Decades later, idyllic Catholic childhood tainted Boston Herald

What’s bittersweet this week - with the pope in America and stories of survivors told anew - is how much of my Catholic childhood has been tainted now, anew, invaded again. I didn’t think I knew any survivors until years after my childhood ended. Then I knew. Then we speculated: Was that horrible priest the reason a boy from CYO barely made his 20s before he died of a drug overdose? Was that same priest the reason a class-clown type inexplicably drove his car into a wall? We’d heard rumors then, but only rumors.

It’s like when children grow up in a more or less happy home. They need not obsess on their parents’ relationship. All seems fine. But when the last child is grown and gone, the parents split. They claim years of misery, announce they only stayed together for the children. Then those stunned children go back and try to reconcile sweet memories - that happy ski trip to Vermont, that surprise 50th birthday party Dad threw for Mom - with the shattering news that this comfort and joy was not real.

Catholics’ attitudes about the church are different now, and not just because of the sex scandal. We’re three and four generations removed from our little ethnic enclaves. And few of us like strict authoritarians anymore. But the scandal exposed decades of sadism - and decades of conspiracies to hide it - that sully what had meant so much. This is why many Catholics lash out at victims and don’t want to hear the truth: Because even though no priest put his hand on them in a darkened sacristy, the sweetness of their own Catholic childhood is sullied, tainted and invaded, too.

 See Decades later, idyllic Catholic childhood tainted Boston Herald