Vatican statement on meeting with Irish bishops
February 16, 2010, 11:43 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
Here one can find the press communiqué issued by the Vatican about the meetings that have just concluded between the Catholic bishops of Ireland and Vatican officials, including the Pope.
The Holy Father also pointed to the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church and he linked that to the lack of respect for the human person and how the weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors. . . .
I am not sure I understand this. Does the pope mean there has been a weakening of faith on the part of priests within the Church? If so, one would expect this to manifest itself not just in the sexual abuse of children but in other phenomena as well. What would they be?
The Pope has got it exactly backwards. If you think back, the sexual abuse of minors inside or outside the Church wasn’t even on society’s radar until the last few decades of the twentieth century. All the work to uncover, understand, and attempt to heal the damage and rectify the problem went on exactly when we were supposed to be experiencing “lack of respect for the human person” and “the weakening of faith.”
Clearly, the US hierarchy’s program is now the template for other places.
“While realizing that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly, he challenged the Bishops to address the problems of the past with determination and resolve, and to face the present crisis with honesty and courage”
This is a change for Benedict. As the prefect for the CDF he commanded secrecy about the sexual abuse crisis and is largely responsible for the coverup on this matter throughout the world. Certainly there is grave concern about the abuse of children by clergy. But by far the greatest alarm and what has caused many to exit was the coverup by Rome and bishops.
An apology would be a good start. At the very least he should direct dioceses, like the Archdiocese of New York, to come clean and be transparent about the abuses so that healing can be effective and the “weakening of faith” occasioned by cover up in the hierarchy will stop.
The Pope’s press release moves the blame from the institutional practices of the Church to the rank & file and that very general “weakening of the faith” comment. So, you see, nothing is amiss at the Vatican. And certainly,we see no acknowledgment that the hierarchy’s obsession with secrecy and protecting its own reputation in any way is the underlying cause of this whole sad mess. I do not trust them.
Quick questions: 1)when did this crisis of faith emerge, granted that the Murphy report goes back 40 years and that sexual abuse by clergy long before that?
2) Since the nuncio has stated he will not cooperate with the government, how beleivable is the Vatican’s own notion of accountability?
3)Is therea triple clergy standard/ One for priests – if something horrible happens. it’s all their fault and the Bishops will correct it? Two, If the Bishop’s oversight was terrible, call them in and lecture them and maybe accept a resignation? Three, (if as bishop Duffy acknowledged the Pope to be knew about these problems), does the Poe say how horriblwe things were done now?
Of course, the voice of the laity doesn’t matter, so i don’t include a standadrd for them.
Bill Mazzella said: “As the prefect for the CDF he commanded secrecy about the sexual abuse crisis and is largely responsible for the coverup on this matter throughout the world.”
I would be interested in any links, citations, etc. from anyone to support this statement.
I’m busy on deadline, regarding Cardinal Ratzinger’s role, I’d say briefly that while he initially condemned the media reports about the abuse as exaggerations and made unsettling and unsubstantiated claims about a tiny minority of priests being responsible, less than any other profession (the usual talking points back then) he did meet with Ann Burke and others of the original National Review Board who truned to Rome because they could not get the answers they wanted from the U.S. hierarchy. Ratzinger met with them, listened, and acted. It was a real tribute to him, and the lay leaders — they had the facts, he listened and then did something. The turnabout on Maciel and the Legion is also evidence of that.
As for his promoting secrecy in some grand conspiracy, I don’t find any substantition for that.
I would say that Ratzinger/Benedict is lamentably (to my mind) quick to exculpate bishops and shovel almost all of the sin onto the priest-abusers. He doesn’t want to shake up the hierarchical structure, nor does he want to dig too deeply into the past.
I also think the third graf from the end, blaming a general lack of faith and secularism and such is just terrible. Benedict has said better elsewhere, and hopefully will again in the forthcoming letter.
But making Ratzinger the villain here is well beyond his competence.
The BBC has quite a different perspective than some of the commentators here. Its article. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8517744.stm, has the headline, “Pope condemns Irish bishops over child sex abuse.” and notes that “The Pope had faulted ‘the failure of the Irish Church authorities for years to act effectively over cases of sexual abuse against young people’, the statement said.” By the generally opaque standards of Vaticanese, the statement is very critical.
BBC program of Sept. 2006
http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=58205
The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight.
In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety.
The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
The Panorama special, Sex Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known document for the first time. The programme also accuses the Catholic Church of knowingly harbouring paedophile clergymen. It reveals that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence the victims.
Before being elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative, he was regarded as the ‘enforcer’ of Pope John Paul II in cracking down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings.
Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis – Latin for The Crime of Solicitation – which laid down the Vatican’s strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times.
Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome.
Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: “I found out I wasn’t working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself.”
And Father Tom Doyle, a Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the church’s handling of child abuse claims, says: “What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.
“When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there’s total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world.”
The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church’s relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world.
The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O’Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: “What gets me is that it’s the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens.”
Last night Eileen Shearer, director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults said: “The Catholic Church in England and Wales (has) established a single set of national policies and procedures for child protection work. We are making excellent progress in protecting children and preventing abuse.”
One combox comment:
Reading the letter further, I’m guessing this is the alleged tidbit:
“Delictum contra mores, videlicet: delictum contra sextum Decalogi praeceptum cum minore infra aetatem duodeviginti annorum a clerico commissum.”
It reads:
“A crime against morals, viz., a crime against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue (adultery) with a minor under 18 years of age committed by a member of the clergy.”
The problem is that this is addressing an abuse of the sacrament of Confession, not the crime itself. Cardinal Ratzinger merely ordered that the ecclesial aspect of the crime remain in the hands of the Church (which is perfectly licit, just as you would not try someone for murder in a civil court, but in a criminal court). There is no reason at all to believe that Cardinal Ratzinger was ordering the crime itself to be hidden, but only that he reserved the right for the ecclesiastical body to deal with the ecclesiastical crime. There is also no reason to believe that the abuse had not already been reported to proper civil authorities. Furthermore, I see no reason to believe that he was dealing with an actual case and not merely with canon law theory.
The sensational BBC report of 2006 refers to Ad exsequendam ecclesiasticam legem, which is on the Vatican website. There is also a letter of John Paul II, also from 2001, Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. The documents do not seem to substantiate claims of a secret cover-up conspiracy.
David – Ratzinger was over the CDF and approved the new canon law revision in 1983:
“1983: The revised Code of Canon Law was promulgated, which included a canon (1395, 2) which explicitly named sex with a minor by clerics as a canonical crime.”
David – my understanding is that this was approved by JPII but with Ratzinger’s involvement. It basically has been used as a reference and resource document that justified everything from non-reporting to civil authorities to the type of social set up we saw in Ireland in which the gardai would not have interfered with the church’s handling of abuse accusations.
“1993: Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) issued the first of eleven public statements on clergy sexual abuse in a letter directed to the Bishops of the United States. The bishops formed the first ad hoc committee to study the sexual abuse issue. The committee published a three-part manual in 1994, 1995 and 1996 successively.” Again, Ratzinger would have been involved in this.
“1994: The Vatican published the official Catechism of the Catholic Church which contains a remarkable paragraph about child sexual abuse: “Connected to incest is any sexual abuse perpetrated by adults on children or adolescents entrusted to their care. The offense is compounded by the scandalous harm done to the physical and moral integrity of the young, who will remain scarred by it all their lives; and the violation of responsibility for their upbringing.”
Doesn’t really address the bishops, priests, etc. except by extension.
Question: Why did the 90% of clergy not involved sexually with minors neglect to object to the conduct of their fellow priests? There were ample rumors, suspicions, complaints, and reports to investigate—begging to be investigated.
Only a handful of priests have been public defenders and advocates for victims.
Why have the ranks of priests joined their bishops in the cover up of abuse?
Why are they still satisfied to be silent co-conspirators?
Fact: Every bishop, without exception, has always known that sex with a minor is a violation of celibacy. Without exception every bishop has known that sex with a minor is a civil crime. No psychiatric or legal advice could change those realities. The history of the Catholic Church maintains a clear history of the sexual abuse of minors and other sexual violations by bishops, priests and deacons from the 4th century onward. It records the penalties—from years of fasting to beheading. In some centuries sex abuse of boys was called the “clerical vice.” Proclamations from the Vatican on how to proceed in penalizing sexual abusing priests have been sent to bishops several times each century for the last thousand years. This is no ancient problem. In 1922 and 1962 clear directives were reiterated. The Vatican commanded the strictest secrecy about priest sexual abuse. Secrecy was to be preserved under the most severe penalty—excommunication reserved to the Pope himself. Only the bishop was to know. And bishops did know. And bishops kept the secret. Under severe public pressure bishops removed 700 priests from active ministry between 2002 and 2004 because of credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors. They acknowledged in their self -report that 4,392 priests had been credible accused of minor abuse since 1950. Few more than 200 offenders have stood for criminal prosecution. Often bishops have conspired to conceal the abuse until the statute of limitations have expired.
Question: Why have they not held themselves accountable?
