With three small children and her marriage in trouble, Pat Bond attended a spirituality retreat for Roman Catholic women in Illinois 26 years ago in hopes of finding support and comfort.
What Ms. Bond found was a priest ”” a dynamic, handsome Franciscan friar in a brown robe ”” who was serving as the spiritual director for the retreat and agreed to begin counseling her on her marriage. One day, she said, as she was leaving the priest’s parlor, he pulled her aside for a passionate kiss.
Ms. Bond separated from her husband, and for the next five years she and the priest, the Rev. Henry Willenborg, carried on an intimate relationship, according to interviews and court documents. In public, they were both leaders in their Catholic community in Quincy, Ill. In private they functioned like a married couple, sharing a bed, meals, movie nights and vacations with the children.
Eventually they had a son, setting off a series of legal battles as Ms. Bond repeatedly petitioned the church for child support. The Franciscans acquiesced, with the stipulation that she sign a confidentiality agreement. It is now an agreement she is willing to break as both she and her child, Nathan Halbach, 22, are battling cancer.
A common equation: Selfish Man + Foolish Woman = Wounded Child.
You’d think the Franciscans would toss out this bad apple: “Why don’t they send these users packing?” is the question at the heart of all of these stories. Lay people know that no one is irreplaceable at work but these priests know they can have their cake and eat it, too. Note that this priest has a plum assignment at a thriving parish.
These are not equal relationships. This priest worked on his victim when she was distraught over a troubled marriage and used “counseling” as the means of ensuring contact with her and exploiting her vulnerability. His other victim was a high school student, much younger than he. In the pedophile cases, it became clear that the priests would target children from single-parent or troubled homes and insert themselves to fill a void. This is NOT simply a situation where a relationship goes wrong, as they do in the secular world. These relationships are formed by the priests very craftily and are used to fill his needs. When he gets bored or something difficult happens, he moves on, clings to the celibacy vow, and maybe does a bit of penance. His victims, though, are stuck with the difficult fallout.
Again, the church should NOT be providing a haven for these “playboy priests” as a woman in the article described them. They should be tossed out of ministry, not using their priestly “aura” to their sexual advantage over vulnerable people. Heh, if they were single laymen working at secular jobs, they would learn quickly that they aren’t “all that.” It’s sick that they use their spiritual role for sex.
As a priest myself I found the article deeply distressing. And I have to agree with teatime above: to the breaking of vows, one has to add the misuse of a counselling situation, which should always preclude any intimacy. The only crumb of comfort I can find is the belief that attitudes in the Catholic Church have changed, and that the situation would accordingly be handled differently today. Twenty years ago when this whole imbroglio began to emerge there was a different outlook, one more concerned to avoid scandal than anything else.
I am ashamed to be a boomer.
I blogged on this last night. My comments were not especially short so I will apologize in advance for a longish post.
[blockquote] I hesitated quite a bit before putting this up. Any post that deals with the Catholic Church tends to draw accusations of either being an “online Orthodox” anti-Catholic bigot, or of still having one foot left on the other side of the Bosporus and being too sympathetic to my heretical former co-religionists. But I think this one is worth discussion so here goes.
My own take on this is that it is a tale of bad choices and irresponsible behavior on the part of many people with one truly innocent victim.
Fr. Willenborg: The man is a cad. I don’t know what else to say except that he has utterly failed at his moral responsibilities. He needs to man up.
Ms. Bond: While I empathize with her plight it is to a large degree one of her own creation. No one forced her to shack up with a priest. She seems to have tried to do right by her son, but irrespective of the low character of the priest in question, it takes two to tango. Rape was not among the accusations here.
The Franciscans: It’s not their fault that one of their members has more issues than Time Magazine. It is their fault that they chose to look the other way over this and similar behavior. More on that a little later. It also sounds like they had to have their arm twisted a bit before they decided to do the right thing for the boy. Unfortunatly at every step the evidence suggests a greater concern for their own position than that of the family now in existence thanks to the activities of one of their members.
The Roman Catholic Church: It’s time to broach a subject that will land me in all kinds of hot water with my Catholic readers. But oh well; sometimes things need to be said. Obligatory celibacy for all ranks of the clergy does not work. It never has. Anyone who believes otherwise is delusional. This is not a doctrinal issue. (I do not want this post to become a springboard for an Orthodox-Catholic debate on doctrine.) The issue is disciplinary.
