Minneapolis, Minn., Aug 28, 2019 / 04:25 am (CNA).- Bishop Andrew Cozzens became a bishop in the middle of a crisis.
“There was this kind of fire that was burning on the front page of the paper everyday,” Cozzens told CNA, “and then I got this call.”
The call was his appointment as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Cozzens was appointed to that role just days after a whistleblower leveled charges of misconduct and cover-up against Archbishop John Nienstedt, who eventually resigned from his post amid scandal.
The archdiocese was in a state of chaos, and, Cozzens said, Catholics were in a great deal of pain.
“I was named a bishop at a very unique time, and it was so unique that it was clear to me God had planned it,” Cozzens told CNA.
He told CNA that he knew, from the time he was appointed, “that the Lord was calling me to be a part of healing. I didn’t have any idea what that meant when I heard that word in prayer.”
“Since the beginning,” he said, “I have felt like that’s why God made me a bishop and that’s what he wants me to do, and so I need to help do that.”
If God chose Bishop Cozzens to be a part of the Church’s healing ministry, meeting Gina Barthel was a big part of how that healing ministry would begin.
He remembers when she emailed him, in early 2014. It was just months after he’d become a bishop.
Barthel wrote to Cozzens that she had been a victim of clergy sexual abuse, and that she wanted to tell him her story. He accepted. They met in his office. Bishop Cozzens hadn’t met with many victims of abuse before. But when Gina told her story, he was disturbed. And he wanted to help her find the healing she sought.
“What was most disturbing about her story was the clear abuse of the office of spiritual direction. And since I’m a spiritual director, and have been a spiritual director, I understand how sacred that space is, and so the fact that it was clearly abused was for me the disturbing part,” Cozzens told CNA.
“Basically I knew that it would be very difficult for her to trust anyone, especially a priest or a bishop, so I was grateful that she was willing to share with me. And that was always the goal from the beginning, was to provide her an example of someone she could trust, and let her know that I was available to help her in any way that I could, to help her find healing, but obviously you can’t force those kinds of things.”
Gina Barthel told CNA that she’s found healing – and found Christ – through the Church, and with the help of Cozzens. But, she says, it wasn’t easy.
In 2005, nine years before she contacted Cozzens, Barthel was a novice in a religious community. She hoped to profess vows as a religious sister. In the course of spiritual direction, she told a priest, Fr. Jim Montanaro, OMV, that she had been sexually abused, and how that had impacted her spiritual and emotional life.
Armed with that knowledge, Barthel told CNA, Montanaro began to groom her, and eventually would sexually abuse her.
At first, the priest asked her to spend excessive time alone with him, and then discuss her body with him in sexual ways that made her uncomfortable. He told her, she remembers, that God could use that experience to heal her.
In the summer of 2005, Barthel decided to leave the religious community. She got an apartment in New York. Montanaro reached out to her, and said he wanted to remain her spiritual director.
“I was like, ‘Well that’s awesome because it’s impossible to find a spiritual director, so I don’t even have to look.’”
“So if you can imagine, a girl from Minnesota, who has no interest at all living in New York City, suddenly finding myself living in an apartment. I don’t know anyone except the sisters and what does that equal? I’m lonely. I’m isolated. It was a setup for disaster.”
Soon, she told CNA, she and Montanaro were talking every day.
“And then multiple times a day. And it turned into, at some point, a spiritual adoption. I don’t remember the timetable exactly, but he adopted me as his ‘Principessa’, like Italian for ‘princess’ and I called him ‘Papito.’ Like, ‘little father.’”
“And we would talk at night, and often the conversations at night would turn very sexual,” Barthel told CNA.
She said that over the phone, the priest would encourage her to imagine that the two of them were saints in heaven together. Then he would tell her that they should each strip naked, to be “naked without shame.”
“So it was just this weird, it feels awkward to tell you about it, because it’s creepy, right? So that was happening.”
In 2006, Barthel moved to her home state of Minnesota. She struggled with depression. She was hospitalized with major depressive episodes. And then a friend offered to send her on a pilgrimage, a group trip for which Montanaro would be the chaplain. The priest invited her to visit his home in Boston before the trip began.
