Kettlekamp Fiasco Reveals Disarray & Bureaucratic Blunders at USCCB
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The recent revelations regarding Teresa Kettlekamp, the USCCB's new enforcer of sex-abuse education programs for Catholic children, have uncovered a widespread management dysfunction that plagues not only the USCCB, but also numerous chanceries nationwide.
Two weeks ago The Wanderer revealed that Kettlekamp, a former Illinois State Police official, was an adviser to a police project sponsored by Eleanor Smeal's Feminist Majority. Smeal and her organization are among the most strident pro-abortion advocates in America. (Kettlekamp's biography mysteriously disappeared from the pro-abortion web site the weekend following, The Wanderer's report.)
Last week, Kettlekamp insisted to The Wanderer that "I don't even know Ellie Smeal." But Catholics across America are wondering: Why didn't the bishops know Teresa Kettlekamp when they hired her? Why do they keep letting these disasters happen?
Three years ago, when the bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, Avery Cardinal Dulles warned them that the charter would cause unprecedented alienation between bishops and priests.
The launching of the "safe environment" sex abuse education programs, supposedly "required" by the charter, expanded that alienation to the laity as well. "Sex abuse safety" programs imposed by chanceries across the country studiously avoided the documented, fundamental role played by homosexual predators in the vast majority of clerical sex crimes that caused the crisis in the first place.
As the scandals unfolded and the bishops reeled from lawsuits flowing, they turned to secular "experts" to insulate themselves against the lawyers, prosecutors, legislators, journalists, federal bankruptcy judges, grand juries, and others in the secular realm.
The bishops insisted on blaming an "anti-Catholic mentality" for the scandals instead of their own decades-long malfeasance. They complained that secular forces were "unfairly attacking the Church" — and then proceeded to recruit "experts" drawn from those same forces, experts whose primary qualification was a secular, anti-family, government social-worker mentality.
The results have been predictable. Instead of enhancing the position of the Church and the safety of children, these secular "experts" have widened the abyss between the bishops and the laity. The USCCB's spectacular failure in vetting Col. Kettlekamp's background reflects similar bungling in chanceries around the country.
The Kettlekamp fiasco reveals that, after three years, the bishops are still propounding the same dismal management blunders that contributed to the criminal scandals in the first place.
The Diocese of Arlington, Va., continues to embody the bureaucratic bunker mentality on the local scene. Bishop Paul Loverde turned to Catherine Nolan in 2003 to enforce the charter. Nolan was lauded by her former supervisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as an "expert in child abuse." However, Nolan, an advocate of the notorious "Bad Touch" program, resigned after only a few months when it became evident that no one in the chancery had exercised even the most basic due diligence in her hiring.
(Chancery official and canon lawyer Fr. Mark Mealey, credited by the diocesan newspaper for bringing Nolan aboard, has steadfastly refused requests to address his role.)
The same casual indifference abounded in the case of Nolan's assistant, Jennifer Alvaro, a self-described expert in the "Bad Touch" sex-abuse-safety program. Alvaro was quickly promoted after Nolan' s departure. Within weeks, Bishop Loverde was telling parents that Catholic children as young as five years of age had to be taught sex-abuse education by trained third parties. He justified his decree by alleging that "sometimes parents are the abusers" — although he did not publicly accuse any specific families in the diocese of child sexual abuse at the time.
Where could this good shepherd have derived such a perverse notion about the families in his flock? The answer soon became apparent. His bureaucratic "experts" had told him so. Mrs. Alvaro soon went public with her contempt for diocesan parents when she told a group of directors of religious education that "children are safer with homosexuals than with heterosexuals" (most parents in the diocese are heterosexuals).
When outrage over her "perverts over parents" approach spread throughout the diocese, Mrs. Alvaro quickly resigned.
The Arlington case suggests that the nationwide "safe environment" bungling is not caused solely by individual bureaucrats, but also by the prevailing secular mentality of chancery bureaucrats. Mrs. Alvaro was succeeded in the chancery by Fr. Terry Specht, a priest of the diocese. His first responsibility was to enforce Bishop Loverde's new requirement that not only diocesan employees, but all parents and volunteers who wanted to be fully active in their parish must first register their fingerprints, Social Security numbers, and other private personal data with both the state and federal governments for "background checks."
Those who refuse are barred even from volunteering at any parish functions' where families and children are present — which means most Church activities.
As The Wanderer has reported, in spite of Fr. Specht' s assurances to the contrary, the Virginia State Police Crime Lab has confirmed that all fingerprints they receive are recorded digitally and kept in a government database.
Moreover, there are recent reports that several parents in the diocese who agreed to be fingerprinted have been told that their records have been lost. They must now submit new applications, complete with new fingerprints. These parents have no idea if their private data — everything required for them to become victims of criminal identity theft — have fallen into the wrong hands.
Liability
The problem that plagues all bureaucracies arises here: Who is to blame for this blundering? That question raises the interesting question of liability. And there, too, the bureaucrats have ratcheted up their war against the parents.
Fr. Specht insisted last April that he had "never heard the word liability in the year that he's been on the job." He might be surprised, then, to discover that the term "liability" appears prominently on every single application that parents are required to sign and to submit to the chancery and to the government if they want to remain fully active in their parish. According to Fr. Specht, over 10,000 diocesan parents and volunteers have had to sign this form and forward it to his office. Apparently, he has never read even one of them.
Fr. Specht's required form reads, "I the undersigned, do, for myself, my heirs, executors hereby release and forever discharge the Diocese of Arlington and each of its officers, employees, and agents from and against any and all causes of action, charges, liabilities, claims including court costs, expenses and attorneys fees, resulting from the investigation of my background in connection to my employment/volunteer assignment with the Diocese of Arlington."
The chancery bureaucrats are apparently as fearful of the faithful as they are of the lawyers, the press, the bankruptcy judges, and all the rest of those "anti-Catholic secular forces" that are launching "unfair attacks" on the Church.
Col. Kettlekamp has "never heard of Ellie Smeal." Fr. Specht has "never heard the word 'liability'." If this promotion of bureaucratic ignorance continues to thrive in the USCCB and the chanceries, the bishops might want to replace all the "Gore for President" bumper stickers that abounded in the USCCB parking lot last fall with a new one: "Cardinal Dulles was right."
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