As the scandal of pedophilia among Catholic priests grew, Eduardo and Linda Rivera wrestled with what to say to their two children.
Ultimately, they tiptoed around the topic with their 8-year-old son but confronted it head-on with their daughter, a 10-year-old altar server at Nativity B.V.M. Catholic Church on the South Side. They advised her to be careful, with a reminder that no one has a right to touch her inappropriately.
“She became very upset with me,” acknowledged Eduardo Rivera. “She said, `Priests don’t do these things,’ but we had to tell her that priests are human beings … and human beings make mistakes.”
While the Roman Catholic Church grapples with vexing issues of responsibility and redemption, the questions being asked around America’s kitchen tables are no smaller: How do we keep our children safe? How do we teach them to be savvy, yet still respect the clergy? That the church is a place to seek spiritual nourishment but, at the same time, to be wary?
With each new allegation of abuse comes more angst–especially for the rock-solid faithful. Parochial schools, religious education programs and youth groups all increase opportunities to mold character and move closer to God–but they also offer the opportunity for priest misconduct.
As Laura and Chris Sonnek began looking for a school for their soon-to-be kindergartner, recent headlines weighed on their minds.
“I must admit that I went back and forth on parochial versus public school,” Laura Sonnek said. The couple, who recently moved to the Chicago area from Indianapolis, also have a 14-month-old.
After much deliberation, the family settled on public education–for reasons other than the latest allegations. But if they had opted for a church setting, it would have accelerated the “good touch, bad touch” discussion, she said.
“I would have done it anyway, but given everything that is going on right now, it would have happened sooner.”
Few priests, in truth, have day-to-day contact with pupils in the archdiocese’s 264 elementary schools, as the overwhelming majority of teachers are not members of the clergy. In many highly competitive parochial schools, the scandal appears to have had no effect on waiting lists for admission.
In fact, the time most priests spend handling the day-to-day business of the parish causes many Catholics to complain that priests do not have enough of a presence in their children’s lives.
Ginger Douglas, of Mattoon, sees no need to address unpleasant subjects with her 15-year-old son, an altar boy at a parish she declined to name.
“If I had any inclination of something going on, I would … but our priest is very holy,” said Douglas, who thinks that much of the furor has been generated by people with an agenda against celibacy.
But the recent revelations have certainly brought new anxieties to the surface, said Anne Marie Mitchell, a communications consultant on Chicago’s North Side.
“It will occur to me when I’m giving my son a bath,” she said. “He’s not even 4, but I wonder if I should start talking to him about this subject. Then, I worry about drawing too much attention to it. Who knows? But I finally decided that he’s just too young.”
Mitchell, 34, is an unlikely candidate to grapple with such ambivalence. Her parents are dedicated to Catholic education–her mother is a parochial school teacher, her dad a development director for a Catholic school–and she looks back fondly on her days at Holy Ghost School and Elizabeth Seton High School, both in South Holland.
It would have been “completely unthinkable” for her parents to broach such issues with her or her siblings. “There was implicit trust of all authority figures, religious or otherwise,” said Mitchell, adding that today’s “healthy skepticism” is probably a more prudent course.
No one feels more strongly about erring on the side of candor than those who have had first-hand experience. Dave Clohessy, 45, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, says he was molested as a teenager by his parish priest–also a family friend–in Missouri. In 1991, he filed a suit against the priest, the church and the diocese, which was tossed out because the statute of limitations had expired.
So now, the father of two boys fights back by advocating for other victims and constantly exhorting parents to talk frankly with their children, even when very young.
“I’m not saying you need to be graphic, but you do need to give children a sense of just where the boundaries are,” Clohessy said.
Mary Smith, a mother of two and a teacher at Cardinal Bernardin School in Orland Hills, sees the latest round of warnings as nothing new. Some 20 years ago, when she was a newly minted kindergarten teacher, she attended a seminar on sexual abuse awareness.
“We were told that if a child had an accident, we couldn’t change their pants,” Smith said. “I told them, `If you want to fire me, go ahead, but I’m not going to let a kid sit in wet pants all day.’ Now, given the times, I’d probably feel differently.”
As for her own children, ages 7 and 10, she said she is not dispensing any additional advice.
Mitchell would like to preserve a certain innocence with her kids, but also wants to keep them safe. “No one can afford to be Pollyanna about this … so I suppose the `Stranger Danger’ talk will impinge on our happy existence,” she said. “Just not today.”
