In all seriousness, let me clarify (make clearer) my main point here.
The 86% (or whatever the percentage happens to be) doesn't tell the whole story about the homosexuality factor vis-a-vis priests who take sexual advantage/molest their young male charges. There is often other components and factors to take into account. Like:
1) Are the priests in charge of an all boy class or school?
2) Is it a priest who is in high 'need' of sexual gratification, and yet there is no females around, so he uses that as an excuse to focus on his young male charges?
There could be a number of other scenarios that go beyond the simple percentage quoting to prove why homosexuals are more of a risk for priest-on-youth molesting. Also keep in mind that in prison, male-on-male rapes are reportedly common, so-o-o does that make the prison population highly gay too?
The study you use, while credible in its own right, fairs poorly in support of your specific arguement here.
Actually, the study does break down temporal data, such as the incidence of the boy's school you mention. As to the incidence of the out of control priest who was just so h0rny he had to find "any port in the storm," well, sorry, I don't believe it gets into that detail. But if you would be so kind as to show me some empirical data to illustrate the incidence of this happening, I'll be happy to review it. Your prison scenario, I guess, could be equated to a remote monastary, but I don't believe that this type of incident was even included...as that would not be considered the abuse of minors.
You mention that this study doesn't support my argument:
My argument, at the beginning, was taking an issue with a point made in the initial post (and in the title) of the thread...
The initial post of the thread stated:
The Vatican said sexually active homosexuals or those who support "gay culture" are unwelcome in the priesthood unless they have overcome their homosexual tendencies for at least three years.
I mentioned in my initial response that the media got it wrong in how they were reporting the story (about this document). I then quoted a leaked copy of the document so that the exact wording of the document's text could be evaluated. I finally pointed out that this was not actually a new statement, and provided a passasge of a document from 1961 that supported my point (that this was not a new rule, but a restatement). I initially expressed neither approval or disapproval for the point -- I was just making sure the facts were out there -- at least in my initial post.
Because of the fact that this document used the words homosexual and pederasty in the same sentence, and an honest misreading of it (substituting pedophilia for pederasty), you took it that the Church was equating pedophilia with homosexuality (or so I surmise)...and several pages later, here we are.
That was my initial point. That was my initial argument. Period.
Garth, I am not equating homosexuality and pedophilia.
I maintain that the majority of the sexual abuse cases reported in the study, most of the sexual abuse cases involving Catholic clergy that I've heard of or read in the media (but not all, in either case), and the ones that I am familiar with, involve male-to-male contact of a sexual nature.
If you have some empirical data that can prove me wrong, again, please bring it forth.
Garth, I am not equating homosexuality and pedophilia.
But one way or the other, it is a major derailment of this thread.
BTW, for the record, my position on the matter is:
Priest who takes advantage of pre-pubescent boys = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of post-pubescent boys = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of pre-pubsecent girls = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of post-pubescent girls = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of men = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of women = evil priest
Priest who has consensual sexual relations with either sex not his wife = bad priest (he took a vow and broke the vow)
Priest who maintains chastity according to his station in life* = if other factors met, good priest
*chastity according to station in life means if he's married, he has sex only with his wife...if he's single, he keeps it zipped.
Please show me some empirical data that speak about Catholic priests (vice the population as a whole). I seriously would be happy to look it over.
But in the meantime, the current document that is the subject of this thread said what it said (quoted in my first post on this thread). It is not a new policy...it merely restates already existing policy (as quoted in my first post on this thread). That is the bottom line.
"Then again, maybe I should go easy on the Catholic Church on realizing these new scientific findings. I mean, it *did* take them over 400 years to _finally_ make the Official Decision that Galileo was right after all."
Huh???
You mean to tell me that you never heard about when about a few years back, the Catholic Church updated its Official Ecclesiastical Judgement regarding Gallileo. All along they knew that he was right, but they never Officially admitted it until 1992 when Pope John Paul officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary - it revolved around the sun. ... Ok, so it was more like 350 years. Still quite a long time for the Church to officially concede to a scientific point that was known for years even by schoolchildren.
Pederasty is directly related to homosexuality:
ped·er·ast ( P ) Pronunciation Key (pd-rst)
n.
A man who has sexual relations, especially anal intercourse, with a boy.
I stand corrected regarding the meaning of pederasty then. That it is being used as a focus against homosexuals and trying to link homosexuality with sexual abuse of minors however, I stand by what I say. And that it is flawed and dishonest. And in addition, that it is a strawman argument being used by the Church to relieve public pressure off of its responsibility in this travesty.
And that you support trying to sell the idea on the relation to homosexuality angle is quite manipulative and dishonest on your part, and all in the name of Defending the Catholic Faith and its dictates. "Look lady, the real blame why your son was molested wasn't really due to the policies of the Catholic Church, but due to a few homos who managed to sneak in past the Pope's oversight." I mean, there is only so far you can argue based on loyalty, you think? As well as the shoddy usage of some research findings.
The only possible case where the 86% would not be a realistic number is if all the dioceses reported all the data on the homosexual priests and minimal on the heterosexual ones.
With their anti-homosexual biases, you think that's such an unlikely possibility?
And think about it: we're talking about the scandal-phobic Catholic church here (the church that was so afraid of scandal that it worked itself into this mess to begin with)?
Oh, so it didn't work itself into this mess because they looked the other way while the abuse was going on until the public nearly revolted due to it?
What would be the worse scandal to a bunch of neanderthal Catholics?
Oh wow! So NOW they are worried about making sure their numbers are straight, hmmmm? Tell me something. Haven't you ever heard of someone trying to doctor the numbers so that a plausible scapegoat (in this case the gays) can be offered on the public sacrificial alter, while the heterosexual (and usually higher ups, like Bernard Law) leave unscathed? That kind of crap happens all the time. ..... Except in the Catholic church, or so you would have us believe.
Man, and you say that *I'm* losing the argument?? :o
Garth, I don't list homosexuality as the only cause of the problem. I list homosexuality in the priesthood as a significant factor, but not the only one. I personally know several homosexual priests who (to my knowledge) are just as disgusted by this 'crisis' as the heterosexual ones are. Fact is that if a priest is capable of being celibate, it really and truly doesn't matter who he is attracted toward.
