KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
February 20, 2019
By Jason Berry
Editor’s note: Jason Berry was the first to report on clergy sex abuse in any substantial way, beginning with a landmark 1985 report about the Louisiana case involving a priest named Gilbert Gauthe. In 1992, he published Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children, a nationwide investigation after seven years of reporting in various outlets. In the foreword, Fr. Andrew Greeley referred to “what may be the greatest scandal in the history of religion in America and perhaps the greatest problem Catholicism has faced since the Reformation.”
Berry followed the crisis in articles, documentaries, and two other books, Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II (2004) and Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church (2011), which won the Investigative Reporters and Editors Best Book Award. Given the current moment and its possibilities and the fact that Berry is singular in his experience covering the scandal from multiple angles, NCR asked if he would write a reflection on the matter as the church’s bishops are about to gather in Rome to consider the issue. Below is the second of three parts. Read Part 1 here.
Everything in this spreading crisis revolves around structural mendacity, institutionalized lying. For years, bishops proclaimed the sanctity of life in the womb while playing musical chairs with child molesters. High-dollar lawyers facilitated church officials’ stiff-arm response to survivors scarred by traumatic childhood memories.
The media narrative of survivors seeking justice has cut a jagged trail through the mind of the church. The concealment strategies, unearthed in depositions and church documents, show how bishops and religious order superiors, sometimes paying “hush money” settlements to avoid scandal, controlled the fate of the priest and kept the closed system operating. “Convinced that they know the truth — whether in religion or in politics — enthusiasts may regard lies for the sake of this truth as justifiable,” writes Sissela Bok in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. “They see nothing wrong with telling untruths for what they regard as a much ‘higher’ truth.”
Clashing with that rationale are insiders who couldn’t swallow the lies and leaked information. The man who did more to shape my reporting of the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana, in 1985 was such a specimen; though even now I am not entirely sure what fueled him.
In June 1984, attorneys for six families with nine boys — victims of Fr. Gilbert Gauthe, a pastor in rural Cajun country — negotiated a $4.2 million settlement with the diocese. Gauthe meanwhile was indicted on 33 criminal counts, including aggravated rape of a minor, which carried a life sentence. In early 1985, as I read civil depositions of Bishop Gerard Frey and other diocesan officials, Gauthe sat in a mental hospital. Ray Mouton, his attorney, negotiated with the tough-minded prosecutor, Nathan Stansbury, seeking a plea bargain.
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