The Church’s sex-abuse scandal hits home

By Ed Palm
Kitsap Sun
August 24, 2018

https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/opinion/columnists/ed-palm/2018/08/24/ed-palm-churchs-sex-abuse-scandal-hits-home/1078827002/

Ed Palm, community columnist

The Catholic Church’s sex-abuse scandal is back in the news — this time, bigger and more troubling than ever. On August 14, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the results of a two-year grand jury investigation revealing what the Washington Post has labeled a “criminal conspiracy” to cover up the abuse of “at least 1,000 victims” by “some 300 priests” in “six of the state’s eight dioceses.”

As a Catholic-school survivor, I’ve had more than a passing interest in this controversy and have even advanced my theory about why this has been happening (“The risk in the old Catholic ‘calls,’” March 13, 2016). More about that anon. My immediate concern is how this latest report hits home, geographically and personally.

Within a few days of Pennsylvania’s blockbuster report, all of us who had graduated from the Salesianum School for Boys in Wilmington, Delaware, received an email from Brendan Kennealey, the school’s current president. Kennealey revealed that two of the priests named in the Pennsylvania report were members of the religious order that had established and still oversees Salesianum, the Oblates of St. Francis de Sales (OSFS), and that they had taught at the school. In the interest of full disclosure, Kennealey acknowledged that 12 oblates had been named in 34 lawsuits brought by 39 victims against the school and the Oblates. In 2011, the victims and the order reached a global settlement to the tune of $24.8 million.

I found one of the lawsuit filings online, and I was saddened to learn that a priest I had liked and respected, Rev. John Heckel, OSFS, was named in the suit. Father Heckel had been my 10th-grade biology teacher. He was also the vice principal at the time and would regularly intercept students for counseling and what I took to be friendly chats after school. When I was a junior, he began intercepting me. It was an especially low point in my life. I welcomed the opportunity to pour out my troubles to a sympathetic ear. As Catholic readers might expect, our sessions always ended with his coercing me into making my confession. Truth be told, I no longer believed in the Sacrament of Penance, but I acquiesced to repay Father for his time and attention.

Heckel, I should add, never made any inappropriate advances or suggestions to me. But, as I look back on it, I can see that the warning signs were there. In hearing my confessions, he seemed to take a keen interest in the “sin” of masturbation. And our sessions always ended with his giving me what I took to be an innocent, paternalistic pat on the rear. My best friend at “Sallies” had also had a counseling session with Heckel and resolved to avoid him. He privately complained to me — as we used to say in those unreconstructed days — that Heckel was “queer.”

I brushed it off at the time. (No pun intended.) In reading that lawsuit filing, however, I learned that Heckel’s buttocks patting had allegedly escalated to caressing. He was also accused of exposing himself to one of the plaintiffs and was alleged to have molested others. Would that I could contact Heckel and ask him to say it isn’t so, Father. He died in 2002.

In that previous column, I advanced a theory as to why so many priests have been implicated in these sex-abuse scandals. Most of the accused are, or were, older men who came along when the Church encouraged boys who believed they had heard the call to enroll in a high-school-level seminary. This system has long impressed me as perfect for creating schools for scandal.

The average eighth-grade boy is 13 — the age at which most boys begin feeling the first full-flush, and even the embarrassing stirrings, of puberty. This is generally accompanied by a keen interest in the opposite sex. Consider how a boy who isn’t feeling that same attraction may take that as a sign of special election — as proof God has destined him for the priesthood. Next, consider how such a boy, in later life, after ordination, may have had to admit to himself the reason he felt no attraction to girls is that he is actually attracted to men or boys.

Some of those older priests, of course, went on to molest or even rape girls. Gay or straight, the human sex drive is a powerful force that, for most people, cannot be suppressed for life. The Church needs to rethink the requirement that priests remain celibate.

In the words of Robert Browning’s errant priest Fra Lippo Lippi, you should not take a young boy “and make him swear to never kiss the girls.” Amen to that!