I was struck by the question one reporter asked at that devastating PA press conf. yesterday. "You mention the one priest who testified ... are there any other heroes in this story?" The AG motioned at the victims onstage: "These are the heroes."
This is not to point fingers but the desire for "heroes" is a huge blindspot - a very immature standpoint - especially when you are LOOKING at heroes - i.e. those who survived and were brave enough to speak out - and the AG who stands by them strongly.
This is a human thing - so I don't mean to call this guy out - and this situation brings up a lot of personal responses, hoping there's at least one good brave priest who spoke up - and there WAS. We already heard about him. But what about the survivors? They're RIGHT THERE.
How can you miss them? There's still a lot of work to do.
Oh, and not to mention the grand jurors - who have been listening to horrifying testimony for, what was it, a couple of YEARS? and their written statement was a blistering no-holds-barred screed calling for decency and justice. THOSE people are heroes too. Regular citizen heroes.
at this point, yes, one priest breaking ranks is meaningful, but ... sorry, hoping for a phalanx of brave priests to emerge to give you your Hollywood ending - while you are looking at a stage full of traumatized courageous survivors ... is messed up.
I understand how terrorizing and triggering hearing these stories are. Many people asking ?s may have been abused themselves. This questioner ... honestly, I do get it. It's a dark dark place. But, as the AG said: sunshine into the dark spaces. We've all had ENOUGH of this.
Like: ENOUGH. Shut this shit DOWN. W/out saying too much, after Spotlight came out - which I reviewed - I was at a Christmas party in my hometown. People I've known my whole life, plus my parents' group of friends, all of whom I've known my whole life.
The majority of these people are Catholic. My parents' friends were in the generation straddling Vatican II - their perspective is unique. At any rate, I wondered their feelings on Spotlight - b/c of course the Boston Globe series rocked our community. (RI had a huge scandal too)
I was talking to one of my dad's best friends - in his mid-70s - he had gone to seminary back in the early 60s before quitting and getting married (our families lived across the street - 4 kids in both families - we're all still great friends. So there's history there.)
Because this guy is seriously Irish Catholic (he came from a family of 12), I hesitated - at first - but then decided, "WTF, I've had a glass of wine and apparently that's all it takes) and said, "So. I gotta ask. Have you seen Spotlight?"
He turned towards me, engaged, said he had - and then he and his sister (also in her 70s) and I talked about the Spotlight team, the Globe - but ALSO of their experiences going to Catholic school. This white-haired guy said to me, "There was a priest we all knew to avoid."
So this would have been early 1940s. I said, "Really?" "Yes, we'd go on these field trips and he'd always pick a boy to sit with him on the bus, and we all knew what that meant, so all of us would race to sit in the back of the bus so he wouldn't pick us."
"Did you all talk about it?" He said, "Not really, we just knew he made us feel weird." We ended up having this amazing discussion. I was afraid, since this guy once wanted to be a priest, etc., that I'd get some version of "protect the Church" or "bad apple priests" ...
Not at all. I was so glad I asked. This shit runs deep and goes back decades, probably centuries. ENOUGH. The heroes are those who spoke up, who faced discrimination, who were brutalized by those meant to protect them, who were shattered but strong enough to SPEAK.
I want to reiterate what I said above in the thread: I feel for the guy asking the question. And who knows what stories he may have to tell, too. Never ever assume. It's a human response and anything less than a human response to this ... You're justifying evil.
