© 2013 Fr. Kevin Lee
Publisher’s Note
All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine, newspaper, or online article. This book is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counselling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought. The publisher can be contacted at:
llkevin6@aol.com
ISBN: 978-0-9875159-0-2
If you have downloaded a QR Reader App on your mobile phone you can scan the above image and it will take you directly to Kevin Lee’s website
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my beloved parents Matthew and Margaret Lee who gave me the gift of life and faith ... and to my gorgeous wife Josefina who gave my life meaning and for putting my faith into perspective.
"A bruised reed He will not break, and a smouldering wick He will not snuff out, till He leads justice to victory."
Matthew 12: 20
EDITOR'S FORWARD
When Father Kevin Lee asked me to edit this book, I hadn't known him for very long. In fact, the first time I had heard of Father Kevin Lee was on television when I watched a Channel 7 news story on 1st May, 2012 about him.
Kevin had just announced to his congregation that he was a married man, and that his announcement was coinciding with his first wedding anniversary. Knowing that priests in the Catholic Church take a vow of celibacy and are not allowed to get married, I felt sorry for the man, that such a happy time as his marriage and the first anniversary of his wedding, was also the day he lost his job, lost his home, and lost many of his friends. So I sent Kevin a simple message over Facebook, congratulating him on his marriage.
I don't normally add Facebook friends, but for some reason I decided to add Kevin as a Facebook friend that day. Normally I have a rule that I won't add anyone that I've not met, or who I haven't known for a considerable amount of time online.
Initially I had no reservations about Kevin, but then as I read more about him in the newspapers and about him in Facebook groups I confess that I did start to have some niggling misgivings.
One big one was whether it was a case of sour grapes that Kevin Lee had turned whistle blower on the church. Why hadn’t he made complaints to the hierarchy if he knew of so many cases of abuse and why only make them now? Why did Kevin link celibacy with sexual abuse of children? There are a lot of people that are celibate for a time in their lives, and they don't go and abuse children, so to me that made no sense.
Was he also a child abusing priest who had turned into a whistle blower because there was some sort of dirt on him? And a big question, why had he not spoken up against so many cases of child abuse if he known about them? After all, didn’t not speaking up make him guilty of being an accessory after the fact for these reprehensible crimes?
I had so many questions. But there was something about Kevin and his ongoing indefatigable commitment to stopping child abuse. I could see very clear evidence of how hard he was working towards bringing an end to it by reading media interviews and other things online.
I also believe that Kevin Lee's persistence with getting word out to the media had an important role in the federal government announcing it would hold a Royal Commission into child abuse that had occurred in institutions such as the Catholic Church.
It was only in reading this book that I was finally able to resolve all these questions, and more. As I read I was amazed how wrong my assumptions were, which were based mainly on what I'd read in the media. I'd incorrectly assumed that Kevin hadn't made complaints to the Catholic hierarchy, or to police ... I was so very wrong.
In fact on reading the book, it became apparent that Kevin Lee had been an utter thorn in the side of the Catholic Church for over 20 years, from the time he was a seminarian (theological student), and that he had in fact made many reports to police over the years.
I must admit to feeling a fair bit of shame, for ever in any way doubting Kevin and thinking these thoughts. But I don't think I'd be alone in thinking them, as I've also heard others voice these same questions. I was prepared to set aside my suspicions and read Kevin’s book with an open-mind. I really encourage you to do the same. Kevin's one aim is to help protect children and keep our children safe. I can only hope that other people take on this campaign and movement to end child abuse and protect children with the same sort of unwavering determination and courage that Kevin Lee has shown. I hope you enjoy his book and the insights he gives into the often secret life of a Catholic Priest as much as I have.
The Editor.
(I have taken the unorthodox step of choosing not to reveal my name. This is due to the fact that this book is so controversial and considered to be such a legal "hot potato", I've decided it is necessary to take this step. One thing I will say about myself is that I have worked tirelessly to try to end child sex abuse, and will continue to do so).
This book contains subject matter unsuitable for persons under 18 years of age. It contains sexually explicit and graphic language at times which may offend. Where material in the book could be considered highly triggering or extremely graphic in nature, the reader is warned prior to these sections and given the option to skip to the next chapter.
Please exercise responsible self-care in the reading of this book.
PREFACE
Everyone knows that sexual abuse has been perpetrated with monotonous regularity by representatives of the Catholic Church, and it has been happening for centuries. But what most people don’t understand is how it happens, and why it continues to be concealed by the authorities within the church, authorities who have a duty to protect the most vulnerable in their care – our children.
What no one wants to consider is the proposition that the Church has established the very educational and residential institutions that have allowed the abuse to happen and staffed those institutions with members who are likely to be abusers.
