KCHS class of 1968 - a get-together

I just had my 40th class reunion at Knoxville Catholic High School in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was a wonderful experience. After 40 years, some of the pretensions that we all had have dropped away, and we find ourselves surprisingly more in tune with each other than we ever were 40 years ago.

I was happy to see so much happiness and genuine care among my classmates and friends. It has warmed my heart like nothing else in a long time.

I wish everyone could have this experience. Sadly, too many who went to KCHS have to contend with the damaging, devastating effects of clergy sexual abuse.

Many of my classmates know that I have worked with clergy sexual abuse victims. I had decided to be candid about it with them, since I also think frankness and candor are benefits of the 40 years after high school!

Many of them had the usual reaction that it happened to someone else and not to those who went to KCHS. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I only had to point to the yearbooks on display from our four years at Catholic. There are pictures of at least two serial child molesters in those pages. TWO pedophile priests that I am aware of, and there are most likely more.

Not pictured in the books are two other priest predators who were assigned to churches where our classmates came from to go to KCHS. All of us were exposed to these predators in some way and did not know it. Or are there classmates of mine and students from other classes who were abused by these priests?

I suspect the answer is yes given all that I do know about the clergy sexual abuse crisis in East Tennessee, a crisis yet to fully erupt, but one that some of us know to be horrific.

Thanks, class of 1968. I love all of you, and I fervently hope we will meet again before too many years go by. By then, I hope the entire Diocese of Knoxville is exposed for the cover-up and corruption that it has perpetrated on too many of the innocents.

An Irish Tragedy by Joe Rigert

There is a new book, An Irish Tragedy, by Joe Rigert that has two chapters dedicated to the topic of the infamous and somewhat banished first bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, Anthony J. O'Connell.

I am looking forward to reading this book and am especially interested in the part on O'Connell. There is so much left unknown and unsaid about O'Connell. My greatest fear is that we will forget about him to the point that he will drift off to Europe and become a renowned leader of a basilica or cathedral or other edifice of note.

After all Cardinal Bernard Law, his best buddy forever, was rightly humiliated in Boston and then went to Europe to become the potentate of a huge church in Rome. What a punishment! Talk about the ultimate "getting bumped upstairs" situation.

I am so afraid that O'Connell will trade his peaceful, posh, carefree existence at Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, for an equally posh existence in Rome or Ireland or some other unsuspecting region of the world.

He deserves jail. He gets comfort. Not fair at all.

Paul St. Charles, the preferred pedophile priest

Why is pedophile priest Paul St. Charles so untouchable? It's a mystery, but perhaps he is the string that will cause the unraveling.

He retired early from the Memphis diocese and has lived ever since in Nashville, his home town. He is the subject of lawsuit after lawsuit and yet remains honored, revered, defended, and protected by bishops, priests, and people in the pews of at least three dioceses.

What does he know that the diocese wants kept hidden? Is it worth giving him the money of good Catholic donors for his livelihood? He is like a cheap knitted scarf. If you start the unraveling of the thread, it will end up a heap of tangled yarn. Too many dioceses want to keep him a perverse but quiet secret that it makes me think he could be the unraveling of the deep, dark secrets of the diocese.

Whatever it is, it's an insult to his many, many victims. When will they be vindicated?

Women in relationships with priests . . .

We have been hearing from the abuse victims of priests who are adult women for a while. I think we will hear more and more. There is a misperception that mostly boys were abused by priests or nuns or brothers in the Catholic church.

Not so. Most of the abuse is of girls and women.

It's the power thing. A priest who enters a relationship with a women is usually entering that relationship by way of his priestly duties. He is her "spiritual director." How many times I have heard that!!!! She confides her problems to him as a counselor.

If he weren't a priest, their paths would likely not have crossed at all. Or more importantly, she probably would not have that awe and reverence for him that is she feels.

And what about this promise of celibacy that a priest takes? What about the power he has over the congregation because he is so "special." That will be the subject of more discussion later.

Here is a presentation about the women's issue.

It's about power . . . not consent

As hard as this is for me to say, there are a lot of people who think that clergy sexual abuse is not really abuse, especially if it is a teenager. People actually think that there is consent involved on the part of the young person. It's the equivalent of saying that "he (or she) was asking for it."

When will we ever stop this nonsense that the victim is the perpetrator? There is really only one perpetrator in clergy sexual abuse. . . the CLERGY. It's quite simple, especially if you put your own loved one in the position of the victim in the abuse scenario.

Here is a presentation that should sum it up.

Father (or bishop) just made a mistake . . .

When Anthony J. O'Connell resigned, I heard all the time that he "just made a mistake." The story which is still held firmly by so many in East Tennessee and the Diocese of Knoxville is that it was mistake. Catholics in the pews tell me over and over that he just "accidentally bumped into the boy's crotch and that the boy made it up that it was sexual."

I know that the many victims of Anthony O'Connell would just love to know that it was all a mistake. That taking them to bed and lying naked with them was just a mistake. The rest of what happened I can't say here. You will have to ask them.

A mistake? If it happened to your child, to someone you love, to you, would it be a mistake?

The following presentation was made to respond in some fashion to this notion that "Father just made a mistake."

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But the boy was a college student. . .

I have heard a million times that these "boys" that Bishop O'Connell molested were in college because they were in the seminary. That is a patent lie. Apparently, the idea that he sexually abused college students means that the victims were "of age" and it is not abuse.

O'Connell was the rector of a minor seminary. A minor seminary is a high school

Would you let the principal of your child's hight school molest your child? Of course not.

Here is the presentation that hopefully explains what I am trying to say.