Tom Doyle addresses statements by Catholic priest Joseph O’Leary (Revised)
REVISED 2.25.2010, 5.15 PM, MST.
Today (2.25.2010) I received an email from Tom Doyle. Here is what Tom wrote.
I usually ignore blog statements and things of that nature. Carolyn Disco [a long time and tireless advocate of victims/survivors of clergy sex abuse, and winner of Voice of the Faithful's Saint Catherine of Siena Distinguished Lay Person Award] found [on the Internet] … statements by a [priest] named Joseph O’Leary. Read the statements [provided below]. I would like my comments and his statements distributed as widely as possible. I don’t want to enter into a debate with him but because he is a priest a lot of people might be convinced by the weird stuff he says. Thanks. Tom
I have included Tom’s comments first and then those of O’Leary.
* * *
Thomas Doyle
February 24, 2010
Attached [see below]is a collection of recent statements by a Catholic priest named Joseph O’Leary. He teaches at Sophia University in Tokyo. Carolyn Disco picked them up and was understandably appalled by his thoughts. I am as appalled as Carolyn. The statements reflect a level of denial and ignorance that I can only hope and pray is not widespread among priests.
The problem with O’Leary’s comments, which are as destructive as they are ignorant, is that there are probably people who will be influenced by them because he is a priest. There are still way too many enablers of the clericalist virus inside and outside the Catholic Church.
O’Leary’s mindset has not been uncommon among priests and bishops. I have been deeply involved in well over a thousand cases of clergy sexual abuse. I have been scandalized and demoralized by the cavalier and narcissistic attitude of many priests, so obvious in what they say and do in response to the continuing revelations of sexual molestation of the young, not only in North America but throughout the world.
The attitude and mindset so blatant in O’Leary’s statements is an attitude shared by many priests and bishops. There is a tragic and shocking absence of any pastoral or compassionate sympathy for the vulnerable victims. There is, on the other hand, an almost desperate defensiveness about the priesthood and the hierarchical model of the Church. Their responses are truly self-serving, narcissistic and in the end, self-destructive. As many clerics from the pope on down to seminarians, bemoan the loss of respect for the priesthood, the dearth of seminarians, the erosion of trust and the rapidly growing sentiments of suspicion and disdain, they either fail to see or refuse to see their central role in this state of affairs. Their own behavior has brought about the attitudes of mistrust and even ridicule. Joseph O’Leary, whether he realizes it or not, has made a significant contribution to the continuing erosion of credibility in the Catholic priesthood and in the Catholic Church itself.
* * *
Here are O’Leary’s comments.
* * *
EXCERPTS ABOUT SEX ABUSE BY FR. JOSEPH S. O’LEARY
Compiled by Carolyn Disco from
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=6811 (scroll down through 266+ comments)
If a lay person came to me as a priest to talk about his or her problems with attraction to minors and in the process revealed that they had done things that could get them in jail, I would certainly not hand them over to the police.
I accept that in the case where the penitent or counselee presents a public danger the police should be notified.
A priest who is sexually involved is not such a scandalous thing nowadays as a young man branded as a pedophile. Pedophiles are the favored scapegoats of our sexually permissive but still puritanical age (especially in the punitive USA), so to expose someone to that opprobrium is a very grave matter. Priests who are sexually active are a dime a dozen.
Again, I see a big difference between sex with a 16 or 17 year old, where the minor is a willing partner, and rape of children. But the anti-pedophile rhetoric refuses to countenance any such distinctions. If we ask “What would Jesus do?” I suggest that he would be on the side of the pedophiles against the violence and hatred they face, and I don’t see him as willingly handing people over to the police
But suppose your son had had sex with a minor — perhaps a minor who was in love with him — would you hand him over to the cops, as you expect priests and bishops to do?
A friend of mine interviewed a man who had had sex with my friend’s 15 yo daughter. Did he report him to the cops? No, he gave him a scolding.
You would say my friend has no balls — what violent, macho language. I would say my friend behaved decently, sensibly and non-destructively.
My friend was not an American.
——–
“Fr. O’Leary – there are always “gray” situations. Unfortunately, as you and I both know we have priests who are not emotionally mature getting involved with “older” adolescents – both may be homosexual in nature. The adolescent may be 17 yrs. old – thus, legally in some states a minor.”
I think it is rather puritanical to treat this as if it were the end of the world. There are lots of men who actually boast about such relationships in later life and who claim that they took the lead in them when they were minors.
I knew a man who was the active partner in a sexual relationship with his parish priest from the age of 15 to 20. He said, 20 years later, that he still loved the PP, 20 years later. It is doctrinaire to say that he cannot have been in love with the PP or a willing partner in their relationship. Just this kind of puritan dogmatism is what is not helpful. As someone said, there are lots of gray areas — and in the absence of any clear protocol it is not surprising that many bishops made mistakes.