Back in the days before swimming the Bosporus I knew my share of priests. A few of them were fairly candid on this subject. While I know of no serious study that’s been done, the numbers quoted in here don’t sound terribly off base to me. It is quite clear that a substantial percentage of Roman Catholic clergy habitually break their vows of celibacy. This occurs in every diocese and in most cases (unless they choose to remain willfully ignorant) the bishops know what’s going on. Some of these priests live, to varying degrees, semi-openly with their “wives” in monogamous relationships. Others, like the subject of the linked story, are serial philanderers. And of course the Roman Catholic priesthood has historically been a popular career choice for homosexuals because it provided them with a convenient place to hide in plain sight where no one would ask them how come they don’t have a girlfriend or get married.
The problem is that the hands of the bishops are from a pragmatic point of view tied. It’s not that they don’t want to discipline their clergy (though I suspect that may be the case in at least some places). The same rule (obligatory celibacy) which creates these scandals has in recent years severely hamstrung the bishops by creating a dearth of priests. Like it or not, we live in an age when large numbers of people who feeling called to a religious vocation, and are then being told that they must abandon any hope of a married life to pursue that vocation, are walking away. If by conservative estimates a quarter of your clergy are playing around routinely how does a bishop sack them all when he already doesn’t have any-where’s near enough priests to keep things up and running properly?
And blaming this on Vatican II or liberalism (which I know is popular) is hogwash. This sort of thing has gone on in every diocese in every country since the day Rome said “NO” to married clergy. In the old days, especially in culturally Catholic countries it was a lot easier to cover it up. But there are more than sufficient records to demonstrate this problem throughout history.
OK lets dispense with the inevitable cries of “Orthodoxy has its share of problems too!”
Yes we do. But they are not on the same level. Not even close. Yea we have priests (and at least one bishop) who cross the line. But we don’t have a system in place that attempts to impose burdens on young men that not everyone is able to bear. And we do accept the possibility that those who are not called to a life of celibacy (which we hold in great honor) may still be called to the religious life including the ordained priesthood. By and large our scandals are more often about power and money. I would also note that in those instances where sexual scandals do occur it is as often as not in a monastery.
The bottom line here is that Rome’s insistence on celibacy is turning away thousands of young men who would make terrific priests and setting up those who enter seminary for burdens that many will not be able to bear. Many of these will fall into grievous sin. Frankly, I think the rule is nuts.
And lastly Nathan: He is the one tragic and truly innocent victim in this mess. To be honest, I am not really overwhelmed by the story if you take him out of the picture and probably would not be posting on it.[/blockquote]
[url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/2009/10/mother-sick-son-and-his-father-priest.html]source[/url]
I think one might fairly add one more point to this sad story. The boy’s plight (suffering from a grave and possibly fatal illness without insurance or the money to pay for treatment) would not even be an issue in any other developed country in the world. I have reservations about the nuts and bolts of the proposed medical reforms. I have no reservations however about the need for a major reform that guarantees everyone basic medical care. That we live in a country in the 21st century that allows people to die because they had bad luck in choosing their parents or they don’t make enough money should shock the conscience of any civilized human being.
In ICXC
John
Teatime (#2),
I agree that Willenborg should most likely not be in a parish, even decades after the incident occurred. I do have grave reservations, though, about throwing him out of his religious institute altogether. Drawing an anlaogy b/n the relationship of clergy w/ the Church and the relationship of employees with secular corporations rightly reminds us that justice, efficiency, and accountability should apply everywhere but it leaves out the nettlesome business of mercy, forgiveness, repentance, reconciliation, etc. Commitment to both justice and mercy, insisting fully on both, is one of the challenging (and sometimes seemingly impossible) paradoxes of Christianity.
Where I think we would agree, however, is that the Franciscans *seem* to have taken a position of “mercy” that focuses almost exclusively on one of their own and has very little to do w/ justice.