“He invited me to come early and I stayed at their house in Boston, and I remember him putting a sign on the door saying: ‘Do not interrupt. Spiritual direction in session.’
“And he turned on music and he’s like, ‘I just want to hold my principessa.’ So there was a lot of holding and touching, but it was not sexual, yet.”
The priest was at least 20 years older than her. But Barthel, struggling with loneliness and depression, said she liked that he was holding her. Still, she said she knew that what was happening wasn’t right.
“I feel like in that circumstance, I was a vulnerable adult, she told CNA. “Because it was like he abused the child inside of me. He wasn’t abusing an equal, adult-adult relationship. Everything was very childlike.”
The next year, Montanaro took Barthel to stay with him at a retreat center in North Dakota and there, she alleges, began a sexual relationship with her.
Barthel told CNA how confused she was. She believed in the Church’s teaching about sexuality, but, she says, she also believed what the priest told her.
“The entire time, he was telling me what was happening was ‘miraculous graces,’” she told CNA. “Like, ‘Jesus is healing you.’ All of the things he was saying we should do were all part of God’s healing plan for me.”
“And the biggest thing I wanted in my entire adult life was to be healed of the sexual abuse that I experienced as a child. And he used that to catapult his agenda to hurt me,” she said.
“Everything was under the guise of healing, Barthel told CNA.
“And even, he was saying, ‘God’s using you to heal me,’” she said.
“So then I felt special like, ‘Well that’s kind of cool, like, it’s mutual. God’s not just using him to heal me, but He’s also using me to heal Papito.’ Like, that’s really special,” she said.
Looking back, Barthel says she can see that Montanaro was using her insecurities to manipulate her. But at the time, she says, she felt confused, and she trusted the priest.
“And I remember asking, ‘Well, do I need to go to confession? Maybe I should go to confession.’ And he always said no. ‘No, we don’t need to go to confession. This is part of God’s will. This isn’t just okay, and it’s not just good, and not just great, it’s holy.’”
The relationship continued until, after a few months, Barthel told Montanaro that it had to end.
She told CNA she realized things were wrong when the priest admitted he hadn’t told his own spiritual director about the sexual relationship.
“He said, ‘Some things are meant to be kept a secret between you and God.’ The minute he said that, my whole world started falling apart,” Barthel said.
She told a priest she trusted about the relationship. That priest called Montanaro and confronted him. Barthel said that Montanaro admitted the whole thing, but seemed to see nothing wrong with the relationship. The priest next called Montanaro’s superiors, and Montanaro was removed from ministry.
A spokesman for the St. Ignatius Province of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary told CNA that the province “first became aware of her allegations relating to Fr. Montanaro in November of 2007, when a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis notified the rector of the retreat house where Fr. Montanaro resided at the time.
“The then-Provincial of the St. Ignatius Province met with Fr. Montanaro on the day he heard of the allegations. Following that meeting, Fr. Montanaro was immediately removed from public ministry and was to cease all contact with that individual.”
“In January of 2008, the Provincial revoked Fr. Montanaro’s priestly faculties, and Montanaro subsequently sought, and obtained, dismissal from the Oblates, followed by laicization from sacred orders from Rome, which was granted in 2010. Montanaro has had no role or ministry with the St. Ignatius Province since then,” the spokesman added.
The spokesman said that at the time Montanaro was removed, the Oblates “began to provide support” for Barthel.
The Oblates, Barthel told CNA, “sent me a couple of checks to help pay my rent because the trauma hit me so hard that I couldn’t work initially. They also sent me a letter offering $15,000 and a year of therapy if I signed one of those letters stating I wouldn’t do anything further.”
“I don’t know what I was more upset about: the fact that they were trying to pay me off to keep me quiet or the fact that they thought I would only need a year of therapy to recover. It’s 12 years later and I’m still in therapy!”
Barthel said it took years of healing before she was prepared to report what had happened to police. When she did, it was too late.
“When I finally built up the courage to go to the police, I missed the statute of limitations by less than a month. That was devastating because it took so much from me to even go to the police. I finally went, I told my whole story, and then I get a call back and it’s the statute of limitation by less than 30 days”
But she was even more devastated, she says, because Montanaro’s community, the Oblates of the Blessed Virgin Mary, have declined to name Montanaro as a sexual abuser.
