GUEST COMMENTARY: Hate the sin, love the sinner, but don’t give him a pulpit

(RNS) Imagine a school bus driver who says he’s “found God” and is rehired by a school district despite an accident in which his drunkenness injured his young passengers. Imagine a lifeguard at a municipal pool nearly strangling a child to death, being convicted for assault, then being rehired because he claims God has “healed” […]

(RNS6-FEB24) Guest columnist David Clohessy is national director of SNAP, the Survivors 
Network of those Abused by Priests. See RNS-CLOHESSY-COLUMN, transmitted Feb. 24, 
2004.

(RNS6-FEB24) Guest columnist David Clohessy is national director of SNAP, the Survivors
Network of those Abused by Priests. See RNS-CLOHESSY-COLUMN, transmitted Feb. 24,
2004.

(RNS) Imagine a school bus driver who says he’s “found God” and is rehired by a school district despite an accident in which his drunkenness injured his young passengers.

Imagine a lifeguard at a municipal pool nearly strangling a child to death, being convicted for assault, then being rehired because he claims God has “healed” him.


No one would argue that these offenders should never be allowed to work anywhere else ever again. Many people favor a “second chance” of some sort for most who commit a crime.

But is there anyone who’d argue that such offenders should be given their old jobs back, driving a bus full of kids or watching a pool full of kids? Surely not.

Yet that’s precisely what’s happening in some of our churches.

A month ago, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, a Kentucky congregation ordained a once-convicted child molester, Mark Edward Hourigan, just three years after he’d been released from prison.

Three weeks ago, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a Minnesota Baptist church music director pleaded guilty to raping a teenage girl who sang in his choir — “a nearly identical scenario to one for which he was convicted 13 years earlier in St. Paul,” according to one newspaper account.

Two weeks ago, Church of the Nazarene officials were urged to reach out to possible victims of a former youth minister who was sent to be a youth pastor and summer intern at a California church, despite having been convicted of a child sex crime.

And in Nova Scotia, where one bishop has been arrested on child pornography charges, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation reports that parishioners knew their priest had two convictions for gross indecency involving two different boys — and yet he’s pastoring a church, with no restrictions on his interactions with kids.


In each of these cases, these aren’t allegations. They aren’t civil lawsuits. They are criminal convictions. And the church employers and supervisors knew of the convictions, yet still gave the criminals positions of authority over and access to children.

In situations like this, it’s always tempting and easy to blame the individual congregations who made or tolerated these dangerous moves. But what of their denominational bodies? Why is there no guidance or no rules prohibiting such callous and reckless decisions?

And why, after the fact, is there no outrage from other religious figures — either supervisors or colleagues?

Many denominations set minimum standards for doctrinal belief. Why can’t they set minimum standards for congregants’ safety?

A doctor’s first obligation is to “do no harm.” The same code should govern the conduct of institutions that deal with the public, especially children. Even before spiritual guidance or personal comfort, church members need and deserve basic safety.

It’s unthinkable that churches would buy defective fire extinguishers or leave their safes unlocked. No church leaders would deliberately ice their sidewalks, break lights in the parking lot or conceal serious structural and engineering flaws in their buildings.


It should likewise be unthinkable that they would hire convicted child molesters and give them titles, power and access to kids.

Worse, it’s irresponsible for denomination leadership to not make this explicit, in both word and deed.

Sadly, these aren’t the only such cases we’ve found.

Right now, a convicted and defrocked Episcopal priest, Lynn Bauman, is leading church retreats at an Episcopal center in Minnesota, according to the center’s own Web site, even though he’s molested kids that he met on church retreats. According to Bauman’s own Web site, he also holds retreats at two facilities he operates in Texas.

In August, the Newark Star-Ledger reported that three Catholic institutions paid $600,000 to a man who was reportedly molested by a Missouri priest, who had earlier admitted molesting New Jersey children. The priest was allowed to legally change his name before being sent to unsuspecting parishioners with no warning.

Child predators always have, and always will, gravitate toward any institutions where kids are present. No one can keep them out of churches. But surely we can at least keep the convicted ones out of pulpits.

(David Clohessy is the national director, and Barbara Blaine is the president, of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.)


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