Another case is a teacher in a lifelong relationship with a young professional — they first met 25 years ago when the younger partner was 13. Say what you like about the morality but don’t say that they are not in love.
——
“Fr. O’Leary, there are people who are warped for life because they were abused as children. Groping and fondling counts.”
Of course.
But there are many people who were not warped for life or even damaged at all by sexual encounters with adults when they were minors — and who are quite ready to tell us so if we give them an ear. A psychoanalyst friend assures me that this is so.
The instant experts who sprung up in the wake of the pedophilia scandals ritually talk as if all such sexual events made the minor a “victim” and “survivor” –t his frozen vocabulary is typical of witch-hunts, not of humane thinking.
” You seem to think that calling the police on them is a matter of harassing the abuser. It’s a matter of stopping further crimes from being committed. It also says to the child (or teen) that this is serious and that the parent is serious about protecting the young person and is not complicit in their exploitation.”
It may be so, and in some cases it may not be. There was a story in the New Yorker 10 years ago about a priest who took photos, in silence, of a boy at the public baths — the boy willingly posing. As the priest headed off, the boy called “Hey, Father, you’d better destroy those pics!”
The pool janitor reported the incident. Next scene: the boy testifies against the priest in count, in tears. Now he regards all adults as diabolical.
Sometimes it is destructive to pursue a puritanical ideological purity.
According to his family, he now runs away from home when frustrated; formerly an open and accepting child, he now fears adult strangers, and fantasizes that they are murderers and robbers.
DOES THIS NOT SUGGEST THAT THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN KINSEY’S CLAIM THAT CRACKDOWNS ON PEDOPHILIA CAN DO MORE HARM TO KIDS THAN PEDOPHILIA ITSELF?
——
In the case of the couple I mentioned, the senior party graduated out of a pedophile lifestyle by falling in love with his present partner when the latter was 13. I think this is an instructive trajectory. Of course there are many cases of people falling in love with very young teenagers and marrying them the moment they reach legal age. As Pushkin remarks, “Love is no respecter of age!”
——-
Well, my experience is very limited. I have never met a victim of child abuse, except some girl students in Japan who related encounters with flashers. I have met a handful of people, male and female, who recounted their sexual encounters with adults as minors and none of them expressed any sense of traumatization. So my deduction is that there are two sides to the story. Morally it is never licit for an adult to involve a minor in sex, but from the human and psychological point of view the results are not necessarily always damaging, as you seem to agree.
The vast field of literature offers me some secondary experience — and here again it is surprising how many writers remember with gratitude the experience of being seduced by their nannies or whoever.
——-
Rev. Dr. Joseph S. O’Leary, born in 1949, is a priest of the Diocese of Cork and Ross in Cork, Ireland, headed by Bishop John Buckley.
He studied at
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth Co Kildare, Ireland
Gregorian University Rome, Italy
Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes Paris
Ordained on June 16, 1973
He is resident in Japan since 1983 and teaches in the Faculty of Letters, Sophia University (Jesuit), Tokyo.
,M
List of Fr O’Leary’s writings published on his weblog.
Bishop John Buckley ,
Cork and Ross Offices, Redemption Road, Cork
Tel: 021 4301717
Fax: 021 4301557
http://www.corkandross.org/html/diocese/bishop/bishopbuckley.jsp
19 Responses to “Tom Doyle addresses statements by Catholic priest Joseph O’Leary (Revised)”
February 25, 2010 at 9:47 pm
And now there is Father O’Leary.
Such lunacy, dark and so dreary,
Is he still saying Mass
This pain in the neck?
A promotion for Leary, we feary.
C. S. Lewis believed that mockery was a moral weapon in the face of evil. Jesuit O’Leary is an absurd and dangerous man and the very least we can do is laugh at his expense.
AW
February 26, 2010 at 12:29 am
Apparently, Fr. O’Leary does not realize that sexual activity between an adult (priest or otherwise) and a juvenile is not “love” as he calls it, but lust. The proof lies in the fact that the pedophile does not limit himself to one youngster, but perpetuates his crime by continuing these activities with others around the same age, often concurrently, and almost always year after year with a string of victims. This continuing self indulgence is consistently without regard for the emotional or physical threat or damage done to the person allegedly”loved”.
Clearly, O’leary does not understand the meaning of love, brotherly or otherwise. People “in love” care deeply about the well-being of the person they love. Love is not a relationship that satisfies only the sexual desires of one (even if the other is charmed by the attention of the other). Talk to some of the victims, Father, before you continue defending the abusers!