“One of my big grievances has been why aren’t perpetrators of adults also being listed publicly?”
Barthel told CNA that she has been concerned that Montanaro might groom other women.
The laicized priest now works as a photographer in Massachusetts. He has not responded to multiple attempts by CNA to contact him.
Among the photographs posted on Facebook by the studio where Montanaro works is a series in which several women have posed nude for the camera. The photo captions read “You are ravishing,” and “Next time you think of something beautiful, don’t forget to count yourself in.”
On the website of the studio, Montanaro writes “My biggest satisfaction is capturing the unique beauty of each person who entrusts that privilege to my partners and to me. We love to help people discover (or rediscover) their God-given beauty in a photo session, and fall in love with themselves all over again.”
In March, Barthel wrote to the Oblates.
“I have concern that he could use his credentials of previous pastoral work and education to get a job in any helper position where he would have access to vulnerable adults. While he is no longer able to hurt people using his position of power as a Catholic priest, that doesn’t mean he isn’t still a threat if he has access to vulnerable adults,” she wrote.
“This is a hurdle in my healing journey. I keep thinking, hoping, praying and wishing that someday when I Google his name, it’ll show up that he is a self-admitted abuser of adult women. Yet, to date, I find nothing. It floods me with grief and also adds to my anger that waxes and wanes as I continue to heal. I feel that as long as the Church stays silent on these matters, there is danger the abuse may continue. Who are we trying to protect and why?”
She requested that Montanaro’s self-admission of sexual misconduct be publicly acknowledged by the order.
She told CNA she has yet to hear back from the Oblates about her request.
The Oblates declined to respond to questions from CNA about Barthel’s request.
While Barthel is discouraged, she told CNA that she has not lost her faith.
“I love Jesus, I love the Church. And it’s not easy and my relationship with Jesus and the Church are different now, but in some ways it’s more beautiful than it was before because I’m more dependent upon Him. And I don’t know how to explain it.”
“My deepest healing has all come through adoration,” she said.
Barthel emphasized the role that Cozzens has played in her life. They’ve met together regularly, and prayed together, for years.
“I needed a safe place to allow the rage and pain to unfold,” Barthel told CNA.
“Yes, I did a lot of that in therapy, but the injustice against my soul demanded someone in the Church hierarchy to listen to me, hear my voice, acknowledge my pain and empathize with me. Bishop Cozzens has been that person for me.”
The bishop, she said, “has been the conduit God has chosen to use to bring me back into a free and even deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and His Church.”
“Eucharistic adoration is where I have received the majority of my healing,” she told CNA.
“Bishop Cozzens helped get me to a place to be able to go there and ask Jesus the hard questions and to sit and wait and listen for the answers. That’s the awesome thing about Jesus, if we ask, if we wait, He will speak to us.”
Barthel explained that Cozzens’ role in her life has been invaluable.
“When I first started meeting with him, I was terrified of praying; especially using my imagination which had always been my greatest source of delight in prayer and way of connecting to Jesus through the stories in Scripture. He never pushed, but would give me little tidbits of spiritual encouragement/advice that I could bring with me to Eucharistic adoration. This is what I needed. Someone who could walk with me and understood the danger and risk I was taking to pursue a life of prayer again.”
Cozzens told CNA that he’s learned, through his pastoral relationship with Barthel, what pastoral ministry to victims of abuse requires.
“One of the things that victims of abuse struggle with is going to Church. It’s really hard for them to go to Church. But if you’re a Catholic, you might think that you’re committing a mortal sin, but you just can’t do it because it’s so emotionally difficult for them. So to be gentle and to let them know that God understands the pain they’re going through, and the Church understands that too,” Cozzens said.
“Just to help people walk through that and let them know it’s ok that it takes time, and that God understands what they’re going through. To do that you have to be willing to go through ups and downs with people, because they go through their good moments and their bad moments. But gradually – and it takes time – but gradually the good moments outweigh the bad moments,” he added.