Fact: Bishops excluded themselves from the zero tolerance policy they imposed on offending priests during their 2002 Dallas meeting.
Question: Why?
Fact: Some bishops have been known to abuse minors.
Question: Are bishops and priests who have not abused minors been so reprehensibly inactive because they are afraid that their own non-celibate activity will be revealed?
Fact: Every movement on the part of the hierarchy to deal with the problem of sex abuse of minors has been reactive. Victims of abuse, lawyers, the press, civil and criminal justice, in addition to public outrage have been the forces that pushed—really shamed—the American bishops and the Vatican to reluctant action. The hierarchy of the United States has given no evidence that there is even one among them who will really stand and be counted for justice and ministry to all of those who are abused by clergy who violate their celibacy. We have no Bishop Romero! [In 1988 even I had a first hand report of an African bishop who requested a mother superior to make her nuns available to priests to save the men from contracting AIDS. The Vatican knew then too. In the mid-nineties a conscientious nun complied an extensive report of nuns on five continents who suffered rape and abuse by priests. The Vatican ignored that also.
Conscience and courage motivated the nun to allow her report to be leaked to the press. After an additional four years the Pope made a public apology for the abuse of these priests.”
From a paper by A. Richard Sipe: ”
“
Bill DeHaas, I believe that text block you have is from Richard Sipe in toto, no? In any case, I disagree with Sipe on this quite directly, and I also think the BBC documentary is an enormous stretch.
Two quick points: I don’t think the promulgating of a single document (Crimines, e.g.) was responsible for the scandal. It was no Dan Brown scenario of someone in the Vatican pulling strings, but rather a church-wide culture that became part of the chancery wallpaper. That makes it no more excusable, no less wrong. Indeed, I think that spreads the responsibility more broadly, as it should be, rather than just giving bishops some kind of easy out Nuremberg defense: “I was just following a memo.”
Second point, the Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1983, and the vast majority of the sex abuse in question occurred before then. So again, pinning the conspiracy of silence and the abuse on a few codicils of canon law doesn’t seem to hold up in terms of timing or the reality of how things were treated “on the ground.” Too many bishops, sadly, didn’t need to run to the Code to figure out what to do.
The organization has a sorry history of protecting its structures of governance over everything else, causing it to compromise in a very real way its basic relationship to reality and of reason and evidence as a means to understand it.
There is no evidence that pedophilia in the Church and the scandal of its coverup was caused by “lack of respect for the human person” and “the weakening of faith.” Yet that is what Benedict is saying, ignoring issues such as clericalism, secrecy, structures of governance, etc. etc. etc. This is willed ignorance and it corrupts the papacy’s and hierarchy’s very relationship to truth.
The idea that faith and reason are coherent, that truth cannot contradict truth, lies at the heart of the Church’s intellectual tradition. Corruption of reason and evidence is therefore corruption of faith itself.
David,
Are you saying that Cardinal Ratzinger did not send a letter in 2002 obstructing the sex abuse inquiry. This was also reported by James Doward in the Guardian of April 24, 2005. “Pope ‘obstructed’ sex abuse inquiry.”
David, I think you need to explain better why you disagree with Bill (and Sipe). It’s not only about Crimen, bu tabout the layers of insulation of responsibility and accountability up the line -just like what happens in giverning beauracracies.
Except there. the ax falls when the proverbial hits.
A lot of history will still have to be writtten on this, I think.
But Law’s work in dismissing Doyle in the 80′s, I think, surely had the blessing of Rome.
I’d also like to hear your thoughts on the performance of the nuncio in Ireland and how much you think he acts independently or takes his orders from up the line.
“The Holy Father also pointed to the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church and he linked that to the lack of respect for the human person and how the weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors. He stressed the need for a deeper theological reflection on the whole issue, and called for an improved human, spiritual, academic and pastoral preparation both of candidates for the priesthood and religious life and of those already ordained and professed.”
Let me say upfront that I’m really not sure exactly what the Holy Father means in linking “the lack of respect for the human person”, “the weakening of faith”, and “the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors”.
FWIW – I interpret the words “the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors” to be a reference, not specifically to sexual abuse within the church, but to the broader problem of sexual abuse of minors throughout the world – by parents, by teachers, by clergy, via pornography, via the sex trade, of minors abusing minors, etc.
If that is true, then he is situating the church’s problem in a broader human problem. He also is stopping short of an “everyone else does it, too, even more than we do!” defense to which so many church defenders resort, and which is justly criticized.
