WASHINGTON (CNS) -- What do you do when a priest you've known for years turns out to have abused kids? What about two priests?
When these revelations come out years -- and hundreds of miles -- later, the first reaction is a cross between "Oh, no!" and "Oh, brother."
I grew up in the Archdiocese of Detroit. Before I turned 20, I got an offer to assemble and direct a folk group to lead singing at a Saturday Mass for one parish. Because I was new at that, the parish offered to pay my tuition for classes offered by the archdiocese's Institute for Pastoral Liturgical Ministries.
One of the teachers was Father Gerald Shirilla, who taught a seminary-level course on the Eucharist. In time, he became the director of the archdiocesan Office for Worship.
I took classes for two years, then ignored that coursework for another eight before I was invited to return to gain certification as a worship coordinator, which I achieved in 1989. By this time, I had become music director at another parish and grown more deeply involved with the liturgical music scene in the archdiocese.
[Explore America’s in-depth coverage of the sex abuse crisis]
In 1987, the year of St. John Paul II's visit to Detroit, several others and I worked with Father Shirilla to leverage the goodwill sure to be generated by the visit by developing a curriculum to be unveiled that fall for a liturgical guitarist certification program, which proved to be fairly successful.
Imagine my surprise when, in January 1993, I read that Father Shirilla was forced to step down as director of the worship office when an allegation of sexual misconduct was leveled against him. Before the year was out, a suit had been filed against him by one of his victims.
Father Shirilla briefly moved to the Washington area, and we arranged to meet for dinner at an Indian restaurant close to where he lived. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
When he showed up, this priest, who had been balding ever since I knew him, sported hair plugs. I couldn't stop staring at them. After dinner, when he asked me what I thought of them, I mumbled something along the lines of "they're OK." What I wanted to say was, "They make you look foppish." Also left unsaid was my asking him why he felt he needed the hair plugs.
Fast-forward to 2002, when the clergy sex abuse scandal broke in the Archdiocese of Boston. Two big surprises. The first was that four brothers in one family -- two of whom later played major-league baseball -- accused Father Shirilla of repeatedly abusing them when they were boys. The second was that, after being listed in the Official Catholic Directory from 1994 to 2001 as being "Absent on Leave," he had taken an assignment in the Diocese of Gaylord, Michigan, whose bishop, Patrick Cooney, was Father Shirilla's predecessor as director of the worship office before being named a bishop.
When the 2003 Official Catholic Directory was issued, all mention of Father Shirilla was gone. He died in 2004.
The second priest was Father Tony Conti, the pastor for six years at the parish I was serving as music director. I had wondered whether he might have been gay; one evening I visited the rectory and there was a young man I'd never seen before sitting splay-legged on a couch, and there were no introductions offered.
But Father Conti had dealt with bigger problems. After one year as pastor, he went to Guest House, a treatment center for priests, for alcoholism. After being an alcoholic, he became an Alcoholics Anonymous-aholic, going to a meeting seemingly every day.
But he was a young priest in his first pastorate, and he had many willing hands -- mine included --- to help him achieve his vision of parish.
Imagine my surprise when, in January 1993, I read that Father Shirilla was forced to step down as director of the worship office when an allegation of sexual misconduct was leveled against him.
I delighted in hearing Father Conti recount a long-sought meeting he finally had with the archbishop, who, he said, immediately fired at him the fact that he had been seen at Off-Broadway East, a gay nightclub two blocks from the church. "It's in my parish," the priest rejoindered.
"Are you gay?" the archbishop is said to have asked accusingly. "That's none of your business!" Father Conti thundered back.
After the parish closed, Father Conti said he would take only another pastorate within the Detroit city limits. He didn't get that, but he eventually took a pastor assignment at a small-town parish well northeast of the city.
That's when -- also in 2002 -- the Detroit Archdiocese said he had been relieved from ministry following "a credible allegation of sexual misconduct arising from the early years of Father Conti's service as a priest." I've always interpreted that to mean when he was a practicing alcoholic.
Father Conti was laicized in 2006. I'd always kept him in my prayers, as I have dozens of others, over the years when I go to Mass, although I never followed up with him personally as I had with Father Shirilla.
Was I naive in thinking that, while we're all sinners, these two priests -- and, as it turns out, many hundreds of others -- were incapable of committing such heinous acts?
It wasn't until I was at a Christmas night dinner in Detroit two years ago with friends from the old neighborhood when one friend told me Conti had died that October. I felt sad for him, and for the untapped potential his abuse nullified.
Was I naive in thinking that, while we're all sinners, these two priests -- and, as it turns out, many hundreds of others -- were incapable of committing such heinous acts? I'd never thought to look for the bad in priests with the exception of the ones who gave you harsher penances in the confessional.
But by the same token, what priest is going to admit to a parishioner in casual conversation that he's committed such grievous sins?