Although most would recognise that forcing its members to refrain from sexual intimacy would have to be the most extreme form of repression, no one wants to accept the fact that compulsory celibacy is contributing to the problem.
Because there have been many opposing views about the sexual abuse crisis and those who are most likely to be perpetrators of it, I have attempted to clear the confusion.
As with all organisational incompetence the blame must be laid with the head. In the case of the Roman Catholic Church the recently resigned, eighty-five year old Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, must surely take responsibility for the atrocious indifference that has been shown by his Church to the increasing allegations of institutional negligence in dealing with instances of sexual abuse. It has been widely suggested that Pope Benedict XVI was not competent to lead such a powerful institution, and his views were at variance with most of his own academics who have assessed his performance.
As late as 20th December 2010 Pope Benedict XVI stunned a gathering of Prelates when he claimed that the sexual attraction of men to children wasn't considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s. In his traditional Christmas address to Cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said. “It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than' and a ‘worse than'. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
Pope Benedict XVI admitted abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church. Catholics should have been embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse, while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis.
He continued to criticise areas of society that he can’t influence while failing to change the structures under his control — the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs.
With the top man in the Church holding views like that, you certainly begin to understand the root of the problem is the misunderstanding of sexuality, by men who have promised to refrain from sexual intimacy for the whole of their life.
The main reason I felt compelled to publish the accounts of the shocking stories you are about to read is out of frustration at constantly hearing the parents, partners or siblings of abuse victims relate the sad experiences of these previously ‘good-Catholic-children’ having committed suicide or indulged in mind-numbing drug addictions as a result of having been sexually assaulted by a member of the clergy.
Indoctrinated in everything the Church officially told me, I used to routinely dismiss these complaints as one-off or rare occurrences. I defended the Church, by maintaining that all the good that we did far outweighed the infrequent harm done by these very few bad apples. But over time these rare occasions seem to multiply. I was hearing about priestly sexual indiscretions with alarming frequency while church officials continued insisting on their rarity.
In a rush to burnish its image in Australia in the light of frequent accusations, the Bishops have chosen not justice for the victims, but harm minimisation. They are not concerned about preventing the damage of the lives of church members, but only further damage to its already tarnished reputation. They created committees whose only measurable outcomes have been carefully worded ‘church-speak’ documents outlining what will be done in the future to prevent opportunities for abuse from occurring.
Impotent committee generated manuals such as ‘Towards Healing’ and ‘Integrity in Ministry’ are the result of years of academic workshops and meetings aimed at heading off the allegations that bishops did nothing to prevent paedophiles from continuing to hide behind the righteousness of their priesthood. Year after year I would follow the Church protocols for dealing with complaints of sexual abuse, and report them to the hierarchy, only to find that time after time these allegations were denied as ever having been passed on to the hierarchy, or dismissed without proper investigation, or brushed under the carpet.
The continual stream of bumf has not resulted in the discovery of one single offender which adds to the suspicion that the church is not really intent on ending the abuse.
Whenever I accused the Church officials that they have done little practically to stem the flow of abusers entering ministry, they directed me to those documents. “We are doing something!” one bishop protested, “We are producing documents telling priests what they should not do!”
Any number of laws will not stop crimes from being committed. In the same way, any number of documents telling priests what they shouldn’t do does nothing to stop them doing it.
Eventually my own failure to keep my vow of celibacy reinforced for me what everyone else had always told me – celibacy is impossible. But despite this awareness, I kept up the pretence that it was, because by that stage I was completely entrenched in the institution, and enjoying the privileges that my priestly position offered.
But the final straw came for me one day after confessing my own failure to live celibately.
I went to confession in an area I would not be known, to an old Italian Padre with a reputation for sanctity. After identifying myself as a priest, I admitted that I had been passionately kissing my girlfriend (the one who was later to become my wife).
“What?” he yelled. “You are a priest! You are not allowed to have a girlfriend!”
I was immediately aware that his loud shouting could be heard by the other penitents waiting outside. “It’s priests like you who bring the Church into such disrepute” he spat venomously at me. “Yes Father, I know that”, I whispered in an attempt to quieten his shouting. “I’m sorry Father”, I said stumbling for a justifying response. He continued to tell me how evil I was, and accused me of having allowed the devil into my soul by engaging in physical contact with this woman. “Yes I am so sorry Father,” I began to get frustrated, “I know! That’s why I am here in Confession - telling God I am sorry!”
After berating me noisily for several more minutes for the scandalous life I was living, the elderly Italian priest suddenly changed his tone. “All right then, make a good Act of Contrition and pray the Rosary for your penance”.