With the exception of your listing homosexuality as a significant (and causal) part of the problem, I think that you're _finally_ getting my main point here (altho' you contradice yourself here "I list homosexuality in the priesthood as a significant factor" and here "Fact is that if a priest is capable of being celibate, it really and truly doesn't matter who he is attracted toward", but I nitpick). And I do see your valid point here "If he's not capable of being celibate, then, according to the rules of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, he has no business being a priest." at least from a Catholic perspective; ie., they made the celibate commitment, let them stay that way.
Altho' from a Protestant perspective, maybe letting them marry is another viable alternative. :P But, that is another debate for another day.
Anywho, stick a fork in me, I'm done with this show.
You mean to tell me that you never heard about when about a few years back, the Catholic Church updated its Official Ecclesiastical Judgement regarding Gallileo. All along they knew that he was right, but they never Officially admitted it until 1992 when Pope John Paul officially conceded that the Earth was not stationary - it revolved around the sun. ... Ok, so it was more like 350 years. Still quite a long time for the Church to officially concede to a scientific point that was known for years even by schoolchildren.
Garth,
Sorry to tell you, but JPII apologized for the Church's treatment of Galileo. JPII never changed the Church's position on geocentrism vs. heliocentrism. The text of this 'apology' can be found here. Basically, the problem was that Galileo was asserting that Copernicism was true, when it had not yet been proven and further stating that some of the Bible must be incorrect because of this. (Curious that Copernic was never condemned by the Church, even though he was the actual postulator of the heliocentric system)
You really ought to read the Wikipedia article on Galileo...
Now, I've heard of JPII's 'apology' about Galileo, but I never heard him reverse the Church's position on heliocentrism. That was the reason for my 'huh.'
I stand corrected regarding the meaning of pederasty then. That it is being used as a focus against homosexuals and trying to link homosexuality with sexual abuse of minors however, I stand by what I say. And that it is flawed and dishonest. And in addition, that it is a strawman argument being used by the Church to relieve public pressure off of its responsibility in this travesty.
Had this usage been in the 2005 document, you might have a point about it being a strawman. But it wasn't. It was in the 1961 document. Issued literally 40 years before the abuse crisis. I hate to tell you, but the Church isn't using that argument (more particularly the US Bishops). They are (as a body) backpedalling and being overly politically correct in my view. They are trying to take YOUR position on the matter. They are the ones who blew off the direction they were given and They are the ones who are at fault here. My position is not the position of the US Council of Catholic Bishops.
And that you support trying to sell the idea on the relation to homosexuality angle is quite manipulative and dishonest on your part, and all in the name of Defending the Catholic Faith and its dictates. "Look lady, the real blame why your son was molested wasn't really due to the policies of the Catholic Church, but due to a few homos who managed to sneak in past the Pope's oversight." I mean, there is only so far you can argue based on loyalty, you think? As well as the shoddy usage of some research findings.
No, I am specifically saying that the US Council of Catholic Bishops mishandled their responsibilities and that is the cause of the problem. Had they enforced the policies they had in place since (at least) 1961 (if not before...I haven't gone to my local Canon Law library to research earlier rulings), the majority of these incidents would not have happened. Not that a few homosexual priests snuck in under the Pope's nose, but that the US Council of Catholic Bishops completely disregarded the rule...and that this is the problem.
Now that the horse is out of the barn, they're trying to react and, with only a few exceptions, are unwilling to come out and actually state the real problem.
With their anti-homosexual biases, you think that's such an unlikely possibility?
Oh, so it didn't work itself into this mess because they looked the other way while the abuse was going on until the public nearly revolted due to it?
Oh wow! So NOW they are worried about making sure their numbers are straight, hmmmm? Tell me something. Haven't you ever heard of someone trying to doctor the numbers so that a plausible scapegoat (in this case the gays) can be offered on the public sacrificial alter, while the heterosexual (and usually higher ups, like Bernard Law) leave unscathed? That kind of crap happens all the time. ..... Except in the Catholc church, or so you would have us believe.
Since you are accusing them of cooking numbers, do you have evidence to the contrary? No? I didn't think so. Do you have ANY documentation to the contrary? Do you? Take a look at any of the abuse sites out there, before putting your foot deeper in your mouth here. You will find that the anecdotal information presented in them corroborates the empirical study discussed earlier.
Man, and you say that *I'm* losing the argument?? :o
Yup, sure do. I think your own biases are beating you thoroughly.
With the exception of your listing homosexuality as a significant (and causal) part of the problem, I think that you're _finally_ getting my main point here (altho' you contradice yourself here "I list homosexuality in the priesthood as a significant factor" and here "Fact is that if a priest is capable of being celibate, it really and truly doesn't matter who he is attracted toward", but I nitpick). And I do see your valid point here "If he's not capable of being celibate, then, according to the rules of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, he has no business being a priest." at least from a Catholic perspective; ie., they made the celibate commitment, let them stay that way.
Altho' from a Protestant perspective, maybe letting them marry is another viable alternative. :P But, that is another debate for another day.
Anywho, stick a fork in me, I'm done with this show.
Peace dude. B)
I have always maintained this. But, one issue is this (brought up in the post you're responding to): But, for some reason, the vast, vast, vast majority of the cases where this immaturity/ these disorders are manifested involve homosexual acts with pubescent/ post-pubescent boys. Not girls. Why is it that the majority of the cases are M-M contact rather than M-F contact (within the set of data under discussion: the Catholic priesthood)? Could it be that the majority of the individuals with "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" also happen to be homosexual? Is there a causal relationship here? In other words, is the fact that they are homosexual cause the "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" or is the fact that they have a "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" result in them being homosexual? Or is their homosexuality simply coincident with the "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders?" And if it is simply coincident, why is the co-incidence not also extant in heterosexual priests (resulting in a higher incidence of M-F abuse cases)?
Rather than simply being critical of what I'm saying or combative, why don't you seriously try to answer those questions? Because if you have a credible answer, rather than just an unsupported assertion, I am happy to listen and may change my mind about the situation. But platitudes, in of themselves, or assertions, unsupported, simply are not going to cause me to change my mind just to be politically correct.
Garth, I have repeatedly cited the facts that I know that are available. I have not simply gone out and said "those $#@#$ f@gs are the problem." I have been responded to with inaccuracies, fallacious, non-sequitor arguments, strawmen, mockery, and so on. Those techniques are the techniques of somebody who does not have the facts on his side. A person with the facts on his side would cite his facts and let them speak.
