As part of the settlement of lawsuits against the Catholic church, a list of priests accused of molesting children in Montana has been published widely. Here’s one link.
In the beginning, like most people, I had thought that religious leaders were rigorously filtered and trained to make sure they were worthy of society’s trust in them to do the right thing in Jesus’ eyes -- regardless of what society’s demands were at the time. The deeper I got into the ministry myself, though it wasn’t Catholic priesthood, the more I realized just how gnarly that expectation was. And yet it is the key to privilege and obligation, not just about the ordained, but also about the surrounding people and organizations. The whole society.
Most of our expectations are not at all controlled by religious organizations but rather by screen writers and since screen writers don’t like ordinary situations, they tended to be extreme. Still, the human mind is easily hooked by ambiguity, conflicting definitions (esp. those with legal standing), penumbras of implication, and missing finality: what REALLY happened. So we’re fascinated. And sometimes the extreme is quite real.
I knew three of these priests, but only by sitting in funeral masses. The Catholic church asserts that when an ordained priest performs a mass, the ceremony is so powerful a connection to heaven that it over-rules any defects in the character of the man. (Always male, you’ll remember.) It’s as though they were electrified with power. Protestants do not have this doctrine. They tend to see any ceremony as a kind of performance, like a musical event or a play. They feel free to critique the service and some tend to feel they could do a lot better job of it. No doubt they might be right.
The three Blackfeet reservation priests were Gillen, Stimatz, and Father Mallman (I can’t separate his title from his name). They were not warm, fuzzy men. Their lives were tough -- spartan living in a severe climate, remote even for the rez. I suspect that some of what has been blamed on them is really accusations of being “mean”, but the stories have not emphasized beatings The one priest I rather suspected was too fond of children is not on this list. I won’t name him. The one priest I would defend, if it were necessary, is the present Father Ed Kohler. I’ll say that on the rez there is rather extreme variation in what is considered sinful and why and how. But I’ve never suspected anything shady about Father Ed and I’ve never heard anyone accuse him.
Father Ed Kohler, warm but not fuzzy
I wish I knew the ages and specifics of the molestations. I mean, are we talking pre-schoolers, early grade school children, adrenarche (8 to adolescence) or adolescents? Indian babies are so appealing that artists can create whole careers out of their depiction: chubby cheeks, dark eyes. Early grade school children are so eager for adult attention and so blank about what’s all right, that they’re easily manipulated. By age 8 children who have been abused are skilled strategists at defending themselves with a mix of compliance and defiance. Adolescents -- well . . . maybe I’ll write a short story sometime. Or are there enough stories already? Probably not.
Some say that pedophilia is enabled by the Old Ways of the people, accepted. That’s baloney IMHO. But the Canadian border comes into play on this rez, partly because the cities big enough to support undergrounds are on the Canadian side (Calgary and Lethbridge) and partly because since that arbitrary division was invented, it’s been so useful to have the interdiction of enforcement -- when stealing horses or selling booze or drugs -- that trails have formed in secret places.
The great number of rez men and boys who have been incarcerated are often angry people who love to prove there is no authority figure who cannot be fucked, even in a displacement onto their “lambs.” Major distances mean that kids are left out in the country either alone a little too young or in the “care” of inappropriate adolescents or men, maybe drunk, high, or inviting disreputables to drop by. There are no neighbors to run to, it takes a long time for cops to get there (assuming access to a phone), and complaining enough for parents to lose their jobs is a very bad consequence. Family is always the complication on a rez, and family is the fantasy metaphor of the Church.
These are the three rez priests on the formal list:
A.M.D. Gillen – ordained May 29, 1926 (in Canada)
Assignments in Diocese of Helena: St. Richard, Columbia Falls: 1950-51; St. Teresa of the Little Flower, Browning: 1951-1965
Left Diocese: September 1, 1965; Died: July 30, 1987
Patrick Stimatz – Ordained: 1946
Assignments: Holy Rosary Parish, Bozeman: 1946-50; St. John Parish, Butte: 1950-59; St. Mary of the Assumption Parish, Laurin: 1959-65; Little Flower Parish, Browning: 1965-72; Chaplain, Montana State Prison: 1972-86. Died: May 4, 1986
When Mallman was in Heart Butte, the church was a small log cabin with an emerald green door.