“Yes Father,” I meekly replied and proceeded to pray the penitent’s prayer as he recited the words of absolution in Latin.
When I had finished my Act of Contrition I stood to leave, but the priest held out his hand to stop me then asked me “Have you got time to hear my confession?” I was surprised by the strangely unorthodox request, but nodded a compliant “Yes Father”.
He handed me the purple priest’s stole he was wearing over his shoulders, and he said in a much more subdued voice, “I don’t think I ever confessed this and it is bothering me”.
“There is a family I am very close to in this parish. In fact, I have married the parents and baptised all the kids. I come to their house regularly for meals you know. Once I was watching TV with the family. I had the youngest daughter sitting on my lap. She couldn’t be more than seven years old.” He then told me he had digitally penetrated the little girl while the other family members were obliviously watching TV.
The image of what he had verbalised caused me to gag with nausea as I spoke the words of absolution. It was the most horrible confession I have heard. People to whom I have confided that story have asked in disbelief, “Why did you forgive him?” I have to admit that it was with great reluctance that I did. But I had to, because he knew my sins.
But that was not the first or only time priests have confessed to me their deviances from what most would expect of a person occupying the esteemed and privileged position of Catholic priest. This book is filled with further examples which will horrify you as much as they have traumatised me.
It has been a constant source of embarrassment for me, every time I open the newspaper to read of yet another case of priestly sexual abuse. Whenever I did hear a news bulletin begin with the words “a priest has been charged”, and then outline something awful that he had done, I secretly hoped he was an Anglican.
But the Catholic Church has always smugly evaded public condemnation of its priests with the blatant denial that it had any knowledge of these offences prior to the arrests announced by police. How do the police seem to discover all the evidence necessary to convict a priest of sexual abuse while his own superiors, often living under the same roof, claim to have absolutely no knowledge of his deviant activities?
My own frustration with the immovable authority structures of the Church has helped me to understand why so many people have vacated churches over the decades. I have begun to comprehend how previously staunch Christians can now admit to having lost their faith in God and even doubted the existence of heaven.
I have joined my voice to those many sincere Catholics who constantly question God concerning the fate of victims of sexual abuse by religious people: “How can you allow this sort of thing to happen in your name? And why don’t you do anything to stop it?”
I have never heard a verbal response, but I posit one for myself: “I have done something about it. I made you!”
And God has certainly given me some insights that most have not had access to. I have been privy to information and events that most are ignorant of. I have seen first-hand the process of abuse, concealment and the shifting of blame.
Only once is it recorded that Jesus endorsed the killing of someone for doing something wrong. It is when He said, "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.” (Mark 9:42).
According to Jesus, those who commit crimes against children and turn them away from God deserve an early termination to their lives. They are the only sinners for whose sin there is no divine forgiveness affordable. It is these men who will be held accountable for those souls whose lives they have destroyed. But it is not good enough to wait for God to exact His vengeance. The men who were responsible for the employment of paedophiles and sex-abusers should also share in His divine retribution and according to me and many others they deserve a fair chunk of it while they are alive.
I am not the first person to identify serious flaws in the way the Catholic Church deals with allegations of sexual abuse. That priests are living double-lives and contradictions are apparent in the way they actually live, compared with the way they profess to live, is not in dispute. In her scandalous but rarely read 2005 book, Priests in Love, Jane Anderson makes an admission to widespread sexual infidelity amongst Australian Catholic clergy.
The author surveyed thousands of priests promised anonymity and presented a compendium of confessions from men who have turned their back on mandatory celibacy to follow their own consciences. However her revelations highlight the fact that there are a significant number of Australian clerics who are not living faithfully the promises they made on their ordinations. Their infidelity authorises other deviates to abuse the sacred trust that the Church empowers them with.
My book will explain how the enormous responsibility that the Church bestows on priests also makes the priesthood an inviting career for paedophiles and those with sexual deviancies. The charade of celibacy becomes the cloak that hides a multitude of sins.
The publicly promoted premise behind the insistence on clerical celibacy is that the priest needed to be as pure and spotless as the offerings that he handled at the altar.
A vow of chastity was what qualified a man to hold such an esteemed leadership position within the church.
Of course, to maintain this façade, the priest must at least appear to be chaste, even if he is not. Bishops responsible for the management of local Church communities, rely on a number of such men willing to wear the vestments and celebrate the Mass. The Bishops will never pry into the priest’s personal life to determine whether or not he is celibate, for fear of finding out to the contrary. With a decline in the number of people willing to become priests, and not enough priests to staff the Catholic churches within Australia, the Bishops are desperate to hold onto the priests that they have within their ranks.
