As revelations unfold in the secular media about sex abuse scandals within the Church over the last century, BRIDGET SPINKS spoke with four Perth priests to explore how they are moving forward
Local Perth clergy say they have encountered “no hostility” from the public following recent revelations of sex abuse committed by clergy around the world.
Mount Lawley Parish priest and Edith Cowan University chaplain, Fr Tim Deeter is greeted by smiles on the street and from parishioners when he walks down Beaufort St to visit his local cafe.
“I’ve never been hesitant to dress as a priest. I’ve never found it to be a problem for the people; I think they can distinguish between the misdeeds of a few and the good work of the majority,” Fr Deeter says.
Fr John Jegerow, parish priest at Mary MacKillop Church in Ballajura, says the spate of media reports on Church sex abuse scandals “doesn’t bother me” and that he “goes about my work as normal”.
“I think the average person realises that the number of bad priests is a very small percentage, and whether we’re talking about teachers, police, priests, there’s going to be a rotten apple. But the rest of us get on with doing our job,” Fr Jegerow says.
City Beach parish priest Fr Don Kettle says that he has “encountered no hostility from anyone,” but people are “talking about it in the parish”. Since starting a special novena of 6.45am masses at Holy Spirit Church to pray in solidarity with Pope Benedict XVI, Fr Kettle has noticed higher than usual attendances.
The novena is an initiative of the Knights of Columbus, a US Catholic men’s organisation formed in 1882. The worldwide novena ran from 11-19 April.
Some parishioners who usually only participate in Sunday Mass are attending the novena weekday masses, he says.
“The response from the people is incredible; part of the healing process is through prayer … people have taken it seriously,” Fr Kettle says.
Fr Kettle moved to Australia from Belfast when he was two. When he decided to follow the call to become a priest, it meant abandoning his own successful business. He trained for the priesthood at the Irish College in Rome from 1996 to 2001.
He says that he has friends who are priests in Ireland and “they are devastated”.
“But the fact is that that the whole body of the Church has been affected by it, not just the local Church in Ireland,” he says.
“You open up a paper and it’s like a dagger going through you. You put yourself in their (the victim’s) shoes. If I was a parent or a victim I’d want that justice, “ Fr Kettle says.
On 19 March, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland “to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation” and noted that the problem of sex abuse is “peculiar neither to Ireland or to the Church”.
This follows the publication of the Ryan Report which revealed allegations of sexual abuse by Catholic priests and humiliation by nuns in up to 250 Church-run facilities in Ireland from the 1930s till the last ones closed in the 1990s. The Report referred to 253 allegations of abuse against boys and 128 cases against girls over several decades.
The Holy Father proposed that the way to heal the wounds of sex abuse is through Penance and prayer. He asked that special times of Eucharistic adoration take place and that Friday penances including fasting, prayer, reading of the Scripture and works of mercy performed from now until Easter 2011 be offered up “to obtain the grace of healing and renewal for the Church in Ireland”.
Fr Don Kettle has turned to the Pope’s Irish letter to seek direction on how to handle the situation and has published excerpts in his parish bulletin, The Paraclete.
“It gives direction and vision for the future of why we must be faithful. It’s encouraging those who are faithful in their call to continue to be faithful,” he says.
Another prayer initiative begun by Fr Kettle last year spiritually supports the brotherhood of priests.
Inspired by Pope Benedict’s inauguration of the “Year for Priests” on the 150th anniversary of the death of St John Vianney, the Patron Saint of priests, a Holy Hour of Eucharistic adoration every second Wednesday of the month commenced in June 2009 at Holy Spirit City Beach.
The Holy Hour spiritually reaches out to priests in the Year for the Priest and prays “for active priests in their ministry, those who’ve left the priestly ministry, for those who are ill and who’ve died and also those priests who are finding their mission difficult”.
During the Holy Hour, Fr Kettle uses St John Vianney’s Eucharistic meditations as reflections.
At St Paul’s parish in Mount Lawley, Fr Deeter has begun praying more publicly since the inauguration of the Year for the Priest”which coincided with his return to Perth in July last year. He says it’s starting to affect the mood and behaviour at his parish.
“I used to pray my Breviary privately but now (since returning to Perth) I will sit in the presidential chair near the altar praying the liturgy of the hours or Rosary so they can see their priest praying, both as an example and encouragement,” Fr Tim Deeter says.
