‘It’s Really Hard to Be a Catholic’: The Pain of Reading the Sex Abuse Report

PITTSBURGH — John Cabon stood quietly and crossed himself before a statue of the Virgin Mary outside St. Paul’s, the mother church of the Pittsburgh Diocese.

“I keep the faith,” said Cabon, 64, on the way to noon Mass. He said his sister had left the faith when explosive revelations of sexual abuse rocked the church in 2002. He had refused. “You don’t really believe everything, you know.”

Inside the church, there was no escaping the abuse scandal, which has entered a new chapter after monstrous revelations were released in a grand jury report on Tuesday, describing the abuse of more than 1,000 young people by hundreds of priests in Pennsylvania.

The priest at St Paul’s spoke of “horrendous and evil acts,” “moral failure” by church leaders, and the “grief, sadness, feelings of betrayal, even anger” that followed. One woman wept silently in her pew.

In Pittsburgh — site of some of the most ghastly acts in the report — and in dioceses around the country, Catholics grappled with the report’s findings.

Some had stayed with the church after explosive revelations of priest abuse over a decade ago, and heard promises by the church hierarchy of atonement.

Then came Tuesday’s report, with descriptions of priests engaged in rape and child pornography for decades, using “whips, violence and sadism,” and in one case joining together in a secret cabal of abusers. Even more painful, the report showed bishops in some cases actively defending the accused priests.

“I think right now it’s really hard to be a Catholic,” said John Gehring, the Catholic program director of Faith in Public Life, a national network of faith leaders. “Everywhere you look, things seem to be falling apart.”

The fallout is not limited to Pennsylvania.

In Nebraska’s Diocese of Lincoln, the bishop has apologized repeatedly in recent days for his handling of misconduct allegations against priests, including one he told “not to be alone with females” and a monsignor, now deceased, accused of “physical boundary violations directed toward college students and seminarians.”

A Catholic school in Baltimore will no longer be named for William H. Keeler, the cardinal who died last year and was once seen as a champion for sexual abuse victims but who was singled out in the grand jury report for failing to take action on more than one priest accused of abuse.

On Wednesday, Cardinal Seán O’Malley, archbishop of Boston and chairman of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors, announced he will not be attending the World Meeting of Families in Dublin this month, a major event the pope will attend.

In a statement, O’Malley said that he must remain in Boston to handle issues at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts. Last week, he placed the rector on leave and launched an investigation into the seminary’s culture following allegations of sexual misconduct at the school.

Wednesday was also the day that Catholics celebrate the assumption of Mary into heaven. The dissonance was not lost on people.

“Here we are, on the Feast of the Assumption, and Jesus is looking at his mother and saying, ‘Look what they have done to my church,'” said Jessica Bede, a parishioner of Our Lady of Peace Church in Manhattan, which was shuttered in a round of church closings. “They have chewed it up.”

In Boston, Barbara Bowe, a nurse who had grown up in Catholic schools, said she had already fallen away from the church. And with the latest round of revelations, she seemed unlikely to return anytime soon.

“As far as priests and nuns being believed, that’s gone,” she said. “The authority is gone.”