Right before Easter, I nearly wrote a column about priests. From Boston to California, the U.S. Roman Catholic church has been blistered by accusations of child abuse and coverups — a much-deserved blistering for an institution rich and powerful enough to shield its offending clergy from the law.
I nearly wrote the flip side of this painful story. I wanted to speak from the heart and from experience about the positive influence Catholic priests have had on my kids.
Something stopped me from writing that column, a nagging doubt. I was ashamed of that doubt.
Hadn’t I watched my children thrive going to Mass every Sunday at Immaculate Conception Church in Everett? Hadn’t they learned responsibility, respect and leadership as altar servers? Hadn’t they been taught charity and service? Hadn’t I sent them to Catholic grade school, high school and on to a Catholic Jesuit university? Hadn’t I seen the kindness of priests after my children’s father died?
No question. I love my church. But secrets now brought to light have thrown a veil of doubt over the entire organization. Suffering from doubt, I didn’t write that Easter column.
We were about to leave for school early Wednesday when my 15-year-old son — for years an altar boy, a kid who studies Latin and has earned extra cash washing cars and taking out trash at the rectory — said in a worrisome monotone, "Mom, Father John is on the news."
I have no way of knowing whether there is truth to the accusation, disclosed in news reports Wednesday, that the Rev. John Cornelius sexually abused a student from Kennedy High School in Burien in the 1970s. As a parishioner, I certainly had no idea Cornelius was transferred from Seattle to my church in Everett in 1997 after an Idaho man filed a complaint saying he was molested in the ’70s while Cornelius was at a Boise seminary.
This is what I do know: My son and I felt like we’d been kicked in the stomach Wednesday.
It’s one thing to read about arrogant strangers in the Archdiocese of Boston knowing for decades about sexual-misconduct allegations yet continuing to allow priests access to children. It’s quite another to see in the news the friendly face of a man who has shaken your hand Sunday after Sunday.
In my experience, the man we at church call "Father John" has been a kind, devout, charismatic, interesting gentleman.
In 1998, I wrote a column about him coinciding with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. In it, I said that "Cornelius shook our congregation from slumber. We’re still getting used to his booming AMEN!"
Even then, I had that tiny seed of doubt. Before the column saw print in 1998, I called the Archdiocese of Seattle to ask whether there was any reason at all not to write a human-interest story about the new priest in our parish.
Jim Britt, then public affairs director for the archdiocese, answered only that Cornelius is "a wonderful fellow." This, according to news reports, was after the archdiocese had investigated a complaint and limited the chaplain’s role in associating with youth.
There are all kinds of hurts here.
Above all, we need to remember young victims of sexual abuse. It is never their fault. It is always a crime. Perpetrators — teachers, Scout leaders, coaches or priests — should never be beyond the reach of the law.
Hurt, also, are the faithful. The church doesn’t belong to bishops, it belongs to all of us. We can forgive one priest’s mistake far easier than we can forgive institutional deception.
And hurt are the thousands of Catholic priests asked to live an impossible life. Celibacy defies human nature. For 12 centuries of church history, there was no such requirement. It’s time, I believe, to turn back the clock.
To ask men called to the priesthood to give up intimacy and family is to ask too much.
Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.
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