{"id":2609,"date":"2006-04-27T09:53:50","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T09:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/secrets.html"},"modified":"2006-04-27T09:53:50","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T09:53:50","slug":"secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/secrets.html","title":{"rendered":"Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

A priest shares a secret; some aren’t pleased<\/a><\/p>\n

Sexually assaulted by a priest as a 25-year old seminarian; he received some compensation from the Archdiocese of Boston a few years ago, but still, the secret gnawed at him:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

He picked Holy Week. And that Tuesday, as about 20 hospital staff and patients’ relatives filed into the chapel for Mass, Moran took a deep breath. Then he spoke about the bittersweet nature of the week for him and about the whole story, right there, in church, during the most hallowed time of the Christian year.<\/p>\n

He railed against church leaders who protect abusers and care more about money than victims. He talked about therapy and the "rationalizations" that kept him in the ministry. Copies of his comments were in the back of the chapel, he said. And when it was over, a burly man came over to hug him. No one else seemed to know what to do.<\/p>\n

The next day, a Washington archdiocese official called, telling him that the hospital thought his actions were inappropriate and that the church felt they were accusatory. His priestly credentials were being pulled immediately, he was told, something that usually wouldn’t have happened until he retired six weeks later.<\/p>\n

Hospital officials, who instructed Moran’s colleagues not to comment for this article, said that people at the Mass had complained and that the priest had burdened people in trauma. Although Moran had recently been "more vocal" about his past problems, there was no sign until then that they interfered with his ability to do his work, said Janis Orlowski, chief medical officer at the hospital.<\/p>\n

Officials with the Washington archdiocese said Moran left them no choice by saying in his letter that he was leaving the ministry.<\/p>\n

"These men literally are responsible for people’s souls, so we take it very seriously if a priest indicates he can no longer function," said archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs.<\/p>\n

Moran feels he is being punished for speaking out: "My gut feeling is that I have been raped again."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A priest shares a secret; some aren’t pleased Sexually assaulted by a priest as a 25-year old seminarian; he received some compensation from the Archdiocese of Boston a few years ago, but still, the secret gnawed at him: He picked Holy Week. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}