Barthel said she appreciated that understanding.
“Particularly in the beginning, coming back to the sacramental life of the church and prayer was excruciatingly painful, adding the regular breaking news reports of clergy abuse and cover up, there were so many times I wanted to throw the towel in and leave the Catholic Church altogether. While he never encouraged me to leave, he also never tried to convince me to stay. This gave me so much freedom and reminded me that the choice was mine. I needed that freedom and I believe it had a big part in helping me choose to remain Catholic,” she told CNA.
“I just wanted to be heard. I am hurting and I need someone to listen to me, and it needed to be somebody in the Church that I felt like cared.” “And I needed therapy,” she added. “Obviously, like I still go to therapy. “
For his part, Cozzens told CNA that many bishops, in the midst of the Church’s current sexual abuse crisis, have built pastoral relationships with the victims of abuse. But he also acknowledged that some bishops and priests, apprehensive about litigation or negative publicity, have been nervous about their engagement with victims of clerical sexual abuse.
“For me, you just have to put the person ahead of the situation…working with someone who has been hurt…they could turn on me, or be angry with me, or say bad things about me, but that’s the risk we all take if we’re going to be part of Christ’s healing. So I think we all need to be willing to take that risk.”
The bishop said Church officials should be confident about openness to relationships with the victims of abuse, despite the fact that bishops have faced, and continue to face lawsuits, for the Church’s handling of abuse allegations.
“We can’t see these things simply as liability issues. Because you have to see the people who God puts in front of us.”
“Anyone who has been wounded by a priest needs to learn to separate, in their minds, the distinction between what priest did and who God is, and what God does, and how God works. And that’s a very difficult things, that’s why I think priest abuse is the worst kind of abuse, because it can separate a person from the source of healing, who is God,” Cozzens said.
“So we have to try and help them make that distinction. And that usually requires patience and trust.”
Cozzens knows there are many Catholics in pain over the sexual abuse scandals, and that healing does not come easy. That it comes one person at a time. And that bishops have to be willing to walk alongside those hoping to be healed.
Gina Barthel knows her healing journey is not complete. But, she says, she is grateful that Bishop Cozzens is walking alongside her.
[…]
I’m not sure what the fuss is.
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Many, many years back, the HEK 293 cell line (among others, see Children of God for LIfe website) came into existence and is currently used in a wide variety of pharmaceutical applications including vaccine production, notably the Covid vaccine, the use of which our very own Pope assures us is an “act of love.”
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https://www.axios.com/2021/08/18/pope-francis-video-ad-encourage-covid-vaccines
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Indeed, vaccines that were produced and or tested with fetal cells lines are often required for entrance into Catholic schools around the country, and I expect Catholic colleges and seminaries. Bishops around the globe (and in the Vatican) order priests, deacons, and employees to be vaccinated against certain diseases (notably Covid) with these vaccines.
Theologians (professional and armchair) assure us again and again and again that being vaccinated with any of these vaccines is acceptable (just be sure to protest!)
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So I am not entirely sure what the fuss is about IVF. In twenty or so years, I am quite confident that Theologians will assure everyone that whatever medical therapeutics invented with the destroyed left-over embryos (aka human beings) at IVF clinics is morally fine (just be sure to protest).
Along the same lines, anyone who is conceived through rape, or who has an ancestor conceived through rape, should be denied entrance to Catholic schools, right? Wait, that’s not enough — better make that anyone ever tainted with Original Sin. Sure, that leaves exactly two people eligible for the schools, Neither of Whom could possibly be educated by the tainted faculty, but I’m sure that is more than made up for by the absolute refusal to cooperate with evil.
Or we could take a page from the Apostle Paul instead. Obviously no one, and especially no Christian, should offer food to idols, nor should they encourage others to do so, but it was still permissable to buy such food in the market at a reduced price. We must not participate in evil ourselves, nor may we encourage others to participate in evil now or in the future, but evil so thoroughly permeates history that if we pretend we can avoid everything touched by it we are being dishonest hypocrites … which means we are participating in evil.
