Philly in Ireland?
John Allen reports on the situation in Ireland in advance of another government report on Church handling of the sex abuse crisis, this one focused in the diocese of Cloyne.
Sounds a lot like the situation in Philadelphia:
the Irish bishops adopted a groundbreaking set of policies in 1996, among other things pledging to report alleged abuse to police and prosecutors. The new report apparently shows that those commitments were not honored in Cloyne as recently as 2008.
At a conference at the Milltown Institute in April, Marie Keenan, a social worker and psychotherapist at University College Dublin specializing in child sexual abuse
said that clinical work with priest-abusers has shown that many live “sex-obsessed lives of terror,” which is a product of the organizational culture out of which they emerged.
In fact, Keenan hinted, the church is lucky that the crisis isn’t worse. Given a theology of sexuality that can fuel “self-hatred and shame,” she argued, coupled with a theology of priesthood that “sets them apart in an unhealthy manner,” the question isn’t why so many priests abused; it’s why more didn’t.
Keenan offered a series of proposals:
A new theology of priesthood that would treat the distinction between the clerical and lay states as “more symbolic and less literal”;
A new ecclesiology that would treat Catholicism more as a “moral and social proposition” and less as a “power apparatus”;
A “serious study of decision-making procedures within the Catholic hierarchy”;
Rather than creating its own child safety protection offices and review boards, which Keenan said are fast becoming “bureaucratic, legalistic and costly,” the church should instead “cooperate fully with the state” and independent bodies devoted to child welfare.
OK, Keenan’s a psychotherapist, not a theologian. But she seems to have hit on a lot of the issues raised at dotCommonweal (and elsewhere) on the crisis. Maybe this would be a good next topic for the National Lay Review Board–to sponsor a series of talks on the fundamentals they’ve identified as contributing to the crisis. Thoughts?
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
Keenan seems to portray the abusers as victims. No thanks.
Lisa,
Keenan goes beyond what we do not dare to say here. The unhealthy attitude of the clergy toward sex and power. This is truly a pathology. We have not had great luck in attacking the lack of morals in the clergy. Perhaps we will get somewhere if we focus on the pathology of the clergy.
The essential problem lies in the fact that the diocese (mirroring the papacy) is still essentially an absolute monarchy. A bishop can rule a diocese in a manner that can be as un-accountable and un-transparent and unjust as he chooses; the mechanisms to enforce transparency, accountability and modern standards of justice are weak—as though in an autocracy it could be otherwise. Bishops still control information, procedures and outcomes. It is a question of power, plain and simple.
From ESSENTIAL NORMS FOR DIOCESAN/EPARCHIAL POLICIES DEALING WITH ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE OF MINORS BY PRIESTS OR DEACONS:
“To assist diocesan/eparchial bishops, each diocese/eparchy will also have a review board which will function as a confidential consultative body to the bishop/eparch in discharging his responsibilities. … Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the diocesan bishop/eparch, with the advice of a qualified review board, to determine the gravity of the alleged act.”
A confidential consultative body that is only empowered to advise—such is life in an absolute monarchy. The perpetuation of the autocratic power of the bishop trumps all.
Here in Philly we have learned the lesson. The review board cannot function with any integrity. Allegations should be reported to the police and the archdiocese should be compelled to cooperate. The bishops have demonstrated that they are incapable of overseeing investigations into sexual crimes.
I don’t understand Jim P.”s comment.
Keenan sounds like Abp. Martin or Juastice Burke at US Catholic today.
It’s beyond the Review Board t oserious questions on how the hierarchy operates, clerica,lism ,mattiruty and (I hate to harp on this) BASIC HONESTY!
“Allegations should be reported to the police….”
Doesn’t that say it all in a nunshell, especially where there’s a need for real responding to take place in a diocese. People simply can’t afford to make any more initial mistakes. Mistakes are always initial anyway. Sadly, in this case or mess, there is but an inch of difference between an initial mistake and a crime.
Philly is not only in Ireland, but everywhere.
