Blood on the Tracks

Some crimes don't leave a body, no obvious and immediate sign that loudly proclaims a wrong has occurred.  Sometimes all you have is the blood on the tracks.  Such a wrong leaves behind a trail of devastation.   The mind struggles to comprehend it.  There is no body left behind to scream in death that a crime has occurred. Yet, the impact of the wrong continues to ripple outward in an ever widening circle of destruction.

Sitting behind the Maryville reception desk, I would occasionally be nudged by this circle of destruction.  Overhearing intimate moments in other people's drama made me feel like a random voyeur.  I was in unwelcome territory and yet this watching other people's drama was compelling.  I was drawn into stories of struggle and minor tragedies.  All these stories helped distract me from the horrible story in which I was trapped.  One day, this eavesdropping into other people's lives took me some where I didn't want to go.  One day it took me to a place where I saw for myself, the blood on the tracks. Those tracks lead me directly to the archbishop's hands. 

During the days of my Maryville exile, the archbishop held a meeting of many of the diocesan priests at Maryville.  Priests trickled in slowly, quietly.  The mood was somber and meditative or that's what I first thought.  I could sense that something wasn't right and was more alert than usual.  It wasn't long after the meeting began that a noise drew my attention.  This noise got louder.  It was the sound of a man in agony,  the sound of a man suffering the tortures of the damned.  The noise didn't come from an elderly resident.  Looking up from the front desk, the sound grew louder.  The intensity and tone was chilling.  Suddenly, very near where I sat, several priests appeared.  They struggled to physically support another.  In the center of this unusual cluster came a low and plaintive sobbing and these words,

  "I've been begging the bishop for help for years.  I told him I had a problem.
  I begged him to reassign me.  I begged him to help me.  Now, it's come to this. 
  Why?  Why?"

Once spoken, he returned to convulsive sobbing.  A tall man, his knees buckled under the weight of his anguish, the burden of what he had done.  The supportive cluster strained and struggled to keep him from collapsing on the floor.  With great effort, they pulled him into a private place and closed the door.

The door had not closed quickly enough.  I knew what I had seen.  The first of the great sex abuse scandals to hit the local papers in the 1980's had just done so.  The sobbing man was the priest who now stood accused of sexually abusing young boys over many years.  This man's actions were abhorrent.  He was an adult in a position of authority.  He used that power to exploit and abuse children.  Yet, the man I saw that day didn't look very powerful.  He was a shattered human being, broken and sick.  I wondered how he got to where he was.  Was he abused as a young boy himself?  Is that how things started to go so terribly wrong? 

I'd just seen the carnage of a tortured human being imploding before my eyes.  Revulsion and pity flooded me as I watched the drama before me.  "I've been begging him for years", echoed in my head.  Revulsion, pity were soon followed by anger.  The archbishop bore a great responsibility and for whatever reason had failed to respond.  He hadn't heard or hadn't understood the pleas of a pedophile priest.  In ignoring the problem, he had allowed it to continue unchecked until time, the legal system and a trail of victims had made silence no longer an option.

To the press, the archbishop would soon claim, as many others of his ilk did, that "We didn't know what was going on."  Every time I heard this archbishop claim ignorance, I knew it was a lie.  Every time any bishop or prelate claimed "we didn't know" I believed they were lying also.  These weren't white lies or a gentle withholding of the truth justified under the concept of mental reservation.  This was an ugly, bald-faced lie, the kind of lie put forth under advice from one's attorney or press agent.  These were not words to expect from men who were said to "represent Christ on earth".  These were not the words of a shepherd of God's people.  These were the words of politicians who spoke the language of power to protect themselves.  Human souls are often the casualties of such political machination.

As I struggled to process the many emotions that coursed through me like demon rivers, I began to feel a deep shame.  Shame that I was associated with a Church that had failed to do the right thing and then failed to admit it.  I'd seen the blood on the tracks and it made me sick.