Twisted View Of ‘The Sexual Revolution’
Used As Facile Excuse For Priestly Pedophilia

By William Finucane

Early in the morning, when old women in black had not yet crept silently into the middle pews in the darkly handsome, wood paneled basement level of the beautiful church in Newton, Mass., known as Our Lady Help of Christians, I was there already. The church was magnificent, seating close to 1,000, and the upstairs was like a cathedral, where you could sing to the heavens with a feeling your voice actually could get there.

But downstairs, while richly appointed in dark wood, had none of that lofty feel. It was where people went to confession and where the daily mass was conducted, mostly for working people, widows and wives. The upstairs was glorious, bright, airy and light; the downstairs was muted, with a relatively low ceiling. Everything was dark except the altar, which was always brightly lighted for services.

I was an altar boy. I was there before the first parishioners.

Altar candles had to be lighted, bells had to be placed on the altar.

Sacramental wine and water had to be fetched. That was for the priest to deal with, of course. But it had to be in the right place. Naturally I had to have donned my black robe and white covering. Shoes had to be shined. Hair combed and cut, properly trimmed.

In the sanctuary the other altar boy was waiting, practicing his Latin. Poor fellow, he was new. I knew my Latin cold. Lots of guys only learned the first few words, which they could say clearly, then they'd go into a meaningless mumble. But I knew mine. Not because I was intrinsically better at it than anyone else, but it was supposed to be said as a prayer and was supposed to be right, so I learned it.

God knew all languages.

One said the prayers well or one sinned. Small sin, of course, but it was a sin.

Father arrived, threw on his green robes and went out to the Altar to start mass. The longest part would be giving Communion; there was usually quite a procession of devout old ladies who knelt, heads bowed, shadowed in black, except when they raised their faces to take Communion.

I have forgotten the priest’s name. But he was very young and painfully devoted to delivering the word of Jesus to the faithful. So his time on the pulpit was his most useful time. His speech had to do with the Mystical Body of Christ. It was metaphysical.

All the black clothed women kept their heads bowed reverently, even if none of them understood all of it. Finally after 30 minutes of dissertation on the Mystical Body of Christ, the now beaming priest spread his arms to embrace all the people on earth and said: "And thus we can all say we are one giant orgasm…"

Out from the shadows, and from under the black head coverings, came the women’s heads; one voiced the smallest yet audible gasp.

"Organism; we all become one organism with Christ in his Mystical Body. Amen."

Crimson was the young priest and Mass ended quickly.

I did nothing.

There was nothing to report. It was just a case of a young fellow bellowing out "orgasm" in the midst of a Mass full of older women, many of whom were Italian.

I never thought much of that malapropism, really, until lately.

Could this have been one of those latent sexual things? No, not possible; that would be just too screwy.

Here was a devoted young man fresh from the seminary, and at the most important point – the crucial moment in a very obviously well and carefully crafted speech – where the young priest is desperately reaching out to touch his congregation, and there, at the most vital juncture of the speech, he practically sang the key word – ORGASM.

At the time, I did not make much of it, even with other altar boys.

They and I had a single purpose; we were supposed to be assistants in making the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass the most holy event on earth. Getting some guffaws from other people was not worth sullying the Holy Sacrifice. This was, after all, the 1960s.

The Vatican was coming out with incredible new things: Mass in English, Masses with guitar music instead of choirs, and more participation in Parish matters by the faithful. Enormous change seemed to be taking hold of the church.

People just out of the seminary in the mid 1960s were truly facing a wonderful growth in the church. A little slip of the tongue – "orgasm" – was unimportant.

Anyway, the young priest was just visiting and I had no idea where he went afterwards. Whether he had a brilliant vocation or quit the priesthood, I don’t know. But what I now know about Massachusetts and other Catholic diocese during that time is chilling.

For me it is especially chilling; sometimes numbing.

All of us now know that many priests committed atrocities against young men from the mid 1960s right up to the late 1980s. Horror stories have danced across news pages and radios and television screens. Everyone is shocked.

Some of the children these priests were supposed to teach and protect were instead being raped by them while they were entrusted to their care; and then they were doing it again, and again. With impunity.

Yes, yes the Church is paying $85 million to some of the people who had the fortitude to step up in court and relive the unreality, again, in an attempt to find some measure of closure. However, no offering of  money can provide true closure, but it does underscore guilt, and surely that must be intellectually satisfying to the victims.

So there will be many men, and some women, who will live all of life remembering a black-garbed man; he would be your savior if you allowed him unspeakable access; and don’t even think of telling anyone this sacrilegious secret. You can be thundered into hell if you do. He has that power. Persuasive arguments, these priests had at their disposal, all to be employed against the most impressionable young minds.

Now, however, after all the public revelations and reluctant mea culpa’s of the church hierarchy, we all figured the blame had been affixed and the healing process begun. It was even possible that another Catholic comeback was in the air.

Then came a bit of incredible news from the City of Springfield, Mass., where the bishop, Thomas Dupre, suddenly resigned. Sickness, he said, was his problem. But the apparent illness was acknowledged the day after the Republican newspaper of Springfield approached him with allegations he had abused two young men in the 1970s.

OK, at first blush that seemed like just one more churchman caught. What followed though, was truly unbelievable.

Monsignor Richard S. Sniezyk, who is serving as interim bishop while Rome looks for a full time pastor, offered the general public this explanation of how and why so many priests started accosting boys, and why the church hierarchy either absolved them and sent them out again, or covered up the offenses and, as often, sent them out again.

