I've said it a million times before, you cannot write my family. It is a melange of general oddballs, norms, and life paths so varied that were they not to get together on a semi annual basis for holidays, you would be hard pressed to know they were related at all. Alright so there is the whole genetic bit as well, but that isn't really what I am on about. One of my favorite stories about my family is that of my uncle and his husband. The gay uncle isn't really so unusual, I've an aunt who showed up with her, "friend," at a fair shake of familial events and they are all but married, for all I know they may be. What was different about this man, was that he was a career, Catholic priest.

I thought this was funny as fuck for obvious reasons, it was like a sitcom. You could call it Holy Men, and get a nice play on words. This man was also notoriously annoying were he to have gotten your email address; take the worst chain emails your politically interested family members have sent you (large, bold, colored fonts, with various jabs and poor photoshopping they just can't see), and multiply this by one hundred and you get a bit of what this man is about. He happens to be of a conservative disposition, which only adds to the irony of the situation at hand.

When I was coming down state from the cabin this weekend, I got a call from my mother informing me that this man who I have know my entire life, had been listed on an Archdiocese document as one of several priests who had been accused of abuse during their career. Before I go any further, I will say that I was not in any way abused by this man; my only thought on him prior to this was that he was a hypocrite of the highest caliber and very difficult to maintain a conversation with about anything. The allegations, whenever they occurred were also levied from out of state at a previous posting he had while still ordained.

Those who raised children around this man, my mother included, are understandably pissed. I cannot put myself in their place of having brought children around someone who was accursed of this, even if he wasn't formally convicted, but there it is. They now have to face their own brother, who married this man and have a very frank, very awkward conversation for what this means for his marriage and for the family, and my uncle is of the disposition that his husband was either wrongfully accused, or is innocent, take your pick I suppose.


All this is happening for me through a very odd window, I am not close enough with anyone in my extended family to do much besides pull up a chair and watch as this unfolds from a distance. This just isn't one of those life experiences anything would ever really prepare you for, and nor should you be prepared for it. I've not gotten the chance to see if I can dig up anything on the actual allegations, and given the time frame I've to work with, the likely hood the Church left much to find would seem pretty low.

In my head this is the kind of act that in my head you don't really get a second chance about. I've never thought of this man as any real relation of my own. He is not one of those in laws you actually feel close to. In this respect I think I understand a very small portion of the anger that my parents and relatives are feeling about this whole situation. You can't undo this kind of allegation, there is no burying that in the back of your head when you see your cousins running around on Christmas and he is there.

Guilty or not, the damage is done, and I don't see this man recovering any modicum of his reputation with those in my family in the short while I imagine he has left (he is markedly older than my uncle and in very poor health as it stands). Before he was just a man I preferred not to talk with because it was cumbersome conversation, and there was very little mutual ground to begin with, I don't see myself talking with him again in the future, and I would frankly be surprised were he to attend Christmas or Thanksgiving in the months to come. I really don't know how a family is meant to respond to something like this, and I hope my actual uncle comes out as unscathed as possible.