So once again, if you have facts to the contrary...if you have alternate logical, supported reason to the contrary, please so state. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing else to argue about. Hitting a blind man gets boring after a while.
Oh, and by the way, let me illustrate some examples:
"Gee, Mark, I think the numbers were cooked in your study. This study (hyperlink) shows that only 41% of the victims were male."
or even:
"Mark, your numbers are full of cr@p. If they are so accurate, how come (this site), (this site), (this site), and (this site) only report incidents of females being abused by priests? - Things that make you go hmmmmm"
Or
"Mark, the study you constantly reference has been totally debunked. (Reference), (reference), (reference) have completely invalidated it due to faulty methodology."
See, Garth, that kind of thing works better for me than just making unsupported allegations. And, believe it or not, I'll listen to that kind of reasoning. And so will a bunch of other people.
The boy would talk to God while he walked to school.
God, let me do well on my test today. God, let me make a friend today. God, let me not get beat up today.
The boy was new to the small mill town of Oakridge, east of Eugene, a rougher place than anywhere he'd ever lived. He was 12 years old, and his was a boy's Catholicism. He believed God was looking out for him, listening to him.
He enjoyed Mass at St. Michael's Catholic Church. He wanted to be an altar boy, to please his mother, but more important, to please a girl he saw at church.
He asked the priest to put him on the list and checked every week, but never saw his name.
"Then something wonderful happened," the boy, now grown into a middle-age man, recalled. "Or so I thought at the time."
A new priest came to Oakridge.
The boy had never heard of the Rev. Maurice Grammond. No one in 1950s Oakridge had. Now everyone knows him. An obscure parish priest has become the Archdiocese of Portland's greatest shame.
Grammond was younger than the previous priest, charming where the former was dour, handsome in glasses fashionable at the time, like the ones Henry Fonda wore. The boy came home one day and was surprised to find the priest talking to his parents in the living room.
The priest was surprisingly cool. He dropped mild profanities into his speech, like "hell" and "damn." He smoked. When the boy's father offered a martini, the priest accepted.
The boy went outside and waited, shooting baskets in the driveway. He would ask him for a spot as an altar boy. This time, he hoped, he'd get a yes.
Grammond finally came out the front door. The priest held out his hands for the ball.
"He puts up a set shot with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and it went through," he said, "and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world."
Grammond told him to come by the rectory.
Right there, it happened. Years later, psychology texts would pick apart and examine every angle and facet of how a pedophile lures his victims. They would label that perfect toss of the basketball with a word the boy had probably never heard before.
The seduction.
Legacy of shame
"Why don't you come up to my room," another boy, now 61, remembered Grammond suggesting. "I've got a radio, we could listen to it there." It became a weekly routine.
"He handed me a book, we'd be looking at pictures, and he'd lean close, put his arm on my shoulder. You didn't think much about it. He'd get your confidence up, like he was your friend.
"I don't know how he suckered me into this."
Orphans. Whiz kids. Misfits. Altar boys. Grammond left a legacy of shame: the shame of boys who'd yet to kiss their first girlfriends, doing unspeakable things with this man; the shame of an archdiocese that admits, through its elder priests, that it quietly handled similar complaints by recycling the accused to a new parish. Although the church found no record of complaint about Grammond, boys remember being ignored, or worse.
Far surpassing Oregon's occasional incidence of abuse lawsuits, by the count of his accusers, Grammond is among the most prolific known pedophiles to wear black robes in this country.
Last week, the Archdiocese of Portland and representatives for 23 men announced the settlement of their sex-abuse lawsuits, even as new cases are being prepared. The archdiocese did not admit fault, and in the past Grammond denied any abuse.
At a time when the mortal failings of the clergy are talk-show fare, the description of Grammond manages to stand out, in his sexual appetite, his gall approaching recklessness, his perversion of the trappings of the faith, his clever masking of his relationships with the boys.
"We'd do some fishing," one boy, now 49, recalls. "At night I remember on more than one occasion . . . this is real hard. I was in the tent and I told him I had a mosquito bite, and he said, 'I need to see it.' He insisted, and I took off my shirt and he said he had to see the rest of me, and he insisted and I said, 'No, no, that's it.' He stood over me, and he took all my clothes off. He took my underwear off, and I fought him and I kept telling him no. I kept telling him no, and he kept insisting. I can remember the light of the campfire through the tent, and then he laid down next to me. That's all I can tell you about that."
From its sensational national outbreak in the 1980s, clergy sex abuse has grown into the Catholic Church's greatest scandal. Every one of the 188 dioceses in the country has faced a pedophilia case.
In his book "Lead Us Not Into Temptation," the definitive text on the topic, author Jason Berry's introduction quotes a former church attorney estimating the cost of litigation at "close to a billion dollars." The church has never released its total payouts.
The financial terms of the Grammond settlement are confidential, but the church agreed to a task force into child-abuse complaints, "healing" services for all families affected by Grammond and an apology from Archbishop John G. Vlazny.
The apology, to be read at Mass throughout the archdiocese today, extends to "any person who has suffered from abuse by any personnel of the archdiocese."
It does not name the priest.
Maurice Grammond served seven parishes and two orphanages of the archdiocese of Portland, from the city's Assumption and Our Lady of Sorrows churches to the rural congregations of Sublimity, Mill City, Verboort, Dexter, St. Michael's in Oakridge and, his last and longest assignment, Our Lady of Victory Church in the coastal tourist town Seaside, a block from the beach.
His contemporaries barely knew him. He seemed like scores of other parish priests, busy in their far-flung posts, dealing with the thousand daily chores of the job between Sundays.
He liked being the new priest. It seemed to be his favorite part of an assignment, the early days, sorting things out, figuring out how the church had been run and where he could make improvements, watching for waste in the meager budgets. Visiting the families. Meeting the boys.
The men describe, collectively, hundreds of sexual encounters. Grammond kept them quiet. It's our secret, he told them. In a rambling, bitter unpublished autobiography, Grammond decries a young boy who "threw himself at me in a sexual manner," as if he foresaw the accusations and sought to head them off.
Today, Grammond is silent, 80 and weakening in a Gresham home for Alzheimer's patients. He speaks only to a couple of acquaintances and his sister.
The impact of the abuse, played out over as many as five decades, is stunning.
Many victims haven't been to a Mass since they wore the altar boy's robes. Some loathe weddings and funerals. They can't go back and start over.