This isn’t just about the HEK 293 cell line. It’s also about slavery and the mistreatment of the American Indians. It’s about barons of industry oppressing their workers to create the modern world. It’s about pogroms and persecutions and purges. It’s about kings and presidents fighting wars and reshaping the map for money or prestige. Everyone you meet, every place you go, every tool you use is to some extent shaped by a sinful choice in the past.
Outis: Could you more clearly explain what your point is? Even though there was evil in the past, can we not oppose IVF now?
Who exactly is “pretending that we can avoid everything touched by “evil?
What does “slavery and mistreatment of American Indians” have to do with this article on IVF?
Please explain.
(I believe) He’s assimilating other “gains” made by society to their related pain to others and/or related sins – pretty much “nothing” is exempt/pure yet we have no problem with it in our daily lives? Do we subscribe to a cable network that also offers porn, so we can watch our news and TV shows?
One example may be, you do business with Amazon because it saves you money, is quick etc… yet they were one of the first to jump on the abortion travel to other states is reimbursed by their health plan bandwagon. They also have the postal service delivering non-emergency packages on Sundays (non optional for some employees – see recent court case) Based on just their revenues, how much real pushback is there on this company or any other in the U.S? If you mentioned this to someone on the street they would just shrug their shoulders, most likely, even if they raised their eyebrows when informed of any injustices. Is our own church even perfect?
I think his point is, it’s impossible to sort out/discard everything in our lives, past or present, that’s not pure – and just put ourselves in a pristine utopian situation. The fact that we kicked the Natives off their land/conquered or whatever you would like to deem it is an example. We still pay tribes billions in grants every year, but the fact of the historical related land matter still remains. We go about our lives every day with nary a thought to what took place in this matter; except maybe to remove the word “Chief” from the name of a sports team, as if that absolves us in present day (and is often being construed as an insult by the Tribes).
Will the Church baptize a baby from the surviving embryo? I imagine/hope the answer is yes, but I don’t know if this has been documented. I naively hope a soul is not yet attached to these embryos that are frozen or discarded, but Ceasar has said this is no different than using the morning after pill.
I consider that what is going on at Fordham University will eventually ruin what had been an unrivaled Law Department/Faculty and the unrivaled form of jurisprudence they had honed there. This should not be allowed to materialize; however, presently the other Departments are all caving to peculiar notions taught as normality. And that is done for the sake of having a peculiar enrollment and avoiding embarrassment, when in reality it is all abnormal. In which respect – Utter Fantasy.
In December 1983, the first babies were born using the IVF method. They happened to be twins. 41 years have passed and I don’t recall a mention of IVF until the Alabama ruling. As a result, state IVF clinics have shut down. Again, “conservative” courts have caused mayhem. The GOP is further conflicted as they try to repair internal damage that has been caused by duplicit Trump’s illegal dictations. Technology too sinful?
I am pro-life, ALL life. When I am conflicted by a topic that defies dogma, apparently today, I ask God for help. I am awaiting his answer.
I continue to ask WHY would an all loving, all omniscient God create an infertile couple? “Go forth and multiply”.
May he forgive me.
Consider Abraham’s aged and childless wife Sarah. She laughed when told by God or His angel that she would conceive by the following year.
Consider John the Baptist’s mother, Elizabeth, and how astonished she was to be pregnant after the Angel Gabriel appeared to her unbelieving husband, announcing her pregnancy, despite her old age.
How do these modern, supposedly infertile, couples know for certain that they are infertile? How do they know that God does not have a plan for them, as He did for Sarah and Elizabeth? They don’t know.
How do they know God does not have some other plan, in which celibacy would be required or preferred? They don’t know.
They need to ask God for supernatural faith, and not gravely offend Him by pursuing IVF.
I hope this helps answer your question. His ways are not our ways. And His thoughts are not our thoughts.
Genesis 18: 12-15
“…Can any task be too difficult for the Lord? At this time of year, the time I have appointed, I will come back to thee; live she till then, Sara shall have a son…
“…And when Sara, overcome with terror, denied the charge of laughing, Ah, he said, but thou didst laugh.”
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Luke 1: 5-25
“…And Zachary said to the angel, By what sign am I to be assured of this? I am an old man now, and my wife is far advanced in age …”
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Isaiah 55: 8-9
“…Not mine, the Lord says, to think as you think, deal as you deal.
