Nun: I reported priest in 2000

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-priest26.html

A nun who worked at Chicago's Holy Family Catholic School -- where the Rev. Daniel McCormack used to say mass for students once a week -- has told the Chicago Sun-Times she alerted officials of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago of her concerns about the priest's behavior with children as early as winter 2000.

The nun, who asked that her name not be used, said a fourth-grade boy at Holy Family claimed McCormack asked him to pull down his pants in the sacristy of the church when the two were alone after a Friday mass in 2000. She said she told several archdiocesan officials about the child's allegations -- both verbally and in writing -- on several occasions, but her warnings went unheeded.

The nun's revelations emerged Wednesday as Chicago authorities widened their investigation of the 37-year-old priest, who was charged last weekend with sexually abusing two boys at St. Agatha's church in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. They didn't investigate the alligations of a nun?

I mean, it wasn't some woman who just walked in off the street and started making accusations. Was the Church still in cover up mode at this time?

[Bridget Burke]

2. After all these years of Dioceses not responding to "reports"....

Why are people still avoiding the police--the ones who can make arrests? So the suspects can go to trial & actually be taken off the streets?

How did this guy finally get caught? "Archdiocesan officials have said they first learned of abuse allegations against McCormack last August, when the mother of the Willowbrook boy went to police."

This does NOT excuse inaction or coverup by the Church authorities. But their job is not to handle real crimes. The Church hasn't had courts & dungeons for a couple of centuries.

[PATRICK]

3. The self defeating double dilemma

creates the easy way out rather than a controversy that will blow up whether well founded or not. The Church has no legal or investigative system(that hads been 95% privatized away from clerics and restricted mostly to their own business matters). The types of complaints they must receive and even a lot of spiteful or deranged ones in the mix considering the mix of religion and psychology just make the Church self governing system inadequate to crime and punishment and charged controversy. Nor do they have the deadly liaison they once enjoyed with the state.

So as bad as it really is one can see how going the easy route of "le bien salut"(the public welfare) the possibility(deniability) of scandal must eventually lead to actual cover up by increasingly easier and ever more legally defensive steps. THEN the expertise of the Church is forced to become more proficient in legal defense maneuvers than discipline. That is what happened when the Church "tackled" this very issue the last decade. There were more programs for dealing with complaints fairly. The defense line was a lot meatier than the offensive against the crime. Now the results are in.

As with any group, self policing is extremely unlikely to be satisfactory. Fear of litigation and loss of reputation, and smearing of innocent officials has created or increased what it feared. Arrogance performance or hiding behind power makes certain areas far worse than others, like cancer peppering the ecclesial body.

Even with staunch standing for celibacy, incredibly clear moral imperatives, the psych exams, the screening, the years of training and in the field, it seems to be a statistical inevitability that was simply swept under the rug long before the court cases broke. Other, smaller institutions dealing with young people face the same problem and deal with it too late in much the same way. Too little, too comfortably tilted, too unable to use stock excuses, too financially exposed, too mediocre, to protective, too big.

What is even worse it does remind people there were past times when the Church did have more use for dungeons and courts and the innocent laity suffered in far greater proportion than real criminals. And that instead of rosy self-congratulatory reform maybe instead it was trade offs in the weed patch.