But back then, Grammond was the first priest they'd ever really known, really talked to, laughed with, fished and camped with. He was wonderful, the new priest.
The road to Oakridge
For Grammond, there was never any doubt he'd be a priest. As early as the second grade, when an uncle asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Grammond answered, "the pope."
Maurice Ronald Grammond was born in 1920 to a Portland streetcar motorman and German mother described as domineering and humorless. He recalls his poor childhood wistfully in the autobiography he wrote decades later: stealing turkeys with his brother at Thanksgiving, watching his father guard their outhouse on Halloween night against tricksters out to tip it over, helping his mother bake. He was the oldest of three, an antsy kid; his mother would later tell his secretary, "he was born nervous."
He describes himself as a good student at the University of Portland, a philosophy major at the Jesuit school. After consulting with his parish priest and his bishop, he boarded a train for Mount Angel Seminary. The schedule was demanding, the classwork exhausting, and, overexerted, he soon took a year off for poor health -- a recurring problem throughout his life.
His younger brother, Robert, had fought in World War II and came home shellshocked, with shrapnel in both knees and aches only drinking could soothe. He lived upstairs in their parents' home.
Boyhood buddies, the brothers fought as adults, their sister recalled.
"You should quit drinking and get a job," Maurice told him.
"Don't talk to me, you damn queer," Robert shot back.
There had never been any girls in the picture. "He never had any use for girls," his sister Dolores recalled in an interview. "He hated women."
He left again, to St. Edward's Seminary and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota. The seminarians studied canon law, church history, the sacraments, theology, Christology. But Grammond would become an intellectually inadventurous priest, best known not for thoughtful sermons, but lightning-fast Masses, not for provocative writings, but a memoir that complains that no one tips priests at weddings anymore.
Yet he writes that he felt he could "convert the whole world" when he was ordained in 1950, a few weeks shy of 30: "I promised the good Lord that I would never do anything to offend Him."
His parents threw him a party, "which was much like a wedding reception," he wrote.
His mother called him "Father" that day, and every day after, for the rest of her life.
The priest was approaching 40 when he arrived in Oakridge, his last 10 years spent bouncing from assignment to assignment in Portland, from a single month at a girls home to three years at Our Lady of Sorrows. Two years at St. Mary's Home for Boys. Three and a half years at Assumption Catholic Church.
Grammond's access to boys leaps off his personnel record: "Prefect of discipline; taught Latin and religion. P.E. teacher for high school boys and upper grade school boys. Director of teen-age club. Coach for high school and grade school -- 3 football and 5 basketball teams. Had to attend 65 basketball games in 3 months. ..."
On the list
The boy waited a while to see if his name was on the altar boy list, and when it wasn't, he went to the rectory. He waited until the last dusty pickup had pulled out of St. Michael's gravel parking lot, and went inside.
He remembers Grammond greeting him warmly and taking him to a back room. While they chatted, Grammond casually changed his clothes.
"I'd never seen a priest in his underwear before," the boy said later. "That made me a little uncomfortable."
But as they talked, the boy soon told the priest about his secret relationship with God, how he was picked on at school and how God watched out for him.
Grammond put him on the list.
There's a saying: If you see an angel and a priest walking down the road together, stick by the priest, for he is closer to God.
One cannot overstate the esteem in which the parish priest was held in rural America. Oregon was no different. Mothers were honored when Father Grammond stopped by for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He'd ask after their sons: Maybe I could take the boy camping? Boys love to camp. Maybe you could spare him for a few hours to help out at the church?
"Father would call and say he wanted Joe to do something," recalled one mother, "and his dad would say, 'Well, you're going.' I thought, where else could he go where he could be more protected?"
From the vantage point of a church pew in rural Oregon, pedophilia was something that happened far away, as foreign as famine and plague. It wore trench coats and carried lollipops. Parents warned to watch out for strangers. The priest wasn't a stranger. He was more than a man.
"One of the most poignant things about cases of priests molesting children or youths is that they go, naturally, for their easiest targets -- good Catholic families," author Garry Wills writes in his recently published "Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit." "Devout Catholic families will be the least suspicious of a priest's conduct and the most intimidated about challenging the church."
Pedophiles follow patterns: finding access to children, winning their trust with rewards and praise, isolating them physically as well as psychologically.
Pedophile priests accomplish all that in broad daylight. Or in church.
In the rectory, Grammond lavished the boy with praise after his first service on the altar. "You appreciate the intellectual side of the Mass," he told him.
He hugged the boy and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Grammond invited the boy to the rectory on Tuesday nights for "evening prayers." He soon realized evening prayers involved just him and the priest.
Grammond continued to encourage the boy and his growing appetite for the Catholic teachings, telling him he had a gift, telling him he could help him gain admission to the seminary someday. The boy was thrilled.
Grammond gave him a blue book, the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, dense reading for a teen, but the boy devoured it, jotting down questions at the passages he didn't understand and taking them to Grammond.
He didn't tell his parents about his secret trips to church.
"An altar boy and priest have a confidential relationship," Grammond told him, "that no one else needs to know about."
"There is nothing here"
It was his first job as pastor, but Grammond hated Oakridge. He'd just left Our Lady of Sorrows, after about three years as a busy associate pastor, visiting, in his estimation, more than 1,000 homes, performing many marriages and funerals and meeting families.
"All the people liked me, as I was a young man," he wrote. "I got along with all them while working there. I attended all the functions, taught religion in the school, and coached athletics. I had contact with the youth and if the children like you, they tell their parents."
He left Portland abruptly: "The pastor informed me that in the coming summer I would get my own parish."
The Rev. Robert Cieslinski had been at Oakridge for several years when Grammond arrived to take over.
"When I turned over the keys, he wasn't hearing a thing I'd said," recalled Cieslinski, now retired. "He just kept saying, 'I'm a long way from Portland. I'm a long way from Portland.' "
The nearest town of any size was Eugene, but he didn't have time to go. "My God, there is nothing here!" Grammond blared in his writings. "It is at the end of the road."
He called the parish "impossible" and "hopeless." His memoir sounds condescending about his congregation, and he appears to smirk through tellings of tragedy: "I got a call that a man had blown his head off with a shotgun. I went to anoint him, but since his head was gone, all I could anoint was his hands."
Yet in public he smiled and glad-handed. He stopped in for coffee. He had a martini and tossed a basketball through a hoop.