Robert Bennett on the initial National Review Board:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/119674059.html
Bennett did “not think Philadelphia was an anomaly” in failing to adequately investigate abuse charges against its priests. “These things are pretty universal,” he said.
Marie Keenan is absolutely on target, raising issues about sexuality and clericalism that Tom Doyle, Gene Kennedy, Richard Sipe and others have been emphasizing for years.
Look at the unhealthy environment within: theology of the priesthood, of sexuality, of authority.
Kennedy is writing now about this subject, and his book will be an invaluable contribution. Also, Geoffrey Robinson in Australia correctly pinned sex and power as the keystones.
Finally, maybe the core issues are reaching critical mass for examination. This is very exciting and hopeful, if it is not quashed at the outset by a willful refusal to face reality.
I believe the NRB is involved in the causes and context study to be released someday. But it will more than probably ignore the questions Keenan cites. I seriously doubt bishops will admit such problems to themselves, and we will get more word fog about irrelevancies.
A comment seen after John Allen’s article: “Do this thought experiment: can you imagine anything in the Dublin or any other report that would shock you? That’s how bad this has become.”
Indeed, I cannot make any comment that I have not made before.
Did the big, mean church actually expect these men to abide by the promises they made? Poor babies.
Clearly, they committed no sins nor are guilty of any crimes – they did no wrong, no deceit was found in their mouths. It wasn’t them, it was the culture.
I would always turn to a psychologist for advice on how to structure the church, particularly given the profession’s track record of advising bishops as to how their offending priests were cured and ready for parish reassignment.
Come to think of it, there are quite a few married people who exhibit signs of self-hatred and sexual obsession. Clearly, the only solution is to abolish marriage and set up something more symbolic in its place.
I thought Robert Bennett’s other comment was enlightening: “I don’t know what the alternative would be,” Bennett said, “but you probably need somebody outside the church apparatus monitoring the process.” The lack of imagination here is striking, and Bennett sounds like he at least has some clue about what’s been going on.
Out here in the “secular world” we have this thing called public auditing, “the examination of the records and reports of an enterprise or departments of government by specialists … other than those responsible for their preparation.” (Wikipedia entry on Public Auditing)
It’s not like we haven’t figured out a few things about organizations in the past century or so, like how to implement transparency and accountability and employ modern standards of justice. Yet this is not an environment in which an absolute monarchy will likely survive. In the conflict between the Church’s autocratic structure of governance and reality, reality takes it on the chin in a classic case of cognitive dissonance. This gets to Carolyn Disco’s point about “a willful refusal to face reality.” That’s exactly the problem – the hierarchy’s mindset, driven by the only way it currently knows how to run the Church, disregards reality itself and disregards reason and evidence as a means to understand it.
The papal dismissal of the “secular world” (also known as God’s creation) as steeped in “relativism” offers a handy way to ignore the secular world’s hard-won knowledge and wisdom: its standards of representative governance, accountability, transparency and justice, and it’s evolving understanding of sexuality. Yet the bishops are in a pickle. If they are truly open to the full scope of evidence and reason on any one issue, it will create the expectation that they will be open and rational about all issues. The whole papal party line either stands inviolate or falls as a whole to the scrutiny of evidence-based reason, including the party line on governance AND the party line on matters sexual. It’s all one big toxic conflation.
The papacy and hierarchy don’t need to apologize, they need to atone by reforming Church governance to reflect modern standards of representative governance, accountability, transparency and justice.
NCR has a good essay showing some new directions in the discussion that occurred with Diarmuid Martin at the Marquette conference:
“The difference in this conference — indeed, the something new — could be seen in two elements: Bishops and priests were speaking in a way that one rarely hears them talk about sex abuse; and in their prepared remarks, many of the clerics dared to look at themselves and what we call, for lack of a term that accommodates more nuance, clerical culture.”
http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/clerics-critique-brings-something-new-talk-abuse-crisis
It avoids reference to a new theology of sexuality, but pins down some elements of clericalism. Yes, the culture matters, which is not to say personal responsibility doesn’t.
