Milford Lenten retreat: A House Built on Solid Rock

By Tanya Connor The Catholic Free Press

MILFORD – “He’s not just Bishop McManus – he’s our bishop.” Rosemary Trettel was expressing her sentiments at the end of a retreat she helped organize. Bishop McManus talked about his own and other bishops’ responses to clergy sexual abuse and took questions at the retreat, held March 23 at St. Mary of the Assumption Parish. Mrs. Trettel said she and her husband, Steven, who belong to Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, had a good meeting with the bishop at the Chancery. She invited him to the retreat, telling him: “You want us to support you? Then you’ve got to support us.”   “The humanness of him today really touched me,” she told The Catholic Free Press after the retreat. “I think he touched a lot of people.” Even one instance of child sexual abuse is too much, Bishop McManus told those attending the retreat, and one cannot defend the indefensible. He said people say the bishops have lost credibility, but critics are sometimes unaware of how the bishops have responded to the crisis and of the fact that most reported cases of clergymen abusing minors happened 40 or more years ago. “I think we bishops have to stand up and give our side of the story,” he said. He also suggested that informed laity speak up about how the Church is addressing this crisis. “I’d say the Catholic Church in the United States is one of the safest places for our children” now, he said. He said background checks are conducted on church workers and the bishops have taken a zero-tolerance approach with the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.     The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, at its meeting in Dallas in 2002, established the Charter for addressing allegations of clergy sexual abuse. The Charter says that “for even a single act of sexual abuse of a minor … which is admitted or established after an appropriate process,” the offending cleric “is to be permanently removed from ministry.” Bishop McManus said that for 17 years he has tried to address the sexual abuse crisis. That has been spiritually and emotionally draining, a horrific, humiliating experience, but it’s purifying, he said. He said most victims he’s met with simply wanted to tell him their story and have him say he believed them and would try to eradicate clergy sexual abuse. Pope Francis wanted the bishops from around the world to listen to victims, to be sensitized to their experiences, before attending last month’s summit about the issue in Rome, – “an absolutely crucial key to addressing the crisis” – Bishop McManus said. The secular media said the summit was a waste of time, that the Church didn’t come up with any plan of action, he said. But, he countered, “I believe it was a pivotal moment of grace.” The bishops listened to victims during much of the summit, which must have affected bishops who considered their dioceses immune to the problem, he said. Pope Francis presented 21 points for reflection, most of which came from the U.S. bishops, Bishop McManus said. He expressed hope that the U.S. bishops will soon vote on, and be permitted to implement, a structure they’ve discussed for addressing a weakness in the Dallas charter: it did not hold bishops accountable for abuse, or failure to address abuse. “I think it’s a very good model,” he said of the new structure; the truth about Theodore McCarrick came out through the use of it. (The Vatican said the former cardinal, now laicized, was found guilty of “sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults.”) A listener asked what’s keeping the Worcester Diocese from implementing this structure. Bishop McManus said the diocese can implement it; he just wanted to discuss it with other bishops first, and improve it if needed. In response to another question, the bishop said he accepts the recommendations of the Diocesan Review Committee, which investigates allegations of clergy sexual abuse, “because they have an expertise I don’t have.” Responding to another question, Bishop McManus said seminary formation after Vatican Council II was a disaster. But, he said, Pope John Paul II’s apostolic exhortation, “I Will Give You Shepherds,” which followed a synod on priestly formation, “completely changed formation.” At the retreat’s Mass Bishop McManus preached about the cross – on Ash Wednesday a public reminder that we are sinners, displayed in homes as a reminder of “the God who calls us to a change of life.”      He told listeners that the crosses he has to bear as a bishop are different than the crosses they bear. Now the cross is very heavy, he said. He said priests are especially saddened by the drop in attendance at Mass, where Catholics receive Jesus’ body and blood. Bishop McManus said he prays for those who claim they’re leaving the Church to find Jesus elsewhere. He recalled how, when Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they wanted to leave him like others did, Peter replied, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:52-68).