EAST BRUNSWICK–Striving to address recent sexual abuse revelations within the Catholic church, St. Bartholomew Church served as a host to a listening session for patrons to voice their concerns.
“The church decided to have a listening session for all Catholics of our parish and surrounding parishes in order to hear about how they are feeling about the sexual abuse crisis and ask for their opinions for what actions the church can take going forward,” parishioner MaryEllen Firestone said.
More than 30 patrons attended the session that was facilitated by Sister Margaret Conlon of Sister of Charity of Saint Elizabeth on Oct. 22 at St. Bart’s in East Brunswick.
Conlon has ministered to high school students and families, as a teacher and counselor, in Jersey City for more than 20 years. For the last 27 years, she has ministered as a licensed clinical alcohol and drug counselor at Emmaus House, a holistic center for women religious, in Ocean Grove. Conlon has facilitated programs for suicide prevention for youth as well as groups and retreats for adult women in recovery, according to a prepared statement from the St. Bartholomew Church.
The session began with parishioner JoLynn Krempecki talking about the history of the crisis and the church’s response.
“Today we are in a terrible state in the Catholic church. The sins of some clergy that have been committed in the dark were brought to light in 2002. These were sins of sexual abuse against children,” Krempecki said. “Sadly, not all of the abusers were named [and] some abused children were afraid to come forward.”
In 2002, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published an investigative article exposing systemic sexual abuse against children in the Boston area by numerous priests.
“When the Spotlight was shown the [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops] scattered to make decisions that was suppose to ensure that such things would never happen again,” Krempecki said. “They put guidelines and provisions into place and since then all who work with children must go through criminal background checks and also must have training that teaches people where the boundary lines are. This is a national policy and this is a policy in this diocese and every parish and every Catholic institution are checked regularly for compliance.”
Despite the new provisions and guidelines, Krempecki that said 16 years later, members of the church have learned that the United States is not the only place where this cancer has struck with stories of abuse surfacing in Australia, Germany, Ireland and Chile.
“Then this summer, we learned that more was hidden in the dark – the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report revealed that a head-spinning number of children were abused from the 1940s to the present by predator priests and that was just in Pennsylvania,” Krempecki said.
Additionally, Krempecki said parishioners learned that bishops in dioceses across the country did not remove priests who had been abusing children, but instead, some bishops had been transferring predator priests around from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, saving face rather than saving children.
“We learned [also] that one of the most visible and influential churchmen in the country, Theodore McCarrick, retired bishop of Metuchen, Archbishop of Newark and Washington D.C., was accused of sexual abuse with children and seminarians. These accusations were never addressed in any appropriate way,” Krempecki said.
Conlon said that the sexual abuse towards children and the cover-ups are about power.
“Where there is abuse there is always a power differential, we hear that in the news all the time. … When we talk about role and status and finances, all of that is about power. Age can also be part of that power differential,” Conlon said. “It’s not about sexual orientation. … Objective research has shown that the abuse crisis [involving] the abuse of minors was due to other factors beyond someone being gay. There has been a great deal of scapegoating of priests with homosexual orientation. To go back to it, it’s about power.”
In light of the recent revelations that were discovered this past summer, Conlon said that this crisis has invoked a lot of different emotions within church members that may include denial, shame, anger and betrayal.
Conlon said members of the church must not paint everyone with the same brush, because not all cardinals, bishops, priests and pastors have committed abuse against minors.
“Pope Francis has said it without saying these words, [the continued abuse] is about the sin of clericalism, which again we are talking about structure within the church. The sin of clericalism, power, prestige and protection,” Conlon said. “Mostly with the protection of leaders for appropriate consequences of their misconduct is a problem in church structure. These attitudes must be worked towards being eradicated.”
During the listening session, parishioners separated into small groups and were given four questions to answer in order to express their feelings about the crisis. Firestone said all of the responses will be comprised into a letter that will be sent to the bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, Bishop James F. Checchio. The letter will contain solutions they recommend to address the issue.
“I admitted in the group that I have trouble talking about this to people outside of the church. I don’t know what to say and I feel like I don’t stand up for my church enough. … What we all have to do and I am going to try to start doing this, is we have to let our feelings be known as to how strong our church really is despite the problems we have and how deep our faith is,” parishioner Paul Endler said.
“I think we can take this horrific event and turn it around into something positive by saying, ‘OK this is the last straw.’ We need to really do some major overhauls of the church, not superficial things, but to the very structure of the hierarchy of the church,” parishioner Nancy Sedlak said. “Women need to be allowed to rise to positions of authority including being ordained priests. Men who are good men need to also be allowed to be married. … I think we can turn this into really positive going forward and … there needs to be total transparency, full disclosure [and] there needs to be criminal prosecution of the offenders.”
Contact Vashti Harris at [email protected].