Catholic priest John Geoghan was judged by his peers when he was convicted on child molestation charges. Now, after his brutal murder in prison, he must be judged by a higher power, writes Vince Guerrieri.
By Vince Guerrieri
210 west Managing Editor [send email]
You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.
--Charlie (Harvey Keitel), Mean Streets
When news filtered in that John Geoghan, the defrocked priest and convicted child molester, was killed in prison, my first reaction was “Good!”
It was a reaction similar to that of many others throughout the country. By most accounts, Geoghan – who was beaten and strangled – molested 150 boys and started a sex scandal that has left few Dioceses in America untouched (pardon my choice of words). It was a knee-jerk reaction as my Mediterranean eye-for-an-eye bloodlust peeked through.
And it was wrong.
People said he deserved his end. People said he was rotting in Hell. And that very well might be the case. I don’t pretend to have a window into anyone’s soul but my own (and even that one’s kind of fuzzy at times). But the fact of the matter is that if he asked for God’s forgiveness for his sins and got it, he’s in Heaven.
The beauty of Catholicism (and really, most sects of Christianity) is that there is no soul beyond redemption. Unfortunately, it was just that sense of forgiveness and recovery from sin that put the Rev. Geoghan back into parishes and thousands of boys into harm’s way. And since this scandal has exploded onto the national scene, nobody within the church is quite sure how to deal with it.
Once upon a time, nobody knew anything about sexual deviance. People thought that homosexuality and pedophilia were “diseases” that could be “cured.” There was no such thing as chemical castration. Nobody had ever heard the word “recidivism” or knew how prevalent it was among sexual offenders.
Geoghan was a child molester, that much is clear. More than 150 people have come forward to accuse him of as much, and he was imprisoned for indecent assault against a 10-year-old boy. (However, in one of the ironies of this case, Geoghan’s conviction was overturned after his death. Massachusetts law mandates that charges be dropped if the criminal dies during the appeals process, which Geoghan did.)
Yet every time he told Cardinal Bernard Law that he finished treatment and was “cured,” Geoghan was shuttled to another parish. Perhaps Law didn’t want to confront the situation. Perhaps it was the shortage of priests. Perhaps Law really believed Geoghan when he said he was cured.
But Geoghan wasn’t cured. He continued to molest children. Many other priests were engaged in similar activities, but Geoghan, who was defrocked in 1998, stood as the poster boy for pederast priests, in part because the investigation in the Boston Archdiocese started the ball rolling at other dioceses.
And now he’s dead. Many of his alleged victims are more saddened than angry. Some said he didn’t deserve to meet the end he did, that he should have a long, healthy prison term to think about what he did. He can’t be called to account, at least not in this plane of existence.
But he will be called to account in another plane of existence, if what he believed is correct, and we won’t get the satisfaction of knowing what that judgment is. But that doesn’t mean he won’t be judged.
And what are we supposed to do? Revel in the idea that karma got John Geoghan? Curse the fact that he won’t be held accountable in this world for his crimes?
I’d just pray for his soul, and the souls of all the people affected by his life and death.