“And that’s what’s stopped people talking in church before Mass and now they come to church and they’re kneeling or sitting in prayer,” he says.
From 2008 to 2009, Fr Deeter lived in Rome to translate from Italian to English Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati’s letters and testimonies given for his beatification.
But how are our priests responding to the way the media are reporting the issue?
Fr Jegerow, who has been a priest for 36 years in the Archdiocese of Perth, says that he’s “annoyed when the media exaggerate, but it’s nothing new; it’s been going on for as long as I’ve been a priest”.
“The Church is regarded as a peripheral sport on the side, whenever they deal with the Church it’s the funny, quirky, out of left field stuff, or it’s negative … which doesn’t really touch at the heart of the matter,” he says, while acknowledging that “every now and then you get a good piece written up”.
He says he has weathered the storm before in 2002, when scandals in the US were regularly in the news and in the 1990s when the Christian Brothers were the subject of extensive media coverage in Australia.
“But you can’t dwell on it; as I say it was worse when it first hit the media. I felt more under attack than I do now.
“We’ve weathered the storm. I don’t think it’s going to go away. The Church is always going to be attacked or pilloried in one form or another, that’s just the way it is,” he says.
Fr Charles Waddell, parish priest at St Thomas the Apostle in Claremont, sees the reporting and the events in the context of Easter and the Risen Lord: “The media invite, no demand, that journeying from the Easter Triduum”.
He says that both the full attendance at parish Easter masses and the way the media “at times seemingly viciously, reported the scandals in and of the Church” both show that the media and the faithful “expect more from the Church than sexual abuse of children, cover-ups and belated care of its victims”.
“What is that more? … The more is nothing less than Jesus Himself! The media, the folks who gathered over Easter, I expect, know that the Church gives us Jesus,” Fr Waddell says.
Fr Waddell says he takes “on board the criticism, abandonment, pain and disappointment caused by the current scandal”.
Fr Waddell says the current situation is an opportunity all Catholics can seize “to be liberated from all the harmful ways in which we go about being Church, so that we can do the one thing the world expects, give Jesus”.
The opportunity is seen by some as a period of purification; a point in history that will herald in an era of transparency in the future of the Church on this issue.
While Fr Kettle feels strongly for the victims of clerical sex abuse, saying “it’s incomprehensible for me to measure the amount of devastation caused by priests who’ve sexually abused children” he refuses to accept that ‘crisis’ is the best word to describe today’s situation with the Church.
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘crisis’. When you look at the history of the Church, it’s endured far more difficult circumstances,” Fr Kettle said.
Fr Kettle sees the scandals as bringing about greater transparency, which is “vital if we’re to go forth”.
Fr Deeter sees the scandals as a trial from which the Church can grow.
“In America in 2002 we had a big scandal and it all settled down because the Catholics in America did not leave the Church. There were daily reports for three quarters of the year and that did not bring down the Church. Now the same thing is happening in Europe; Europe is different because Europe is largely secularised,” Fr Deeter says.
“But perhaps this trial will be a purification because it will make people decide to practise their faith more fervently or lose it.”
There are other benefits, too.
“The constant barrage of the media is good in a sense because it’s making us become more transparent, to face the reality of what is happening, and the Church is using the media to its advantage to publicise its protocols,” Father Deeter says.
“And it’s now at the forefront of establishing regulations and making itself more and more transparent, far ahead of many other institutions that are still struggling to grasp the situation in their own midst.”
In his pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI diagnosed the factors and causes of the present crisis, including “a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures”.
Fr Deeter agrees the Church is “held to different standards (compared with other professions) and rightly so,” and that the Holy Father’s call to return to greater personal prayer and Penance is what’s needed now.
“When I was in the seminary (in the late 1960s to 70s in Chicago), we never once prayed a Rosary in public, never once prayed a holy hour and weren’t encouraged to go to confession. A lot of the cases of [US] sex abuse are from that period,” he says.
Referring to personal prayer and Eucharistic adoration, he says that for priests “if we’re to live a different life, those are the other-worldly ways of supporting our life”.
Fr Kettle adds that priests “must be men of prayer”.
“Priests are called to lead holy and exemplary lives, and only through the grace of God can this be achieved,” he says.