BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun [Baltimore MD]
April 9, 2023
By Jonathan M. Pitts and Lee O. Sanderlin
The atmosphere seemed close to normal at two historic churches in the Archdiocese of Baltimore as Catholics celebrated the most sacred holiday on the Christian calendar Sunday.
The pews were filled to overflowing at Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in North Baltimore and 165-year-old St. Louis Catholic Church in Clarksville. Worshippers in both places sported their colorful Easter best, children and families abounded, and lilies and tulips festooned the sanctuaries. The men celebrating the two Masses refrained in their sermons from directly mentioning the disturbing new report by the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, released this week, that details the sexual abuse and torture of more than 600 children by 158 priests and brothers in the archdiocese dating to the 1940s.
But Archbishop William E. Lori, the spiritual leader of America’s first and oldest diocese, and the Rev. Michael DeAscanis, the parish priest at St. Louis, alluded indirectly to the report and its contents during their homilies, tying the destructiveness of unnamed sins on the church’s part to such familiar Easter themes as suffering, loss and redemption.
And after the services were over, it was clear the report and the hundreds of stomach-churning abuses it detailed were very much on the minds of parishioners at each house of worship.
“I was glad Archbishop Lori made his less-than-veiled-references to [the sexual abuse report],” said Bob Keimig, a Baldwin resident and a member of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church in Hydes who attends Mass at the cathedral on special occasions. “It was a more intellectual sermon than he usually gives. It was deeper theologically. It’s clear he had a lot on his mind.”
During an interview with The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday, when state prosecutors made their 456-page document public, Lori said he considered that day to be the time to make extensive comment on the report, a voluminous retelling of a disturbing chapter of archdiocese history whose details made headlines across the country.
Asked whether he would address the report as part of his annual Easter sermon at the Gothic cathedral on North Charles Street, Lori said he would do so only glancingly, and he followed that plan in his 13-minute homily.
He opened the message with a metaphor, citing the hypothetical case of a hospital patient who appears to have died, only to be brought back to life by a medical procedure in the operating room.
“What was once thought impossible can and does happen,” he said, warming to the theme of Jesus’s resurrection. “We are rightly amazed at the resuscitation of those once regarded as lost to death.”
After asserting that the Jesus who miraculously rose from the dead embodies an assertion of divine truth, he said that “sadly, in the past, representatives of the church have betrayed the Lord’s gift of new life, especially in deceiving and in harming the innocent. We cannot undo the past, but we can lay our failings at the feet of the risen Lord, beg for forgiveness, and beseech the risen Lord to heal those who are harmed.”
Then Lori urged the nearly 1,500 people present to “take heart,” since “it is in darkness that light shines the most brightly” and “it is in the night that the new light of grace shines in greatest splendor.”
“Let us then allow ourselves to be made new, new with the newness of the risen Christ,” he said by way of preparing worshippers to take Communion, the sacrament of bread and wine in which Catholics believe they’re partaking of the body of Christ.
‘It’s not my usual joyous Easter’
As Communion ended and the faithful filed out, some stopped to express views on the report, the timing of its release during Holy Week, and how they believe the archbishop handled the subject during Mass.
One parishioner said Lori didn’t handle it at all.
“I don’t think he really addressed it,” said Matt Bollinger, a member of the cathedral parish for more than 20 years. “I’d have liked him to be more forthright and transparent. Why not directly acknowledge the victims? They’ve suffered and they continue to suffer.”
The “shocking” nature of the report left him with mixed feelings about Holy Week, Bollinger said, not by shaking his faith but by sowing doubt about archdiocese leadership “past and present.”
“It’s not my usual joyous Easter,” he said.
John Coyle had a diametrically opposite reaction. The North Baltimore photographer, a parish member since 1981 and a former Sunday school teacher, said he believed Lori handled the situation well by not mentioning the abuse report at all.
Coyle, who had not read the attorney general report, said that while any abuse of children appalls him, the abuse incidents the archdiocese is being asked to address happened more than 30 years ago, and the archdiocese has instituted successful protocols for preventing any sort of repeat in the years since.
Coyle said he worries that those who keep bringing up past abuse are undermining an institution that is overwhelmingly good, and he’s less than happy the report was released just four days before Easter.
“As you can see, it did not deter people from showing up today,” he said, gesturing toward the throngs of people pouring out onto the sun-drenched front steps.
‘It all works out in the end’
Thirty miles to the southwest in Howard County, DeAscanis addressed a mostly cheerful gathering at St. Louis Parish, the church home for some 3,000 families and the site of more than 60 ministries today.
In past decades, it was also home to such notorious abusers as the Rev. John Mike, an associate pastor described in the report as carrying out sadistic rituals involving two teenage boys at the church in the 1980s.
Some felt DeAscanis was alluding to the potential repercussions of the report when he took up the theme of lost faith. Atheists are depressing, he said, because they believe in nothing, including good or bad, right or wrong, justice or injustice.
Believing in God, he added, means believing that justice will come eventually for those who deserve it.
“It all works out in the end,” he said. “The good guys win in the end. Sometimes on Earth, but not always. Always in heaven.”
DeAscanis also prayed for all the ways the faithful have sinned and added that Easter is a reminder that, while human beings are fallible, they are not without hope.
But for some parishioners, the attorney general’s report cast a shadow on the day.
Kevin O’Donnell, 59, has been a parishioner at St. Louis for 24 years. When the document came out Wednesday, he was sure to take a look, in part because he knows some of the men who were involved.
The Rev. Ronald Mardaga, a priest assigned to various Baltimore-area parishes between 1975 and 1986, he said, taught Bible study for O’Donnell and some of his friends. The archdiocese listed him as credibly accused in 2002 and the report says the church asked the state’s attorney’s office not to prosecute him when the abuse was first revealed in 1986. Mardaga was not charged.
O’Donnell said reading the document left him feeling angry about the abuse and disappointed in how the church responded to it then and is responding to it now.
“I’m still not sure I’m happy with the church’s overall response and the amount of time it’s taking to get to where we need to be,” he said.
O’Donnell said that while the years of scandal and subsequent backlash have not shaken his faith in God, he understands why people have left the church over the fallout, calling it “human nature.” But he said the lesson for Easter at this challenging time is that believers should invest their faith not in priests, brothers or nuns but in Jesus Christ.
“The church is the pipeline to Jesus in your heart,” he said. “Not the men and women that make it up.”