Why This Texas Verdict Hits a Nerve for Catholics

It lands with that same sickening thud, doesn't it. Another priest. Another courtroom. Another set of people who came looking for God, or at least for help, and found someone willing to use the collar like a weapon.

This week a Texas jury found Fr. Anthony Odiong guilty of sexually abusing women under his spiritual care. I wish I could say the details shocked me. Some did. The mention of spiritual direction, confession, vulnerable women in crisis, that part didn't surprise me nearly enough, and I hate that about us. We still talk as if abuse only counts when the victim is a child, as if adults can't be trapped, manipulated, cornered by someone who speaks with sacramental authority.

They can. Of course they can.

I've sat across from people in my office who were barely holding it together, divorce papers folded in a purse, mascara half gone, trying not to cry because they felt embarrassed crying in front of a priest. In those moments the power imbalance is obvious to me. Maybe not always to them, especially if they came in desperate for stability and someone calm in black clerics seemed like safe ground. That's why this kind of crime feels so vile. It takes trust at its most fragile and twists it.

The collar doesn't make him less dangerous

One thing that bugs me every time one of these stories breaks is how quickly Church language can get weirdly passive. "Boundary violations." "Inappropriate relationship." No. If a priest targets someone under his spiritual care for sex, that's not murky. That's exploitation.

I know some people still hear "adult woman" and immediately start doing mental gymnastics. They imagine consent as if this were two equals meeting on an app and making bad decisions. That's not what spiritual direction is. That's not what confession is. When someone comes to you as their priest, especially carrying grief, fear, shame, or trauma, you don't get to pretend you're just another man in the room.

You're not.

And honestly, most priests know this instinctively. You feel it even in ordinary parish life. A late-night text from someone spiraling. A person who starts depending on your attention too much. The little inner alarm that says, slow down, set clearer boundaries, loop in other support, do not play savior here. If you're healthy and honest, you respect that alarm.

Years ago I had a parishioner start bringing me banana bread every Thursday after daily Mass. Very good banana bread too, which complicated my discernment more than it should have. But it became clear she wasn't just being kind, she was attaching in a way that needed gentleness and distance, not encouragement. So I pulled back and made sure she connected with a solid Catholic counselor and a women's group at the parish instead of orbiting around Father all week. That's normal pastoral responsibility. Not heroism. Just basic decency.

The part we still don't want to say out loud

This case also pokes at something the Church has been clumsy about for years, abuse of adults by clergy is often treated like an awkward side issue instead of what it is, serious predation.

I think some Catholics prefer cleaner categories because they're easier on our consciences. Child abuse is evil, full stop. Everyone agrees. But when the victim is an adult woman who entered spiritual direction willingly or kept returning to the priest or got tangled up emotionally over time, people start getting fidgety. They want the story to become messy enough that nobody has to call it what it is.

That's cowardly.

Adults can be groomed too. Adults can freeze too. Adults can comply because saying no to "Father" doesn't feel possible anymore once he has wrapped sex around prayer and secrecy and guilt and the promise that this means something holy or special or necessary. Sin loves confusion. Predators do too.

And yes, there is another layer here that makes my blood run cold, the movement across dioceses, states, institutions, all those little jurisdictional gaps where accountability goes fuzzy and paperwork gets thin and suddenly nobody seems able to answer basic questions about where exactly he was serving and under whose watch at any given moment.

I've seen simpler versions of this bureaucratic shrug before. Not in criminal cases like this one, thank God, but enough to know how easy it is for responsibility to dissolve into phrasing like smoke. He belongs here but served there but lived over there but lacked faculties somewhere else but maybe had permission once upon a time from somebody now retired... you can lose your mind listening to it.

Meanwhile victims are expected to remember exact dates from fifteen years ago while institutions can't seem to locate their own spine.

What repentance would actually look like

A guilty verdict matters. Civil law naming abuse clearly matters a lot. Texas has laws recognizing sexual exploitation by clergy in these situations, and frankly more places should stop acting squeamish about spelling this out legally.

Still, juries can only do so much after the damage is done.

For the Church, repentance can't just mean issuing one more sad statement about prayers for healing while declining comment because legal proceedings are ongoing or personnel files are complicated or canonical status remains unclear pending communication with some chancery office halfway across the globe. I've read enough of those statements to last me three lifetimes.

Repentance would look like radical clarity.

Name who knew what and when. Publish assignments promptly and fully. Stop hiding behind technical distinctions ordinary Catholics don't understand and frankly shouldn't have to understand just to know whether their priest was safe around vulnerable people. Treat exploitation in spiritual care as abuse without waiting for public outrage to force plain speech.

And maybe one more thing.

We priests need fewer illusions about ourselves. The mythology of Father as uniquely holy, uniquely trusted, uniquely needed... it's dangerous if we start believing our own press clippings. A priest isn't safer because he's ordained. In some situations he's more dangerous precisely because he is ordained.

That's the hard sentence nobody wants framed in the parish hall.

Tonight some Catholic somewhere will walk into church carrying private grief and look at a priest hoping for mercy from God through him. Most priests will honor that trust well and quietly and with clean hands. Thanks be to God for that.

Still, after news like this, I keep thinking about the confessional mentioned in testimony, that small place built for truth telling becoming part of somebody's nightmare instead.

How do we make sure no one ever has to flinch at that door again?