Bishop’s message addresses background checks, training, need to support priests

Shortly after being installed as your bishop, I wrote to you about the clergy sex abuse scandal just then emerging, and I made the commitment that protecting our children would be among my highest priorities.

During this season when we prepare to celebrate the birth of our Savior and to recall again the wonderful events surrounding the Christ-child, I wish to share with you some of what our diocese has been doing to fulfill my pledge of a year and a half ago.

In implementing various programs and policies meant to safeguard the most vulnerable within our Church, I have been guided by the U.S. Bishops’ Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and by the undisputable fact that the sexual abuse of minors goes beyond the reprehensible actions of some clergy. The sexual exploitation of children is a societal problem, and children can be victimized by parents, relatives, neighbors and even other children.

The Bishops’ Charter requires that every diocese establish a program to help those who have ongoing contact with young people to recognize the signs of child abuse and to eliminate situations where it can occur. In the spring of this year, I approved for use in the Diocese the highly regarded safe environment program, "Protecting God’s Children." To date, nearly 600 parish staff and volunteers from throughout the Diocese have been trained in the program and training sessions are continually being scheduled. Some of you have even volunteered to be a facilitator of the program and I thank you for doing so. I believe "Protecting God’s Children" to be an invaluable resource for all who have children or who minister to children, and I urge you to avail yourself of it when it is offered in your parish.

You may have recently read or heard about our efforts to fulfill the Charter’s requirement that dioceses "evaluate the background of all diocesan and parish personnel who have regular contact with minors." It is my view that if the Diocese is going to make the commitment to undertake background evaluations, we should make use of the best, most complete kind of evaluation available, which, by all accounts, involves fingerprinting.

Although fingerprinting is a requisite in many professions and volunteer organizations today, I recognize that the idea of being fingerprinted will evoke uneasy feelings for many. I have heard it said that background evaluations are merely an exercise in public relations. I am aware, as well, that the initial expense entailed in fingerprinting will present a challenge for some of our parishes.

I am encouraged, then, that so many of you have written or remarked to me and to your pastors that while background evaluations will require sacrifices, the future safety of our children is well worth those sacrifices. If even one child is spared the agony of abuse because of our efforts, then the inconvenience to any of us is well worth it. The Diocese is also committed to working with those parishes where implementing our background evaluation policy will prove to be a financial hardship.

Finally, I would like to offer some thoughts about our priests. As you can imagine, these are not easy days to be a priest. The terrible deeds of a few have tarnished the reputations of the many. Our priests are fine men who give of themselves so selflessly to the spiritual care of the people who are entrusted to them in our parishes. This caring is exhibited in the fact that already more than 80 percent of them have received the "Protecting God’s Children" training and undergone a background evaluation (and the same, it should be said, is true for our deacons). In my visits to parishes I see men living out their vocations with dedication and zeal. I am proud to be their bishop.

I am also so very grateful for your support of our priests. I cannot tell you how many of them have told me they have never felt so affirmed in their priesthood as they have since the scandal first broke. If, as St. Paul tells us in the twelfth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, the sign of an authentic Christian community is the concern of its members for one another, the Diocese of Metuchen is a community, a family, after the Lord’s own heart.

May Mary, Mother of Our Lord and patroness of our Diocese, keep our Diocese always close to her Son, and may her Son grant you a healthy and blessed Christmas season.

Sincerely in the Lord,

Most Rev. Paul G. Bootkoski
Bishop of Metuchen