New Report released on sexual abuse by Catholic Priests in Grand Rapids, my own experience, and what the Bishop said and didn’t say

On December 12th, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released a report that covered  a 75 year period of reported sexual abuse by Catholic Priests in the Diocese of Grand Rapids.

The 336 page report is hauntingly difficult to read, especially since there were lots of names I recognized in the report. When I first moved to Grand Rapids in the early 1980s, I was a youth minister at St. James Catholic Church in Grand Rapids. The following year I went into the Catholic seminary and attended Aquinas College as part of the process of becoming a Catholic Priest.

The priest at St. James who invited me to work there was Fr. Charles Antekeier, one of the priests named in the report.  Antekeier was a rather conservative priest who was part of the Catholic Charismatic movement, which adopted some fundamentalists religious views, but maintained a deep commitment to Rome and the church hierarchy.

I loved the work with the youth, both at the grade school and through the congregation, but I soon realized that Fr. Antekeier was a rather rigid leader and would not tolerate anyone who questioned him. A friend of mine at the time, who was head of the Peace & Justice committee at the church had organized an event to hear from two local priests who had just come back from Nicaragua to talk about the role that some catholic priests were playing in the revolution there. Fr. Antekeier was not pleased by this event and made it a point to invite Nicaraguans to speak at a mass the following week. However, the Nicaraguans he invited were part of the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, which was a reactionary group that supported the Nicaraguan dictatorship that had been overthrown in 1979.

I was then told by Fr. Antekeier that I needed to go to Ann Arbor and spend a week at the Word of God community, so I could be presented the real truth about what was happening there. I refused, saying that I already had work commitments with the youth of the church. Fr. Antekeier then told me to pack my stuff and leave that same day, as I was fired from my job.

In 2015, Fr. Charles Antekeier was permanently removed from doing any ministry work, since it was revealed that while he was pastor of St. James Church, he abused youth in the parish in the early 1980s. I remember seeing a news story about this and then read the formal statement from the Grand Rapids Catholic Diocese.

I was not surprised by this revelation, since I always had a suspicion about Antekeier’s relationship to the families at St. James, especially since his authority could not be questioned. However, I do struggle with the fact that this priest was probably abusing children while I was working at the church and I had no idea it was taking place.

The details about Fr. Antekeier in this new report are deeply troubling. There are 30 pages alone of testimony from survivors in this report, with victims being abused by Fr. Antekeier as both children and adults.

Bishop’s Response

On December 15th, the Catholic Bishop for the Grand Rapids Diocese wrote a letter and made it public here at this link.

The two-page letter has some sincere comments, particularly regarding victims/survivors. At one point the Bishop writes:

All alleged conduct involving a minor occurred before 2002, the year the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops enacted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. While the report highlights the failings of priests over a 75-year period, it lacks proper context, especially in failing to acknowledge how the Church has supported victim-survivors and taken appropriate and immediate actions to address reports of clerical sexual abuse, especially since 2002. The AG report gives evidence that these safeguards are working.

While this comment seems reassuring, I don’t personally take comfort in it. There are two things that I find troubling from both the report and the Bishop’s response. First, there isn’t any real acknowledgment or exploration around the fact that Catholic priests have tremendous power in the communities they work in. Catholic priests are still seen by too many people as authority figures who often do not like to be questioned or challenged, especially in public. What I wrote about my experience with Fr. Antekeier was about the power he had and even though I was not sexually assaulted by him, he still wielded tremendous power over someone who dared to question him. The Catholic Church (and churches in general) need to address the formal and informal power that clergy have in this society, if we are serious about addressing abuses committed by clergy.

The second problem with I have with Bishop’s response is his comment in the last sentence, “The AG report gives evidence that these safeguards are working.” The Bishop provides no hard evidence that the abuse by priests isn’t continuing. If you say that there are no new reports then you are perpetuating one of the dynamics about the power that priests continue to have. Those who have a documented history of abuse are not the only problem, since there are likely priests who have not yet been caught or held accountable for their actions. Just because people are not coming forward doesn’t mean clergy abuse has ceased in the Grand Rapids Diocese.

Lastly, it is worth noting that in the Bishop’s letter he does not have any strong language condemning this history of sexual abuse by priests. The only language he uses is calling the abuse a “crime and a sin.” This kind of language is not forceful enough and the Bishop should make it clear that he condemns this kind of violence, both physical and spiritual, since priests can easily coerce and manipulate children and adults they mean to harm.

The Bishop also completely ignore the trauma caused by such abuse, trauma that has life-long implications for individuals and families who have been impacted. The Catholic Church has not responded adequately to this issue and too many priests have not been held accountable for their actions and abuse of power as priests. People who have been harmed deserve better, indeed they deserve more.