Today, in Catholic parishes throughout the world, and particularly in Australia, men are pretending to be celibate in order to hold the exalted office of priest. They are keeping up the image of a church that is losing its relevance in secular society. If it were not for its expansive school system and the government grants sustaining them, the Catholic Church would have died out long ago.
The ongoing financial success and academic leadership of Catholic schools, are propping up the Church’s flagging identity, and topping up the church coffers, depleted after endless sexual abuse compensation pay outs. But the church still needs to have enough men willing to celebrate the Sunday Mass to give the impression that it is business as usual. It doesn’t matter whether or not these men are in fact celibate, as long as they look like they are.
I should know... I was one of them!
INTRODUCTION
In case you are tempted to think that I am just another disenchanted, rebellious or failed pastor attempting to justify myself by slinging mud at other priests, let me say without humility, that I have sacrificed a huge amount of kudos by writing this book. Until recently I was the parish priest of the fastest growing Catholic community in New South Wales. I established the new parish at Glenmore Park and supervised the funding and construction of an architectural award winning church building now valued at over five million dollars. The parish land, properties and assets I was responsible for, are valued close to ten million dollars.
Along with the responsibility for over 600 primary school children and close to 1,000 girls in our neighbouring high school, I was chaplain to a large Christian Brother’s boy’s high school, and Dean of our region’s priests. I was on the Council of Priests for the Diocese and on the Board of Catholic Care Social Services, both prestigious appointments given me by the Diocesan Bishop.
In 2000 I had the honour of being a Chaplain to the athletes during the Sydney Olympic Games and was also distinguished with the honour of being the region’s Catholic Police Chaplain for nearly 15 years, having had appointments to various Diocesan committees.
Being selected for these tasks and positions of leadership inferred experience, competence and trustworthiness. All of which doesn’t prove a thing about my virtue or ability, only that someone in the hierarchy valued myself and my work highly enough to place these enormous responsibilities on me. But reputation and rank are not something that I sought in priesthood. I would rather be remembered for having made a difference in people’s lives, by bringing them closer to Jesus.
On October 17th 2010, eight thousand Australian Catholics were amongst the hundreds of thousands crowded into St. Peter’s Square in Rome in collective euphoria as they awaited Pope Benedict XVI’s canonisation of our first national saint. Most lay people in the Church were unaware that this day might never have happened. If the upper echelon had their way, Mary MacKillop’s name would have remained suppressed along with her Order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
A few days earlier the ABC's Compass program revealed that in 1871, at the time of her leadership in the Order of Mary MacKillop's Josephites (as they were known colloquially), Sisters attracted the ire of the hierarchy by revealing that Father Keating of Kapunda, South Australia was molesting children at the local church school. The Sisters reported the abuse to the Vicar-General and disciplinary action was taken against Father Keating, humiliating him and angering his friend Father Charles Horan, who was close to the then boss of Adelaide Catholic Diocese, Bishop Laurence Shiel.
Father Horan is believed to have harboured a grudge against Sister Mary MacKillop and the other whistle-blowers in her order, and used his influence over Bishop Shiel to manipulate him into throwing the nun out of the church in 1871. Bishop Shiel’s conscience must have plagued him, because he reversed her excommunication on his deathbed.
If Father Horan had had his way, Sister Mary MacKillop would still be silenced by excommunication. What was her sin? Wishing to uncover and prevent the continuation of the crimes of a paedophile priest. Mary MacKillop had become aware of the awful activities of a man who had been entrusted with the spiritual lives of the young and vulnerable and had tried to prevent him. Sadly many others, including myself, have experienced the same opposition and excommunication when they attempt to expose the dark secrets of priests.
Paedophilia continues unabated amongst the clergy in the Catholic Church, largely fuelled by the secrecy that surrounds the personal lives and activities of priests. Saint Mary MacKillop would be oscillating in her North Sydney grave if she knew, as I am sure she does, that the very Church that canonised her is continuing to endorse the proliferation of these heinous crimes against children, and doing very little to discourage future abuses.
As you get further into this book you will hear of terrible examples of the Catholic Church’s systematic process of concealing abuses, a process which is evident to everyone else but themselves.
You will also notice that women are removed from the possibility of leadership in the Church as they pose a threat to the male-dominated structures, structures which permit paedophilia to flourish. Religious women who have followed in St. Mary’s active service among the more vulnerable in Sydney society continue to work for restorative justice by seeking equality in the Church. But the blatantly misogynist hierarchy has persisted in its opposition to women’s rights to leadership in the church on flimsy theologically chauvinistic arguments. There are many more suffragettes petitioning the church to give women equal access to priestly ordination, but the subject has been officially closed by the Vatican in a decree of 1994. In an apostolic letter, On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone, the then Pope John Paul II said the Church's ban on women priests is definitive, and not open to debate among Catholics.