Terry Tee (#3),
On the whole, I think you’re correct in stating that the RCC has changed in the way it deals w/ such matters. Unfortunately, though, I’m advising friends involved in a somewhat similar case and am very discouraged to report that the bishop in question simply doesn’t “get it.”
what all of this suggests to me is that shepherds are abdicating their pastoral responsibilities. Willenborg probably showed enough signs of inappropriate conduct back in his day. But something tells me his superiors merely shrugged their shoulders, I regret to say. Similarly, I fear, w/ the bishop I’m dealing with. Perhaps doing away w/ the celibacy requirement would indeed make a difference, as Ad Orientem suggests. But I can’t help wondering if a bit of pastoral concern and charitable fraternal correction wouldn’t do a world of good.
Monksgate,
I might agree (about allowing him to remain) IF the RCC didn’t teach its members (ad nauseum) that these men act “in the person of Christ.” Think about that for a minute, especially from the victims’ POV.
As a former RC, I got tired of hearing how “special” RC priests were and accounted much of their arrogance to this. We were told they acted “in persona Christi” in the confessional, at the altar, and were men set apart. And because they were “so special,” they had to be male and unmarried, just as Christ was. They were “mystically married” to the Church, Christ’s “bride.” Hogwash.
It’s amazing how quickly these “special men” lose their Christ-persona, though, when they commit grievous offenses. THEN, their church is busily reminding everyone how human they are and how unfair it is to expect more of them. The Church can’t have it both ways.
More importantly, you can’t build up the human ego to understand that it’s more than what it really is, teach members to revere and obey these men as they are representing Christ, and then chastise people when the “Christ reps” rain hell down on the deluded and innocent. Do you believe for one minute that Christ Himself would continue to subject His sheep to wolves such as these? They are USING the status that the Church created for them to feed their own egos and desires. It’s not a short lapse — they’re carrying on like this for decades. If their desire is to have secular relationships, then they should be laicized. Period.
Teatime (#7),
I should have added that in addition to tending towards the view that Willenborg should remain a Franciscan, he should most likely have been, and perhaps still should be, laicized. Agree fully about not letting known wolves among the sheep. He can remain in the priory and pray — ardently.
As for the “in personam Christi” theology, I agree that the priest stands ipC when acting sacramentally but am not able to translate that concept into placing any priest on a pedestal. That said, I realize many cradle Catholics do exactly that. But it’s a line of reasoning that escapes me entirely and one that frankly I’m not sure can be supported by sound theology (RC or Protestant).
If anything good can come from all of these horrific scandals, it might be that younger generations of both clergy and laity will have much more realistic expectations.
Ad Orientem wrote:
The problem is that the hands of the bishops are from a pragmatic point of view tied. It’s not that they don’t want to discipline their clergy (though I suspect that may be the case in at least some places). [b]The same rule (obligatory celibacy) which creates these scandals has in recent years severely hamstrung the bishops by creating a dearth of priests. [/b]Like it or not, we live in an age when large numbers of people who feeling called to a religious vocation, and are then being told that they must abandon any hope of a married life to pursue that vocation, are walking away. If by conservative estimates a quarter of your clergy are playing around routinely [b]how does a bishop sack them all when he already doesn’t have any-where’s near enough priests to keep things up and running properly? [/b]
This point is widely overlooked and explains a huge amount. Thank you.
I suspect Ad Orientem is spot-on where both civil and canon law are concerned. I.e., there’s only so much a bishop can do. But I know from direct experience that many of these issue can be and must be addressed in seminaries and have not been. The situation might be changing now, but I know of too many instance in which this was anything but the case. While I would be comfortable w/ married RC clergy, I nonetheless cannot see priestly celibacy as “giving up hope” of marriage. Explaining the theological and spiritual reasons why would take me too far afield. But I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the priests who have transgressed would have done so had they been married as well. Indeed, wouldn’t we all like to see (“like” in the sense of clearing up a lot of speculation rather than in the sense of enjoying this kind of information) statistics that *accurately* present the rate of infidelity on the part of RC priests as contrasted w/ clergy in other traditions as contrasted w/ married people, etc? The assertions that equate celibacy w/ sexual acting out may well be correct, but who has put forth solid evidence?
All of which gets back to Wollenberg. Assuming he had been allowed to marry the woman in question, I’m not sure he would have had the maturity or the integrity at that point in his life to have been a faithful husband/father now. One doesn’t want to assume too much, but if one set of vows can be broken, why not another?