Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

When I first entered St. John's,

I loved it.

The campus of that school was beautiful.

Such magnificent stonework.

It was like a castle.

I loved that school.

Our school had a magnificent statue of Jesus Christ

with his hands lovingly placed

on the heads of two children.

I could see that Jesus loved children

and that children loved Jesus, too.

My name is Gary Smith.

I was four in 1954

and I really liked being at school.

I liked being in the dorm.

The dorm was cooler than being at home with my parents,

because I didn't have any siblings.

When I first got to the school, I loved it

because there were so many children around the same age as me

who I could play with, and they were good people.

It was a good group of friends.

In 1953, I was four years old.

I remember when I got there,

I couldn't stop crying.

And I was looking up at a nun.

She was wearing her white and black robes.

I was looking at the nun,

and my parents left.

Every morning we'd have mass.

The priest would use incense

and the smell would fill the room.

I felt like we were in heaven.

I wanted to be a Catholic like everyone else.

And so when I was 10,

Father Murphy baptized me.

Murphy would hug children.

All the kids just loved him. They always flocked to him.

He would play with the kids and the nuns would stand around,

just watching and smiling.

I wanted Murphy's attention like all the other kids.

I needed him.

He was like a second father to me.

He had this ability, like the Pied Piper,

to just get all the rats to follow him

and do whatever he wanted.

Father Murphy knew how to sign

and he could communicate with all the kids.

He was a hearing man who could sign

and sign very well.

I remember looking at him and thinking,

"Wow, that's really impressive."

Lawrence Murphy was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

and entered the St. Francis Seminary in 1943.

After he was ordained as a priest in 1950,

he moved next door, on assignment,

to St. John's School for the Deaf.

He had a knack for public speaking and fund-raising,

and by 1963 he was promoted to director of St. John's.

After Father Murphy baptized me,

I felt proud.

I felt better.

I was excited and couldn't wait

to have my first communion when I was 12.

Later on, I got into trouble at school.

I was mischievous.

And the nuns would come and say, "Go to Father's room."

And so I did.

In the confessional booth

there was a dividing wall...

but there was a little space

that you could see his face through.

So you could sign back and forth.

And he would bless you.

I filled out the confession form.

The form listed stealing, lying,

sex, and things like that.

I would mark things off and turn it in.

Father Murphy looked at it

and then asked me really weird questions like,

"Have you been with other boys?"

I would say, "I played with myself."

And he would ask detailed questions

like, "How?" or, "What did you do?"

And then he said, "Okay, I want to see you in my office this afternoon."

So I said, "Okay," and left the booth and kneeled to pray.

He asked me, "Have you been playing with your penis?"

I told him, "No."

But he gave me one of his looks.

And it scared me, so I admitted

that, yeah, I played with myself.

He told me to pull down my pants

and to do it right there.

So I played with myself for a little bit.

He watched me intently until I was done.

Then he told me that God forgave me.

And I felt like my sins had been wiped away.

He could have been playing with himself, for all I know,

but I couldn't see.

I remember one afternoon I went to Murphy's office

and he closed the door.

And he told me to take off my pants.

And I said, "Take off my pants?"

I was shocked.

And I thought, "Why would I have to do that?"

And I was looking at this man

in a black suit and a white collar

and I thought to myself, "He's a priest

and I'm supposed to obey him."

So I took my pants down

and he molested me.

I felt sick

and confused.

"Why would a priest do that to me?

Is this supposed to be okay? Did I do something wrong?"

I didn't know.

After it happened, I just left.

And I just kept it to myself.

Later on, Father Murphy decided

the confessional would be on the second floor,

in the closet.

I confessed my sins.

I was forgiven and blessed,

and then I was touched.

I started sweating like crazy.

I was so nervous.

I could just feel myself shaking.

I just kept thinking, "Enough. Enough."

When Father Murphy stopped, I went to bed right away

and I was just sick.

I was just sick.

And I laid in bed under the covers,

and I felt absolutely disgusted.

I was a monk. I was a very pious monk.

I folded my hands, kept my eyes down, did my studies.

I lived in the system.

Richard Sipe spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk.

He was also a therapist counseling his fellow priests.

Sex and celibacy became central

to my research and understanding.

Sipe began what became a 25-year study

examining celibacy in the priesthood.

My intent was that this would help

in the training of priests.

I felt that I could make a contribution

by being honest about it.

The data showed that at any one time

no more than 50% of American Roman Catholic priests

were practicing celibacy.

There were certain levels of experimentation,

relationships, involvement,

and even criminal involvement with children.

And the more I got into it,

the more and more discouraged I got.

They know that celibacy is not practiced.

By "they," I mean the Vatican authorities;

I mean bishops; I mean religious superiors.

And the higher you go, the more they know.

You may not be keeping your celibacy,

but as long as it's secret, it's okay.

Sipe found that clericalism...

Setting a priest on a pedestal above ordinary laypeople...

Helped to prop up the secret system.

Kids would come forward to their parents and say,

"Well, Father did this to me."

"Don't you say that!

You can't say that about a priest."

Which then allowed priests

to express themselves sexually,

some from time to time,

and some in horrendous ways.

Sipe recognized the syndrome

that police call "noble cause corruption"...

A belief that good intentions purify bad behavior.

For a priest, belief in his own goodness can transform,

like turning bread into the body of Christ,

a perversion into a holy act.

A priest who had an affair

with this 12-, 13-year-old girl

brought to one of their encounters

what he said was a consecrated host.

And he touched it to her vagina.

And he said, "This is how God loves you."

And then he raped her.

It goes from just this broad social acceptance...

The priest is perfect; the pope is perfect...

To this kind of perversion of power

that can be twisted in this way.

The system of the Catholic clergy,

for which I have great respect

and to which I have given many years of my life,

selects, cultivates,

protects, defends,

and produces sexual abusers.

I went to bed one night and, before I fell asleep,

I could see Murphy creeping into our room

like a ravenous wolf.

I could see him sit on a bed

in the dim light of the illuminated exit sign.

And I saw that he was molesting a boy.

I imagined Jesus crying on the cross with a broken heart,