Since that time a further encyclical, General Decree Regarding the Delict of Attempted Sacred Ordination of a Woman was published in June 2008 and has given the threat of excommunication to any Bishop who attempts to ordain a woman as priest. A Vatican spokesman (there are notably no spokeswomen) Father Di Noia said, ‘The decree makes clear the fact that the people directly involved in an attempted ordination of a woman excommunicate themselves automatically; it is not a penalty imposed by the local bishop or the universal Church.’ In stating it this way the church attempts to exonerate itself of any discrimination by saying the person excommunicated himself, not by the action of the church. It’s really a chicken or egg question.
There is a story I have used as a parable with children in an attempt to explain how we chose whether we will ultimately become good or bad: An old man was attempting to encourage his wayward grandson by admitting to mistakes he had made in his own life.
“In my life I have done many bad things and many good things. It is because inside me there is a bad bear and a good bear. The bad bear causes me to do bad things and the good bear causes me to do good things." The little boy asked, “So who wins in the end Grandpa?”
“Whichever one I feed”, the old man answered.
Many would recognise in themselves a tendency to sometimes do wrong even though the predominant tendency is to do good. We take things home from work, download pirated music or movies, exceed the speed limit, exaggerate exemptible items on our tax return. But we wouldn’t steal a car or kill someone.
The difficulty people have in believing that priests sexually abuse vulnerable people or children is because they attribute to priests a holiness that is not realistic. We want to believe that priests are always doing ‘good’ and could never do the opposite. People want to believe that priests are programmed differently from other mortals. We assume priests are somehow immune from the more base human tendencies. They are above the temptations and impulses that cause us to act in a way contrary to our nature. Priests are altruistic super-humans. And it is precisely this belief that allows us to bestow so much of our trust in priests.
In my time as a chaplain with the NSW Police I was sometimes asked to give supporting testimony during trials for offences that I had witnesses merely by having been in the police vehicle at the time when an alleged offender was apprehended. Sometimes those who are arrested and charged with offences attempt to claim innocence of the crime after speaking with a lawyer. I remember once being a witness in court for the police who were prosecuting a car thief. At the time he was arrested, he claimed not to have been the driver of the car when the officers arrested him as he had left the vehicle and hidden in a clothing store. I had been in the police vehicle when the officer gave chase and ultimately arrested the thief who had left the stolen car when the police tackled him. I had clearly seen him running from the vehicle, and was able to identify him in the store, by the distinctive clothing he wore.
When the time came for me to give my testimony, the defence lawyer began his cross-examination. “I suggest it to you Father Lee that you could be fabricating this evidence to support your police colleague here, who didn’t in fact get a clear view of the assailant ...”
The Magistrate irritably intervened, before I even had a chance to open my mouth in surprise at the accusation. “Now hold it right there Mr Smith ... if you are daring to question the integrity of a Catholic priest, you are treading on very thin ice.” The solicitor immediately withdrew his suggestion, and the criminal was ultimately sentenced to 18 months gaol.
This lawyer and the Magistrate were obviously Catholic-school educated. They too were indoctrinated in the philosophy that the priest is always truthful. This belief in priestly infallibility, contributes to the cause of many priests going astray. The priest himself starts to believe that they are what people think of them. Some priests thrive on the adulation and exaltation that their parishioners bestow upon them. They believe that they are someone special and expect special treatment. Consequently they even expect to get away with an arrogance that most ordinary people would be condemned for.
CHAPTER 1 - PRIESTLY REPUTATIONS
It is not uncommon when I am at a wedding or baptism party to be seated next to the grandparents of the celebrants and be asked “Do you know Father So-and-so? “Of course in nine out of ten cases, Father “So-and-so” had been dead long before I was ordained, but sometimes I do know the man they are referring to. Even when I do say I know him well, they then proceed to tell me of his achievements and readily heap praises on the man they hardly know.
I am always amazed at how these priests have been so successful at giving the impression that they have been working so diligently in their parishes and are on the way to driving themselves into an early grave through their concerted efforts to save souls.
As I was hanging out the washing one morning late last year, Inspector Garry Sims the local Duty Officer at Penrith police station rang me on my mobile just to ask me how I was.
I had known the portly policeman for nearly all the time I had been a police chaplain.
My first dealings with him were when he was working at Rosehill Local Area Command and he requested my services to provide some counselling to some officers who had been traumatised over the recent and sudden suicide of a female colleague.
This time Inspector Sims was concerned for me after noticing some of my Facebook status updates airing my disappointment at the premature death of another Constable we both knew.