February 26, 2010 at 3:19 am
Fr. Tom -
Your comments show your kindness to a fellow priest, on this occasion, to a fault.
pax
larry
February 26, 2010 at 4:14 am
posted by Joseph S. O Leary
on February 22nd, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Jeanne Follman, I agree that the procedures by which the hierarchy claim to discern Natural Law do not meet what we today regard as criteria of rationality. There are no credible procedures of dialogue, consultation, critical reflection. Discussion is cut short by stalinistic slogans — “The Authority of the Magisterium!” “The Church is Not a Democracy!” “If you don’t like the Church’s Teaching go and join the Anglicans!”
Is there a community of philosophers or legal and political theorists somewhere who proceed in a rational way and thus identify Natural Law with clarity and certitude?
Or do we rather find a diversity of views, all with reason on their side, with the final choices being made on the basis of culturally constructed concerns?
I believeth that Mr. O’Leary
is more than an unjust bit of twisted eerie,
his thoughtless words are in need of natural law in-query
for his ruthless heart is so contrary
for the cross of clergy sexual abuse he does & will not carry!
February 26, 2010 at 5:41 am
After reading Father O’Leary’s comments and Father Doyle sobering response, Joe Rigert’s book makes all the more sense:
http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Tragedy-Priests-Cripple-Catholic/dp/0979027985
Father Shuster
February 26, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I see no reference on his blog listing any writings about child sexual abuse by clergy( did I miss something?)
One of the greatest and still unfolding cover ups of child sexual abuse and criminal behavior and no reference?
Amazing in its blinding light ( or lack there of)
Very telling, very telling indeed.
February 27, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Sober response?,
no, more like “Somber” than anything.
“Giving the benefit of the doubt” maybe he gets blue every time dealing with the RCC Heil-Hier Anarchy G#D Idiots!,
that keep ignoring and going around & around the Clergy Abuse Crisis instead of comforting their fears about it.
my take on it!
February 27, 2010 at 7:57 pm
U S CATHOLIC BISHOPS MUST NOT RESIGN
Unlike their Irish Catholic bishop colleagues, U.S. bishops must not resign because of their roles in the clergy abuse cover-ups. Irish bishops admitted their roles in the cover-up; U.S. bishops have not admitted anything. Irish bishops say they want to “bring peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims”. U.S, bishops have given millions of dollars to victims; isn’t this enough peace? Irish bishops say there’s a “prevailing culture” of abuse that must not go unchallenged. The U.S. bishops have lived and prospered in this culture, why change what works for them.
Civil authorities must not conduct investigations into the systematic cover-ups by U.S. bishops. Church and state in the U.S. must co-exist in mutual accommodation, and not rock each others boat. If the Irish civil authorities see a problem with the Catholic Church there, it’s their business. Cook county, and other local authorities must continue to look the other way at systematic hierarchical cover-ups and let the church handle it. It’s enough that civil authorities go to church on Sunday, and they must leave church matters at the church door when they leave mass on Sunday.
The catholic laity in the U.S. must not involve itself in protecting children from clerical sexual abuse. Clerical missteps, hierarchical process flaws and general “abuse fatigue” must be understood as part of being human. Catholic laity must not be intimidated by the bold actions of the Irish bishops and the laity of Ireland.
And the Vatican must continue their primary role of pontificating, and not taking sides in the clergy abuse crisis. The pope must remain above the fray and allow resolution of the “heinous crimes” to the local churches. The fact that rampant clergy abuse is found in the U.S., Ireland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Australia, and elsewhere around the catholic world doesn’t make it his problem.
February 27, 2010 at 9:30 pm
The statements are on the blog for Commonweal magazine at http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=6811 — as noted at the beginning of the “Excerpts”.
The thread is about the statement by Irish bishops when they were in Rome.
February 27, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Thousands of Dubliners want to celebrate Wilde instead of Archbishop Ryan, not despite the fact that Wilde was a devotee of boy prostitutes but precisely because he conducted his sex life with elan and style: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=251862842120
February 28, 2010 at 5:21 am
deacon tony,
What are you smoking? how high are you?
Than whose problem is it?
the Clergy began the Clergy Sexual Abuse crisis and let it end with the clergy.
May the Laity forever have the Freedom to speak with their God given Free of WILL!
on behalf of all abused by the “consecrated hands” of those whom you are siding with.
February 28, 2010 at 5:47 am
I wonder out of all of these countries (U.S., Ireland, Canada, Germany, Italy, Australia)
how are they ranked in funding the RCC Inc.?
is the US ranked #1 in donating to RCC Inc?.
that would explain why US Bishops won’t step down & resign….tooooo muchhh $$$$$$$$$$$$
to lose!
February 28, 2010 at 4:38 pm
deanna,
i’m not high enough, but i’m workin’ on it. my comments above are SATIRE. they are meant to be critical of bishops, civil authorities, and the laity. your understanding of my comments mean that i shouldn’t use satire since it can be easily mis-understood. change amd accountability aren’t happening fast enough for me. satire clearly won’t speed thigs up.
