The Rev. Tom Doyle didn’t tell the 150 people who turned out to hear him speak in Portland last week that his boss had fired him as a military chaplain.

In fact, it was not the first career disruption for the outspoken Roman Catholic priest, and it was not why he came to Maine.

Doyle met at St. Pius X Catholic Church with the Maine chapter of Voice of the Faithful to talk about what he’s been doing throughout the country for the past two decades: offering comfort and support to the victims and survivors of sexual abuse by priests.

He also encouraged lay Catholics and groups like Voice of the Faithful to continue supporting victims and demanding accountability about clergy abuse from bishops and diocesan officials.

“We have a long way to go before there’s full accountability on the part of the institution that covered up, that manipulated, that revictimized and that essentially has kept this terrible abuse alive decade after decade after decade,” Doyle said.

Three days after Doyle spoke in Portland, The New York Times reported that he had been quietly removed from his job as an Air Force chaplain over pastoral issues with his archbishop.

And in 1986, the Vatican embassy in Washington ended his employment as a staff canon lawyer after Doyle wrote a detailed memo to the nation’s bishops that warned of a pending sexual abuse crisis.

Doyle became the most outspoken U.S. priest in criticizing the U.S. hierarchy’s handling of the scandal. He has provided pastoral counsel to victims and expert legal advice in hundreds of suits against the church.

Last year, Voice of the Faithful awarded Doyle, 59, its first Priest of Integrity Award.

Born in Michigan, Doyle grew up in Cornwall, Ontario, just across the border from New York state. Ordained in 1970, he studied canon law in Rome and earned his doctorate in Washington, D.C., where he began serving in the Vatican’s embassy in 1981.

After Vatican service, Doyle enlisted as a U.S. Air Force chaplain.

Last September, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of the Archdiocese for the Military Services withdrew his endorsement of Doyle as chaplain. Doyle can no longer function as a priest on military bases or celebrate the Sacraments.

The stated reason: disagreement over whether military chaplains must provide public Masses every day, but church critics have charged that Doyle’s advocacy for victims was the underlying reason.

David Clohessy of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said last week that “the only reasonable conclusion” is that Doyle was punished for victim advocacy.

He is scheduled to retire in August, when he turns 60. He continues to work at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base near Goldsboro, N.C., where he provides drug and alcohol counseling.

While the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland has not been rocked by sexual abuse scandals as the Boston Archdiocese has, it has not gone unscathed.

In February 2002, now-retired Bishop Joseph J. Gerry removed two priests, the Rev. Michael Doucette and the Rev. John Audibert, who were accused of sexual abuse of minors years before they arrived in their Aroostook County parishes. Two months later, Gerry removed the Rev. Leo James Michaud after the priest was accused of having had a relationship with a teenage boy 25 years earlier.

In the past, when priests strayed from celibacy, Doyle said in Portland on April 26, the responses to such incidents were controlled by the institutional church.

“The radical difference today is that the institution is not in control of the responses,” he said. “In this era’s debacle of sexual abuse by the clergy, the pope and the bishops are not in charge. The laypeople are, the legal establishment is, and the victims are. They will determine how this drama is played out. And I tell you just as sure as I’m standing here, we are a long, long, long way from this being over.”

In answer to a question about what advice Doyle might offer Maine’s new bishop, the Most Rev. Richard Malone, Doyle urged Malone to “get out of the office.”

“He should break the mold and travel from home after home to apologize and listen and absorb the anger of the victims,” Doyle said. “It’s the Christian thing to do and there are still victims who have not felt that touch, that feeling from the church.”

The sexual abuse scandal, however, has caused many Catholics – clergy and laity – to rethink their definition of church, Doyle said, and see the church envisioned not by popes but the one modeled by Jesus Christ.

“The Christ that we’re talking about, the one who we read about on Sundays and whenever else we hear the Gospels was a Christ of love and understanding and compassion and care,” Doyle said. “He didn’t walk around with an administrative assistant and certainly not with a canon lawyer. He encountered sin and evil and he took that stuff and separated it from the people. We have to be able to do the same thing.”

Doyle said that seeing how the church handled complaints from victims of sexual abuse has caused him to rethink his own relationship with God, the church and its people.

“The miracles of Christ – the things that were the most miraculous in his life – were not pulling something like turning a few barrels of water into chardonnay or raising people from the dead,” Doyle said. “That was dramatic.

“For me, the revolutionary thing and the most miraculous thing this man did was stand up to the society and the established religion of his time – to walk outside and embrace the untouchables, the riffraff, the rejects, the unattractive.

“That was tough and that was essentially what got him into trouble. He didn’t get in trouble because he threatened the wine industry, but he did get in trouble because he stood in the face of organized religion and in the face of their hypocrisy. That I find miraculous and the source of my faith.”

It is those steps that Doyle will continue to take as long as he’s able.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Thomas Doyle

? Born Patrick Michael Doyle, Aug. 3, 1944, in Sheboygan, Mich.

? Grew up in Cornwall, Ontario.

? Ordained a Dominican priest on May 16, 1970, and took the name Thomas.

? Studied canon law in Rome in 1973.

? Earned a master’s degree in church law from St. Paul University in Ottawa and a Ph.D. from The Catholic University of America in 1978.

? Began serving as a canon lawyer at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1981.

? Enlisted in the Air Force as a chaplain in 1986.

? Relieved of duties as a chaplain in 2003.

SOURCE: “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II” by Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Free Press, 2004.