This man was an officer I had attempted to counsel out of his depression, over a failed relationship with an Asian woman he had met over the internet. No amount of tangible evidence could convince him that he had been duped. Despite the fact other men had recently enjoyed sexual relations with the same woman and had also given her large amounts of money, he wanted to believe she really loved him exclusively and continued to profess his undying love for her.
Eventually he had to accept that she was never going to consummate their cyber-relationship and he gassed himself in his car. His unexpected and sudden suicide caused me to experience moments of guilt wondering if I could have said or done anything more to convince him that there was life after this woman.
When I told Garry Sims that I was feeling better about the whole tragedy, despite having felt deflated that there were only three attendees at his funeral, I hastened to change the topic.
I mentioned that I had seen his parish priest Father John Smith the week prior at our annual Clergy Conference. Father John Smith had been the pastor of the Catholic communities of the Upper Blue Mountains for a number of years, after arriving suddenly and without explanation from England.
He quickly endeared himself to the locals with his affable and humorous personality. Inspector Garry, being a fairly traditional Catholic, had grown fond of him because he was always dressed in his black clericals. In our conversations Garry often spoke about topics that Father John had alluded to in his homilies the previous weekend.
I mentioned that Father John had informed the priests in our Diocese that he was making application to retire from ministry. Garry seemed bemused to be hearing the news from me and not from Father John himself as he felt quite close to his Parish Priest and expected he should have been informed. That’s another illusion we priests can create quite easily. Parishioners are convinced that we care so much about them that we would share intimate details about our personal life with them, and also that they are entitled to that knowledge.
“Well I shouldn’t be surprised,” Garry said, “Father John had been so ill the week prior to the conference that he was confined to bed for the entire week and no Masses were celebrated in our parish church at Katoomba”.
John Smith was a short and overweight Englishman who spoke in a tawdry London accent. His black clericals highlighting the white specks of dandruff and cigarette ash covering them. He reputedly liked a Sherry and was sometimes possessed by a quick temper.
He was a priest whom our diocese had somehow acquired from England. He travelled back and forth quite freely between Australia and England, regularly exceeding the allowable four weeks holiday enjoyed by locally born members of the clergy.
He owned a comfortable holiday residence in Spain in which he planned to retire. How he could afford this on his approximately $16,000 annual priest’s stipend is beyond my creative accounting. It is quite possible however, that he inherited the money from his parents or some rich parishioner. It’s not uncommon for elderly spinsters with no living relatives to bequeath their wealth to their caring parish priest whom they have built up a strong affection for.
It is also not uncommon for insincere priests to manipulate an elderly parishioner into bequeathing their inheritance to them, through insincere expressions of care and concern, knowing that the parishioner would be willing to reciprocate. I will never know how Father John Smith funded his retirement, one he never got to realise. He died less than a month after Garry Sims’ phone call. Father Smith suffered a sudden aneurism, embarrassingly dying whilst doing his morning ablutions in a parishioner’s home.
Most Catholics are astonished when informed that some priests own extensive personal property and some have even managed to purchase investment properties. The reason for their mystified looks as I discovered when I told some journalists that some priests own holiday properties is because most assumed that they take a vow of poverty. This assumption could be due to the fact that priests are always appealing for money to fix the church rather than sharing their own personal wealth.
I admit it also suggests a certain lack of confidence in the Church’s ability to look after its priests when priests see the need to invest in real estate for their own retirement.
The priest’s life is indeed a mystery. You won’t find a clearly agreed upon role description on Wikipedia. I am about to take the veil off the tabernacle and let you know what happens on the inside of the cloisters. The secrecy that shrouds the lives of priests has for too long hidden many dark secrets. These awesome holy men, whose human foibles are so readily excused by the laity with pious platitudes such as “Father works so hard” or because he is lonely or aging rapidly.
From time to time, we read of this priest or another, who did some unspeakable things to children or took off with another man’s wife. But when they become aware of it, the community are all convinced by the oft quoted lie, “It is a very rare occurrence and this man was one in a million”.
We all want to believe that priests are generally good. But these all too frequent examples of clergy abuse are like the household security alarms with their flashing blue lights, that you ignore as you drive by them - the ones that no one seems to attend to, including me.
These isolated and infrequent events are the canaries’ voices in the mineshaft,1 that if we are to survive as a church or society we must listen for. The Church authorities appear to merely press on with business as usual, hoping there is no one to recognise the real danger. We ignore these warning bells at our peril.
In exposing the frauds I do pose a very real danger of destroying the reputations and good work done by so many honest foot-soldiers in the Church. There are obviously many fine examples of hard working priests who have suffered because people are all too ready to believe that all priests who want to minister to children are paedophiles.
