St. John's Abbey Releases 15,000 Pages of Disclosure re: 18 Monks: NCR Reader Writes, "To Me, This Story Encapsulates the Entire Scandal"

Does anyone but me ever have the sense that Catholic pastoral authorities have played and continue playing an ugly game with the rest of us about the abuse situation in the Catholic church? (I'm being facetious, of course: we all know that they've long been playing games with us about this.)

That nagging question is in my mind yet again today as I read Brian Roewe's report in National Catholic Reporter about St. John's Abbey in Minnesota, the largest Benedictine monastery in the Western hemisphere. Roewe notes that, under pressure, St. John's has just released documents regarding 18 monks who "likely offended" sexually against minors, with allegations dating back to the 1960s. Further information about this release of documents is to be found at the website of the Minnesota Transparency Initiative, to which Roewe's report links.

Here's a powerful, thought-provoking statement by a reader of Roewe's report, mokantx, that in my view perfectly summarizes the problem we have as we try to deal with the continuous game-playing of the pastoral leaders of the Catholic church re: the abuse situation: mokantx writes, 

This Abbey's problems capture perfectly, the problem with the scandal in the church. Think about this sequence, from the article: 

1: June 1985: The Abbey hosted the U.S. bishops for a conference devoted to the issue of sexual abuse of children by priests. 

2: In 1992, the abbey received an allegation against one of their own from a former college student. The Abbey recalled the priest from his assignment in Japan and sent him to the St. Luke's Institute in Maryland. There, he admitted as many as 15 "sexual contacts" with college students, leading an evaluation report to conclude the priest represented "a very serious moral, legal and financial risk to the Benedictine Order and to St. John’s University." Still, the trips abroad continued as other allegations came in. Lawsuits as of 1992 accused five monks of sexual abuse. 

3: In 1993, it held another conference, titled "Sexual Trauma and the Church," which brought together leading Catholic experts on the abuse issue, along with ministers from other faiths, victims' advocates, abuse victims and clergy abusers in recovery. In the invitation to this conference Benedictine Abbot Timothy Kelly "insisted he wanted the truth; we were to resist any temptation to mere image repair or litigation control." He and his community wanted to understand the scope, causes and nature of sexual abuse by clergy, which has resulted in such trauma to the church."And he wanted action," Sipe wrote. 

4: In about 2002, the Abbey brought internal sanctions against a dozen monks. 

5: In 2016, the Abbey released 15,000 pages of documents on this mess. 

And the highlight of it all is how the article closes: 

Wall, the former abbey monk, said it’s that history that makes the revelations from the files even more disheartening. “That’s why there is a higher duty,there’s a higher standard at Saint John’s – there should be – than almost any other place in the world,” he said. “But man, that’s not what the documents show.” 

To me, this story encapsulates the entire scandal. We have an entity that is publicly hosting all of the bishops to talk about the abuse in the church. They have a SECOND such conference, even after they've got clear evidence that they have the problem "in house." TEN YEARS later they finally take action against SOME of their own abusers. Thirteen ADDITIONAL years later, they get around to releasing documents. And all the while, they are beating their breasts, and sending out a public message suggesting concern about the problem, commitment to fixing things, etc... 

And this essential story has played out in diocese after diocese (taking a substantial number into bankruptcy), and in country after country for a VERY long time. And somehow, the bishops would seem to want us to believe this is all past us now, and that we all need to move along. 

I can't help but see this as the church's equivalent "state of the Union address."

Game-playing: in 1993, knowing full well it has a serious problem of abuse of minors on its hands, but having covered up that problem and allowed monks known to be abusing minors to travel the world and continue their contact with young people, St. John's, under its abbot Timothy Kelly, hosts a conference about the sex abuse situation in the Catholic church. Abbot Timothy tells invitees to this conference that "he wanted the truth; we were to resist any temptation to mere image repair or litigation control."

Click over to the Bishop Accountability website, and you find an exhaustively documented report about allegations made against Abbot Timothy himself, which notes,

Kelly served as abbot of St. John's Abbey in St. Cloud Diocese from 1992 - 2000. He died in 2010. One man filed suit 6/11 alleging that Kelly sexually abused him in 1966 at St. Anselm's Church in the Bronx. Abbot of St. John's issued a statement saying he had just learned of the accusations (6/11) and was conducting an investigation. Plaintiff said he told the Order 12/10. R. Sipe says other accusers also exist.

Click at the link that Bishop Accountability provides to the website Beyond the Pine Curtain, which has long been tracking the situation at St. John's carefully, and you find a page full of documentation and links about allegations regarding Abbot Timothy and his own personal connection to the abuse situation, which opens with this statement:

Abbot Timothy Kelly has been accused of engaging in sexual misconduct with an altar boy (and at least four others) at St. Anselm's Parish in Bronx, New York in 1966 and 1967.  Father Timothy Kelly later became Abbot of St. John's Abbey and President of the American-Cassinese Congregation. Abbot Kelly's background, the complaint and other links are available below.

All this, and yet, in 1993, as abbot at St. John's, Timothy Kelly hosts a conference about sexual abuse in the Catholic church and tells invitees that he wants to get to the truth about the abuse situation in the church. And: "R. Sipe says other accusers also exist." Richard Sipe was a former member of the St. John's community, and is one of the world's leading experts on the abuse crisis. If anyone would know that "other accusers [of Abbot Timothy] also exist," Richard Sipe would know.

Something about this picture is very strange, isn't it? It's possible that allegations against anyone at all are false, of course. In the case of Abbot Timothy, however, it's worth noting that there is not simply one allegation of sexual misconduct with minors: there are multiple allegations. 

And these allegations relate to his alleged activities prior to 1993, when that conference was held at St. John's and Abbot Timothy announced that he wanted to get to the truth about the sexual abuse crisis. And so back to mokantx:

To me, this story encapsulates the entire scandal. We have an entity that is publicly hosting all of the bishops to talk about the abuse in the church. They have a SECOND such conference, even after they've got clear evidence that they have the problem "in house." TEN YEARS later they finally take action against SOME of their own abusers. Thirteen ADDITIONAL years later, they get around to releasing documents. And all the while, they are beating their breasts, and sending out a public message suggesting concern about the problem, commitment to fixing things, etc... 

And that point becomes all the more shockingly clear when one considers that one of the people organizing these conferences is himself alleged — by multiple people — to have committed sexual offenses against minors. Which — if there's any truth at all to these allegations — would seem to make the breast-beating, conference-organizing, statements of concern, commitment to fix things, etc., entirely unbelievable. Incredible. Astonishingly insincere.

The St. John's story reminds us that Catholic pastoral leaders are capable of engaging in spectacularly twisted, spectacularly immoral game-playing around these issues of sexual abuse of minors that is deeply destructive to the integrity of the institution of which they are leaders. And it also points to the conclusion that this game-playing continues to this day right from the top of the Catholic church, since the documents just released are simply the latest cache of documents provided to the public by church leaders under duress, leading us to ask ourselves in what other diocese and in what other monastery there are similar stories that have long been hidden from the public, about which no information has yet been released — or may ever be released. Just as mokantx suggests . . . .

(For a footnote to this posting, commenting on the string of homophobic statements that have now appeared at the NCR thread discussing the St. John's story, see this subsequent posting.)

The photo of the abbey church at St. John's, Collegeville, Minnesota, is by Kris Kampshoff, and has been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons for online sharing.