To the Editor:
Bishop Gelineau died a peaceful death. As head of the Providence diocese during his twenty-five year tenure, 1972-1997, he was directly responsible for reassigning molesting priests throughout RI.
In a Mark Patinkin naive interview regarding a decline in faith and dwindling numbers of men entering the priesthood, Gelineau said, “It’s a cultural change. People are distracted…not reaching out to religion as a priority.”
Distracted? No, people have been horrified and disgusted by the rampant unaccountability on the part of the Roman Catholic Church.
Interestingly, Gelineau traveled to Haiti in the 70s and created the Providence-Haiti Project where one notable molester reassigned by Bishop Gelineau for years was Father Normand J. Demers whose resume includes:
* St. Joseph Church, Providence 1974-1990 where he is reported to have resigned and taken a short leave of absence in 1990, after he was accused of “inappropriate behavior”.
* The Haitian Project 1986 which Demers helped found and was accused in 1989 of inappropriately touching boys at this Haiti orphanage. He was briefly jailed in Haiti and the orphanage asked him to resign.
Providence Bishop Gelineau allowed him to continue working in the Providence diocese. (Providence Journal-Bulletin April 19, 2002).
Demers’ career continued under Bishop Mulvee where he was reassigned to St. Martha’s Church in East Providence .
* Fatima Hospital where Allegations in 2002 that Demers sexually molested a 12- to 14-year-old boy.
Demers, allowed to retire in 2016, died in 2018 with no consequences.
Underlying all the “good” Gelineau may have done was the underlying filth of what he really was doing in supporting the destruction of children’s lives in Rhode Island. Sadly, reassigning Demers to St. Joseph Church intersected with my family where he molested a family member.
Bobbi Houllahan
An Iliad? Shouldn’t it be The Iliad? And Bill Harley? Isn’t he a story teller and singer for children? Well, there’s power in that small change of an article, from “The” to “An.” And regardless of his reputation among parents of small children, Bill Harley has proven himself in An Iliad to be a dramatist of the first order.
The play opens when a lone actor, Bill Harley, enters a simple room, closing the door on a storm that’s raging outside. Who is this person dressed in modern garb who will tell us the tale of Achilles and the Trojan War? Is he a modern incarnation of the blind poet Homer, who first brought this story to our attention hundreds of years ago? Or is he something more than that, someone who has existed from the time of Homer to the present?
With Cathy Clasper-Torch accompanying Harley on stage with violin and cello sounds that match the mood of the story being told, Harley tells us about the wrath of Achilles. How Agamemnon steals Achilles Trojan War trophy-concubine, Briseis. In retaliation, Achilles vows to no longer fight with the Greeks against the Trojans. With the Greeks now losing the war, Achilles’ beloved friend Patroclus goes into battle wearing Achilles’ armor, only to be brutally slain by Hector. Seeking revenge for his friend’s death, Achilles suits up in new armor forged by the gods, kills Hector, then ties his body to his chariot and mercilessly drags it around the walls of Troy. This blood lust ends only when Hector’s father, Priam, begs for the return of his son’s body for a proper burial and Achilles consents.
And here is where the singular “The” becomes the one-of-many “An.” There was no one-and-done Iliad. The brutality and the blood lust of that war has been repeated over and over again, from the time of Homer to our current times. In one moving scene, Harley with mounting emotion, gives us a non-stop recitation of all the wars and atrocities that have plagued this world from the time of the Trojan War to the present. The effort has him almost collapsing on stage in exhaustion and disgust. And it is not only war that has moved from the singular to the many, it is the emotions of hate and brutality that have been multiplied. In Harley’s expert depictions of the seething anger that allows both Hector and Achilles to perform horrible acts of violence, he provides more than just a clue that none of us is immune from acting in a similar way.
The door Harley first enters temporarily protects us from the storm outside, but the storm is still out there raging.
An Iliad, a play written by Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare, is currently playing at the Burbage Theatre in Pawtucket (www.burbagetheatre.org) now through November 24th.
Robert Bedick
LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
The obituary of Mr Gelineau should have included how many people his church victimized during his tenure as Bishop and the little he did to stop the abuse. Glorifying the leadership of a totally corrupt institution is bad form. We must speak truth to power.
Greg Gerritt
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