Dismantling of the Spokane diocese

The Diocese of Spokane. is in serious trouble as it deals with continuing legal fallout from the Scandal, although the National Catholic Reporter’s subtitle seems a bit of a stretch. While the physical property of the diocese is at risk, a diocese is not its buildings. As long there is a bishop and his people, the diocese still exists.

What we have is a lawsuit that threatens to force the archdiocese to sell off every building, every church and school, to pay off victims and their lawyers. Thus another generation of kids and their families can be victimized by the Scandal too. Victims and their families are unrepentant though, because they want to punish someone, whether it’s the bishops or the parishioners who sit in quiet silence in the pews around them.

This past Palm Sunday, Terry and Ann sat on opposite edges of their bed after yet another night of restless sleep since the death of their son Tim, who committed suicide on a late summer’s day in 2002, hours after telling his wife that O’Donnell had molested him. ... “I can’t pray there with those people anymore,” added Terry. “I’ve come to the sad realization that the hierarchy of the Catholic church cares more about money and assets than it does the souls of young people. The institutional church has begun to look more to me like—somebody once said—the mafia. And I think the only way to change it is by force.”

Is it change they want or revenge? Do they want others to hurt like they do? Lest there be any doubt, listen to their own words:

Emboldened by recent court decisions, angered by diocesan hardball tactics and alarmist posturing, and feeling shunned by what they perceive as a lack of parishioner support, victims are considering the unprecedented course of suing individual parishes and even individual churchgoers in parish leadership positions.

“There are no warm and fuzzy feelings here,” said attorney Tim Kosnoff, who represents 101 Spokane victims. “With an exception of maybe one or two people, I don’t think any of my clients would lose sleep over a parish being bulldozed and replaced with a 24-hour fitness center.”

Skylstad’s role

Technorati Tags:bishops, Catholic, priest, sex abuse, Skylstad, Spokane, USCCB

And presiding over it all is Bishop William Skylstad, with the supreme irony that he is now the elected president of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops. And he’s not free of taint here in this case. He isn’t just a bishop presiding over the legal wrangling. He was once a pastor for a molester.

The Sulpicians didn’t inform then-bishop of Spokane, Bernard Topel, of the extent of O’Donnell’s sexual struggles. But just two weeks after O’Donnell’s ordination in June of 1971, Topel received a complaint that O’Donnell had molested a young student at the Mater Cleri Seminary outside Spokane. Still, the diocese named O’Donnell director of the Catholic youth ministry and allowed him to serve as chaplain to the Boy Scouts. He arrived at Assumption Parish in 1974 after abuse complaints arose at another parish. Skylstad, then pastor of Assumption, has denied knowing of those allegations. (Although parishioners have long marveled at Skylstad’s ability to recall names and faces, the bishop used variations of the phrase “I can’t remember” or “I cannot recall” over 500 times during his three days of court deposition.)

In his deposition, Skylstad said he “remonstrated” O’Donnell when notified by a parishioner that the priest was having the boys stand on the auditorium stage and wash their naked genitals after gym class. The two men shared cramped living quarters in the parish rectory. O’Donnell slept in the basement.

“It’s just little old me,” numerous victims remember Skylstad saying when he’d return home upstairs.

Skylstad claimed ignorance of the molestation going on under his nose. But then over the years Skylstad has demonstrated the ability to miss the most obvious facts before him. When he was once confronted with the fact that former Spokane Bishop Lawrence Welsh once tried to strangle a male prostitute in a Chicago hotel room, Skylstad missed the forest for the trees:

“Obviously, he had a very serious drinking problem,” Skylstad said. “Certainly, it’s very sad behavior associated with that drinking. That would be my observation.”

Yes, a drinking problem. The drinking is the problem there. Nothing else.

The rest of it sounds familiar. Shuffling abusers about. Bishops and certain important priests knowing and doing nothing. Homosexuality as the elephant in the sacristy. Victims committing suicide. Lawyers deconstructing the Church.

The sad thing is that I agree with Skylstad’s declaration of bankruptcy. (That’s legal bankruptcy, not the obvious moral bankruptcy.) What would it solve to sell of all the churches? Who would it benefit to have the Catholic Church’s infrastructure so completely dismantled? Which spiritual entity would so love it? It’s a sad familiar tale, told too often in recent years. Healing will be a long time coming.

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