Massachusetts: When the state opens the archives that the Church didn't dare reopen

Ezekiel 34:2–4

²«Son of man, prophecy concerning the shepherds of Israel; prophecy and say to these shepherds: Thus says the Lord God: Woe to the shepherds of Israel, who have only taken care of themselves! Should not the flock be taken care of by the shepherds?” ³You ate the fat, you clothed yourselves in wool, you slaughtered the fattened animals; you did not tend the flock. ⁴You have not strengthened the weak sheep, you have not cared for the sick, you have not bandaged the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost; but you have ruled over them with violence and cruelty.

Genesis 4, 10

¹⁰The Lord said: What did you do? The voice of your brother's blood cries out from the earth to me. .

1 Corinthians 12:26

²⁶And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with him; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with him.

A truth that came from the outside

A report that is not that of the Church

On September 30th, a civil authority accomplished what the Church had failed to do alone: to present a complete picture, supported by evidence. Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell released a 203-page report, the culmination of a seven-year investigation, into the dioceses of Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester. More than 270 clergymen are identified as perpetrators of abuse. Nearly 1,000 children were victims over a period of more than seventy years.

Until now, we had primarily viewed this issue from Rome, or from France, through commissions mandated by the Church itself. The approach here is of a different nature. It is not the house that is being examined, but the city that is entering the house, with the authority of the law, to report what it has found. Catholics worldwide have much to learn from this reversal.

Because, to put it simply: being observed from the outside is not a humiliation to be endured, it is a grace to be received. A sick body that refuses a doctor's examination does not heal. It merely maintains the illusion of its health, and illusion always costs more than diagnosis.

What the numbers say

The figures have the starkness of truth. They list 275 clerics implicated and 944 identified survivors. In Fall River, 92 clerics and 469 survivors. In Springfield, 93 clerics and 259 survivors. In Worcester, 90 clerics and 216 survivors. Thus, in the Diocese of Fall River alone, roughly half of the victims recorded in the entire investigation are concentrated.

Behind these totals lie over 300,000 pages of documents examined and more than 100 interviews with survivors, lawyers, clergy, and diocesan officials. The report nevertheless acknowledges a staggering limitation: the true extent of these abuses "cannot be determined." Some victims never spoke out. Files may have been destroyed or never even created. The figure of nearly 1,000 is therefore a minimum, not a maximum.

There is a lesson here that every pastor should ponder. What is not recorded cannot be cured. An incomplete register is already a form of concealment, even when no one intended to lie.

The mechanism of silence

What is striking in the report is not only the number of abusers, but the mechanics of the protection. Diocesan officials, it notes, knew. They transferred accused priests from one parish to another without explanation. They returned them to the ministry after "treatment" without any real oversight. They allowed the restrictions they had imposed to erode. They concealed the reasons for the removals and did not systematically alert law enforcement.

Among the names cited are even two bishops of Springfield, who together led that diocese for thirty-six years and who themselves appear on the list of clerics accused of child rape. The high priest of the place was therefore, in some cases, the predator and not the protector. This sentence should be read slowly: the institution charged with guarding the sheep had entrusted its care to the one who was devouring it.

Investigators were unable to recommend further criminal charges. Most of the events predate the 2002 law, which mandated that clergy report abuse and made it a crime to endanger a child. In other words, justice arrives too late to punish, but in time to establish the facts. This is a truth without a verdict, and perhaps that is why it must be heard with all the more seriousness.

What Scripture says about pastors

Shepherds who feed themselves

Twenty-six centuries ago, the prophet Ezekiel delivered the most precise indictment imaginable against this kind of failure. «Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not the flock be taken care of by shepherds?» Then the details come, implacable: «You have not strengthened the weak, you have not cared for the sick, you have not bound up the broken leg, you have not brought back the strays» (Ezekiel 34:2-4). The rest of the verse is even harsher: they were governed with violence and harshness.

Reread these lines with the Massachusetts report in mind. The shepherds' sin is not primarily ignorance, but favoritism: preferring the image of the institution to the child's suffering, the reputation of the presbytery to the victim's testimony. This is self-interest. It is not necessarily greed, but the fear of scandal that has become stronger than love for the flock.

The prophet does not stop at condemnation. God announces that he himself will come to seek his sheep, and he promises to hold the shepherds accountable. This promise has two aspects. It consoles the victims: God has not turned a blind eye. It warns those in positions of responsibility: accountability is not an invention of modernity; it is inherent in the very structure of pastoral care.

The blood that screams from the ground

There is another text, older and more stark, that is too rarely read concerning these matters. After the murder of Abel, God questions Cain and says, «What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground» (Genesis 4:10). Note that it is not Abel who speaks; he is dead. It is his blood, the earth that bears it, a voiceless cry that God hears when men are silent.

Nearly a thousand children—that's the cry of that magnitude. Many spoke out too late, or never, or to ears that refused to listen. For decades, the earth has absorbed this suffering. That a civil institution has gathered the voices, the dates, the names, the places—perhaps this is how God finally made this cry heard even in the conscience of the Church. We are not obliged to claim that the Attorney General is acting like a prophet. But we have a duty to recognize that Providence sometimes makes use of those who do not claim to follow it.

