Bishop D'Arcy "Uncommon Hero": Interview on 10th Anniversary of Boston Crisis

The National Catholic Register's Joan Frawley Desmond interviewed Bishop John D'Arcy last week while he was visiting family in Boston about the Boston Archdiocese crisis.  It has been 10 years since the Boston Archdiocese was confronted by the crisis.

Ms. Desmond's interview with the former Auxiliary Bishop of the Boston Archdiocese and the former Bishop of the Fort Wayne - South Bend Diocese was published today by the National Catholic Register.

Ms. Desmond writes:

Ten years ago, Bishop John D’Arcy of the Fort Wayne-South Bend (Ind.) Diocese got an urgent call from lawyers representing the Boston Archdiocese, where he had previously served as an auxiliary bishop from 1975-1985. He learned that The Boston Globe would soon publish the personnel files of the alleged serial predator, Father John Geoghan, and that a plaintiff’s attorney had obtained a 1984 letter he wrote opposing the priest’s assignment to a local parish.

“I didn’t remember that I wrote the letter at first,” recalled Bishop D’Arcy, during a telephone interview last week while visiting his family in Boston. [ ... ]

Yet despite that initial lack of recall, Bishop D’Arcy would emerge as an uncommon hero as the clergy abuse scandal unfolded in the media. While the published personnel files of the Boston Archdiocese exposed a legacy of episcopal negligence, Bishop D’Arcy’s repeated efforts to raise the alarm would lead the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People to describe him as a “voice in the wilderness.”

Asked to discuss the reason why he spoke up when others remained silent, Bishop D’Arcy insisted that he should not be singled out for special credit. Rather, he viewed the 10th anniversary of the Boston crisis as an opportunity to reflect on both the vital role of the Catholic bishop, and the ongoing importance of screening candidates for seminary.

[ ... ]

In 1949, he entered the archdiocesan seminary, and then studied in Rome, receiving his doctorate in spiritual theology in 1968. But he received a shock when he returned to Boston to serve as the spiritual director and professor of spiritual theology at St. John’s Seminary.

“At the time, I was still learning what it means to be a spiritual director. But I soon realized that one of my jobs was to get people out of the seminary — while helping the good men become holy priests,” he recalled.

“We had some who should not have been there. At this time, the Vietnam war was raging, so some men were there for the wrong reasons. I was known by some of the seminarians as ‘D’Arcy the hatchet man.’ I was focused on whether their vocation was authentic.”

[ ... ]

During a time when the impact of clergy sexual abuse was poorly understood or ignored, Bishop D’Arcy also grasped its devastating, long-term consequences — whether victims were coerced or manipulated into accepting the advances of adult predators.

“Young people are open to priests and when assaulted in this way, their souls are often irreparably damaged,” he stated in one of several letters cited in the National Review Board’s 2004 “Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States.”

That same report asserted that “Bishop D’Arcy appeared to be a voice in the wilderness, and shortly after he raised troubling questions about a number of priests he was asked to leave Boston and was installed as bishop of the Diocese of South Bend-Fort Wayne [sic].” Bishop D’Arcy rejected this assertion during his interview with the Register.

[ ... ]

One salutary lesson he absorbed from the abuse crisis was that bishops mistakenly ceded their judgment to others.

“That episcopal human judgment — not infallible, but enlightened by grace — was put aside. In the past, I have been advised that certain priests could be returned to ministry and I rejected that counsel. I knew it was outrageous.”

While grappling with a vocations crisis in his own diocese, Bishop D’Arcy recalls now that he rejected about half of the men who sought admission to the seminary. “Pope Benedict XVI is one of the heroes who emphasized that it was more important to have good priests than many priests,” he said.

[ ... ]

“I should have done more,” he insisted, affirming that his great love and respect for the priesthood continues to stir his moral reflections on the past.

[ ... ]

Sister Anne D’Arcy, for her part, is unsurprised by the attention her brother has received in the wake of the crisis.

“The thing about John is that he is not afraid to do the hard thing. If he feels it’s for the good of the Church, he will speak out,” she said.

“He opened his homily at the funeral Masses for both our mother and our father with this quote from St. John of the Cross: ‘In the evening of life you will be measured on love,’” she noted. “Sometimes that means tough love.”