PHILADELPHIA (PA)
Voice from the Desert
Robert M. Hoatson, Ph.D.
March 30, 2012
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.
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