By this time, church leaders possessed a psychological report in
which Catholic psychiatrists diagnosed Harris as having an
attraction to adolescents and concluded that he likely had molested
multiple boys. (Harris, who has denied the allegations, now stands
accused of molesting 12 boys, according to church records.) But
they didn't step forward to set the record straight. Instead, a
diocesan spokesman called Harris an "icon of the priesthood."
Harris' top defense attorney, John Barnett, lashed out at the
priest's accusers in the media, calling them "sick individuals."
Again, church leaders remained silent as the alleged victims were
savaged. Some of the diocese's top priests including the cleric
in charge of investigating the accusations threw a going-away
party for Harris.
At the time, I never imagined Catholic leaders would engage in a
widespread practice that protected alleged child molesters and
belittled the victims. I latched onto the explanation that was
least damaging to my belief in the Catholic Church that this was
an isolated case of a morally corrupt administration.
And I was comforted by the advice of a Catholic friend: "Keep your
eyes on the person nailed to the cross, not the priests behind the
altar."
IN late 2001, I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend a conference
of former Mormons. These people lived mostly in the Mormon Jell-O
belt Utah, Idaho, Arizona so-named because of the plates of
Jell-O that inevitably appear at Mormon gatherings.
They found themselves ostracized in their neighborhoods, schools
and careers. Often, they were dead to their own families.
"If Mormons associate with you, they think they will somehow become
contaminated and lose their faith too," Suzy Colver told me. "It's
almost as if people who leave the church don't exist."
The people at the conference were an eclectic bunch: novelists and
stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs and cartoonists, sex addicts and
alcoholics. Some were depressed, others angry, and a few had
successfully moved on. But they shared a common thread: They wanted
to be honest about their lack of faith and still be loved.
In most pockets of Mormon culture, that wasn't going to
happen.
Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of
Jesus to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to
lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold.
As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons many of
whom rigorously follow other biblical commands such as giving 10%
of their income to the church could miss so badly on one of
Jesus' primary lessons?
As part of the Christian family, I felt shame for my religion. But
I still compartmentalized it as an aberration the result of
sinful behavior that infects even the church.
IN early 2002, I was assigned to work on the Catholic sex scandal
story as it erupted across the nation. I also continued to attend
Sunday Mass and conversion classes on Sunday mornings and Tuesday
nights.
Father Vincent Gilmore the young, intellectually sharp priest
teaching the class spoke about the sex scandal and warned us
Catholics-to-be not to be poisoned by a relatively few bad clerics.
Otherwise, we'd be committing "spiritual suicide."
As I began my reporting, I kept that in mind. I also thought that
the victims people usually in their 30s, 40s and up should have
just gotten over what had happened to them decades before. To me,
many of them were needlessly stuck in the past.
But then I began going over the documents. And interviewing the
victims, scores of them. I discovered that the term "sexual abuse"
is a euphemism. Most of these children were raped and sodomized by
someone they and their family believed was Christ's representative
on Earth. That's not something an 8-year-old's mind can process; it
forever warps a person's sexuality and spirituality.
Many of these victims were molested by priests with a history of
abusing children. But the bishops routinely sent these clerics to
another parish, and bullied or conned the victims and their
families into silence. The police were almost never called. In at
least a few instances, bishops encouraged molesting priests to flee
the country to escape prosecution.
I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies many of
them right there on their own stationery out of my head. I had
been in journalism more than two decades and had dealt with
murders, rapes, other violent crimes and tragedies. But this was
different the children were so innocent, their parents so
faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.
The lifeline Father Vincent had tried to give me began to slip from
my hands.
I sought solace in another belief: that a church's heart is in the
pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my
stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God's house.
Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had
molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges,
offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the
victims, often to their faces.
On a Sunday morning at a parish in Rancho Santa Margarita, I
watched congregants lobby to name their new parish hall after their
longtime pastor, who had admitted to molesting a boy and who had
been barred that day from the ministry. I felt sick to my stomach
that the people of God wanted to honor an admitted child molester.
Only one person in the crowd, an Orange County sheriff's deputy,
spoke out for the victim.
On Good Friday 2002, I decided I couldn't belong to the Catholic
Church. Though I had spent a year preparing for it, I didn't go
through with the rite of conversion.
I understood that I was witnessing the failure of humans, not God.
But in a way, that was the point. I didn't see these institutions
drenched in God's spirit. Shouldn't religious organizations, if
they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect higher standards than
government, corporations and other groups in society?
I found an excuse to skip services that Easter. For the next few
months, I attended church only sporadically. Then I stopped going
altogether.
SOME of the nation's most powerful pastors including Billy
Graham, Robert H. Schuller and Greg Laurie appear on the Trinity
Broadcasting Network, benefiting from TBN's worldwide reach while
looking past the network's reliance on the "prosperity gospel" to
fuel its growth.
TBN's creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will
repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in
debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards.
"If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have
not contributed
you are robbing God and will lose your reward in
heaven," Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based
network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan,
live like tycoons.