It's the thing you can never touch that they can't get over. "These kids, they have such a hard, hard row. Now, Jean thinks about how her church fed the pain. "Jean doesn't bring her work home much, but the saddest stories are when she knows they just can't come back or they're in such a bad spot." She called on the church to relieve officials like Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, who let abuse continue, and to systematically assist prosecutors. Cowman said Driscoll would be happy to meet with Jean. "If that number were down, we would probably look at it and say, 'What's the problem?'"Īfter newspaper reports, Idaho Bishop Michael Driscoll apologized for mishandling cases of two priests accused of abuse in California in the '70s and '80s. On a Sunday in October, the church will take attendance, as it does once a year, Cowman said. Contributions to the Boise Diocese development fund are down 2 percent from last year, but that may be a result of a down economy and capital campaigns in two parishes. Spokeswoman Colette Cowman said few people have left the church. It's unclear how the scandal has affected 130,000 Catholics in Idaho.
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My faith in an organized religion has just totally been rocked, and I'm not going back until - I don't know what they can assure me of right now - I don't know how to fix it." I have my faith, but it's not in the Catholic Church institutionally. If I didn't have my faith, I couldn't do my job, I couldn't be a mom, I couldn't be a wife. Others have reassured Jean: "You still have your faith.
"She says, 'Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.' I told her, 'I just can't go back. "I can't stand it, and I don't want to get up and leave in the middle of any more homilies, which I've done." "I mean, how can I show up in church?" Jean asked. And I got taken."īut new evidence of a widespread coverup paints a picture of a corrupt institution, feeding injustice and abusing power. "There are bad priests, bad teachers, bad plumbers. Jean struggled then, but resolved her concern when she realized offenders come from every walk of life. Worsley wasn't prosecuted because the statute of limitations had passed. James Worsley landed on Jean Fisher's desk. The Boise police investigation of the Rev. In 1993, a family priest - who performed Terry's wedding, taught Jean and Nate in college, and helped in Nate's conversion - was accused of molesting a boy in his parish. The current scandal has a sorrowful resonance for the Brennan clan. "What does a priest do? He goes to the rub of your faith and says, 'You're going to hell with me,' or 'We're both committing a sin,' or 'This will be our secret,' or 'You want to embarrass your family?' or 'You think your family's going to believe you over me, the parish priest?'" Other offenders say, 'Your mother's gonna think it's your fault,' or, 'You're the one that wanted it you like it.'
"I know what that priest has done in order to get that child to do what he wanted him to do. Among her prosecutions have been a school principal, a teacher and a church choir volunteer. Since 1992, she has been a prosecutor in Ada County's child abuse unit, which she has headed for four years. The scandal has been toughest on Jean, because of the work she does. "We go, but man, a lot of it is out of habit."
"This has affected the whole family," said Marty Brennan, the patriarch, who still makes it to the pews Sundays with his wife, Martha. "We talk about the inequity of it, and the arrogance of the leadership." "We get together and pray together and shout together, but it has an angrier tone," said Jean's sister, Terry Armbruster. Fisher's husband, Nate, was so moved by the gatherings, he became a Catholic.īut the talks have taken on a sadness in recent months, as the family struggles to reconcile church teachings with the church's hidden practice of shielding child abusers. Sunday nights' extended family dinners once were a forum to challenge conventional notions, wrestle with the mystery of faith, strengthen belief. Two great-aunts were nuns two great-uncles were priests. Jean's aunt Margaret, a retired nun, was mother superior of her order. When Jean Fisher's sons ask, "Mommy, when are we going back to church?" she doesn't have a satisfying answer.Ībsent a family crisis prompted by the child-abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, 8-year-old Nate would be studying for his First Communion.īut the Fishers aren't going to church, painfully excising a vital part of their lives because Jean, the sixth of seven children, prosecutes child abusers for a living.
Scandal Tears at Faithful Catholics Job Religious Beliefs Create Dilemma, by Dan Popkey, Idaho Statesman,
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