Editorials
Renewing the covenant In the face of mounting allegations of sexual wrongdoing and financial improprieties, the Rev. Bruce Ritter, O.F.M. Conv., resigned as president of Covenant House February 28....
...Ritter's charisma and moral authority provided the energy and vision that propelled the agency to prominence...
...A series of conversations with the Redmonds followed...
...Ritter's Franciscan community appears to have been especially negligent in monitoring his activities...
...We are reminded once again not to confuse priests with saints, or for that matter, saints with social workers...
...Where was the church whose collar Ritter wore so proudly...
...That was early in March...
...John's, a four-building complex that lies in the Christian quarter, was occupied by Jewish seminary students and their families on Wednesday of Holy Week...
...We knew they had worked at Covenant House and suggested the possibility of their writing a first-hand account that would go beyond the stereotypes of the newspaper and TV coverage...
...One looks for numinous light, but it is dark and cramped...
...The frailty of man is nowhere more apparent than here...
...Things have been getting bad in Israel-and the Occupied Territories-for too many years without any evidence that getting worse leads to getting better...
...It is true that full-scale civil war has not broken out, that there is a significant peace movement, that there are solid contacts, cultural and political, between some Israelis and some Palestinians, that 22 percent of Israeli voters have signed a petition demanding reform of the electoral system-in other words things are not yet as bad as they could be...
...For various and complex reasons, literally millions of people came to trust him...
...Subsequently the Israeli ministry of housing has admitted to helping finance the $4 million lease with $1.8 million...
...311-316), did not come to us with their story-we went to them...
...a shocking neglect and manipulation of its own staff...
...it had been a formative part of their lives...
...How could Ritter and Covenant House have been made more accountable...
...worst of all, the chance for peace with the Palestinians could pass...
...A degree of disillusionment is inevitable in the wake of this episode, but a merely cynical response will do nothing for the children and youth who are in such great need...
...Even in the age of computerized, direct-mail solicitation, it is worth remembering that a good shepherd rescues his sheep one at a time...
...Thus Jerome Murphy-O'Connor on Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre (The Holy Land, Oxford, 1980), the site venerated as Jesus' burial place, and which, as these things are measured in the Middle East, is but a stone's throw from St...
...failed to keep its own house in order...
...The more we heard, the more we knew Covenant House's story needed telling and the Redmonds were the ones to tell it...
...There is no reason why Republicans and Democrats in Congress should join Labor and the Likud in the Knesset as hostages to zealots who owe no loyalty to the best of the Zionist vision, who view any concession to the Palestinians as too great a price to pay for peace, and who look upon not only Palestinians but other groups as intruders on their sacred turf...
...Things could get so bad that even the Congress of the United States might begin to think about its uncritical support for Israel and its $3-4 billion subvention...
...That's not easy to say...
...The demonstration ended with Israeli soldiers tear-gassing the protestors...
...It is now clear that, when and if that happens, the tragic flaws that brought the agency to this sorry pass were both personal and institutional...
...The church's autonomy keeps the doors open, cuts administrative costs, and helps to attract dedicated, talented workers...
...A BAD MOVE "One expects the central shrine of Christendom to stand out in majestic isolation, but anonymous buildings cling to it like barnacles...
...Covenant House was not just a worthy cause for them...
...it epitomizes the human condition...
...This small incident, in a land with far larger and more intractable problems, is symptomatic not only of the defensive sense of territoriality endemic to the Holy Land and alluded to by Murphy-O'Connor, but also of the unbridled jingoism with which a small group of extremists is driving Israeli policy...
...The use of funds from the U.S...
...policy which appropriately sees the status of Jerusalem as finally being settled through a peace treaty with the Palestinians...
...an arrogance and willingness to stretch the truth...
...How did Covenant House become vulnerable to such personal and financial excesses...
...Rosanne Haggerty Redmond and Mark Redmond, the authors of "The Paradoxes of Covenant House" (pp...
...All that having been said, some better method of oversight must be developed without sacrificing the benefits of independence...
...There is a school of thought that says things must get worse in Israel before they can get better...
...One hopes for peace, but the ear is assailed by a cacophony of warring chants...
...Where, we now ask, were the procedures of accountability...
...There are, indeed, many ways in which things could get worse without anyone half trying: Shamir could form a new government that would support further settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and previously restricted areas of the old city...
...No one man, regardless of his talents or virtue, should be given unchecked dominion over an $88-million pasture...
...To some extent the very nature of Covenant House made such mismanagement inevitable...
...For them, writing honestly about Covenant House seemed to involve an element of betrayal...
...By the time things get that bad, we are afraid that it will be too late for the U.S...
...They had a more difficult decision to make...
...But first a word of explanation...
...in recent years, in our view, it has not been adequately tested by acts of courage on the part of mainstream Israeli politicians...
...The answers are both technical and subtle: a misguided preference for large-scale operations and publicity over less glamorous alternatives...
...The occupation was followed on Holy Thursday by a protest that included a Greek Orthodox priest removing the Star of David placed to cover the Greek Cross on the entrance door...
...and, most dismaying, a willingness to use and be used by those whose political agenda conspicuously ignored the chronic social and economic problems that made Covenant House necessary in the first place...