"They did good ministry, they were good to their people, they were kind, compassionate, but they had no idea what they were doing to these young men that they were abusing," Sniezyk declared. "It was the era of the 60s – most of it took place from the mid-‘60s to the early ‘80s – and the whole atmosphere out there was, it was OK, it was OK to do."

Sniezyk told the Boston Globe that as a seminarian, and as a young priest, he had heard of priests who had sex with boys, but "no one thought much about it."

Priests who could actually debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin could not see that what they were doing to boys was wrong?

That simply seems impossible!

What the comments of acting-Bishop Sniezyk illustrates is an incredibly self-serving system that attempted to effectively erase any real sin from the hands of the priests involved. They just didn’t know. It was ingenuousness on their part! Live and learn, eh?

They all know now it was and is a sin. ‘Really! Is it a sin? Well, ok then, we’ll stop.’ Such intellectual machinations beggars the imagination. Especially since the entire Catholic system, of which the Bishops, Monsignors, and priests were the rigid code enforcers, was and is based on stringent rules of moral conduct for the faithful.

But now, looking back, it is important to recall all the selfish, ruthless badgering by the priestly brotherhood, the latent threats of being literally damned for all eternity for the smallest sins exposed in the confidence of the Confessional: Did you kiss a girl? Did you do anything inappropriate? Did you have impure thoughts and actions? All of the flotsam and jetsam of adolescence was drawn out and scrutinized, sometimes with the most direct and embarrassing questions.

It was impossible not to feel tarnished by the very awakenings of one’s own body, one’s sexuality. And always afterwards would come the penance, depending on just how many impure thoughts and actions you might have had, or, all the worse, if you had actually had some sort of fumbling teenage encounter. How long you knelt at the wooden railing of the altar doing your Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s, or your Rosary – proof positive of your terrible failing – was visible to everyone waiting for their turn in the Confessional.

But, as Monsignor Sniezyk, filling the role of interim Bishop, now declaims, the priests who were involved in pedophilia were somehow able to view themselves as free of sin. Somehow, as incredible as it seems, they were able to rationalize these abominable crimes against young people as free from recrimination, because after all, it was the times they lived in that created the forgiving environment.

With such a twisted view of historic reality, perhaps we should not be too surprised at the end result; but was there no thought at all of what was happening with the number of boys, and some girls, who were abused during these years? Was there no understanding that the priest’s selfish gratification would result in damage or destruction of the young souls in their care? Was it so easy to assume these young people could do without a clean soul, some measure of self-respect, a normal childhood, a real marriage, or any measure of peace with God?

Well then, given this history, if the clergymen were such "good ministers," as Monsignor Sniezyk declares, just who were they helping? Surely it was not the children to whom they ministered. Did they do any "good" for the boys? Were they "kind and compassionate" to the boys, and once in awhile to the girls, who were the objects of their lust and self-gratification?

Exactly who was it in the early 1960s through the 1980s that created the "atmosphere out there" that suddenly made it OK to abuse children, especially boys?

Monsignor Sniezyk may have been trying to explain how it appeared within the hallowed halls of the church decades ago – when a convoluted and distorted understanding of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the ‘60’s apparently enabled churchmen to rationalize heinous crimes against children – but what he has actually done is opened up the terrible question of church behavior and decision making again. So just who is he talking about here?

It would seem he is ultimately pointing to the bishops. They are the ‘trouble hiders.’

Of course, any time intense trouble, such as the ruination of lives that priests are supposed to be protectors of, is covered up, the facts will eventually emerge putrid. This is no secret. It is simple reality.

No group of men, no matter how close knit and no matter how well protected by their own cloistered and organized mysteries, can silence tortured souls. But Catholic bishops certainly tried.

Of course, Monsignor/Bishop Sniezyk explains, he "heard" of "cliques of priests" who made it a practice to molest boys and then when found out were protected by the church and its legal officials. In other words, these pedophiles were shielded by the Catholic bishops.

Back in the early 1960s when I was an altar boy, things were different, at least in my personal experience. Every now and then, one of the priests would take a minute to ask me for more wine or ask me to fetch a given page in the Gospels, or whatever. He would never speak to me as another human being. This is exactly what I expected. I had no business conversing with a priest. He had years of theological training and carried the most sacred vocation any human could ever possess. I was a high school kid.

Later, when I showed some thought of becoming a priest, they did want to talk. During neither time did any priest ever intimate to me any hint of sex or abuse or damnation or anything like that. Still, now it seems that abusive practices were well enough known among the members of the clergy that a priest coming out of the seminary in that period could recall now, and say with some assurance,  that "it was OK" to do such things, but of course it was better not to be caught or have an issue made of it. Discretion was the apparent order of the day, especially if the priest liked the parish and area in which he worked, because if the ‘indiscretion’ became apparent to his superiors, he would be likely be transferred somewhere else.

Had any priest ever intimated any of this to me, I would not have believed him. Perhaps as a test of my faith a priest might make that a test question; but no one could possibly believe it was legitimate.

Maybe that proves what a failure I was as a boy in my ability to judge anyone. Or maybe it proves just how merciless the church hierarchy was when it wanted to protect its priests from the anguished and outraged questions of its own parishioners. Blessed be the meek, for we will walk all over them.

If learning your Latin so you will not sin in reciting it is one kind of offense; then how many Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s, full rosaries and Stations of the Cross does a priest molester owe God, and how can he ever apologize to his fellow man?