It was basketball that landed the boy flat on his tailbone, bruising it badly enough that it hurt to walk, to sit down.
At the rectory of St. Michael's, the priest gave him some pills and watched while the boy swallowed, he said. Grammond told him to lie on the couch, on his stomach, and to pull down his pants.
"I remember being self-conscious about how skinny I was," he said. Grammond began massaging his bottom, the boy recalled.
He woke up later -- hours later, as it was dark -- without realizing he'd fallen into a deep sleep. He was wearing only his underwear, under a blanket. He felt groggy and queasy walking home.
Soon after, he realized he was bleeding, in his pants.
He figured he'd ask Grammond what was wrong.
You're bleeding, the priest said, from your fall on your tailbone.
Weeks later, when the boy finally had finished the book, Grammond told him to come by the rectory, that he had a special surprise for him.
He arrived, and remembers Grammond told him to take off all his clothes.
"Don't worry," the priest said, as recalled later. "This is part of a sacred Catholic ceremony between an altar boy and a priest."
Grammond lit scented candles and dimmed the lights and presented the boy with a stole, a long, white scarf draped over the neck and worn on the altar over the appropriate gown. He also gave him a rosary and told him to kneel down. It was time for confession.
The sacrament of reconciliation is a hallmark of Catholicism, wherein the priest is a medium of absolution for the sins man confesses. Catholics are taught that so important, so sacred is the confession, that one cannot receive Holy Communion at Mass without being in a "state of grace" from a reconciliation. Priests are sworn to secrecy from repeating anything uttered in the confessional. For the penitent, it's considered a sin to leave anything out.
Grammond had heard many confessions in the last 10 years before befouling the sacrament on this night, smoking a cigarette in a chair behind the naked, kneeling boy.
"It's time for me to anoint you," he said, approaching the boy.
"I just stood there and let him do it," he said. "If he wanted me to jump off the roof, I would have done it. I'd do anything for him."
You can reach Michael Wilson at 503-294-7663 or by e-mail at michaelwilson@news.oregonian.com.
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markomalley
Actually, the study does break down temporal data, such as the incidence of the boy's school you mention. As to the incidence of the out of control priest who was just so h0rny he had to find "any port in the storm," well, sorry, I don't believe it gets into that detail. But if you would be so kind as to show me some empirical data to illustrate the incidence of this happening, I'll be happy to review it. Your prison scenario, I guess, could be equated to a remote monastary, but I don't believe that this type of incident was even included...as that would not be considered the abuse of minors.
You mention that this study doesn't support my argument:
My argument, at the beginning, was taking an issue with a point made in the initial post (and in the title) of the thread...
The initial post of the thread stated:
I mentioned in my initial response that the media got it wrong in how they were reporting the story (about this document). I then quoted a leaked copy of the document so that the exact wording of the document's text could be evaluated. I finally pointed out that this was not actually a new statement, and provided a passasge of a document from 1961 that supported my point (that this was not a new rule, but a restatement). I initially expressed neither approval or disapproval for the point -- I was just making sure the facts were out there -- at least in my initial post.
Because of the fact that this document used the words homosexual and pederasty in the same sentence, and an honest misreading of it (substituting pedophilia for pederasty), you took it that the Church was equating pedophilia with homosexuality (or so I surmise)...and several pages later, here we are.
That was my initial point. That was my initial argument. Period.
Garth, I am not equating homosexuality and pedophilia.
I maintain that the majority of the sexual abuse cases reported in the study, most of the sexual abuse cases involving Catholic clergy that I've heard of or read in the media (but not all, in either case), and the ones that I am familiar with, involve male-to-male contact of a sexual nature.
If you have some empirical data that can prove me wrong, again, please bring it forth.
Garth, I am not equating homosexuality and pedophilia.
But one way or the other, it is a major derailment of this thread.
BTW, for the record, my position on the matter is:
Priest who takes advantage of pre-pubescent boys = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of post-pubescent boys = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of pre-pubsecent girls = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of post-pubescent girls = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of men = evil priest
Priest who takes advantage of women = evil priest
Priest who has consensual sexual relations with either sex not his wife = bad priest (he took a vow and broke the vow)
Priest who maintains chastity according to his station in life* = if other factors met, good priest
*chastity according to station in life means if he's married, he has sex only with his wife...if he's single, he keeps it zipped.
Please show me some empirical data that speak about Catholic priests (vice the population as a whole). I seriously would be happy to look it over.
But in the meantime, the current document that is the subject of this thread said what it said (quoted in my first post on this thread). It is not a new policy...it merely restates already existing policy (as quoted in my first post on this thread). That is the bottom line.
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GarthP2000
I stand corrected regarding the meaning of pederasty then. That it is being used as a focus against homosexuals and trying to link homosexuality with sexual abuse of minors however, I stand by what I say. And that it is flawed and dishonest. And in addition, that it is a strawman argument being used by the Church to relieve public pressure off of its responsibility in this travesty.
And that you support trying to sell the idea on the relation to homosexuality angle is quite manipulative and dishonest on your part, and all in the name of Defending the Catholic Faith and its dictates. "Look lady, the real blame why your son was molested wasn't really due to the policies of the Catholic Church, but due to a few homos who managed to sneak in past the Pope's oversight." I mean, there is only so far you can argue based on loyalty, you think? As well as the shoddy usage of some research findings.
With their anti-homosexual biases, you think that's such an unlikely possibility?Oh, so it didn't work itself into this mess because they looked the other way while the abuse was going on until the public nearly revolted due to it?
Oh wow! So NOW they are worried about making sure their numbers are straight, hmmmm? Tell me something. Haven't you ever heard of someone trying to doctor the numbers so that a plausible scapegoat (in this case the gays) can be offered on the public sacrificial alter, while the heterosexual (and usually higher ups, like Bernard Law) leave unscathed? That kind of crap happens all the time. ..... Except in the Catholic church, or so you would have us believe.Man, and you say that *I'm* losing the argument?? :o
With the exception of your listing homosexuality as a significant (and causal) part of the problem, I think that you're _finally_ getting my main point here (altho' you contradice yourself here "I list homosexuality in the priesthood as a significant factor" and here "Fact is that if a priest is capable of being celibate, it really and truly doesn't matter who he is attracted toward", but I nitpick). And I do see your valid point here "If he's not capable of being celibate, then, according to the rules of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, he has no business being a priest." at least from a Catholic perspective; ie., they made the celibate commitment, let them stay that way.
