I Am a Bulldog

I am a Bulldog.  That is to say, a graduate of the now-defunct St. James Catholic High School for Boys, formerly of Chester, PA.

I graduated from St. James High School in 1980, an amazing twenty-two years ago.  For me, the intervening years have been filled with good times and bad, both from a worldwide perspective and from a personal perspective.  They have been filled with triumphs and tragedies, elation and disappointment, love and despair.  Mostly though, they have been filled with simple, unadorned life as it passes inexorably by.

Throughout these years, my well-cultivated belief system has undergone countless metamorphoses— my faith coming and going and coming again as my belief systems have been steadily injected with daily doses of the reality we call Life.

A few years ago, my apprehensive system of beliefs took a dose of reality that went quite beyond the previously conventional prescribed amount of pragmatism—another case of priestly pedophilia was made public by the Catholic Church.  Specifically, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced that it had suspended a priest working out of Northeast Philadelphia by the name of Father Craig Brugger, who had allegedly committed acts of pedophilia some years ago at a parish in Phoenixville.

Father Brugger, the accused pedophile, was at the time of the incident reassigned out of that parish, a practice that the Church defends and continues to this day.  Oddly, he was reassigned from that parish to a small suburban school in Delaware County located at 21^st and Potter Streets in Chester Pennsylvania—St. James Catholic High School for Boys.

Am I the only one thinking that this was a bizarre assignment for an accused pedophile?  I don’t mean to sound mean (or maybe I do), but isn’t this irony a little bit like the old cliché of letting the fox guard the chicken house?

I had the privilege of having had Father Brugger for religion class during my senior year at St. James High School.  He was a good teacher, virtuous and committed to the religious education of young minds.  He had a hot temper and a reputation to go with it, but no one really minded.  He was fair with the doling out of discipline, and when you got corrected by Father Brugger, you knew you had done something to deserve it, and always in the back of your mind you appreciated it, because you knew at a deeper level that the discipline was a Good Thing.

Much as I liked Father Brugger in specific and my education in general, I must admit that the thought of the accusations leveled at Father Brugger has been slowly working through my mind since being made public.  I am becoming mad.  No, check that.  I am becoming furious.  Not necessarily at Father Brugger—he was a human man who had some serious problems—but at the Church behind the man.

What cunning minds were at the Church’s helm back then to have had the lack of rationale to reassign an accused pedophile to an all boy’s high school where, several years after I graduated, he was elevated to Principal?  Why has no one publicly asking that question?

Father Brugger had inexcusable problems of a sexual, moral, theological, and criminal nature.  I hope that he has gotten the help that he so desperately needs, and the punishment he so richly deserves.  Father Brugger’s crime was a crime that was rooted in sickness.

The Church, however, committed a crime of another kind.  Their crime was a crime of volition—a crime rooted in will.  I hold the administration of the Catholic Church—specifically of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia—fully responsible for the heinous offense of reassigning an accused pedophile to an all boy’s high school.

I sit and think back now at the lessons taught to me by Father Brugger, the accused pedophile.  Where there was once a warm, sunny feeling at the memory of the religious training that gave me the roots and foundations of the theology that I hold at the core of my spiritual being today, there is now a sickened feeling of betrayal.  A tainted view of a room in my mind that was once sacred, now polluted with mistrust and uncertainty at things once interpreted one way, but now fearfully interpreted another.

This whole incident has shaken the very core of faith.  I realize at a spiritual level that the imperfections of man have little to do with the heart of the Church itself, but I too am a man, with imperfect impressions in an imperfect world.

There won’t be any screaming and yelling, there won’t be any overt revolution.  But the boat now has a gaping hole, the gunwales are swamping, and the ship will go down.  Quietly, but it will go down.

If the Church wants to get past this vile affair, it must do more than come clean to its congregations that have had their trust betrayed throughout the many years of deceit.  It must do more than pay off its victims with money.  It must do more than reassign and recommend treatment for the perpetrators of the abuses.  And it must do more than turn those perpetrators over to civil authority (although all of these things are necessary steps).

It must cleanse itself of everyone who was involved—everyone from the priests right up to the pope himself (albeit the current pope was not in office at the time).

They must do this for the victims, for the people who were betrayed physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  They must give us back our Church.

Update:

I wrote this article eight years ago for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Delaware County Daily Times when the news first broke about the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.  Nothing much has changed, except that I later found out that another well-loved priest in my life-- Father McLaughlin from Our Lady of Peace Church-- was also accused of pedophilia.  This was a big one as well, as Father McLaughlin was responsible for the training of a generation of alter boys, myself included.

I have a picture of him from the day I became an alter boy: we are standing on the alter right after the ceremony, Father M. and I, and he has a hand draped affectionately across my shoulders, and a smile on his face.  I always thought that smile was one of pride, both for "his boys" and for himself at a job well done.  Now though?  I shudder to think what what that smile might have really been about.

Comments

[James Dugan]

This well written and thoughtful piece. A topic that I have thought about, but the words are often too painful or among the mostly confusing to articulate. Thanks for sharing on the lunch.

For many years this has been news, at least the 8 and much more. I have grown immune to outrage and shock from recent stories and even the Church cover up doesn't make my blood boil. Maybe I am coming complacent or just aware of the human element of sin in the Church and more importantly, the pain and suffering that these instances have created to our society to shout burn them all.

But a man needs faith. A man needs to believe in something more than himself and spirituality is an important component to reaching a happiness. Are we angry by the outrage of this Church, or because we wanted a reason to hate the Church and justify our seperation?

The church is many things, but we can not continue to blame someone five thousand miles away for deviant predators who organized a systematic route to achieving his prey. They are all weak and sinful. But we as adults know that, because we are weak.

Perhaps the Church's crime is denying their humanity, denying that they are growing, and failing , and succeeding. Perhaps this scandel knocked them off their high horse and exposed their sin, but also their humanity.

I am one to forgive but I also haven't been hurt personally from the Church's child abuse priests. I do not believe people or organizations or nations have to be perfect anymore -- and as these 10 or 15 years have shown, those who pretend to be so, are often the weakest and saddest of us all.

And with all humanity and its institutions, there is always something left that is good if forgiveness, understanding and love is at its cornerstone.