Catholics stay true to faith despite priest scandal

By Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today

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History of support There is no national Catholic public opinion survey — yet — that reflects the impact, if any, of the current scandal in the priesthood. But American Catholics historically approve of church leadership even when they disagree with church teachings. A nationwide survey of 1,508 U.S. Catholics conducted by Zogby International last fall found: • 83.5 percent say they agree strongly or somewhat that "American bishops are doing a good job leading the U.S. Church," 83 percent approved of the leadership of the bishop in their diocese, and 86 percent were pleased with the work of the pastor in their parish. • 72 percent say "laity should assume a greater role in leading the church." • 61 percent disagree with the church teaching that "birth control is morally wrong." In a 2000 poll by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, 71 percent of Catholics favored having female priests or deacons, if the church approved. — USA Today

On Sunday, as hundreds of churchgoers flowed up the steps in the noon sun, pulled open the immense wooden doors against a strong cold wind and entered for Mass, the latest news of scandals in the U.S. Catholic church still rang in their ears.

Yet a brief, unscientific survey of visitors at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception finds their faith in God and the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church unshaken, even as they're shocked by reports of:

• Dozens of priests named in cases of sexual misconduct. "I felt the pain all over again when I saw on television that the priest who baptized my baby brother before he died (at 5 weeks old) did shameful things," said David Allen, 21, of Hyattsville, Md.
• Millions of dollars paid in the past 30 years in hushed-up settlements with victims from Boston to Los Angeles. "We've got to have moral and financial accountability. They're hiding the baloney and they can't do it anymore," said Roger Reid, 60, of Baltimore, director of a 100-year-old international Catholic men's service club.
• The leading cardinal in America — Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, who has acknowledged keeping sex offender priests on parish duty for decades — faces public demands to resign for failure to protect young victims, remove offending priests and assure believers the leadership could be trusted. "What was he thinking? Were they hanging on to questionable men because of the shortage of priests? The bishops need to focus less on damage control and more on coming clean with parishioners," said Becky Kroeger, 28, of Arlington, Va.

These Sunday churchgoers don't claim to speak for all of America's 60 million Catholics, certainly not for those lapsed believers or disaffected ex-Catholics who add this scandal to a list of reasons they left the church long ago.

Yet all who spoke Sunday agreed with Brian Freeman, 34, of D'Iberville, Miss., who said: "We will give to our churches and go to our churches and support the Church as she solves these problems. This will never lessen our faith."

Maria Leib, 31, of Loretto, Pa., feels pain for those wounded by the abuse scandal, yet insists on a longer view. "The Catholic Church has weathered all sorts of storms across the centuries and it will continue to weather these for centuries to come. It is made up of human beings, and we are all sinful creatures."

Austin Hunt, a priest from Liverpool, England, insists that corruption can be found in every history, land and faith, and that such clergy are still "incredibly few, incredibly small in proportion to the whole."

Catholics are taught, says Allen, that "even if the priest is not pure, the sacrament is always pure."

Still, Sunday at the Basilica there was plenty of blame to go around for man, if not for God.

"I get a little grit in my eye when I see people I know should not be taking communion going up to the altar, even more if I think there are priests who shouldn't be giving it," says Linda Davis, 52. She remains stubbornly Catholic, although the church has exiled her from the sacraments for divorcing and remarrying outside the faith.

Davis is a city councilwoman in D'Iberville, and was attending meetings in Washington, D.C., with a group that included Freeman.

Steve Balshi and his friend John Falcicchio, both 22 and graduates of Catholic University, have not joined the outcry for Catholic church leaders to resign.

Balshi asks rhetorically, "Who would you replace them with?"

Falcicchio said that the church leaders struggled to make the right decisions and took the best counsel they were given at the time. The scandals and the new demands for tighter screening and more open discipline won't drive worthy men from the priestly vocation.

He said: "People who are meant to be priests will still be priests."