One glaring example is Father John McCulloch. John was ordained a priest in 1963 at St. Mary’s Cathedral Sydney. After ordination he served as a Curate in various parishes in the Archdiocese of Sydney before becoming the Parish Priest of Katoomba. Whilst at Katoomba he worked for many years establishing the Family Camping Movement, which enabled disadvantaged Western Sydney families to have low-cost seaside holidays on the Central Coast. To keep the costs down, ‘Father Mack’ as he was lovingly nicknamed, even managed to provide the canned goods that the families would eat at those camps, through his charitable fundraising exercises.
But not everyone loved him. Someone accused Father Mack of some impropriety at a camp and he was stood down from ministry while an investigation was conducted. The complainant later admitted he had lied and Father Mack was later exonerated. But the damage had already been done. That one vexatious complainant’s unfounded allegation of impropriety destroyed Father John McCulloch’s reputation irreparably and also his desire to work in a parish. After being cleared of the charges, and when Broken Bay Diocese was established in 1986, John transferred to that Diocese and chose to limit his activities to helping out with Masses on weekends before retiring some years later. He died forlorn on 10th January 2009 with only a few good friends who still believed in his innocence supporting him.
It seems that people are all too willing to believe that all are tarred with the same brush. The mud of other priests’ sins was flung at Father John McCulloch and most of it stuck.
But there are many seriously holy looking men in long robes pontificating about how everyone ought to be living who are not practicing what they preach. They surround themselves with yes-men who are perhaps unaware of how contradictory their lives actually are.
Modern Day Pharisees
Jesus constantly criticised the religious leaders of His own time. They were the Pharisees who proscribed laws that enforce attentively cleaning the outside of cups and pots while ignoring the insides.2 He was ultimately silenced because He condemned their religious hypocrisy. From some of the very un-Jesus like rebukes I read in the Bible, I get the impression that these sanctimonious churchmen appeared to enforce the law for everyone else, whilst at the same time exempting themselves from it. Various people throughout history have echoed Jesus’ condemnation of religious hypocrisy to the obstinate disregard of their intended audience.
The weakening of the bonds between Church and State during the High Middle Ages3 led to a decline in blind adherence to doctrinal leadership. The Crusades attempted to force submission to the Church’s spiritual and political authority; however willingness to follow ill-informed religious leadership declined on a large scale with the advent of the Protestant reformers in the sixteenth century. In that period we see a courageous and robust opposition to the obvious contradictions in the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings and practices.
The first real impairment to Roman Catholic sovereignty began in Germany with the sermons and writings of Martin Luther. He was born on November 10th 1483 and baptised the next day, thus he was named after the patron saint of the day, St. Martin of Tours.
At only age twenty-four he was ordained a priest, but was soon to become uncomfortable with many puzzling practices within Catholicism that resulted in his insistence on the heretical position that “nothing a man can do can gain his own salvation”.
Luther claimed that all salvation had been achieved by Jesus Christ with His suffering and crucifixion. This led to the inescapable conclusion that we do not need the Church and the sacraments to assist us on our earthly pilgrimage. By extension of this, if we don’t need the Church or sacraments then we don’t need priests.
But it was his outspoken rejection of the practice of granting ‘Indulgences’ which was to create the greatest controversy ultimately leading to his excommunication on 3rd January in 1521. The word "indulgence" comes from the Latin indulgeo originally meaning a kindness or favour. An Indulgence was the forgiveness of sins granted to a dead person that could be paid for by giving money to a priest to offer Mass for a deceased relative or friend. In the time of Martin Luther, most priests were theologically illiterate and they began selling Indulgences to the families of recently deceased persons. To increase business the Church even developed popular songs to promote their sales. One popular ditty went along with a contemporary tune to the words: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from purgatory springs."
This contemptuous practice still occurs today with many priests profiting from the death of their parishioners, encouraging their relatives to ‘buy’ Masses for the Dead for a $20 fee especially during the month of November. I have even lived with a priest who approached the relatives of the deceased soon after a funeral with the request that they sponsor a stained-glass window in the church and have the name of their relative engraved on a plaque, for the privilege of which they would be required to ‘donate’ $10,000!
Luther did not reject Indulgences outright but he protested the sale of sacraments, effectively making them a product. He based his righteous criticism on Jesus’ own words, “You received without charge, give without charge.4”
He wrote his infamously provocative Ninety Five Theses which attacked certain dubious practices of the Catholic Church, and allegedly nailed them to the Castle Church door at Wittenburg on 31 October 1517, and according to some sparking the Protestant Reformation. Non Catholics have been known as Protestants ever since. In 1524, Martin Luther finally threw off his monastic habit and married an ex-Cistercian nun, Catherine von Bura, after publicly opposing many of the practices that had created obstacles for the simple but devout laity to following the true path of holiness to Jesus.
