us were groomed and then abused. I survived. My cousin killed himself at age 29. I was a Christian Brother at the time of my cousin's death because I joined that religious order at eighteen years of age and left when I was forty-two, only to join another "sect" of the clerical culture, the priesthood.

As a bright-eyed idealist of eighteen joining a religious order after being named "Outstanding Senior" of my high school class, I thought I was entering a community of men who believed in the Gospel and all that it entailed. I was fooled. The very day I stepped into religious life, I was hit on by my first superior. He told me I was a cold person and needed to be warmed up – by him. He criticized my popularity in high school and all of my God-given talents that led me to be honored by my school at graduation. He told me I would have to get warmed up or else not become a religious brother. That was my introduction to the clerical culture and nearly four decades of trying to survive in that culture commenced.

My novice master used to hug me after each monthly conference and rub himself against me while his face went up and down mine. I can still smell his aftershave. This was the same man who used to take novices to the local bars to drink to excess and exploit his authority. One of those novices killed himself later in life after suffering abuse. The novice master eventually drank himself to death and was found on the floor of his bedroom.

My abuse didn't stop at the novitiate. A classmate abused me, and when I reported his abuse to what I thought was a trusted superior, the superior abused me. After leaving the religious order and entering a diocesan seminary, one of the seminarians told me that in order to be his friend I would have to be his bitch. He was just one of many seminarians who engaged in heavy drinking, sexual promiscuity, overt aggressive homosexual advances, and financial shenanigans. They were being prepared for the clerical culture and the preparation was elaborate and dysfunctional. No wonder I didn't fit in.

In my first parish, the pastor pulled me aside one day and told me that I would probably hear about a family whose sons were abused by a former priest of the parish. He then told me that the family was crazy and not to believe them. As it turns out, the priest abuser had had a top job in the diocese at one time and was protected and concealed. The family told the truth about the abuse of not one boy but two. The pastor ignored their pleas for help. I had to get out of that parish so I asked for a transfer.

Little did I know that I was "blackballed" by many pastors for asking out of my first parish after one year. They finally found a parish for me but never told me that I was replacing a priest who had made sexual advances toward a young adult parishioner. It took many months to get rid of the priest because he was best friends with a bishop who was best friends with another bishop who was pastor of the parish. That bishop was in charge of clergy sexual abuse allegations for at least ten years. Bishops protecting bishops and their "boys" was the practice then and remains the practice to this day. It's part of the clerical culture. It is an insular, all-boy network.

My third assignment took me to a parish where the schools were on the verge of collapse because of mismanagement, drug sales, and theft. The pastor hung around with drug addicts and I was told that illegal drugs were being sold from the rectory. In addition, the pastor used school money to buy himself an automobile. He was eventually removed but has quickly been placed in parish after parish despite allowing various "friends" to live in his rectories. Financial irregularities have surfaced in all of his parishes.

I couldn't live in the rectory of assignment three because I didn't speak Spanish and wouldn't have had an effective sacramental ministry, so I moved into a rectory located in my hometown. It was there that the pastor allowed his best friend to move in. This priest had been removed from his assignment as a pastor because of sexual abuse allegations. When I protested his moving in, the pastor said, "The least we can do is provide safe haven for a brother priest." When I protested to the number two man in the diocese and told him that an accused pedophile was living in my rectory, he responded about the removed priest, "That poor man, what he's been through." He then told me to move out.

I moved into another rectory many miles away from my workplace, and within weeks of my moving in, the nuns from the convent asked to see me one at a time. They complained about their abusive superior who was close to the pastor. When the pastor realized that I was uncovering abuse in the convent, he started to harass me, took away my Mass schedule, and began to nit-pick my "bad" habits, like not putting the Sunday newspaper back in order after reading it. I escaped from that dysfunctional atmosphere in the dead of night.

My final assignment in the inner city schools mentioned earlier came to a screeching halt three days after I testified before a state legislature and called for the resignation of any bishop who had covered up clergy sexual abuse. The bishop ordered me to the chancery and fired me on the spot, except I was ordered to stay in the schools to run graduations and break-in my priest replacement. My replacement was removed after four months on the job for inappropriately touching an elementary school student who had come to our school because he had been abused in his previous Catholic school. Of course, the priest was not given any formal reprimand and he was allowed to stay on as pastor of two parishes.

After being fired, I knew I would never live in another church-sponsored residence. I couldn't. It meant I would have to rent my own place and hope for some changes. The changes never came and the harassment and retaliation continued, so I sued my bishop. He then placed me on administrative leave, effectively stripping me of my priesthood. One of his top aides who had been involved in his own sex scandal disciplined me for speaking out about clergy sexual abuse. He said I needed to obey the bishop. I told him essentially that I would obey the bishop as soon as the bishop and his clergy stopped covering up sexual abuse and started treating victims with compassion.

If you have concluded after reading this that the clerical culture is highly dysfunctional, you have gotten the message. This is not a culture that needs tweaking or reform. It must be eliminated. The structures, policies, and practices of clericalism that have fostered the serial sexual abuse of hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers, and vulnerable adults and corrupted one of the world's great religions are still in place and will be for the indefinite future because the guys in charge like the power they have. While the church and priesthood implode, the power brokers battle to keep the structures in place so they can stay in power. And, the black and white code of silence is upheld. Except in Philadelphia and Kansas City, where courageous prosecutors said enough is enough and indicted not just a bishop, priests, and a lay teacher but a corrupt, dysfunctional, arrogant, and sick clerical culture.

Contact: roberthoatson@gmail.com