One priest's story - Letters

National Catholic Reporter, June 21, 2002

* Thank you for printing the anonymous article by the priest who years ago had a sexual relationship with one of his young adult parishioners (NCR, June 7). In all the discussion of this subject it is so rare to hear a balanced attitude that has any perspective other than narrow-minded, hate-filled judgment. The media and the people have made a sensationalistic scandal out of a complex issue, showing that perhaps there is no more enticing victim for attack than the Roman church itself. The arrogant self-righteous attitudes of the lawyers, media hounds and "victims' advocates," willing to judge a whole career of beautiful service against one act of indiscretion is so disgusting that I have simply stopped paying attention to the so-called "priest scandal." Your choice to go out on a limb and publish this beautiful article by a caring, real-world servant of God, even under his unfortunate but obvious need for anonymity, makes NCR shine out as perhaps a solitary beacon of truth and justice as this tragedy unfolds.

MARK S. SHIRILAU
Irvine, Calif.

* Thank you for "Sex offense, one part of his story." My wife, Kate, and I were deeply grateful for the truth it portrays. No excuses. No alibis. No hiding. Just the truth as it was then and is now. I am a priest in St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Seattle. I am sharing this article with many parishioners who grieve at what is happening with our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers, and are looking for ways to understand. This article is one way to do that.

(The Rev.) WRAY MacKAY
Seattle

* I am moved and saddened by the poignant account of what was clearly a case of non-abuse, written by a priest who prefers to remain anonymous. As a teacher, I remember being appalled at the fact that, in sex abuse and child abuse allegations, only one party need speak up. I know of a teacher and supervisor being put on administrative duty for a year because of one teenager's accusation; of a parent who spent the night in jail because of her own child's accusation of being beaten; of a teacher losing his job, transplanting his wife and children to another town, and having to start over. In all three cases, the accuser (usually disturbed) had been lying--and later recanted.

This account by the anonymous priest brought back to mind the awful cases above. How beautifully and sensitively he writes, how powerfully his story is imparted. I have never studied law, but I feel an uneasy sense of something gone terribly askew in our legal system when the word of a single accuser is enough to destroy another human being.

AMIE ILVA TATEM
Staten Island, N.Y.