Egon Mallman, SJ – Ordained: 1929
Assignments in Diocese: St. Anne Parish, Heart Butte: 1934-1976;
Assignments in Diocese: St. Anne Parish, Heart Butte: 1934-1976;
Left Diocese: 1976; Died: August 20, 1980
1964 is the year of the Big Flood. It falls close to the line between Gillen and Stimatz. I don’t know which one of them had a herd of cattle along Birch Creek, but he was trapped while trying to save them. It was news to most of us that priests owned cattle. The variousness of different orders, which can overlap priesthood, keep the ordinary uninformed person from knowing. (Neither was a Jesuit.) It seems obvious that being the chaplain in the Montana State Prison is not exactly a reward for good behavior, but Deer Lodge as a town is a beautiful place. A priest might not have to travel much and have a little easier community outside the prison. On the other hand, a priest assigned to a prison is going to be supervised along with the prisoners -- however effective that might be. Maybe I could put that in a short story, but fiction has a nasty way of being taken as fact. And vice versa.
The church is all that is left from the Holy Family MIssion School.
Father Mallman is legendary. In “Mission Among the Blackfeet” by Professor Howard L. Harrod, both Mallman and Gillen are discussed by Harrod who actually interviewed them. You can read some of the book online. Harrod is no longer living. His “take” on the two men was that Mallman was an old-fashioned missionary whose focus was on the sacraments and little else. He ignored trouble in the Heart Butte way: pretending it’s not there. Bob used to say that Mallman was totally opposed to any “pagan superstition” but if someone’s horse happened to die on their new grave, Mallman was out of town and failed to notice.
On the other hand, in 1942 a boy died because his parents insisted on traditional Indian medicine instead of the Indian Health Service and consequently, Mallman refused to bury the boy. Mallman “believed that a priest’s life should mirror the sufferings and life style of Christ,” but I think that Jesus would have buried that child. Harrod speaks of the emphasis on the Father Role, which sounds Old Testament to me, dangerous in a patriarchy that sees a father as a small king. So much of sexual transgression is about power and obedience, esp. when brought to bear on a child.
On the other hand, in 1942 a boy died because his parents insisted on traditional Indian medicine instead of the Indian Health Service and consequently, Mallman refused to bury the boy. Mallman “believed that a priest’s life should mirror the sufferings and life style of Christ,” but I think that Jesus would have buried that child. Harrod speaks of the emphasis on the Father Role, which sounds Old Testament to me, dangerous in a patriarchy that sees a father as a small king. So much of sexual transgression is about power and obedience, esp. when brought to bear on a child.
Harrod says, “Early in his ministry, [Mallman] was involved in struggles with the Powers of Darkness dwelling in the vicinity of his parish.” One can interpret such a position as indicating a virtuous man, or in a psychoanalytic age can see it as projection of soul-struggle in the man himself.
St. Theresa, Church of the Little Flower in Browning, MT
As for Father Gillen, who was not Jesuit, Harrod suggests that he had more thought for worldly politics and even worked with the Tribal Council to develop schemes for helping people economically and in other practical ways, but nothing ever came of any of his ideas. There is a LOT of history about all these things, some of it recorded.
Last night I watched “Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” which is a careful and thorough account of five deaf men who had been molested by a man named Murphy, a priest who molested hundreds of boys which the church knew and did nothing about. Murphy was a major money-raiser. When finally put on trial, among other things he admitted that at night he had gone into the dorms of the younger boys, felt their sleeping bodies for “stiffies” and relieved them of their engorgement which he thought was doing them a service. I think the man had some kind of damage to his pre-frontal cortex that organically removed his ability to make moral decisions or even stay in contact with reality. I wish there had been an autopsy.
After watching this movie one will never again assume that the boys shrugged off any damage because “it’s just what boys do.” There’s more to say, but I try to keep these posts under 1500 words. I’ll be back.
PS. I see that Father Stimatz was ordained at the same time as Father Hunthausen. Their paths were quite different. Father Hunthausen's biological sister, Sister Edna, was always a friend of St. Anne's in Heart Butte.
https://www.carroll.edu/files/files/alumni/prospector/1946_05_29_XXXIV_11_Prosp.pdf
PS. I see that Father Stimatz was ordained at the same time as Father Hunthausen. Their paths were quite different. Father Hunthausen's biological sister, Sister Edna, was always a friend of St. Anne's in Heart Butte.
https://www.carroll.edu/files/files/alumni/prospector/1946_05_29_XXXIV_11_Prosp.pdf
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