“by the full height of heaven above earth, my dealings are higher than your dealings, my thoughts than your thoughts.”
— taken from Knox translation
God gives us freedom to love or not, do good or evil. I am not a scientist but I have heard that infertility is the result of human choices that pollute our environment, including the womb environment. When mothers or grandmothers take the pill, it influences the fertility of their offspring. God did not make the person infertile, pollution might have.Humans choose to pollute.
Republican politicians typically oppose abortion, but now appear to support IVF. Philosophically, these two positions would appear to be contradictory, but expect some interesting moral and intellectual gymnastics to justify this seemingly mutually exclusive position.
Perhaps that great moral philosopher and intellectual Marjorie Taylor Greene can enlighten us?
It would be naive to think any politician regardless of party affiliation would be able to align their platform with every Catholic moral principle. Informed voters should investigate the platform of each candidate and make a conscientious decision to vote for a person who most aligns with Catholic moral teaching. On the whole, the scale has always tipped toward the Republican candidates. It just has.
“Father Ezra Sullivan, OP, a professor of moral theology and psychology at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, told Robertson that the Church is ‘outspoken’ against the mass “production of children” through IVF.
I must understand a vastly different meaning of the word “outspoken.” I have never heard the Phrase IVF spoken at my home parish, or other parishes where I occasionally attend Mass. While we already have 10 states with legal Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS-Euthanasia), I have read that a number of additional states will have it on the ballot this November. I have not heard that word mentioned either. Also haven’t heard homosexuality, cohabitation, etc. mentioned. The Church being outspoken seems to mean today that a bishop who is head of a USCCB committee issues a statement on an issue – a statement which is not read by 99 out of a 100 Mass going Catholics.
If these moral issues are not addressed at the parish level, then the Church is not really being outspoken. But, thanks anyway to CWR for addressing them.
Embryo. An unborn or unhatched offspring in the process of development, in particular a human offspring during the period from approximately the second to the eighth week after fertilization [after which it is usually termed a fetus] (Oxford Dictionary).
Inhumane treatment is relative to an ‘offspring in process of development’. Human life begins at the moment of conception as insightfully taught by the Church. Life created in God’s own image, which is why the entire process from human intent in the conjugal act, until old age and death is a sacred process. Why motivation for sexual relations and the entire process of developing a relationship must be within the realization of this sacred end. Purity and impurity. Man and woman in sincere and lasting love for eachother exclusively in an act of mutual love open to life.
Any deviation violates the sacred process and offends the creator of life. A sin of impurity directly violates the author of life, who is true life, life to be experienced by the believing faithful in its fullness.
The reverence or lack given to this initial process of bringing life into the world affects most profoundly the entire spectrum of our relationship to others and to the dynamics related to world and nature. The balance of that relation is either excessive or negligent when the life process is itself devalued and abjured. That is why we currently perceive an imbalance in Church priority referring to abortion and the environment, to sexual sanctity and love of creation.
Dear Father. I appreciate your wisdom. But, with all due respect, being IVF “celibate”, I believe you speak from afar on conjugal relations. I am a nitpicker on dogmatic conclusions, especially with scientific offerings to relieve human suffering. Thoughts, infertile couples that seem forgotten….
God created man/women to his image and likeness.
God said “go forth and multiply and fill the earth”.
Our Lord Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”.
I am pro-life, ALL life. The IVF scientific process must improve. Embryos must not be discarded.
God bless.
Pope Francis recently said on X that loving neighbour and loving God are a single love.
The Commandments (of Moses) put limits, eg., eye for an eye means you can not kill for an eye. Jesus put further limits, in the Beatitudes, in some statements eg. about millstones and in the sins against the Spirit.
Like the situation with abortion, we are not to be co-opted into cryogenic infanticide by “becoming baptizers because the problem can’t be beaten”. Very serious. Abomination.
It seems that either the X statement is wrong or it fails to clarify faith teaching as it should -fully.
In fact “limit” is -and will be- an essential feature in the eschatological determination. Mercy is meant to begin justice; justice invites mercy.