When John J. Geoghan was strangled to death in his lonely prison cell late last month, many people thought it was the perfect ending to a tragic story.
The things said immediately after were predictable.
“The bastard got what he had coming,” or “justice is served.” The lines were automatic.
Many predicted that the murder of Geoghan would serve as closure for his victims and their families. They said life would be able to move on, and the healing process would be complete.
They were wrong. If it could only be that easy.
The Catholic sex abuse scandal and Geoghan’s path of destruction in particular has proven to be a never-ending litany of accusations, frustrations and broken promises. The pain cut deeply on this one, deeply enough where somewhere along the line, the priorities of many Catholics changed. One of the basic fundamental things that Catholics learn growing up – forgiveness – was tossed by the wayside in exchange for the continuation of a vicious cycle. Getting even became an easier way of dealing with the shock and pain, rather than learning how to cope.
Other Catholics can dispute this, but I won’t. My first reaction was disbelief upon learning how widespread the corruption in the Catholic Church I grew up in was. After that came white-hot anger, and, perhaps most selfishly, relief. Relief that it hadn’t been me, relief that the innocent, happy and unsuspecting upbringing I had within the Catholic faith wasn’t shattered by a monster in a robe. All the relief did was lead me right back to the feelings of anger at the Church and the abusers, and thanks to the guilt I felt for feeling fortunate enough to have been spared the horror.
Catholics can say they needed to protect their children from predators. They can say they needed to make the Church pay and understand how much its oversights and irresponsibility harmed thousands of innocent people. They’d be right, if that’s where it had ended.
Unfortunately, the trauma that went with having the most innocent part of our population completely violated by a group of people that should have been so easy to trust did not go away. Because of that, extracting an eye for an eye became the next best thing. The size of the financial settlement became important. Maximum punishments for the abusers became important. Making them pay became important, in any way possible, to the fullest extent allowable by law. For many, Geoghan’s strangulation wasn’t the latest twist in the plot to a story that’s now been horrifying for years; it was what he had coming all along.
If things are ever going to return to normal in the Church, that prevailing attitude needs to change. It needs to change not for the sake of the Church, and not for the sake of the abusers, but for the sake of the victims and the thousands of good, regular everyday people that call Catholicism their faith. The cycle of vicious revenge needs to end.
There are numerous examples of that need for revenge, starting with the most dramatic and violent: the murder of Geoghan himself. When Geoghan was sentenced, the end result was entirely predictable. It’s no secret that convicted child molesters and others who abuse the innocent, weak and elderly are immediately targets once they step inside the walls of a prison.
Considering how emotionally charged Geoghan’s situation was, he was a sitting duck. Somebody was going to get to him “for the children,” as Joseph L. Druce, Geoghan’s alleged killer, supposedly did. It was a matter of time. Regardless of how much of an animal he might have been, Geoghan’s strangulation only perpetuates the same type of misery that he brought to others.
One of the most horrifying things that I have noticed as this story continues to play out is the way that a lot of people have glorified Druce as a hero. He’s not. Indicted for the murder last week, Druce is a hateful man serving time for the murder of a gay man who allegedly made a sexual advance on him. He pleaded insanity to that charge, and his lawyers say that he’ll plead it again in this case. Authorities told the Associated Press that he hates blacks, Jews, homosexuals and many other minority groups just because of who they are. Since when is that the definition of a hero?
Maybe I’m just hoping things can go back to the way they used to be. Maybe I’m hoping that at some point, people will start remembering that there are at least some good men running the Church.
Catholics as a whole won’t be able to pick up the pieces from this mess until we’re willing to admit that there could be some hope that things will eventually turn out OK. Perhaps it’s naive to believe that a healing process needs to begin.
Trust, however, cannot be built back up until people are willing to stop hating. It’s that simple.
