[Vision2020] The Priest That Preyed

[Art Deco]

 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

------------------------------
February 6, 2013
The Priest That Preyed By DANIEL A. OLIVAS

LOS ANGELES

IT is the autumn of 2003, and I am sitting with my wife and teenage son at
a large table that is groaning with plates of Mexican food and soft drinks
and wine. We’re celebrating my sister’s anniversary, and like most Mexican
parties in Los Angeles, a member of a religious order is in attendance to
share in the family’s joy.

This time, it’s a nun whom I’ve known since I was a student at St. Thomas
the Apostle grammar school. I am no longer Catholic, but I admire this
tough, compassionate woman who dedicated herself to educating the children
of my predominantly working-class Latino neighborhood. She leans over and
says, almost in a whisper, “I read your new book.” And then she says, “I
recognized him.”

Immediately, I know whom she’s talking about, and I begin to perspire.

The title story of the book, called “Assumption,” describes a fictionalized
priest, Father González, who served a parish in a neighborhood not unlike
the one I grew up in. The priest in the story is known for being “cool” and
spending time with some of the more troubled boys at the nearby grammar
school. The boys talk about how he has invited them to visit his room,
drink wine, listen to Sly Stone and look at dirty magazines. These visits,
of course, lead to the boys’ molesting. In the story, the priest gets
caught and, in disgrace, hangs himself.

In real life, shame did not bring an end to the abuse. The priest I based
the story on, the priest the sister recognized, was the Rev. Eleuterio
Ramos. My parish knew him as Father Al, the hip young priest who spoke out
for immigrant and Chicano rights, railed against the Vietnam War, could
drink with the best of them and dedicated his spare time to mentoring the
most troubled boys at St. Thomas.

“I was young and naïve,” the nun says. “I thought it was great that he was
helping the boys who needed it.” She looks down at her plate. Finally she
says, simply, “I liked your book.”

I, too, was naïve. I was jealous of the boys who got to spend extra time
with Father Al. He took some of my friends to the beach, the movies or to
his famous room at the rectory. But I came from a home that had two
attentive parents, not the profile Father Al searched out.

The allegations against Father Al, who became a priest in 1966 and was
transferred from parish to parish 15 times, first came out in the ’90s,
when the Orange Diocese was sued by two men. They accused Father Al of
plying them with alcohol when they were children, showing them adult films
and sexually abusing them. But by that point, he had already been suspended
from priestly duties. In 2003, he admitted to the police that he had
molested at least 25 boys. But because of the statute of limitations, he
was never charged, and he died in 2004, a year after my conversation with
the nun.

According to church records that became public last month after years of
litigation brought by victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests and
brothers of religious orders, this story is sadly familiar. The documents
include information on 124 priests over four decades, and demonstrate a
pattern by the church of cover-up, denial and — I can’t help but think it —
evil.

Though Father Al’s victims were not only Latino, the news has been
particularly painful to Latino families who considered Father Al to be one
of them. Families like mine admired his desire to help the most vulnerable
in the Catholic community, the troubled boys who were poor or lacked a
father figure. That admiration blinded us to the clues that, today, would
not go unquestioned.

The same is true for Father Al’s superior, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los
Angeles, who was famous among Latinos for speaking out for immigrants’
rights. But as the thousands of pages of records show, he apparently tried
to prevent law enforcement from discovering the abuse of his parishioners.
But this question of guilt should be decided in a court of law. Last week,
the retired cardinal was relieved of his remaining duties.

Thinking back to that conversation with the nun a decade ago, I have no
doubt that more revelations will come to light; earlier this week it
emerged that the church hadn’t
released<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/los-angeles-archdiocese-is-accused-of-failing-to-release-all-priest-abuse-records.html/>all
the information it had promised.

I once hoped that fictionalizing Father Al would help expose the truth to a
community that had been so thoroughly betrayed. But I have now come to the
conclusion that fiction can never match the audacious brutality visited
upon those children for so many years.

Daniel A. Olivas <http://www.danielolivas.com/> is the author, most
recently, of the novel “The Book of Want.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20130207/706a988c/attachment-0001.html>