A SIGN OF CONTRADICTION
Many people are familiar with Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss American psychiatrist who pioneered studies on dying people. In 1969 Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying, a book in which she identified Five Stages of Grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
While some people have applied her stages of grief to how people feel who are going through a divorce and other experiences involving loss, no one to my knowledge has ever applied these stages to priests who have been “canceled” by their bishops, ordinarily for speaking out in exposing corruption within the church or hierarchy.
Father “John” grew up in a devout Catholic home. He was an altar boy, a lector, and a cantor in his parish church. Although he had girlfriends that he liked very much in high school and college, he felt he had a vocation to become a priest which contributed to his celibate status. In consultation with an elderly priest he respected, he decided to enter the seminary to discern more fully if Jesus Christ was truly calling him to “Come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21)
While in the seminary, John befriended another seminarian, “Tom,” who was similarly motivated after having grown up in a devout Catholic home. Following their ordination, while Father John had the good fortune of being assigned to a parish with Monsignor Pat, a very holy, dedicated, and mentoring pastor, Father Tom was assigned to work as a chaplain at a large hospital with residence at a nearby parish. Unlike Pat, the pastor where Tom lived was either drunk or out golfing. When Tom asked to be reassigned to live with another priest, the Cardinal encouraged Tom to “hang in there.” Rather than return home from the hospital to find himself making his own dinner and eating alone, Tom began eating his meals at the hospital cafeteria where he met a nurse and the rest is history.
Knowing how unhappy Tom was in residence with an alcoholic priest, John felt he might have left also had he not been assigned to serve with Pat who loved him like he were his own son. While Tom was happily married and blessed with a loving wife and children, John proved to be a very respected, dedicated priest who in time was recognized for his talents by being named a “Monsignor.”
Because John interpreted his promotion as a sign that he was expected to exercise leadership, he created a blog in an effort to reach more people than those who attended services at his parish church. When the Catholic Church in 2018 underwent a “Summer of Shame” owing to revelations of abuse and cover-ups uncovered by Archbishop Carlo Viganò and the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, John used his blog to call for an independent investigation of Church leaders who were accused of engaging in or covering up the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults. Because John’s Cardinal was a closeted homosexual who over time had sex with several clerics and who covered up the abuse of predator priests under his supervision, he ordered John to stop blogging and writing about the sexual abuse crisis that implicated several high-ranking Church officials, including the pope.
The “straw that broke the camel’s back” which led the Cardinal to reassign John to an isolated state prison was a blog in which John reported allegations that the Pope not only covered up abuse before and after his papal election, but that he was also accused by two sources of having had sex with seminarians. Recognizing that he as a celibate heterosexually oriented priest was a “sign of contradiction” to his Cardinal and other gay bishops, priests, and seminarians, and fearing that he might become an alcoholic or develop other problems by living alone without the support of loving parishioners, John took a leave of absence and supported himself by creating a website and publishing paid-subscription articles which provided sufficient income to cover his living expenses.
One of the readers who subscribed to his Substack publication was a single woman who, inspired by John’s writings, contacted him which in time led to an encounter and, as in the case of John’s friend Tom, “the rest is history.”
Following his reprisal for exposing episcopal corruption in the Church, John had been consumed with anger toward the Cardinal whom he held responsible for his leaving the priesthood and the parishioners that he loved. His friend Tom, with whom he never lost contact and who became a psychologist, helped him to apply Kübler-Ross’ stages of grief to his life as a canceled priest. What really helped John reach the stage of “acceptance” was the birth of his son. It was then that John realized he would never have become a husband and a father had it not been for the Cardinal. He loved being called “Father” as a priest, but “Dad” warmed his heart and helped him be grateful for the blessing of marriage and family life.
Upon learning from a priest friend in another diocese that the bishop’s housekeeper accidentally opened a package and discovered HIV medications, John felt sorry for prelates who, although often living in opulence, lead very lonely lives. In an effort to achieve closure, John wrote a letter to the Cardinal thanking him for retaliating against him as a whistleblower, while enclosing a photo of his happy family. John’s message to other canceled priests is to apply Kübler-Ross’ stages of grief to their situation and pray that God will help them find peace, happiness, and love despite the injustice they experienced at the hands of hypocritical, complicit, and lonely closeted Church leaders.
John’s message to Catholics is to support canceled bishops, priests, and seminarians. Organizations like the Coalition for Canceled Priests prevent unjustly treated clerics from choosing unhealthy “escapes” while helping them financially, emotionally, and spiritually. Instead of putting money into collection baskets, a percentage of which is used by the bishop to pay legal costs stemming from sex abuse claims, consider contributing instead to the Coalition for Canceled Priests, P.O. Box 174, Rochelle, IL 61068, 312-761-2149, contact@canceledpriests.org.