I'm struggling to figure out what to think of all this, Jim, to get it into some sort of balance. I tend to prefer to consider current problems rather than past ones, but I do realize we need to do what we can to heal the wounds of the past.

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when abuse was acceptable in many spheres. Many people are right on the cusp of demanding abuse even today - I hear all sorts of complaints about "luxuries" that our local jail inmates get, and yet it seems to me that inmates get the bare minimum of what would be considered humane treatment.

For some reason, we had a lot of military academies in Wisconsin when I was growing up - and I was embarrassed that some of them were Catholic. I don't really know what went on at those academies, but I imagine they were quite harsh. I think there was a time in our history when harsh treatment of children was considered to be a virtue. During college, I worked as a counselor at a Catholic boys' camp outside Milwaukee. The usual camp term was 2 weeks, but there were maybe 15 wealthy Mexican kids who stayed they entire 8-week summer season at camp and went to military academies during the rest of the year. They spent time with their families before and after camp, but were away from home all year round. The families were really wealthy - Presidential Cabinet members and such. I felt bad for the kids - they never seemed very happy.

That was the 1960s, and I think that was a time when brutality in U.S. schools and institutions was becoming no longer acceptable. I think that brutality carried on longer in Ireland.

During my last year of college and until I entered the Army, I also worked at a Catholic home for emotionally disturbed boys. The director was a priest who was a social worker, and there were nuns who were social workers who directed the four age-separated "cottages." The home seemed to use the best practices known at the time. One thing bothered me - the "quiet room." When kids got out of control, their shoes and belts were taken from them and they were locked in a padded room. They didn't stay in the room long and the room didn't seem to be used abusively, but I just didn't feel right about it. The home is still in operation, but I'm sure there are no priests and nuns staffing it any more.

I keep wondering about St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, where the priest who directed the school molested as many as 200 boys. I had a friend whose brother was at the school during the time, but I see her only rarely now. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to ask what happened to her brother.

I keep trying to find opportunities to ask Irish priests and nuns here about their experience growing up in Ireland - I generally have contact with Irish priests and nuns a couple times a week, including a weekly Scrabble game with an 85-yr-old nun from Kerry. So far, I really haven't heard anything negative. They don't deny that things happened, but they generally contend that the abuse was the exception, not the rule. I have not been able to get a balanced, proportional view from them about what happened in the Catholic Church in Ireland, but I keep trying. This is a group of about 40-60 Irish-born priests and nuns that I know, so it's not an insignificant number. And most of them have kept their ties to Ireland alive, and have visited regularly.

My wife got a Catholic education in Rhode Island, and she went home every night. But she knew resident student who lived in dormitories, and and they said there "certain nuns that you had to look out for." She didn't know of any nuns who actually did anything wrong, but there were nuns she knew not to trust. I suppose the same could be said about my seminary experience - there were priests I didn't trust, although I don't remember ever discussing with my classmates that feeling of not trusting certain professors. The priest/professors I did not trust, were often very popular with other students.

I did have one incident in high school where an upper classman got too "friendly" with me and slipped into my bed to tell me about what he had experienced at some music event. I was 14, and didn't understand what was going on - and actually, nothing happened. The other guy confessed it to the priest who was Dean of Discipline, who handled it very well. I'm still in awe of how that dean handled things. He may have saved me from a lifetime of trauma and guilt. I always thought that priests were a little out of touch with reality, but that guy wasn't. I thought the world of him, and still do. May he rest in peace.

If my incident had happened a year earlier, I'm not sure what would have happened. The previous year, we were under the "old rules" and we had a Dean of Discipline who enforced them the "old way" (he later became Chief of Maintenance).

I think there has been a change in the Catholic Church, and I don't think there are philosophies still extant that would support what created the scandalous things that happened in the Industrial Schools and the Mother and Baby Homes and the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, as well as in seminaries and Indian schools and military academies and other church-run institutions in the U.S. I just don't think the things that happened then could happen now, but maybe I'm wrong.

You're not going to like to hear me say it, Jim, but I need to point out that the director of St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee was named Lawrence Murphy. At the same time, there were Irish-born U.S. priests in the U.S. like Father Flanagan (of Boys' Town) who condemned the Industrial Schools when he visited Ireland. There were Irish-born priests in the U.S. who committed absolute atrocities, and there were Irish-born priests here who spoke out with amazing courage against those atrocities.

All I can say is that I'm struggling to figure all this out. I see both remarkable and horrendous people in the Catholic Church, so I just can't make generalizations.

-Joe-

Jim, I want you to understand that in all of our discussions of this issue, I have tried my best to be brutally honest. Sometimes my observations will not coincide with yours, because I have had very close relationships with American and Irish-born priests and nuns who were absolutely remarkable people - and I have to say that the bulk of my experience has been positive. But I have also been able to observe and sometimes to work against things in the Catholic Church that were NOT right. And I struggle to get it all in balance and make sense of it.