THE SECRETS OF A SMALL-TOWN PRIEST
Posted October 15, 2000
MICHAEL WILSON - The Oregonian
October 15, 2000
Correction: PUBLISHED CORRECTION RAN 10/16/2000, FOLLOWS:
* University of Portland is affiliated with the Congregation of Holy Cross. An incorrect affiliation was reported Sunday in an article about the Rev. Maurice Grammond’s history of sexual abuse.
The boy would talk to God while he walked to school.
God, let me do well on my test today. God, let me make a friend today. God, let me not get beat up today.
The boy was new to the small mill town of Oakridge, east of Eugene, a rougher place than anywhere he’d ever lived. He was 12 years old, and his was a boy’s Catholicism. He believed God was looking out for him, listening to him.
He enjoyed Mass at St. Michael’s Catholic Church. He wanted to be an altar boy, to please his mother, but more important, to please a girl he saw at church.
He asked the priest to put him on the list and checked every week, but never saw his name.
"Then something wonderful happened," the boy, now grown into a middle-age man, recalled. "Or so I thought at the time."
A new priest came to Oakridge.
The boy had never heard of the Rev. Maurice Grammond. No one in 1950s Oakridge had. Now everyone knows him. An obscure parish priest has become the Archdiocese of Portland’s greatest shame.