(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, May 18.)
On a recent Monday morning I sat at the press desk in the
Wellington District Court and watched as a former Catholic priest was sentenced
to six years and seven months in prison for historical sex offences.
Peter Joseph Hercock left the priesthood in the 1980s. He is
72 now, and married with a son. But in the 1970s he was a chaplain and
counsellor at Sacred Heart Girls’ College in Lower Hutt.
The four women who pursued complaints against him were then pupils
in their early teens. They were grappling with personal problems or came from
troubled home environments – sometimes both.
They went to Hercock thinking he would help them. Instead he
groomed them for his sexual gratification. He raped and indecently assaulted
them in his bedroom in the Catholic presbytery and at a Kapiti Coast bach used
by nuns.
One victim, then aged 14, vividly recalled a “wretched” Leonard
Cohen record playing in the background as she was raped. Another was given two
glasses of whisky and carried to bed.
Much as we have become accustomed to sordid stories of
sexual abuse by priests, the women’s victim impact statements were painful to
sit through.
All four told of long-lasting psychological and emotional
damage. One had a breakdown, another tried to kill herself.
The betrayal of trust was breathtaking. One victim said her
father worked two jobs to send her to Sacred Heart. His belief in the value of
a Catholic education was rewarded by the rape of his virgin daughter.
She was later expelled for drinking and drug-taking. When
her mother died, she didn’t attend the funeral. She was scared she would see Hercock
there.
Another complainant said the girls had been taught that men
couldn’t be trusted because of their lust and it was up to women not to tempt
them. At the time, she blamed herself for corrupting Hercock.
As a priest, Hercock was supposedly dedicated to the care of
his flock. In betraying those vulnerable girls he destroyed their faith. It’s
impossible to overstate the breach of trust.
One victim said that her sense of cultural identity came
from being part of a small Catholic community. Having been brought up Catholic
myself, I knew what she meant.
Catholics of that era, living in a predominantly Protestant
society, defined themselves by their faith. To have it betrayed by a priest
would have been shattering.
Listening to the victim impact statements, I felt myself
getting angry, but not so much with Hercock – he was finally getting his due
punishment, after all – as with the Church that allowed this to happen.
Hercock entered the Catholic seminary at the age of 17 and
was in his 20s when most of the offending took place. Few men at 17 have a
clear idea of what they want to do for the rest of their life; fewer still have
the emotional maturity to commit to a life of celibacy. Yet that’s what the
Church expects them to do.
It is an expectation that priests often fail to live up to. The
need for human intimacy isn’t easily suppressed, and when it is, it can lead to
twisted outcomes.
Some priests end up having illicit but consenting relationships
with women; a few even father children. Others, like Hercock, become predators.
You might call this Catholicism’s dirty little secret,
except it’s not; it’s a dirty big secret.
The shocking pain and guilt caused by the vow of celibacy is hidden behind a
wall of silence and hypocrisy.
Before anyone accuses me of being anti-Catholic, a
declaration: I’m not one of those bitter and resentful ex-Catholics. I value my
Catholic upbringing; it’s a big part of who I am.
Moreover, I know far too many genuinely good and holy
Catholics, priests included, to dismiss the Church out of hand.
Catholicism’s problem is that it remains in the grip of
calcified, twisted dogma which is stubbornly defended by a male hierarchy that has
a disturbingly ambivalent attitude toward women.
A good friend of mine who attended a Catholic girls’
boarding school says the nuns warned the girls about young priests. That
confirms the Church knew some priests couldn’t be trusted to honour their vow
of celibacy.
It almost makes the nuns complicit in what went on, yet I
don’t entirely blame them. They were caught up in a warped system that required
them to defer to male authority. In a sense, they were victims too.
An editorial on the Hercock case in the latest issue of the Listener says the Church should have
been in the dock with him. That’s not an overstatement.
Despite its many apologies and payments of compensation
(often given grudgingly) to victims of sexual abuse, the church still refuses
to confront the harm caused by the cruel and unnatural rule of celibacy.
Other institutions change and move on when evidence of the
damage done by their doctrines becomes too overwhelming to ignore. Why can’t
the Catholic Church? 
4 comments:
Hi Karl
I was also raised a Catholic, attended a rural school and can remember our sense of ‘difference’ as the protestant children had ‘Bible in Schools’ and five of us met with the Priest out in a cold ‘shelter shed’.
I don’t think he enjoyed the experienced any more than we did.
The problem of sexual abuse is in the Church not unique to Catholicism, although the scale may well be. This is what happens when the institution takes on a life of its own, and its internal culture becomes more powerful than the call of Christ, or of his example.
I agree that 17 is too young to accept a call to celibacy and may well be a contributing factor to the abuse cases we have seen. What has been even less excusable has been the attempts to protect these Priests by Church authorities, to move them along to other parishes only to have them repeat their offending.
The attempts at cover up were not caused by celibacy, but something fundamentally more sinister. Let’s hope these people are also brought to account.
Not a catholic but I well remember when at Teachers' College in the very early 1960's how as students we discussed almost anything informally but the students who were part of our group and catholics really couldn't discuss religion and just appeared to be totally out of their depth. Always recall how confused and uncertain they were when anything like that came up.
Excellent post. The notorious smut screen-writer Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct, Showgirls) became a bit of a born again Christian in the early 2000's. He wrote a book called 'Crossbearer' and one of the points he makes is that the celibacy requirement invariably means that the people who become Priests either won't be able to stick to their vows, or are s8xually abnormal. The Church needs to do away with it.
I don't think the rule that Priests must be unmarried is helpful, and it would be a good idea if the Roman Catholics followed the Orthodox model of ordaining married men. This would encourage more well-adjusted people to seek the Priesthood, I think. But I don't think it's a silver bullet either. The Latin church has managed with exclusively unmarried clergy for around 1400 years now, so to say that the problem is entirely that Priests have no legitimate sexual outlet would be naive, and not borne out by history.
My view is that this problem has arisen not from the ban on married Priests, but from the Roman Catholic doctrinal development of Vaticans I & II. Vatican I saw the beginning of a shift away from reliance on church tradition to the whims of Popes. Then you had Cardinal Newman justifying "doctrinal development", which posited Christianity as ultimately being whatever the RCC says it is "so there". Instead of the power being in unchangeable things, like the Bible, or the Mass, or the other traditions, it was all relative, based on the very human clergy that formed the church. This sort of attitude spawns a lack of accountability, and given the massive sociological changes of the 20th Century, it left the RCC struggling to cope. Vatican II, while having some positive aspects, truly sealed the deal - it was largely a capitulation to the twin threats of Evangelical Protestantism and secular humanism. Undermining the solid foundations of centuries has had devastating effects, one of which has been the severe decline in Latin monasticism. If monasticism looses its centrality to the life of the church then you have no solid tradition of men seeking a life of asceticism and spirituality. There is no model or example that Priests can draw on to solidify the convictions of their tonsure. They are forced to be and do something which in modern society is more and more alien and "unnatural".
I firmly believe that to really root out this problem will take more than just the admission of married men to the priesthood. It will take a brave Pope who is prepared to "walk it back" and undo the damage the Vatican Councils have done to their faith.
Post a Comment