At about the same time in Switzerland Father Ulrych Zwingli, a former military chaplain strongly criticised Catholic countries that used soldiers as mercenaries and he preached vehemently against other abuses by the Church and State. In 1522 he preached a sermon against fasting from meat in Lent and showed his opposition by allegedly eating two pork sausages in the pulpit on Ash Wednesday5. Zwingli and Luther both rejected the authority of the Pope and clerical celibacy and later formed their own churches. These two reformers are among many who do not necessarily deny the constancy of the Catholic faith, but condemn the practices that the Catholic Church has invented which appear at odds with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Rejection of Authority
What prevents like-minded “protestant” priests today from following in the footsteps of Luther and Zwingli is the fact that the local diocesan Catholic Church authority officially owns the buildings and the land on which the church he has been using has been built, despite the fact that the buildings would have been paid for by the local community.
In former times, if a priest wanted to protest the Catholic hierarchy or organizational culture, he could simply secede with his congregation from communion (or be effectively ex-communicated) but retained control of his church buildings and naturally many of flock would continue to support him.
If a priest today wanted to protest the Roman Catholic Church over any point at all, he would likely be immediately kicked out of the church. I found that out. After I spoke out about the rampant abuses of authority that I personally observed and the consistent paedophile cover-ups and protested by getting married, I was expelled from the parish that I have built and was immediately stripped of my faculties to preach or administer sacraments.
Many of the discovered paedophiles and sexual deviates, and even those with psychological disorders have been returned to their communities, given accommodation, a car and continue to receive private health insurance and monthly remuneration.
My stipend (a monthly amount of little over $1000) was stopped immediately and my Church credit card was cancelled. Even my ‘super-extras’ health cover and life insurance was terminated. My personal bank account was closed and the remaining balance was sent to me in a cheque for $76.77 with a covering letter containing only two words “Account closed”.
I have retained this letter, and the unbanked cheque, as a poignant reminder of how little my twenty years of priestly ministry and service to the Catholic Church really meant to the establishment. Having no source of income and little prospects of gaining another career, unless I re-train, it makes earning a living for myself and my new family challenging.
Until recently I had listed a fellow priest I have worked closely with over the years, as a referee on my online C.V., until Father McSweeney informed me he could no longer act as a referee, as his Bishop had instructed him he was not allowed to. It seems that the church is intent on sabotaging any of my efforts to also gain future employment.
I am hand-tied from promoting my dissenting opinions and my community has now been forced to worship with me in private homes. As a consequence of my opposition, I am no longer authorised to preach in Catholic churches anywhere in the world. A new priest has already been appointed to my parish, who has informed the remnant community that I have done something very bad and they are better off without my scandalous heresies being preached. Interestingly, the Bishop of the Diocese, Anthony Fisher came the weekend after my sacking, to personally console the grieving community, and warned them not to attend any Masses I propose to offer in the future. He apologised for the scandal my secret marriage had caused them, and offered complementary counselling for any who were affected. People were crying of course, but not because of the shame my departure caused, but because the community were genuinely grieving my absence from them after nine years as their pastor. I was exiled as a Catholic priest, as good as dead to my congregation. The Bishop’s apology and comforting platitudes were all video-taped and posted on the Diocesan website within a day.
In 2009 when the parishioners of All Saints Liverpool first heard the news that their parish priest Father Robert Fuller had been arrested for attempting to procure a child over the internet for sex, no Bishops turned up with video cameras to broadcast an apology for the scandal he had caused. Why not? No counsellors were offered. Why not? Surely the Catholic Church doesn't consider what I did was a more serious offence than that of paedophilia or child abuse! It was publicly reported that Father Fuller repeatedly masturbated on internet chat sites in front of whom he believed to be a fifteen year old girl (but who in fact was an officer of the Sex Crimes Task Force who had been tipped off about him).
In the late 1990s when three priests and a number of brothers of the Society of Gerard Majella at Greystanes were arrested for prolonged sexual abuse of trainees in their Order, there were also no Episcopal Visitations or TV cameras, nor offers of free counselling. Why not? A new priest was summarily appointed and it was business as usual as if nothing had happened.
Because I haven’t the financial means to build my own church, my dissident views have been effectively silenced and very few of my once loyal parishioners still support me.
My reputation for any good works I had done, have been trashed and this preacher’s voice will no longer be heard through church PA systems. But the Catholic Church mechanism will roll on with its mission undaunted.