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Priest who warned bishops receives justice
award
By CHUCK COLBERT
Boston’s Paulist Center Community awarded its 2003 Isaac
Hecker Award for Social Justice to Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a long-time
advocate for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
Doyle has shown a “compassionate approach to victims, as well
as the church,” said Donna Stiglmeier, who serves as pastoral minister at
the center. But it cost him, she added. “He traded in hierarchical power
for power that comes with presence and solidarity with people in need, becoming
change agents themselves for a broken system.”
Accepting the award, Doyle said, “What we’ve experienced
with sex abuse makes the indulgence scam of the Reformation pale by comparison
and probably is equal in its horror only to the Inquisition. Certainly far more
souls have been murdered or gravely injured in this saga.”
In 1985, Doyle cowrote, with attorney Ray Mouton and psychiatrist
Fr. Michael Peterson, a 92-page report on the crisis, urging the U.S. bishops
to form a national policy (NCR, May 17, 2002).
For the most part, the hierarchy ignored the report, and Doyle
lost his job at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, as well as a teaching
position at The Catholic University of America. Since 1986, he has served as a
chaplain in the U.S. Air Force, all the while advocating tirelessly for
survivors of clerical sexual abuse. He is currently stationed at Ramstein Air
Base in Germany.
Doyle likened justice to the prophet Amos’ vision -- “a
waterfall cascading down a mountain,” he said. “Justice like a
roaring mountain torrent, an ever-flowing stream, rushing down, that’s
what we need. That kind of justice, not the justice of a blind statue, will
make the necessary changes.”
Past recipients of the Isaac Hecker Award, which is named for the
founder of the Paulist Fathers, have included Dorothy Day, Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton, St. Joseph Sr. Helen Prejean, Sr. Jeannine Gramick, and Salvatorian
Fr. Robert Nugent.
Free-lance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge,
Mass.
National Catholic Reporter, February 14,
2003
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