The mystery of iniquity

Here's a tremendously sad story from Jasper, a small town in Indiana. The German Catholic town's revered priest, the late Msgr. Othmar Schroeder, dead for 19 years, has been revealed by Bishop Gerald Gettelfinger to have been a notorious pedophile. From the story:

Monsignor Schroeder, the founding pastor of Holy Family Church, was never disciplined by the Diocese of Evansville or charged with a crime, and the diocese is under no threat of a lawsuit. Still, Bishop Gettelfinger said in an interview, he is sure the abuse occurred. And while he would not say how many victims had approached church authorities — none of the victims have spoken publicly — he did say that “in terms of potential numbers,” this was the largest sexual abuse scandal in the history of the 70-parish diocese, which has seen others.

The bishop said he was acting now because it was only early this month that he began learning the scope of the abuse. Since then, he has spoken on consecutive weekends at parishes where Monsignor Schroeder served. Bishop Gettelfinger said those appearances had generated even more accusations against the monsignor.

“This isn’t ancient history” for the victims, the bishop said, speaking after Mass on a Saturday at one of Monsignor Schroeder’s former parishes. “The pain they are experiencing is still very real.”

I applaud the bishop for doing the right thing, but man, how painful this is for everyone. According to the story, this priest was at or near the center of the town's life from 1947 till his retirement in 1975. Conservative Catholics who believe that this scourge is the result of the Second Vatican Council's reforms are wrong. More:

Parishioners who were children during his tenure at Holy Family say his appetites were an “open secret” among children, though not adults. Monsignor Schroeder, they say, often took boys on hunting and camping trips, and swimming at a lake.

Bishop Gettelfinger said he understood why children did not come forward at the time.

“The culture where I grew up, just up the road in a farm community, this kind of thing was not talked about,” the 72-year-old bishop said. “And I also know that if someone had told a parent, they wouldn’t believe him. When you take someone like Monsignor Schroeder, who was such a pillar of the community in so many other ways, who are you going to believe? A 10-year-old kid?”

That quote from the bishop brought to mind the story of a man I'll call John. I knew him when I lived in New York. John was somewhere between 50 and 60 when I met him. It was hard to tell, because he was a recovering alcoholic, and the boozing had ravaged his body. He had come back to Catholicism after many years spent as a drunk and promiscuous homosexual. His liaisons occurred chiefly with priests. I came to trust him when he started telling me about hush-hush things going on in the archdiocese regarding sexual impropriety that would later come out, or could be independently verified.

John grew up a working-class Irish kid in one of NYC's boroughs. His mother sent him to Catholic school. When he was around 10 or 11, the priest who ran the school called John into his office, and anally raped him. John went home and told his mother ... who slapped his face hard and told him never to say such things about a priest. From that moment on, John was trapped: the priest made him into his sex slave, abusing the child in the rectory and elsewhere. "What could I do?" John said. "Nobody believed me. We were Irish Catholics. You didn't question the priests in those days."

John was ruined, morally, spiritually and psychologically by his abuse. As I said, he went on to become an alcoholic, and as an adult made priests his lovers. His initial abuser went on to become a famous and well-regarded figure in the Church, and died honored and beloved by the community.

An interesting thing happened to John not long before I left New York and lost touch with him. He'd heard that Father Zlatko Sudac, a Croatian priest was coming to town, a young man with a reputation as a mystic and a stigmatist. John went to see him on his last night leading a prayer service at a Catholic parish in the city. John hung at the very back and stayed quiet, observing. Toward the end, there was a long line of parishioners who wanted to receive Father Sudac's blessing. John decided that he should too. As I recall his story, he was one of the last in line. He hadn't talked to anybody there, and to his knowledge, no one at that parish knew him.

As he knelt and received the priest's blessing, Father Sudac, who spoke no English, whispered something to his interpreter. The interpreter leaned over and whispered to John, "Father says to tell you that the Virgin says she was with you in the rectory, and suffered along with you. You were not alone."

When John told me that story, he started crying. He didn't cry because he thought, "If you were there, why didn't you stop it?" He cried because he was now convinced that he had not suffered alone. God, and the Virgin Mary, had seen what happened. That was enough for John. He had begun to heal.

Make of that story what you will. It's all very mysterious to me. But hopeful too.

UPDATE: Deacon Greg Kandra posts about this Fr. Sudac prayer meeting on his blog -- it happened in his own parish, and there were other instances of clairvoyance and consolation that night.