February 28, 2010 at 7:54 pm
It seems to me that Fr O’Leary is not so much concerned with the clergy as with the category of so-called pedophiles — he thinks society it too harsh on them, or at least that it is too harsh in many cases.
March 2, 2010 at 3:55 am
Aren’t all Priests Deacons?, & aren’t Deacons prior Priests?
Your Satire sounds kind of like you are pontificating for the Clerics who stick for Clergy Abusers.
Do Deacons have to swear a similar oat of office to the Pontif?
Why not Corporeal Punishment for Clergy Sexual Abusers & those who cover-up for these paedophile clerics? they are not listening nor obeying anyone!, not even God!
I don’t think it is harsh, seeing that they have a Mother’s Manual teaching the Mother’s to use on their kids, when their kids won’t listen & obey.
March 2, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Deanna, here are the facts.
- all priests were at one time tansitional deacons.
- permanent deacons, which I am, are not priests or wannabe priests.
- permanent deacons make promises to not marry if their spouse dies; say the daily office; and allegiance to the bishop.
- 90% of permanent deacons are married with children.
- only a few roman catholic priests are married with children. these are men who were methodist, anglican or episcopalian priests who converted to catholicism with families, and became RC priests. YES , there are married non-celibate RC priests.
i’m not a clergy apologist. cardinal george and I spoke several times on the abuse cover-up, including a face-to-face meeting with him because i wrote a scathing letter to the editor, which was published, highly critical of the atrocious behavior of the hierarchy. if you’d like to see the letter, send me your email. mine is jannotta@comcast.net
now Deanna, who are you?
March 2, 2010 at 8:49 pm
I would like to steer this blog/conversation back to Jesuit Joseph O’Leary.
O’Leary is certainly entitled to his beliefs, no matter how twisted, ignorant and odious they may be. But, we are equally entitled, if not compelled, to denounce these fake arguments which seek to justify, and explain away, the rape and sodomy of innocent children.
In fact, it is our duty to speak out in condemnation about this kind of self-indulgent, intellectually limp, and transparent rationalizing of deviant, perverse sexual behavior of priests and bishops.
Further, it is our duty to challenge these detestable notions and demand that O’Leary’s Jesuit superiors publicly denounce and disassociate the Jesuits from their confused confrere and immediately institute remedial actions against O’Leary.
I don’t find myself citing Benedict XVI very often, but this is the very kind of “filth” Ratzinger was speaking of when he publicly identifying this kind of exploitive behavior in priests at the beginning of his papacy.
Here in California, I am aware that the Jesuits have had to pay out millions of dollars (initially given in trust to Jesuits by the Catholic community to use for their ministries) to settle abuse claims against members of their religious community (some Jesuits, I believe, have even been sent to prison for their crimes).
Does O’Leary really believe that these intellectually and developmentally disabled people under the care of Jesuits here in California, who where repeatedly raped and sodomized by Jesuits, were in “loving,” “humane,” or “not necessarily damaging” relationships?
If love is not freely given between equals, Joseph O’Leary, it can NEVER be love. Are we to believe that you missed this part of your vaunted Jesuit education and training? This kind of intellectual sophistry will not be tolerated anymore, even from a priest trying to impress us with his cultural and moral erudition.
O’Leary’s argumentation is something more typical of the ideology of the “Man-on-Boy Love Association” which figured prominently in the investigation and trial of Paul Shanley, a disgraced Boston priest who is still doing time in prison for crimes as a serial pedophile rapist.
We should demand that the Jesuits discipline O’Leary. Compel him to take down his offensive writings from the internet and the Jesuits should publicly disassociate and condemn his public writings. O’Leary himself should be thoroughly investigated by ecclesiastical and civil authorities to determine if he himself has ever “acted out” on any of his perverse ideologies, and furthermore, determine if Joseph O’Leary, S.J. is a present threat to the safety of children and vulnerable adults.
I do not seek vengeance against any priest, or O’Leary in particular. I only ask that all those who have been evangelized by the witness, some would say martyrdom, of survivors of sexual abuse to resolve to never again be silently complicit, to never again allow these crimes against innocent children by priests and bishops to go unchallenged.
Jesus’ tough words as recorded by the evangelist Mark for Joseph O’Leary: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9: 42-50)
Thank Jesus, times have changed, Joseph O’Leary.
May 7, 2010 at 11:02 am
WE need a lot more honest and outspoken Honourable persons like Fr.Tom Doyle who has dedicated his life to clean up this cess pool.
May 17, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Jim Jenkins seems to have read a different O’Leary from me — indeed, has he read him at all? His remarks could easily be prosecuted for libel.