Imesch's Failure Ultimately a Matter of Trust

The following is a column written by Joliet resident Tim Placher in 2006 when Bishop Joseph Imesch retired. Placher told Patch his feelings about Imesch upon his death are the same today as they were a decade ago. His column is reprinted with his permission, with this introduction:

Bishop Joseph Imesch died today. I wrote the column pasted below on the day he retired, an event that only occurred due to him reaching mandatory retirement age. Until recently, he continued traveling around the diocese performing confirmations, laying his hands on young boys and girls as a symbol of Christ. He continued to enjoy a place of prominence at diocesan celebrations. USF continues to honor excellent Catholic school teachers with an award bearing his name. But if Imesch thought he came through it all with his good name intact, his reputation rehabilitated, he was wrong.

In the nine years since he retired, nothing has happened to change a word of how I felt the day I wrote this ...

By Tim Placher

“It will take years to repair the damage from this,” I said.

“No, it will take generations,” said Joliet Bishop Joseph Imesch.

In the aftermath of the column I wrote earlier this year describing the abuse done to me as a child and teenager by the late Joliet priest, Rev. Richard Ruffalo, Imesch called me and asked for a meeting. In an hour-long conversation held in his office in March, we talked frankly about the priest-abuse crisis.

While Imesch’s “generations” comment showed he understood the gravity of the harm done during his tenure, other statements indicated he didn’t fully appreciate its source.

In the end, it wasn’t about sex abuse.

It wasn’t about which priest touched which boy’s body parts. It wasn’t about abusers being transferred from parish to parish. It wasn’t about sensational newspaper stories, victims’ press conferences, lawsuits or settlements.

In the end, it was about trust.

Over the course of the last several years, Imesch systematically took local Catholics’ faith in their priests, bishop and institutional church and thoroughly trounced it. As he retires this week after nearly 27 years at the helm of the Joliet diocese, he sails off into the sunset on a sea of distrust and disgust of his own creation.

What began with the abhorrent acts of a small minority of Joliet priests ended with an entire Catholic community’s respect for its local church in tatters. For many people, lifelong trust in the church and its leaders gave way to ugly skepticism.

But Imesch never fully understood why. During our conversation, he steadfastly refused to take any personal responsibility for the harmful actions of the individual priests. In each case, he said, he made the best decisions he could based upon the information and advice available to him.

He pointed at continuing media reports of abuse as a major factor in the damage to the faith community. Priests had been disproportionately singled out, he said, considering they make up only a small percentage of reported abuse cases. And he insisted he’d been unfairly criticized for his handling of cases that preceded his tenure or had gone unreported for many years.

But in focusing so intently on his lack of culpability for individual cases, Imesch only proved he was never able to see the big picture regarding his ultimate failure.

The people in the pews always believed their well-being was first and foremost in their bishop’s mind. With Imesch, sadly, they learned their interests took a backseat to those of his priests.

What Imesch didn’t grasp was that the problem no longer centered on the incidents of abuse. Instead, it revolved around his failure to lead the church in a manner that gave primary acknowledgment and respect to the faith and sacrifices of the people in the pews.

Throughout his tenure, his actions and statements—especially several made during sworn depositions—betrayed a willingness to protect priests’ privacy and reputations at the expense of the families and parishioners whose generosity of spirit, labor and money makes the work of the church possible.

He handled individual sex-abuse cases throughout the diocese like little brush fires that needed extinguishing. Each abuse victim and family was appeased in some way, comforted in the belief their fire was an isolated case. But in fact, flames were flaring up all over the Joliet diocese. And the only one in a position to see the entire landscape was Imesch.

The problem of priest abuse was no minor fire. It was an inferno. Imesch knew it, yet kept if from his people.

As the truth leaked out bit by excruciating bit, those in the pews steadily lost their trust. They wound up feeling betrayed—not so much by the acts of some pervert priests, but by the secrets, stonewalling and lies of omission inflicted on them by their bishop.

Whether or not they believed Imesch acted maliciously or merely negligently in his handling of the crisis, the people ultimately wanted him to admit his responsibility for taking a bad situation and making it worse. In the end, they simply wanted him to stand up and say, “I messed it up so badly, the only way you can begin to get past it is for me to leave.”

But Imesch wouldn’t do it. He was too isolated, too proud or simply too oblivious to see the forest for the trees.

After my original column was published, several hundred people wrote me e-mails and letters, scores of them expressing deep hurt and anger over Imesch’s breach of their trust. I provided a lengthy sampling of those e-mails to Imesch. I told him I had only received a handful of notes supporting him.

But he remained unswayed. “If I thought for one minute my resignation would help heal the damage that’s been done, I’d do it today,” he said.

He obviously didn’t think it would help. He held on until the bitter end, leaving office this week only because he has reached the church’s mandatory retirement age of 75.

In the context of a church in which we were raised to believe self-sacrifice is the ultimate good (see: Jesus on the Cross), our bishop refused to make the selfless gesture that would begin his church’s healing. He ultimately put his own needs and the needs of his priests above those of the people in the pews.

In the process, he served none of them. Every good priest wound up tainted by the sins of his abusive brothers. The people ended up feeling duped and misled, their trust for their church in shambles. And Imesch? Whatever good he did is forever obscured from view by the cloud of the abuse scandal. His legacy is sealed: He’s the “Sex-Scandal Bishop.”

But now, Imesch’s tenure is over. We in the Joliet church are left to deal with the mess of distrust and disgust he left us.

Will the damage ever be repaired?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the answer. According to Imesch, only our great-grandchildren will know for sure.