I wish to speak about the children of priests and I write this letter to you in the fervent hope that not only will you kindly bring up the topic of the children of the ordained and religious at any and all available opportunities, but that you will do so with a fatherly heart.
Why do I say this?
For many months now, I have grown weary and tired in my work, not tired of helping people but of bringing people who come to my company asking for assistance and knowingly leading them to “muddy waters” so to speak, where there is a lack of transparency and real fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Here (not in Ireland I add), the bishop and superiors general are concerned only with ego and the impression of the Church on wider society and protecting the “crown jewel” of the pristine veneer of celibacy. Here, the priest is admonished, the woman is often not listened to and the child is viewed as a threat. Here the child is witnessed through the “crosshairs of hate” and not the cross of love of Jesus Christ.
I grew so tired of willfully and knowingly leading these poor people out of a dark room of secrecy where they felt afraid and yet safe to another room where they would be terrorised in a different way, terrorised by indifference, lawyers, by powers of manipulation and fear.
Since Coping launched in December 2014, 184,975 “unique individuals” have accessed the website and searched out information on this topic. There are more people who searched the topic and downloaded material from the site, designed as a self-help platform.
An average of almost twenty thousand unique people per year are seeking answers and help, up from the 176 who accessed it that first December. The figures since then:
2015: 3,242 people.
2016: 5,397 people.
2017: 1,4208 people.
2018: 20,605 people.
2019: 48,289 people.
2020: 27,294 people.
2021: 39,674 people.
2022: 18,935 people.
This year, up to 26 September, 7,331 people have accessed the site.
In 2023, 23.6 per cent of those who accessed the site sought a “safe sample letter” to represent themselves to a church they feared and were literally related to.
In 2021 “having a child with a priest” was the phrase Googled by 2.7 per cent of those accessing help.
In 2020, the phrases “had a child with a Catholic priest” and “who help children of priests represented” 1.5 per cent and 1.5 per cent of the searches respectively.
In 2019, “a child with a catholic priest” represented 3 per cent of those accessing help, while in 2018, 1 per cent of those who found us did so by typing “where do we take care of children of priest” into a search engine.
Perhaps the saddest of all the key search phrases was the 0.6 per cent in 2016 who sought information and help, females (not to preclude “girls” from this fact), who typed, “help pregnant by a Catholic priest” into Google.
Approximately, 32 and 34 females went to Google and not the church seeking solace, and why? Because you left her pregnant and alone. How can you preach about the nativity with a straight face and know this fact?
These are just a sample of the 180,000 people who sought help on this issue. Now consider that these are people with internet access who speak English – how many fit into neither of the aforementioned categories? Furthermore, if only 1 in every 10 unique visitors is the child of a priest, that equates to almost twenty thousand children of priests globally, as a conservative minimum, but the figure is likely to be much higher.
How are children of priests psychologically impacted by the secrecy they endure for their lifetime? I wrote an open letter to His Holiness touching on that topic in 2021. In essence, “premature imposition of responsibility upon a child” is the part definition of emotional abuse according to the Tusla Child and Family Agency. Note “imposition” – i.e., imposed by a third party.
Expecting a child to understand the complex nature of the adult world, much less the clerical world, and to lie and deceive and to become adept at doing so is cruel and inhumane not to mention immoral and curbs their childhood impacting them negatively.
The denaturing impact of premature responsibility (to maintain secrecy, often disguised as “privacy”), weighing upon the developing psyche of a child, holds the potential to distract and promote interior (hidden) anxiety (fostering dysthymia), and the child becomes a focus of scorn and shame, ridicule and psychological neglect.
The secret called privacy is not privacy, for privacy assumes a choice; here there is little or no choice at all! This is childhood emotional abuse and it is indicative of possible coercive control (if the priest controls the mother and child into a relationship of secrecy denoted as “privacy”). The latter of course is a crime in most developed countries.
So why won't the church be more open about this issue? I believe, plainly and ultimately, because they cannot stop it. Men will always become fathers; you can pretend all day they don’t but the law of nature says that they do.
If the Church fathers and laity cannot and will not face this, then can they really say “We are a church of a fatherly heart”?
Are we as a Church sacrificing ourselves and our own appearance and everything that we are because we have a fatherly heart?
Are we a body of united people that all agree, “the child comes first”? If we are, then surely, God above, surely, your own children – literally your own children – should absolutely come first?
Many may say, “he [the priestly father] is expected to leave and care for the child, the Church condemns secrecy...” and so forth. However, in reality, the episcopal silence and papal silence on this subject (aside from Ireland) on a global level fosters further silence at local and domestic levels.
Not one Pope in history, recent or otherwise has ever publicly stood up at a pulpit with a fatherly heart, warmed by affection for marginalised children hidden among the flock in front of him and said:
“The children of priests and religious are counted as having the same rights as every other little boy or girl from a Catholic perspective and silencing or marginalising them is 100 per cent unacceptable; let no priest who is a dad be afraid of coming to me, for I will approach this priestly-parent with a fatherly heart, conjoined toward our one Father...”
Not once in the Church's 2,000-year history has one Pope spoken of the issue openly, not once. What does this say about a fatherly heart?
Synod Fathers, I beg you, with respect, thankfulness, gratitude, sorrow, hurt, anger, and pity for children that I know, who turn to me (from across the world) and seek help, to say the words: “children of priests” and say it so loud we can hear it, everywhere you want Christ to be.
For the love of your heavenly Father, for the love of your own fathers, for the love of your priestly hearts that guide priests and the church, as fathers, spiritual fathers, I beg you – please, say the words “children of the ordained and religious” at the synod, dismissing the platitudes and usual remarks, that in the pit of your stomach, as a human being, you know all too well are just that ... clichés!
Clichés everyone knows are well-rehearsed statements to whitewash over the fact that, what St Paul VI in 1967 called “the lamentable defection” (Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, 83ff) is as inevitable as the stars in the sky. Indeed the sin greater than infidelity is surely not being honourable toward a small child.
What if God says to any of us – including me – when we see Him: “Priests’ children, did you really heed my voice, or did you rehash sentiment and platitude that aided adults who had sins to hide?”
Surely we participate in the sin if we help hide the fruit?
So Fathers, do I bring shame to your vision of how practised Catholicism is as pristine as the hem of the resplendent garment worn by the Risen Christ at John 20:17?
If I do, then ... Well, there are no words, are there, only your agitated conscience.
Do right by us, your children, and remember those 33 women who in 2016 sought help and turned to a computer instead of a priest, all because they feared you.
What have you done to the collar, dear Fathers?
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