When I was a 9 or 10 year old boy, nobody meant more to me than my father. He was my hero, larger than life. A stoic protector of our family, who disappeared toward the el tracks most every morning headed into the big wonderous city to provide. He was a noted lawyer and a litigator. It remains one of the great memories of my life being taken by my mother to an ornate courtroom in Chicago to watch my father in action; not a kid in this world felt luckier!
My dad’s father, Grandpop Bud, was just as proud of him as I was, and when he came to visit us one summer, he showed me yearbooks from the Catholic high school my dad attended back in the Boston area. The annuals were from his sophomore, junior and senior years, and fully documented his rise to stardom in both football and basketball. By the time he was a senior in 1950, he was the captain and star of the basketball team, averaging almost 20 points per game. The yearbooks became prized possessions, fully solidifying my father as one of the world’s great men. Often back then I would beg my dad to tell me stories of his glory days; he would always demure.
Of course my father turned out to be human, and as I grew older and more aware, and he buckled a bit under the stress of life and the consequences of a Mad Men taste for a Dry Manhatten, my idol worship was usurped some by resentment and a nagging feeling that a teenager was not yet able to articulate.
Years later, well after he gave up drinking and sort of admitted his problem with a cocktail, I would come to understand my dad had some demons. What they were I had no idea, but something gnawed at him, and he was not the sharing type when it came to such things.
My dad died in 2003 of lung cancer, again every bit the titan I had adored in my youth. One day, more than a decade later, just after my mom passed suddenly and shockingly, I was in their house alone going through old memorabilia… and there were the yearbooks! I hadn’t seen them in more than 40 plus years, but I remembered every page. The memory of my dad flooded through me as I turned the pages, seeing pictures of him as a youth, shooting his jumper, and hanging with his buddies, engaging in all manner of scholastic activities, often in the company of priests. But now he seemed to have a more melancholy look than I remembered as a boy, more dutiful, almost sad. And suddenly it hit me! Boston, priests…my dad! The high school he attended was a bunch of boys in the care of Catholic priests in the heart of the Boston area!
I googled “list of Boston-area pedophile priests” and turned the page to the faculty section. My heart raced; I hoped nothing came up, but was certain it would… and there they were. The list of all Boston-area cases had been released years before. Under section E, which had a long title basically underscoring the accused were all “deceased”, but “credible” accusations had been made, were two members of the faculty of my father’s high school. Both had been there throughout my dad’s matriculation and were prominent in pictures in the annuals. One was the faculty sponsor of the French Club; he actually chaperoned its members on annual trips to Paris! Thankfully, my father never had any interest in French. Looking at the database, their work histories fit the pattern of most of the accused listed, frequent reassignments, never staying at a post more than several years, and sporadic leave of absences. Looking at the French Club pictures from the various years of the yearbook, I wondered if other future children of those boys had done the same math as I.
This week’s report from Pennsylvania is yet another chapter in the ugliest religious scandal in American history. Pittsburgh joins Boston, Chicago, New Mexico… really anywhere enough good Catholics entrusted their most cherished possessions to predators interested only in grooming and destroying. Case after case of, not only one monster acting as the devil himself, but groups! And all the while a beauracracy intent on, at best mitigating the damage, at worst conspiring to abet it.
Honestly, I have no idea whether my dad was part of the carnage. But I do know he was in the care of Jesuit Priests from grades 1-12 in Newton Massachusetts. With all that has come to light, those seem like frightful odds.
A non-negotiable requirement for living under my father’s roof was attending Sunday mass. And no offertory basket ever left empty when passed by my dad. Yet and still, my brothers and I went to public schools; the parochial option was never seriously mentioned. In addition, the subject of sex was more than uncomfortable, it simply was avoided… perhaps like a bad memory. Who knows?
What I am certain about is my decision to leave Catholicism more than two decades ago. It’s hard to understand how so many still embrace an institution awash in betrayal at every level. This week’s report reminds us, not only how pervasive the evil has been, but how wholly inadequate the leadership’s reaction to it continues to be. That a nation of sons and daughters have to wonder whether their parents went to their graves as victims of unspeakable crimes clarifies an enterprise undeserving of the slightest benefit of the doubt. Our fathers deserved better. BC
disturbing, bc, poignant