But when you’re practically trained for dysfunction, as were many left to struggle alone with what they did not understand, that’s a recipe for problems not solved by personal prayer alone. The spiritual bypass has its limits. Where sickness and evil intersect is a terrible place. Controls are essential, external and internal, but so is knowledge of the underlying dynamics — with a heavy dose of humility.
I don’t undersatnd Jim P.’s last paragraph analogy.
The issuescited by Jeanne, Carolyn, and beyond by Justice Burke et al point strongly to institutional strucurtal reform’s necessity!
Transparency is a well known and powerful antidote to al kinds of corruption, both organizational and psychological. As Tom Friedman says, “There is no greater restraint on human behavior than having other people watching exactly what you’re up to.”
A smart move for the National Review Board in 2011 would be to read the USCCB National Review Board’s “A Report on the Crisis ….” of Feb 27, 2004 — out loud, nationally. The Board under then-chair Justice Anne Burke provided findings and recommendations which, had they been seriously implemented by all the members of the USCCB, would have created a very different US situation from the one observable over the past 7 years and today. In hindsight, the Board’s major error, understandably, was misplaced hope for the future. Recent experience with “zero tolerance”, “audits”, legal tactics, lay roles, and bishops’ obligations may suggest refinements. Meanwhile, that old report would be a powerful starting point, bolstered by the lonely voices of Abp. Diarmuid Martin and of Justice Burke, who is still speaking out on the critical need for the truthfulness that is missing.
http://www.usccb.org/nrb/nrbstudy/nrbreport.htm
http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2011/04/scandal-continues-clergy-sex-abuse-crisis
I spent time in minor seminary in the middle 1950s. Most of us were about as immature as we could be. Psycho-sexual development most likely was a million miles out into space as a formation concept – but we sure learned that we should not for close attachments, nor have our room doors closed more than 12 inches if there was someone other than one’s roomate in the room. The entire culture at that time fostered an outlook that, once one was finally ordained (I was invited to spend more “time in the world” – thank God!) the chances of having a healthy outlook on sexuality, one’s relationship to non-ordained adults, and a proper sense of the priest’s role in the social milieu of the parish were quite slim. None of this excuses sexual abuse, but it does point to an environment in which hot house tomatoes rather than mature men were turned into priests.
People can mock the issue of “culture’, but Karen Sue Smith has an excellent post at America’s “In All Things” on the problem of the “culture of complicity” about Japan, the financial crisis, and the Church and the sex abuse dcandal and how it insulates higher ups at the expense of vioctims.
It made me think of a letter to the Editor by the Chancellor of Chicago about Cardinal George and al lhe’s done -another in house PR piece.
Instead of real responsibility, the culture not only of complicity, but immaturity (Jimy Mac is spot on) and of narcissisim (the otherness of the clergy ”the pirest is everything” -underscores how far we are from facing up to the tasks laid out by Abp. Martin, Justice Burke and a host of others who ask for real honesty and accountability.
“I spent time in the minor seminary in the middle 1950′s.”
Jim Mac, I hope you don’t really believe a minor seminary in the 1950 is analogous to a major seminary today. Minor seminaries were for children between the ages of 12 and seventeen. There are no such US institutions today. Major seminarians are for the most part in their twenties and thirties. Most have experienced the world as it were. Big difference! To a degree, Jim P. has a point: comparison or comparing (in some posts) seems the resort (or contrivance) of those who cannot reach the heart of the things compared. Who is it that said — anger is to think too many things in succession too fast, or of one thing too exclusively? He or she had it right, indicating the depths (in this mess) of our anger and thirst for honesty, transparency. But make the right distinctions!
James C –
The Legion of Christ runs three minor seminaries in the US today, and one in Canada. Enrollment is for boys from grade 7 to 12.
See http://www.legionariesofchrist.org/eng/articulos/categoria.phtml?lc=se-241_ca-984_ci-801&width=1024&height=768
The one in my state of NH also runs weekend retreats for interested boys. Archbishop O’Brien of Baltimore was concerned about the separation of minors from their parents, leading to one-on-one spiritual direction with the Legion’s heavy-handed methods.
