Oh Captain! My Captain!
Today, I mailed our petition for Father Joseph Reed, signed by 435 people, to the Archbishop, the Apostolic Nuncio, and the Prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops.
My Dear Friends,
As in that iconic scene from the movie Dead Poets Society, 435 of you climbed up on your desks and said, “Oh Captain! My Captain!” Many more of you prayed earnestly for a holy resolution.
Today, I mailed our petition to Archbishop Shelton Fabre, our Apostolic Nuncio, Cardinal Christophe Pierre, and to Cardinal Robert Prevost as Prefect for the Dicastery for Bishops. I will publish any response I receive.
On Friday, March 21, we received word that Bishop Beckman has appointed Father Mark Schuster as Pastor of St. John Neumann Catholic Church. No matter what happens with Father Joseph Reed, I am relieved and grateful that Fr. Schuster is returning to us. We are wounded and grieving, and our priests are overworked. We need Jesus Christ in Fr. Schuster.
While we are happy that Fr. Schuster is coming, and we recognize the bishop’s authority to place any priest anywhere for any reason, we still seek justice for Fr. Reed.
We all want to rid our Church of abusive clergy, but we won’t make headway if we accept bad processes.
This was a bad process:
The Diocese failed to disclose a serious conflict of interest—that Fr. Reed may be a key witness for the plaintiff in an active sex-abuse lawsuit against our Diocese.
The Diocese allowed a man, Chris Manning, to sit on the diocesan review board who was directly involved in the events which led to the lawsuit. Manning is mentioned by name in the lawsuit, and not favorably (Doe vs. DoK and Stika, p. 23).
The Diocese misunderstood the functions of the preliminary investigation and diocesan review. These may be helpful to a bishop, but they are not judicial processes by which someone can lose the presumption of innocence. Fr. Reed still enjoys the presumption of innocence today.
On March 4, the Diocese broadcast its negative conclusions about Fr. Reed to secular media, possibly violating his right to a good reputation under canon law.
The Diocese has never published anything about Fr. Reed’s troubles in its own newspaper, the East Tennessee Catholic. If you search the ETC archives, you won't find anything about Fr. Reed's leave, the civil investigation, or Bp. Beckman’s decision. Personally, I'm glad about this, because I believe that Fr. Reed is innocent. But the Diocese claims he committed “boundary violations with both minors and adults” which were “frequent and consistent, grave and unbecoming of the Holy Priesthood.” If this were true, wouldn’t it be more important to inform the faithful than the outside world? Why would the Diocese broadcast to secular media things which they don't think the faithful should read about in their own newspaper?
Bad processes generally obtain bad results. Yet even today, it's not too late for Bp. Beckman to do the right thing by Fr. Reed.
Early this morning, I provided the Diocese of Knoxville with a copy of this article. I invited comments before 2:00 p.m. today but received no response.
St. John Neumann, pray for us.
Jennifer Hay
Jennifer.Hay@KnoxvilleNobility.com
865.804.9721
P.S. I’m grateful to Mrs. Taylor Williams for her editorial services.
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I really appreciate these encouraging words. Sometimes the truth just has to be enough.
Thank you again for great reporting. Praying for justice for Father Joe.