...In the end, the Redmonds judged, as Muriel Spark wrote (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), that "it's only possible to betray where loyalty is due...
...Treasury is a domestic concern of Americans...
...interests, the cause of peace, or the future stability of Israel...
...It does not accurately represent the state of public opinion in this country, or in Israel...
...Nevertheless, with donations plummeting and public confidence shattered, Covenant House, the nation's largest shelter program for runaway and homeless children, may be teetering toward collapse...
...Blind congressional advocacy of any official Israeli policy however dubious does not serve U.S...
...We second that acknowledgement and share that hope...
...The accuracy of this perception isn't all that clear...
...Sharon, who left the right-wing Likud government over Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's feeble, but now abandoned, support for a peace process, is positioning himself to take that right wing ever further right...
...Ritter continues to deny any wrongdoing...
...An opportunity now exists to send a different message...
...Such sexual delinquency has done enormous damage to the individuals involved and to the credibility of the institution...
...At the same time, our own Congress was busying itself passing a nonbinding resolution to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel, despite U.S...
...By its vote Congress contributes to the bellicose direction of Israeli policy...
...If the idea of spiritual authority is to survive-an idea much needed in a world awash with "experts"-churchmen must demonstrate both a reasoned and a passionate reticence when assuming the mantle of worldly power...
...Did anyone think to remind him of these priestly obligations...
...John's Hospice in the old city (divided by tradition into Christian, Armenian, Muslim, and Jewish quarters...
...The Redmonds take pains to acknowledge the good that has been accomplished at Covenant House, sometimes by heroic means, and they express the hope that the agency will emerge from its current crisis with a more effective program and a deeper understanding of the structures that generate despair and result in wasted lives...
...There is no reason why Americans should be complicit in Israel's heedless, potentially suicidal course...
...In any case, it needs to be balanced by a counter-perception...
...It is an old story: unconstrained, Ritter's compelling gifts led to folly...
...The occupation of St...
...The standard rationale for such behavior is the fractionated state of Israeli politics: to get or keep a majority in the Knesset, it is said, any Israeli coalition needs votes from extremist groups, and will therefore wink at or connive in their endless challenge to Israel's democracy...
...But: we are already profoundly involved in those affairs...
...an essentially monarchical corporate structure that was allowed to function without accountability...
...Others have been scandalously evasive...
...Some dioceses have set clear policies and have dealt openly and honestly with particular incidents...
...It is more than a bitter irony that Ritter felt he could control a private $900,000 trust fund and wield nearly dictatorial power over a multimillion-dollar enterprise and still be faithful to the religious ideals of humility, poverty, and obedience...
...Surely much of Ritter's appeal, and the foundation upon which contributors' trust was built, derived from his status as a priest and a Franciscan...
...One desires holiness, only to encounter a jealous possessiveness: the six groups of occupants-Latin Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians-watch one another suspicously for any infringement of rights...
...Soviet Jewish emigrants could overwhelm the capacity of Israel to absorb them while providing many potential votes to the right-wing coalition...
...And peace in the Middle East is not an exclusively Israeli matter.usively Israeli matter...
...John's Hospice was patently wrong and so provocative as to be potentially explosive-the more so, of course, because of the Israeli government's hidden collusion in the action...
...You will read in the following pages more about those flaws and the true nature of Covenant House's failures...
...Ariel Sharon, who provoked similar reactions when he took up residence in the Muslim quarter (a building now replete with a giant Menorah and an Israeli flag displayed on its roof), was on hand to support the settlers and to provoke more ill-will among Christians and Muslims, who live in the old city...
...to exercise whatever leverage it may have, and too late for Israel to grasp the opportunity for peace now offered by moderate Palestinians...
...Is it any wonder, then, that efforts to speak truth to power on issues such as abortion and economic justice are greeted with suspicion, if not disdain, by the secular world...
...Any such step will be described as an unwarranted intervention in Israel's domestic affairs...
...It is owned by the Greek Orthodox church, but was sublet through its Armenian lessee to the settlers through circuitous arrangments designed to hide the group's true identity...
...Free from the bureaucratic, legal, and political compromises inherent in government programs, the church can have a more immediate impact on problems...
...For Catholics, the tragedy engulfing Ritter seems to have a parallel in the hypocrisies of evangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker...
...It sends the wrong message...
...Furthermore, whatever the truth of the specific sexual allegations against Ritter, the church needs to confront forthrightly those clergy who abuse the trust so many place in them...
...In the Covenant House case, as in too many others, the church has failed to take care of its own...
...Covenant House's current administrators admit that a too "deferential" attitude was taken toward the inspirational priest, and that the $88-million-a-year enterprise was run in an unorthodox fashion...
...Indeed, they judged that continued silence about Ritter and the program meant betraying the children they wanted to help...
...Americans of all political and religious groupings should urge Congress to condition current appropriation bills upon Israel's agreement to end new settlements in the Occupied Territories and previously restricted areas of the old city...
...A certain freedom and flexibility need to be preserved in church-related institutions...
Vol. 117 • May 1990 • No. 10