Altho' from a Protestant perspective, maybe letting them marry is another viable alternative. :P But, that is another debate for another day.
Anywho, stick a fork in me, I'm done with this show.
Peace dude. B)
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markomalley
Garth,
Sorry to tell you, but JPII apologized for the Church's treatment of Galileo. JPII never changed the Church's position on geocentrism vs. heliocentrism. The text of this 'apology' can be found here. Basically, the problem was that Galileo was asserting that Copernicism was true, when it had not yet been proven and further stating that some of the Bible must be incorrect because of this. (Curious that Copernic was never condemned by the Church, even though he was the actual postulator of the heliocentric system)
You really ought to read the Wikipedia article on Galileo...
Now, I've heard of JPII's 'apology' about Galileo, but I never heard him reverse the Church's position on heliocentrism. That was the reason for my 'huh.'
Had this usage been in the 2005 document, you might have a point about it being a strawman. But it wasn't. It was in the 1961 document. Issued literally 40 years before the abuse crisis. I hate to tell you, but the Church isn't using that argument (more particularly the US Bishops). They are (as a body) backpedalling and being overly politically correct in my view. They are trying to take YOUR position on the matter. They are the ones who blew off the direction they were given and They are the ones who are at fault here. My position is not the position of the US Council of Catholic Bishops.No, I am specifically saying that the US Council of Catholic Bishops mishandled their responsibilities and that is the cause of the problem. Had they enforced the policies they had in place since (at least) 1961 (if not before...I haven't gone to my local Canon Law library to research earlier rulings), the majority of these incidents would not have happened. Not that a few homosexual priests snuck in under the Pope's nose, but that the US Council of Catholic Bishops completely disregarded the rule...and that this is the problem.
Now that the horse is out of the barn, they're trying to react and, with only a few exceptions, are unwilling to come out and actually state the real problem.
Since you are accusing them of cooking numbers, do you have evidence to the contrary? No? I didn't think so. Do you have ANY documentation to the contrary? Do you? Take a look at any of the abuse sites out there, before putting your foot deeper in your mouth here. You will find that the anecdotal information presented in them corroborates the empirical study discussed earlier.Yup, sure do. I think your own biases are beating you thoroughly.
I have always maintained this. But, one issue is this (brought up in the post you're responding to): But, for some reason, the vast, vast, vast majority of the cases where this immaturity/ these disorders are manifested involve homosexual acts with pubescent/ post-pubescent boys. Not girls. Why is it that the majority of the cases are M-M contact rather than M-F contact (within the set of data under discussion: the Catholic priesthood)? Could it be that the majority of the individuals with "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" also happen to be homosexual? Is there a causal relationship here? In other words, is the fact that they are homosexual cause the "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" or is the fact that they have a "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders" result in them being homosexual? Or is their homosexuality simply coincident with the "lack of emotional maturity and underlying personality disorders?" And if it is simply coincident, why is the co-incidence not also extant in heterosexual priests (resulting in a higher incidence of M-F abuse cases)?
Rather than simply being critical of what I'm saying or combative, why don't you seriously try to answer those questions? Because if you have a credible answer, rather than just an unsupported assertion, I am happy to listen and may change my mind about the situation. But platitudes, in of themselves, or assertions, unsupported, simply are not going to cause me to change my mind just to be politically correct.
Garth, I have repeatedly cited the facts that I know that are available. I have not simply gone out and said "those $#@#$ f@gs are the problem." I have been responded to with inaccuracies, fallacious, non-sequitor arguments, strawmen, mockery, and so on. Those techniques are the techniques of somebody who does not have the facts on his side. A person with the facts on his side would cite his facts and let them speak.
So once again, if you have facts to the contrary...if you have alternate logical, supported reason to the contrary, please so state. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing else to argue about. Hitting a blind man gets boring after a while.
Have a great day!
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markomalley
Oh, and by the way, let me illustrate some examples:
"Gee, Mark, I think the numbers were cooked in your study. This study (hyperlink) shows that only 41% of the victims were male."
or even:
"Mark, your numbers are full of cr@p. If they are so accurate, how come (this site), (this site), (this site), and (this site) only report incidents of females being abused by priests? - Things that make you go hmmmmm"
Or
"Mark, the study you constantly reference has been totally debunked. (Reference), (reference), (reference) have completely invalidated it due to faulty methodology."
See, Garth, that kind of thing works better for me than just making unsupported allegations. And, believe it or not, I'll listen to that kind of reasoning. And so will a bunch of other people.
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coolchef1248 @adelphia.net
mark i sure ain't as smart as you but wow i sure do agree with you
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excathedra
THE SECRETS OF A SMALL-TOWN PRIEST
MICHAEL WILSON - The Oregonian
October 15, 2000
The boy would talk to God while he walked to school.
God, let me do well on my test today. God, let me make a friend today. God, let me not get beat up today.
The boy was new to the small mill town of Oakridge, east of Eugene, a rougher place than anywhere he'd ever lived. He was 12 years old, and his was a boy's Catholicism. He believed God was looking out for him, listening to him.
He enjoyed Mass at St. Michael's Catholic Church. He wanted to be an altar boy, to please his mother, but more important, to please a girl he saw at church.
He asked the priest to put him on the list and checked every week, but never saw his name.
"Then something wonderful happened," the boy, now grown into a middle-age man, recalled. "Or so I thought at the time."
A new priest came to Oakridge.
The boy had never heard of the Rev. Maurice Grammond. No one in 1950s Oakridge had. Now everyone knows him. An obscure parish priest has become the Archdiocese of Portland's greatest shame.
Grammond was younger than the previous priest, charming where the former was dour, handsome in glasses fashionable at the time, like the ones Henry Fonda wore. The boy came home one day and was surprised to find the priest talking to his parents in the living room.
The priest was surprisingly cool. He dropped mild profanities into his speech, like "hell" and "damn." He smoked. When the boy's father offered a martini, the priest accepted.
The boy went outside and waited, shooting baskets in the driveway. He would ask him for a spot as an altar boy. This time, he hoped, he'd get a yes.
Grammond finally came out the front door. The priest held out his hands for the ball.
"He puts up a set shot with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and it went through," he said, "and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world."
Grammond told him to come by the rectory.
