BishopAccountability.org

There's no avoiding the priest abuse scandal and the pain it brings

By Maureen Maas-Feary
Democrat and Chronicle
June 3, 2019

https://bit.ly/2W7fqU9

Rosary beads hand in a cabinet.
Photo by Tina MacIntyre-Yee

I didn’t go to Catholic school, though I grew up Catholic and wished I could have attended a special school and worn plaid jumpers.

Our church was the center of our small town. Attending Mass every Sunday provided a secure sense of belonging. Later, I experienced predictable teenage rebellions, complaining about going to church and rejecting religion totally.

In my mid-20s, I started needing the church. I had a joyful wedding at the same church where my parents and older sister were married. That day marked our family’s last huge family occasion. We lost my great aunts first, and then my mom, whose time came way too early. I promised her as she died that I’d have kids and bring them up Catholic. I did my best, prodding my daughters through the same rituals I’d grown up with. They even enrolled in a Catholic high school, my dream realized vicariously.

And though I still had doubts about my beliefs, every time I entered a Catholic church, I felt the warm love of my relatives no longer with us. To me, this was faith, and I clung to it, even as friends stopped going or shopped around for other churches. The Catholic Church was where I belonged, although I disagreed that priests had to be single men and abortion was outlawed. When the priest scandal hit, I stayed as ignorant of it as possible.

We moved from the Buffalo diocese to Rochester, where the stories about priests abusing kids listed names and churches I didn’t recognize. Avoiding the scandal wasn’t the reason I moved, but it served as shaky armor. Occasionally, I’d consider researching priests accused in the diocese where I spent the first half of my life, but I’d find another distraction.

Recently, I read about a woman who  said she was abused by a nun and suffered resulting trauma for 40 years. The story pierced my shield. As the daughter of a strong woman and mother of two daughters, this woman-on-girl violence wounded me.

I forced myself to the computer, typed in “list of priests accused of abuse in diocese of Buffalo.” The Database of Publicly Accused Priests popped up in alphabetical order. Near the top was a smiling Father Becker who looked just as he had while I was raising my children in the church where he was pastor. Nauseous, I scrolled on and saw the grinning face of the priest who replaced him.

I stood up in tears, a giant hole blasted through my midsection.

I felt like I’d lost my family all over again: the last thing that held them to me gone. I’m back to grieving, without a retreat to turn to for solace.




.


Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.