MICHAEL D'antonio's "Mortal Sins', a Compelling Trace of the History of the Pedophile Priest Scandal

By Michael O'Malley
Plain Dealer
July 1, 2013

http://www.cleveland.com/books/index.ssf/2013/07/michael_dantonio.html

In discussions and news stories about child sex abuse at the hands of Catholic priests in the United States, attention often turns to Boston, commonly regarded as the ground zero of a crisis that has touched every diocese in the nation.

In 2002, at the height of the cascading scandal, Boston's Catholic leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, was forced to resign after acknowledging that 80 of his priests faced charges of abuse.

That admission came under pressure from vigilant newspaper reporters and aggressive lawyers who dug through files, documents and depositions, exposing the archdiocese's harboring of serial sex abusers and covering up of heinous crimes against children for four decades.

Boston certainly was in the eye of the national media at the time. But all this didn't start in Catholic New England, as documented in a gripping new book, "Mortal Sins: Sex, Crime and the Era of Catholic Scandal," by the award-winning journalist Michael D'Antonio.

The book captures the drama, impact and reach of a 30-year-crisis that began before the Boston meltdown and continues today.

It's a story of abuse of power and the hypocrisy of men in leadership. It's a story of legal intrigue -- a real-life chess game with real bishops. And, shockingly, it's a story of horrendous acts against children.

Before Boston, there was Lafayette, La., where, in 1984, the parents of a 7-year-old boy who was repeatedly raped by a priest were preparing to file a lawsuit against the diocese.

Back then, suing a diocese over the horrendous actions of a priest was unheard of, so the Catholic hierarchy didn't quite know how to respond.

Cardinal Pio Laghi, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States, appointed one of his staff members, the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a priest of the Dominican order, to look into the matter. Nearly two decades before Boston, Doyle, working with a lawyer and another priest who was also a psychologist, discovered that the Catholic Church in the United States was sitting on a ticking time bomb.

By the mid-1980s, plaintiffs' lawyers, notably Jeff Anderson of Minneapolis, had a handful of dioceses in their crosshairs, and journalists, notably Jason Berry of New Orleans, were ready to break news of Catholic cover-ups equal in scope to the Watergate scandal.

Doyle, shocked by his discoveries and believing he was racing against a gathering deluge of litigation against the church, sounded an alarm to the Catholic hierarchy both in Washington, D.C., and in Rome.

But, in even more of a shock, Doyle's appeals to his superiors were met with blank stares. Some church leaders, he discovered, appeared indifferent to priests sexually abusing children, and the institution apparently had no interest in discussing it.

Three decades ago, Doyle, who today is still crusading on behalf of victims, insisted that the church see the seriousness of crimes against children, report those crimes to civil authorities and then reach out to comfort and rehabilitate psychologically damaged victims.

Instead, the church quietly transferred pedophile priests from parish to parish and secretly paid families of victims hush money to keep incidents out of the courts and newspapers.

The dramatis personae of D'Antonio's Shakespearean-like tragedy include a flamboyant lawyer hooked on drugs and booze, a private investigator who tracked down a child-molesting priest, forcing his confession, and a Deep Throat source who fed a journalist inside information.

As with most tragedies, there are ghastly episodes: A priest fatally shoots two men, then hangs himself from a church fire escape; a 7-year-old boy is treated at a hospital for rectal bleeding after being raped by a priest.

These stories have been reported in newspapers over the years, but D'Antonio gathers them into the context of one tale. He tells that tale well, making "Mortal Sins" a powerful and important work.

The book is well-researched, and D'Antonio does a good job of getting into the heads and hearts of its main characters. However, when he jumps into different time periods -- which is often necessary to tell the story -- he sometimes loses the thread.

D'Antonio needs to give the reader more reminders as to when events are happening. Too often, chronology is lost, and the reader has to read back, looking for a date.

Still, "Mortal Sins" is a captivating page-turner as it covers a lot of ground in a story Doyle describes as "the biggest debacle the Catholic church has ever faced."

From the time Doyle, who plays a prominent role in the book, first sounded the alarm, it would take 26 years and more than $1 billion in payments to victims in America before the Vatican would require allegations of abuse be reported to police.

Doyle, as D'Antonio points out, would become one of the church's harshest critics, prompting Auxiliary Bishop A.J. Quinn of Cleveland to write a letter in the late 1980s to Cardinal Laghi: "The continuing comments attributed to Father Doyle . . . are not serving the image of the church and the priesthood."

The letter, obtained by D'Antonio, continues: "(T)he church has weathered worse attacks, thanks to the strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit. So, too, will the pedophile annoyance eventually abate."