Last Sunday, our pastor read a statement after the homily in each mass expressing his sorrow over the disclosures in Pennsylvania, but stressing the parish and diocesan policies requiring all parish employees and volunteers to participate in the Virtus program. I can think of at least one example of how effective the Virtus program actually is in preventing abuse: in 2009, the parish janitor at St Patrick's, Chatham, NJ murdered its pastor, Fr Edward Hines, when Hines fired him for not undergoing a background check required by the Virtus program.
Fr Hines discovered the janitor had an arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child and had used aliases and fake identification over the years to hide his past. The fact is that since the child abuse scandals came to light, diocesan policies have been very effective at minimizing the problem, to the extent that a priest has died in the process of enforcing them. In effect, our pastor said last Sunday that if you're concerned about the Pennsylvania scandals, there's something you can do -- support and participate in existing policies.
Frankly, the OCSP's record hasn't been as good. Dcn James Orr of Our Lady of the Atonement was forced into retirement when the parish was in the Archdiocese of San Antonio due to violations of child protection guidelines, including kissing pubescent boys on the mouth. The archdiocese later announced that there had been a credible allegation of abuse against Orr. However, repeated attempts to bar Orr from the OLA property under the OCSP have been unsuccessful, according to photographic evidence published here, and Orr's strange relationship with OLA's pastor emeritus, Fr Phillips, continues, also according to photographic evidence.
In 2015, I e-mailed the then-Officer for Child Protection Compliance, Fr Ken Wolfe, bringing to his attention the number of alcohol-related parish functions at the Blessed John Henry Newman group in Irvine, including a "wine hour" following Sunday mass, in which there did not seem to be sufficient concern about the presence of underage children and toddlers. Wolfe's reaction was to refuse to discuss it on the basis of my supposed "animus" against Fr Bartus.
I believe Houston eventually advised Bartus to cut down on references to alcohol-related events in web announcements, but if I were Fr Perkins (or in fact an alternate-universe Fr Perkins who was capable), I would be interested in whether there's a "wine hour" with children and toddlers present after mass in Pasadena, Murrieta, or Irvine now.
Beyond that, I decided to double-check the OCSP Safe Environment Policy. Let's keep in mind that of about 40 communities total, well under half are full parishes; a significant number are very marginal groups that form and disperse within fairly short periods of time. The candidates for ordination who form many of these groups likely haven't been through relevant background checks, and a bigger question, given their small size and highly informal organization, is who qualifies as a "volunteer" and thus who goes through Virtus training.
Thus they seem able to use the name "Catholic" and may even meet under the auspices of a diocesan parish, but I would be most hesitant to give such groups the level of trust I would give to a Sunday school or LifeTeen group at the same parish. If I were a diocesan bishop, although i'd hate to have to spend the time on it, I'd definitely want to know who was a "volunteer" for such groups and see the record of their Virtus training. If I were Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins or Lynn Schmidt, the current Safe Environment Coordinator, I'd want to know. I'd want to know who is involved at the maybe-maybe not Tampa Bay group, the Athens, GA, group, the Bath, PA group, and I'd want to see their Virtus records.
Fat chance, I betcha.
I went to the Recordkeeping section of the OCSP Safe Environment Policy linked above and found:
- Information gathered during individual background checks, as well as other personnel records, will be maintained by the parish, activity or the Ordinariate in accord with civil and canon law.
- The Ordinariate shall maintain, in accord with the provisions of civil and canon law, all records related to any report of sexual abuse of a child, youth or at-risk adult by any Church Personnel, including those made anonymously.
- All attendance at Safe Environment training will be documented.
This is yet another reason why I would not go anywhere near an OCSP community, and those who do with toddlers and young children are simply reckless. They are better off getting serious and just switching to the 10 AM OF mass and other events at the same parish where they go for the DW mass. The ushers, greeters, and other lay volunteers there will have been through Virtus training. The nice people at the 5 PM DW mass, probably not.
I would ask Mrs Gyapong and Mr Coulombe at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, for that matter, to confirm that the Pasadena and Ottawa communities conform, if nothing else, to the recordkeeping requirements of the OCSP Child Protection Policy.
Fat chance.