Right there, it happened. Years later, psychology texts would pick apart and examine every angle and facet of how a pedophile lures his victims. They would label that perfect toss of the basketball with a word the boy had probably never heard before.
The seduction.
Legacy of shame
"Why don't you come up to my room," another boy, now 61, remembered Grammond suggesting. "I've got a radio, we could listen to it there." It became a weekly routine.
"He handed me a book, we'd be looking at pictures, and he'd lean close, put his arm on my shoulder. You didn't think much about it. He'd get your confidence up, like he was your friend.
"I don't know how he suckered me into this."
Orphans. Whiz kids. Misfits. Altar boys. Grammond left a legacy of shame: the shame of boys who'd yet to kiss their first girlfriends, doing unspeakable things with this man; the shame of an archdiocese that admits, through its elder priests, that it quietly handled similar complaints by recycling the accused to a new parish. Although the church found no record of complaint about Grammond, boys remember being ignored, or worse.
Far surpassing Oregon's occasional incidence of abuse lawsuits, by the count of his accusers, Grammond is among the most prolific known pedophiles to wear black robes in this country.
Last week, the Archdiocese of Portland and representatives for 23 men announced the settlement of their sex-abuse lawsuits, even as new cases are being prepared. The archdiocese did not admit fault, and in the past Grammond denied any abuse.
At a time when the mortal failings of the clergy are talk-show fare, the description of Grammond manages to stand out, in his sexual appetite, his gall approaching recklessness, his perversion of the trappings of the faith, his clever masking of his relationships with the boys.
"We'd do some fishing," one boy, now 49, recalls. "At night I remember on more than one occasion . . . this is real hard. I was in the tent and I told him I had a mosquito bite, and he said, 'I need to see it.' He insisted, and I took off my shirt and he said he had to see the rest of me, and he insisted and I said, 'No, no, that's it.' He stood over me, and he took all my clothes off. He took my underwear off, and I fought him and I kept telling him no. I kept telling him no, and he kept insisting. I can remember the light of the campfire through the tent, and then he laid down next to me. That's all I can tell you about that."
From its sensational national outbreak in the 1980s, clergy sex abuse has grown into the Catholic Church's greatest scandal. Every one of the 188 dioceses in the country has faced a pedophilia case.
In his book "Lead Us Not Into Temptation," the definitive text on the topic, author Jason Berry's introduction quotes a former church attorney estimating the cost of litigation at "close to a billion dollars." The church has never released its total payouts.
The financial terms of the Grammond settlement are confidential, but the church agreed to a task force into child-abuse complaints, "healing" services for all families affected by Grammond and an apology from Archbishop John G. Vlazny.
The apology, to be read at Mass throughout the archdiocese today, extends to "any person who has suffered from abuse by any personnel of the archdiocese."
It does not name the priest.
Maurice Grammond served seven parishes and two orphanages of the archdiocese of Portland, from the city's Assumption and Our Lady of Sorrows churches to the rural congregations of Sublimity, Mill City, Verboort, Dexter, St. Michael's in Oakridge and, his last and longest assignment, Our Lady of Victory Church in the coastal tourist town Seaside, a block from the beach.
His contemporaries barely knew him. He seemed like scores of other parish priests, busy in their far-flung posts, dealing with the thousand daily chores of the job between Sundays.
He liked being the new priest. It seemed to be his favorite part of an assignment, the early days, sorting things out, figuring out how the church had been run and where he could make improvements, watching for waste in the meager budgets. Visiting the families. Meeting the boys.
The men describe, collectively, hundreds of sexual encounters. Grammond kept them quiet. It's our secret, he told them. In a rambling, bitter unpublished autobiography, Grammond decries a young boy who "threw himself at me in a sexual manner," as if he foresaw the accusations and sought to head them off.
Today, Grammond is silent, 80 and weakening in a Gresham home for Alzheimer's patients. He speaks only to a couple of acquaintances and his sister.
The impact of the abuse, played out over as many as five decades, is stunning.
Many victims haven't been to a Mass since they wore the altar boy's robes. Some loathe weddings and funerals. They can't go back and start over.
But back then, Grammond was the first priest they'd ever really known, really talked to, laughed with, fished and camped with. He was wonderful, the new priest.
The road to Oakridge
For Grammond, there was never any doubt he'd be a priest. As early as the second grade, when an uncle asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, Grammond answered, "the pope."
Maurice Ronald Grammond was born in 1920 to a Portland streetcar motorman and German mother described as domineering and humorless. He recalls his poor childhood wistfully in the autobiography he wrote decades later: stealing turkeys with his brother at Thanksgiving, watching his father guard their outhouse on Halloween night against tricksters out to tip it over, helping his mother bake. He was the oldest of three, an antsy kid; his mother would later tell his secretary, "he was born nervous."
He describes himself as a good student at the University of Portland, a philosophy major at the Jesuit school. After consulting with his parish priest and his bishop, he boarded a train for Mount Angel Seminary. The schedule was demanding, the classwork exhausting, and, overexerted, he soon took a year off for poor health -- a recurring problem throughout his life.
His younger brother, Robert, had fought in World War II and came home shellshocked, with shrapnel in both knees and aches only drinking could soothe. He lived upstairs in their parents' home.
Boyhood buddies, the brothers fought as adults, their sister recalled.
"You should quit drinking and get a job," Maurice told him.
"Don't talk to me, you damn queer," Robert shot back.
There had never been any girls in the picture. "He never had any use for girls," his sister Dolores recalled in an interview. "He hated women."
He left again, to St. Edward's Seminary and St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota. The seminarians studied canon law, church history, the sacraments, theology, Christology. But Grammond would become an intellectually inadventurous priest, best known not for thoughtful sermons, but lightning-fast Masses, not for provocative writings, but a memoir that complains that no one tips priests at weddings anymore.
Yet he writes that he felt he could "convert the whole world" when he was ordained in 1950, a few weeks shy of 30: "I promised the good Lord that I would never do anything to offend Him."
His parents threw him a party, "which was much like a wedding reception," he wrote.
His mother called him "Father" that day, and every day after, for the rest of her life.
The priest was approaching 40 when he arrived in Oakridge, his last 10 years spent bouncing from assignment to assignment in Portland, from a single month at a girls home to three years at Our Lady of Sorrows. Two years at St. Mary's Home for Boys. Three and a half years at Assumption Catholic Church.
