Silva: Priestly life changed by sex abuse crisis
Father Robert J. Silva, president of the National Federation of Priests Councils, was busy with the federations usual work of representing priests on issues from pay and health care to spirituality and serving on the U.S. bishops committee on priestly life and ministry, when news of the clerical sexual abuse scandal hit in 2002. Suddenly, in addition to his public duties, he ended up as the public face of the priesthood, fielding 50 media calls the day the Boston Globe broke the story. At the same time, the council had to help accused priests defend themselves and advocate for their rights. Silva, ordained in 1965 for the Diocese of Stockton, Calif., spoke about how the scandal has affected priests with staff writer Michelle Martin.
The Catholic New World: What does the federation do?
Father Robert J. Silva: The National Federation of Priest councils has a two-fold purpose: to represent the priests of the country in some way, and then to assist in discerning the pastoral mission that we face. It does that by pulling together into a loose federation all the presbyteral councils who choose to affiliate with us (Councils from 126 out of 186 U.S. diocese participate.) Were going to take up issues that deal with the way a priest lives, his humanity, his spirituality.
Then I represent the priests to the media. Usually, the media are pretty good. For all the tragic things they are accused of saying and causing, they usually do pretty well. BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, weve had them all in here with the scandal.
TCNW: You deal with priests and media. What dont they understand about each other?
FRJS: The priests are afraid of the media, because the priests have a perception that the media sets the agenda and misrepresents them, and so theyre afraid and defensive whenever the media comes around. I dont particularly buy that. Ive learned thats just not true. For example, when CBS sent a crew here to film in the middle of the crisis, everybody on the team was a Roman Catholic, and four out of the five went to Catholic schools. They would say to me, Father, we hate this story, but weve got to do it. The problem is not that the agenda is set by the media. We set our own agenda and the media does its best to represent it. Although there are times when you will get a contentious reporter.
TCNW: Are there things the reporters just dont quite understand?
FRJS: Yes, because theyre not theologians.
TCNW: What happened when the crisis started?
FRJS: When the crisis came, the very day the Boston Globe broke the story, the phone just started ringing. It was questions like, What do you think of this? What do you think are the causes of this? Why did this happen? How could a priest do a thing like this? I was stunned. I had no idea this was going on out there. I had dealt with cases in the 80s and thought we were through that. The fact that we had to come back at it was very disturbing.
We want to support the bishops in the task they have of leading, so at the beginning, the question was, where are the bishops? And how do I support them if at least some of them really havent been doing the job appropriately?
There were some dilemmas to try to resolve. We had to move very carefully, because most priests are very afraid of the press. But the first instinct of a good priest is to take care of the victims and survivors. That was a big thing on my part: How do I reach out to them?
Then Im sitting in the chair where Ive got the job of helping to defend some of those priests who were themselves perpetrators. And I have to start saying, well, these men have rights, too, and we need to be respecting those rights. I had to be very careful how I approached it all.
TCNW: How has the crisis and the scandal changed priestly life?
FRJS: Priests are much less free to engage in certain kinds of relationships. Theyll be much, much more careful with children. Open rectoriesputting a teenager in the front office in the evening, when Father and the teenager are the only ones there? Wrong, absolutely wrong. It jeopardizes that young person and it jeopardizes the priest. Altar serversthe priest used to have a special relationship with the young people who were serving Mass. Cant do that any more. In the last two parishes where I was the pastor, we formed teams of high school and college students to do the forming of new altar servers, because while I wanted to stick my nose in and be around, I didnt want to be there by myself with the children.
Sometimes, you walk into a schoolyard, and its like the Red Sea. It separates and you walk through. You can tell parents have told their children, be careful with Father. And they have to. Its absolutely imperative that they do.
What its done to the priests self-image? I think its really shaken priests. In the old modelthe priest as one who is set apart, one who is configured to Christ the priest ontologically, a sacred personthere was a certain amount of reverence that people had for the priest. Thats gone. Big time.
Even priests will say, For me thats not a model that works anymore. I dont want to be separate and set apart that way. That whole sense of yourself as doing this particular work that has a sacred and infinite facet to it, its shaken.
The other thing is, youre always wondering, What do these people think? Especially when youre sitting in an airport and you hear some guy saying, Theres one of those blankety-blank-blanks.
TCNW: Do you travel with your collar on?
FRJS: I dont anymore. I did one time coming out of New York, and man, I got the daylights scared out of me. There was a guy there who was saying, Theres one of those blankety-blanks, and I thought, Oh God, Im going to get beat up. Ive never worn my collar when Im flying again.
But some priests will say, Im not going to give in to that kind of stuff. You should be proud of who you are and take the beating. Im proud of who I am, but I dont know that I want to take the beating. Its like putting a dollar bill on the desk of the teacher and then having the teacher walk out of the classroom. Why tempt?
TCNW: Youve talked about the cultic identity of the priest versus a more ministerial, pastoral model, and you seem to favor the latter. Why?
FRJS: I dont think the cultic model is wrong, but I dont think it should be emphasized. It creates a clerical culture, and theres an elitism to it. In the self-perception of the priests, if theyre not careful, they begin to see themselves as different from the laity. In some ways they are, of course, but I mean experientially, holding themselves outside of the laity, and in some ways above and beyond the laity.
Theres a certain reality there. The sacrament does imprint a character and it does imprint an ontologic change, if you want to use Scholastic terms. But thats Scholastic philosophy and theology. To have a priest identify himself that way specifically?
I was trained as a psychologist. I have a problem trying to form somebodys identity around mystical kinds of understandings of the reality theyre supposed to be identifying with. Were human beings. Our identity has to be somehow grounded in the reality of how we interact with others. Thats more helpful.
For example, if you take the cultic the model as a base, and you have a priest who abuses a child, it is God who is doing this. What do you mean youre configured in this way to Christ? You mean, in an ontological way, I am configured to Christ, but I can still perpetrate this horrible evil? Its a denial of the Christ thats in you. Yes, but if thats the perception out there, the person thats being abused sees this alter Christus, this other Christ, abusing him. And the one who sees himself as this other Christ is going to have a psychological dilemma the likes of which is almost irreparable. We need to be very careful when we start messing around with philosophical realities as a foundation for talking about identity.
TCNW: If child sexual abuse has always happened, why did it become such a scandal now?
FRJS: It started in the late 1960s because of two things. Number one, children became human beings with rights. Number two is the womens movement. The womens movement sensitized us, and when women began to be able to speak out, and to speak out in places that made a difference, they were able to challenge a lot of the old notions, even legal notions. Thats made us very sensitive to the children, and more sensitive to the issue of child sexual abuse.
Also, what people are seeing is a result of what came out of the (Second Vatican) council. People are claiming the church as their own. People are saying, I am a baptized Catholic. I am a member of the church. Its my church. It is not only my right, but my responsibility to speak.
TCNW: Is the church moving toward a more pastoral model?
FRJS: Theres a whole slew of folks coming along now who are saying, The heck with that, Im going back to the way it was.
I think its a natural kind of swing, After every councilafter every action, theres a reaction. Were there abuses immediately following the council? There certainly were. But that doesnt mean the council was no good.
What theyre looking for is more security. Theyre saying, you cant make the priesthood simply a function. And I would say that too. The priesthood is definitely not just a function or a role in the church. The notion of priest existed long before Christianity. Theres something about priests that relates the concrete finite world with a world beyond itself, which gives people a sense of hope for their lives, that theres more than this.
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