Tear Down the Vatican

And the answer needs to come quick. Time’s up. At least maybe then the church can begin to undo someof the damage it’s done. Take a look at the stories coming out of late-20th-Century Pennsylvania – Pennsylvania! – and ask yourself what unimaginable horrors must the church have perpetrated in 14th-Century Spain. When I hear of the abominations the church has committed in places like Ireland, and Australia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Pennsylvania, Boston, I shudder to contemplate what remains to be unearthed in places like the Philippines, Africa, and South America. 

No more time remains to think, or equivocate, or utter bland statements appalling in their neutrality in the face of evil. 

Answer the question: Why not tear down the Vatican and sell it for scrap? 

In the 1980’s I attended an all-boys Catholic high school on the South Side of Chicago, run by the – now bankrupt – Irish Christian Brothers. The brothers were put out of business by the tsunami of child abuse claims that came their way in the wake of the first wave of such claims against various arms of the church. 

One brother in particular remains vivid in my mind because everyone at the school knew he was a pedophile and a sexual predator. In my freshman year, he took a particular liking to me. And – I’ll cut to the chase here and say that I’m not about to reveal some deeply-held secret of long-ago child abuse. No. I was lucky. Thank God. But Brother Duffin did take a liking to me. He used to put his arm around me in the hall, joke around with me in class, and give me the kind of attention young kids actually crave. And to tell the truth, most of us kind of liked him. Interesting, funny, smart, learned – a gifted teacher – but underneath it all we feared him. 

In Catholic school, we called detentions “jugs.” If you did something particularly bad – like skip school – you would get a Saturday jug. I got my share. Every Saturday, all the bad kids would show up to do odd jobs around the campus. We would report to a single classroom, where the brothers would farm us out on various projects: wash the cars, rake the leaves, pick up trash. And every Saturday, Brother Duffin would make an appearance and choose four or five kids to come with him to “clean the pool.” I never got picked – lucky me! – but the story goes that Brother Duffin would take his weekly group of young boys into the locker room and watch them change into their speedos. 

Everyone knew about it. And no one said a thing. 

I still remember the terror of sitting, captive in that classroom and praying that this charming, intelligent, predator would not take me with him into that locker room.   

One day, my best friend walked into the cafeteria and said to me: “Brother Duffin just stuck his hand down my pants. What should I do?” 

I said, “Call your mom.” He did. And I never saw him or Brother Duffin again. But I know that the Irish Christian Brothers transferred Brother Duffin to Hawaii, and that he continued to teach young boys until his death. I don’t know whether he continued to prey on young boys, but I have little reason to doubt it. 

In the 1990’s, when these stories started surfacing for real, people found it hard to accept that the church could have been involved in such horrific abuse. Why? If a child predator could stalk the halls of an all-boys high school on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980’s with full knowledge of every kid and (I suspect) teacher in that school, why did it take so long for the extent of these horrors to break through into the light? 

This latest round of stories out of Pennsylvania – even after everything we know – still shake us to the core. But the church seems unshaken. I don’t really know what Pope Francis has had to say about it – but he hasn’t answered my question. And that’s the only question he needs to answer.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)

-cw