From NCR:
“O’Brien: But what goes on in the one-on-one counseling … there seems to be a tendency to say, ‘We represent God. You can tell us anything, and you better believe that what we tell you is from God too. If your parents disagree, we know better. We’re in the God business, and they’re really not.’ This is a caricature, but it’s there.
They sponsor father/son weekends. The father drives 14 hours, brings the kid up to New Hampshire and drops the kid off at 11:00 at night. Where’s the father going to stay? Well, there’s a place about 40 miles away you can stay, so the father’s sleeping in the car overnight. Next day they’re ready for the hike, but no, the fathers don’t go, it’s just the counselors and the kids. That’s the tendency.
Who’s in charge of this? Who’s responsible? Each time you meet with an official, [they say], ‘Oh, no, that didn’t happen, did it? You should have let us know right away. That’s not right.’ But it happens over and over again.”
Why isn’t the Legion dissolved? And why do bishops allow those minor seminaries in their dioceses? “Gifts” from the Legion perhaps?
Minor seminaries may matter in trying to explain today’s Church problems because of the present roles of some of their products in running the Church. Starting a boy on the path to priesthood that early removed him from the less constrained alternatives and formative sub-cultures open to most boys in that stage of life.
An enormous maturing transition occurs in most young males in our society between the ages of roughly 14 and 20. Through the teens, a boy evolves into a man under the complicated influences of his surroundings and experiences. The change is varied, irregular, turbulent at times, and unique to the individual, and it is an extremely important step in constructing the foundations of the man that will follow.
A few examples of men who started on the road to priesthood at early ages are Crd. Burke (14), Abp. Dolan, (14), Crd. O’Malley (12), and Crd. George, all successful by Church standards. The question to be asked is whether some of their evident conflicts with the society in which they live and work result from their having missed out on an important facet of normal development in a highly absorptive phase of life because they were in minor/junior seminaries.
(Then-Abp. Raymond Burke in a Vatican Radio interview recently recalled the ’60s in the seminary, particularly remembering rebelliousness going as far as disregard for canon law. Many a US campus and city in the ’60s would have gladly settled for no worse than that. )
Have minor seminaries helped or hurt the students in their later years? Have they contributed to the Church problems recognized today? How many bishops have been affected? Which ones?
Characteristics of recent seminaries, per a priest’s study in C’weal “Let’s be candid about the candidates” as part of a series:
http://commonwealmagazine.org/more-seminaries-0 (subscribers only)
“Many of the men in my study entered the seminary in their thirties and forties, yet – like many younger candidates – they frequently seemed to lack well-developed social and relational skills. Many had been away from the church for years before having a conversion experience, and some reported being moved to seek priesthood by the charisma of Pope John Paul II.
Faculty members I interviewed noted that today’s seminarians are frequently drawn to theologies that exalt the status and distinctiveness of the clerical role, and are more interested in consulting the Catechism of the Catholic Church for clear answers than in exploring the wide breadth of Catholicism’s theological heritage.
My sense from my research visits is that a significant number of seminarians are looking for a religiously saturated environment that will bestow a special sense of sacred identity. Their rooms often have the appearance of shrines, and their days are spent in study and prayer among peers who share their worldview.”
More ominously:
“To shed some light on the crisis in seminary formation today, let me describe a priest I know, a man I will refer to as Fr. Bo. Ordained after barely scraping by in the seminary academically, Fr. Bo identifies strongly with John Paul II. The first in his class to own a cassock, he has a strong devotion to Mary, never misses a papal youth rally, and prides himself on his theological orthodoxy.
He also recently began cruising gay bars.
Bo did not realize he was sexually attracted to males until his mid-thirties. Not sufficiently challenged to face this issue in the seminary, he has remained in many respects an adolescent.
He was once a strong proponent of mandatory celibacy and continues to oppose the ordination of women, but he now supports optional celibacy-because “priests need fun too.”
Besides the sense of spirituality that drew him to the priesthood, Bo found the role appealing because it meant he would never have to look for another job, worry about money, clean house, or otherwise fend for himself. And because he was compliant and did little to draw attention to himself, he managed to be ordained.