Grammond's access to boys leaps off his personnel record: "Prefect of discipline; taught Latin and religion. P.E. teacher for high school boys and upper grade school boys. Director of teen-age club. Coach for high school and grade school -- 3 football and 5 basketball teams. Had to attend 65 basketball games in 3 months. ..."
On the list
The boy waited a while to see if his name was on the altar boy list, and when it wasn't, he went to the rectory. He waited until the last dusty pickup had pulled out of St. Michael's gravel parking lot, and went inside.
He remembers Grammond greeting him warmly and taking him to a back room. While they chatted, Grammond casually changed his clothes.
"I'd never seen a priest in his underwear before," the boy said later. "That made me a little uncomfortable."
But as they talked, the boy soon told the priest about his secret relationship with God, how he was picked on at school and how God watched out for him.
Grammond put him on the list.
There's a saying: If you see an angel and a priest walking down the road together, stick by the priest, for he is closer to God.
One cannot overstate the esteem in which the parish priest was held in rural America. Oregon was no different. Mothers were honored when Father Grammond stopped by for a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He'd ask after their sons: Maybe I could take the boy camping? Boys love to camp. Maybe you could spare him for a few hours to help out at the church?
"Father would call and say he wanted Joe to do something," recalled one mother, "and his dad would say, 'Well, you're going.' I thought, where else could he go where he could be more protected?"
From the vantage point of a church pew in rural Oregon, pedophilia was something that happened far away, as foreign as famine and plague. It wore trench coats and carried lollipops. Parents warned to watch out for strangers. The priest wasn't a stranger. He was more than a man.
"One of the most poignant things about cases of priests molesting children or youths is that they go, naturally, for their easiest targets -- good Catholic families," author Garry Wills writes in his recently published "Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit." "Devout Catholic families will be the least suspicious of a priest's conduct and the most intimidated about challenging the church."
Pedophiles follow patterns: finding access to children, winning their trust with rewards and praise, isolating them physically as well as psychologically.
Pedophile priests accomplish all that in broad daylight. Or in church.
In the rectory, Grammond lavished the boy with praise after his first service on the altar. "You appreciate the intellectual side of the Mass," he told him.
He hugged the boy and gave him a peck on the cheek.
Grammond invited the boy to the rectory on Tuesday nights for "evening prayers." He soon realized evening prayers involved just him and the priest.
Grammond continued to encourage the boy and his growing appetite for the Catholic teachings, telling him he had a gift, telling him he could help him gain admission to the seminary someday. The boy was thrilled.
Grammond gave him a blue book, the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, dense reading for a teen, but the boy devoured it, jotting down questions at the passages he didn't understand and taking them to Grammond.
He didn't tell his parents about his secret trips to church.
"An altar boy and priest have a confidential relationship," Grammond told him, "that no one else needs to know about."
"There is nothing here"
It was his first job as pastor, but Grammond hated Oakridge. He'd just left Our Lady of Sorrows, after about three years as a busy associate pastor, visiting, in his estimation, more than 1,000 homes, performing many marriages and funerals and meeting families.
"All the people liked me, as I was a young man," he wrote. "I got along with all them while working there. I attended all the functions, taught religion in the school, and coached athletics. I had contact with the youth and if the children like you, they tell their parents."
He left Portland abruptly: "The pastor informed me that in the coming summer I would get my own parish."
The Rev. Robert Cieslinski had been at Oakridge for several years when Grammond arrived to take over.
"When I turned over the keys, he wasn't hearing a thing I'd said," recalled Cieslinski, now retired. "He just kept saying, 'I'm a long way from Portland. I'm a long way from Portland.' "
The nearest town of any size was Eugene, but he didn't have time to go. "My God, there is nothing here!" Grammond blared in his writings. "It is at the end of the road."
He called the parish "impossible" and "hopeless." His memoir sounds condescending about his congregation, and he appears to smirk through tellings of tragedy: "I got a call that a man had blown his head off with a shotgun. I went to anoint him, but since his head was gone, all I could anoint was his hands."
Yet in public he smiled and glad-handed. He stopped in for coffee. He had a martini and tossed a basketball through a hoop.
It was basketball that landed the boy flat on his tailbone, bruising it badly enough that it hurt to walk, to sit down.
At the rectory of St. Michael's, the priest gave him some pills and watched while the boy swallowed, he said. Grammond told him to lie on the couch, on his stomach, and to pull down his pants.
"I remember being self-conscious about how skinny I was," he said. Grammond began massaging his bottom, the boy recalled.
He woke up later -- hours later, as it was dark -- without realizing he'd fallen into a deep sleep. He was wearing only his underwear, under a blanket. He felt groggy and queasy walking home.
Soon after, he realized he was bleeding, in his pants.
He figured he'd ask Grammond what was wrong.
You're bleeding, the priest said, from your fall on your tailbone.
Weeks later, when the boy finally had finished the book, Grammond told him to come by the rectory, that he had a special surprise for him.
He arrived, and remembers Grammond told him to take off all his clothes.
"Don't worry," the priest said, as recalled later. "This is part of a sacred Catholic ceremony between an altar boy and a priest."
Grammond lit scented candles and dimmed the lights and presented the boy with a stole, a long, white scarf draped over the neck and worn on the altar over the appropriate gown. He also gave him a rosary and told him to kneel down. It was time for confession.
The sacrament of reconciliation is a hallmark of Catholicism, wherein the priest is a medium of absolution for the sins man confesses. Catholics are taught that so important, so sacred is the confession, that one cannot receive Holy Communion at Mass without being in a "state of grace" from a reconciliation. Priests are sworn to secrecy from repeating anything uttered in the confessional. For the penitent, it's considered a sin to leave anything out.
Grammond had heard many confessions in the last 10 years before befouling the sacrament on this night, smoking a cigarette in a chair behind the naked, kneeling boy.
"It's time for me to anoint you," he said, approaching the boy.
"I just stood there and let him do it," he said. "If he wanted me to jump off the roof, I would have done it. I'd do anything for him."
You can reach Michael Wilson at 503-294-7663 or by e-mail at michaelwilson@news.oregonian.com.
Copyright © 2003 Oregonian Publishing Co.
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excathedra
my whole point is all the doctrine and statistics and debates in the world can't change the heartache and grief
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satori001
Grammond reminds me of the accounts of Vic Wierwille, with his well-reported "spiritual healing" seduction line.
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