The text also teaches us something about Cain's temptation. To God's question, he responds with an evasion, as if the responsibility could be shifted: am I my brother's keeper? The transfers of priests from one parish to another, the sealed files, the discreet departures are the administrative version of this. The Gospel's answer is precisely the opposite: yes, we are our brothers' keepers, and first and foremost, the most vulnerable.

The body that suffers together

Saint Paul affirms to the Church of Corinth a law of solidarity that admits of no exception: «If one member suffers, all suffer together with it» (1 Cor 12:26). This phrase is often quoted for consolation. Here, it is a demand. If the suffering of the survivors does not reach every member of the faithful, it is because something within the body has atrophied.

This concerns all the baptized, not just the bishop and clergy. The parish that protected a popular priest by refusing to believe a family, the layperson who knew and remained silent, the colleague who changed the subject: all participated, to varying degrees, in the blindness of the body. This is not about assigning blame like a street tribunal, but about understanding that healing is a collective endeavor, just as the wound was.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, in his sermons on pastors, reminded the bishops of his time that they were both shepherds to the faithful and sheep among them. The office does not erase the condition of being a sinner. It makes it heavier, because others have placed their trust in us.

To be accountable without losing one's soul

The apologies, and then what?

Bishop Edgar da Cunha of Fall River reacted that same day. He said he was "filled with sorrow" at the historical account of these failures, and he told the survivors, "We, as a Church, failed you when you were most vulnerable." These words are necessary. They are not enough, and he himself likely knows this.

Because an apology is worth what it costs. Uttered without follow-through, it becomes a mere formula, and the survivors, who have heard many such formulas, are the best judges of its worth. The diocese acknowledges having cooperated with the investigation by handing over eighty thousand pages of documents, and this is to its credit. But cooperating with an investigation is the bare minimum of honesty, not the pinnacle of conversion.

True conversion begins where we accept relinquishing control of the narrative. Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches that justice renders to each what is due; and what is due to the one who has been wronged is, first, the truth, then reparation, and finally, the guarantee that it will not happen again. Apologies open the door to these three areas. They do not replace them.

The report's demands, a call to the Gospel

The report does not merely describe; it demands action. It calls on the three dioceses to prioritize survivors and to adopt trauma-informed practices when handling complaints. It requests that each allegation be examined independently, that accused clerics be closely monitored, and that a list of credible clerics be published. Finally, it calls on the legislature to abolish the statute of limitations for civil actions related to child abuse.

There is something profoundly evangelical about this list, even if it is written in legal language. Placing the injured person at the center is the gesture of the Good Samaritan. Having a third party examine what one might otherwise minimize is to acknowledge that no one is a good judge of their own case. Publishing the list of names is to refuse to let the shame of the victims alone bear the burden of what should be brought to light.

This demand for transparency echoes what Pope Francis has forcefully reiterated, calling for zero tolerance and lifting papal secrecy in these matters. It also reflects the clear-sightedness of John Paul II, who stated that there is no place in the priesthood for those who would harm young people. These words are well-known. The Massachusetts report measures the gap, sometimes immense, between these words and past local practices, and it compels us to verify that this gap has truly been closed today.

The survivor's place

It remains to address the most delicate issue: what faith can offer those wounded by the Church. Many survivors have abandoned religious practice, and some have even lost their trust in God, because the abuser spoke in His name. Their anger is not an obstacle to the Gospel; it is often closer to the Psalms than to many religious formalities. The imprecatory Psalms were preserved in the Bible precisely so that the believer could cry out before God without lying.

One example suffices to illustrate the difference. Imagine a seventy-year-old man, abused at twelve in a parish in a small industrial town, who never dared to speak to his wife about it. One day, he reads his own file, acknowledged and recorded by a public authority. He doesn't need a sermon first, but to be believed. This is where all just pastoral care begins: listening, believing, accompanying, without demanding that he forgive quickly, without asking him to remain silent to spare the institution.

Forgiveness cannot be decreed; it is received like a fruit, if God grants it, after the truth has been spoken and justice has begun. It is not for the victims to reconcile the Church with itself. It is for the Church to make itself worthy of their trust again, patiently, at their pace, until the word "Father" ceases to be a wound for them.

What the Church can do about it

It would be wrong to conclude that all is lost. The report itself emphasizes that the legal framework and practices have changed profoundly since 2002. Current vigilance stems in part from what has been painfully learned. But vigilance is a virtue that wears thin, and it wears thin all the more quickly as time recedes from the scandal. Recent events in Massachusetts remind us that the past is not closed until the victims have been heard.

For each community, the concrete task is modest yet demanding: to know the reporting protocols of their diocese; to know who to contact when a child confides something troubling; to pray for the survivors, but also to contribute to welcoming them, without conditions or deadlines; and finally, to reject the idea that the priest's holiness exempts him from verification: true holiness does not fear being scrutinized.

The light, says the Gospel, has come into the world, and people have preferred darkness. When the light arrives through a door we hadn't opened, our first instinct is to shield our eyes. The second, the instinct of faith, is to let it in and allow ourselves to be healed by it.

Lectio divina

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