Intellectually unformed, personally immature, Fr. Bo is by no means a rare exception at seminaries today. Indeed, his is a personality one encounters often among the newly ordained. And that’s the problem.”
PS: This was in 2006 before the “Visitation” a few years later.
“Legion of Christ runs three….”
All right, but there are no US diocesan minor seminaries! Again a distinction.
“My sense from my recent visits….”
Our judgments are forced upon us by our experiences. Makes sense. Yet, no two judgments go just alike.
“Yes, the culture matters, which is not to say personal responsibility doesn’t.”
Carolyn – I agree. My point is that the culture didn’t abuse those children. Still less did a “theology of sexuality that can fuel self-hatred and shame” abuse them. It was done by adults who engaged in criminal and sinful activities.
Jim, understanding and dealing with the issue here requires more than just saying it was a criminal and sinful act.
Issues surrounding power/control, maturity, accountability structures, etc. are critical to move forward.
These issues (as Abp. Matin pointed out) affect the seminary of today and questions about how maturity is fostered there – and as the isue is discussed here, it is not merely a matter of age.
“Jim, understanding and dealing with the issue here requires more than just saying it was a criminal and sinful act. Issues surrounding power/control, maturity, accountability structures, etc. are critical to move forward.”
I can think of nothing dumber and more dangerous than trying to deconstruct and reconstruct entire systems and structures in the name of “solving” the sexual abuse crisis.
We’ve seen one such attempt already. It’s the policy that goes, ‘if you’re gay, you can’t be a seminarian anymore.’ Does that strike you as a policy that is going to root sexual abuse out of the church? An awful lot of folks think so. My view is that it is a mistaken policy on multiple levels.
Conceding that sexual abuse is not systemic, not structural, but an individual, sinful, criminal act is a paradigm-shifting concession.
It allows us to strip away all of the nonsensical talk about culture, theology, ecclesiology and so on, focus on what is true, stop wasting our time and energy on the stupid and impossible, and do what needs to be done.
Doing away with the seminary system is not going to solve the sexual abuse problem – we can say this with certainty, because sexual abuse is rooted in human sin, and abolishing seminaries would do nothing about human sinfulness – but it will harm the formation of priests in a thousand unintended ways.
Reconstructing the church such that the church authorities have no authority is impossible from any perspective you wish to look at it. It’s even a logical absurdity.
What needs to be done is to hold men responsible for their sinful and criminal actions.
* We need to enforce the policies we already have in place – which means that offenders need to be evicted from the priesthood and out from under any claim on the responsibility and care of the institutional church, as quickly and completely as possible.
* We need to work with law enforcement to the extent possible so that these men are held responsible for their crimes.
* We (meaning the institutional church) needs to tell the truth about the things we have done wrong to enable and shield these criminals and sinners from the consequences of their crimes and sins. When church officials have themselves committed criminal acts, they need to be held criminally accountable, too.
* And we (meaning the entire church) needs to do whatever it can to help the victims heal.
Jim, I’m not going to keep arguing with you, but I think you are engaging in overkill.
Reforming seminaries is not the same as doing away with them. I don’t think Abp. martin urged doing away with seminaries bu the did talk about real reform!
Giving Church authorities”no authority” is not the same as making authorities transparent accountable and Bishops(say your own for example) able to be set aside if they screw up,
There is a lot of fear of “change” in the institution despite all the insights urging change.
I fear this is a sign of the immatutity that will go on because of fear of loss of power.
A couple of more things:
Justice Burke’s op ed in the Chicago Tribume of April 29 (being discused at “In All Things” America blog underscores the lack of insight our hierarchy has into the issue.
Carol Marin the Sun Times there today scores Cardinal George for his uspension of Fr. Pfleigler and the Cardinal’s lack of pastoral insight, his connection to Cardinal Law, and the obvious wound that Law’s continuing status in Rome, (his status confered by the soon to beatified JPII).
But of course, for some, the issue is authority – no matter how badly it’s used or how good people are punsihed if they speak up criticize or even refuse to obey.