The following sentence: “He stressed the need for a deeper theological reflection on the whole issue, and called for an improved human, spiritual, academic and pastoral preparation both of candidates for the priesthood and religious life and of those already ordained and professed.” – is also worth commenting on. Here we see, I believe, the stance that attraction to minors is a form of immaturity that, with adequate formation and preparation, the candidate can be taught to overcome or master. I wonder if there is clinical evidence for this? (I am not being argumentative – I’d really like to know).
What Bob Nunz wrote.
Could someone please explain (to me at least; maybe everyone else knows it) why the Pope met with the Irish bishops over the sex scandal, but did not meet with the American bishops? And is there any connection between this and the resignation of several Irish bishops, while not a single American bishop did the same (I don’t count Cardinal Law, who quit when he was driven into an untenable position at home, and went off to collect his Roman reward.)
Jim – in some cases, the abuse really was a manifestation of sexual immaturity – primarily because of the formation process. But, hard core pedophiles are sick not immature. David may not agree with Sipe but 7% all priest probably abused – of that number, probably 3% or less would meet the DSM IV definition of pedophilia.
Hi, Nicholas, I’m certainly not the expert on this issue, but perhaps one big part of the explanation is that a different pope is in the chair now than was the case when the US scandal was on front pages everywhere.
JPII did meet with American cardinals and Bishop Gregory, who was president of the USCCB at the time, after Bishop Gregory basically cajoled him into agreeing to meet. (That is my recollection, perhaps those who are more well-versed can correct me if that is not accurate).
Wouldn’t it be wise to wait for the full text of the Pope’s remarks about the general crisis of faith, its link to the loss of due respect for the human person, and the link to sexual abuse of minors? In the light of his proposed solution: “an improved human, spiritual, academic and pastoral preparation both of candidates for the priesthood and religious life and of those already ordained and professed,” it could be that he was referring to loss and failure among the clergy; certainly he was not excluding them.
The more general problem is the search for explanations of sin. Sin can no more be understood or explained, as Augustine put it, than darkness can be seen or silence heard.
The Irish seem to harshly criticise the Pope’s previosuahndlign of matters in Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0216/1224264553929.html?via=mr
“The report continued: “Bishops wanted procedures that they could be certain of; they felt extremely vulnerable because in 1996 . . . they were meeting an onslaught of complaints and Rome was pulling any particular solid ground that they had from under them.”
The former chancellor of the Dublin archdiocese, Msgr Alex Stenson, told the commission that “Rome had reservations about its [the Framework Document ’s] policy of reporting to the civil authorities. The basis of the reservation was that the making of a report put the reputation and good name of a priest at risk.”
Not content with “pulling any particular solid ground that they had” from under the Irish bishops, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith went on to ignore co-operation with the Murphy commission and, for good measure, its papal nuncio twice refused to respond to commission correspondence.”
I think we all agree that child sexual abuse is intrinsically evil.
There appears to be widespread substantial material cooperation with intrinsic evil on the part of the Church clergy.
Bill Mazzella, Doward’s Guardian article did not refer to a 2002 letter but to a 2001 letter, presumably Ad exsequendam ecclesiasiasticem legem?
Doward wrote: “Ratzinger’s role in protecting the church against scandal became apparent four years ago. In May 2001, he sent a confidential letter to every bishop in the Catholic church reminding them of the strict penalties facing those who referred allegations of sexual abuse against priests to outside authorities.”
Again, this seems to misrepresent the letter in question.
Here is the Latin text of the letter. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010518_epistula_graviora%20delicta_lt.html
It is the Ryan report, not the Murphy report, that dealt with industrial schools.
The sexual revolution is not an entirely bad thing, and it is true that the liberalization of Catholic valuation of sex before Vatican II was a contributing factor.
The Holy Father is often critical of the spirit of the modern age. I’d love to see him take this opportunity to reflect on how the spirit of the modern age (much of it originating outside the Church) made covering up this intrinsic evil unacceptable where it had been winked at for many years. In the US it was the Boston Globe and others that forced this out into the open — speaking for the modern age. How can we learn accept (and be grateful for!) the Holy Spirit’s action when it comes from without?
Joe K.: I didn’t know that the pope’s remarks were going to be released. I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at when you say that we can’t explain sin. Can we explain sins?
What Jeanne Follman said.
Grant: To explain sin (or sins) is to offer a reason for them, but aren’t sins by definition the failure to be intelligent, reasonable, and responsible? We know when we are rationalizing a failure, that it doesn’t explain why we did, or didn’t do, something, that there is no excuse, which is an effort to offer a reason that gets us off the hook. Psychological or sociological factors can help understand the incidence of sin, but won’t yield a reason why it’s done.
I suppose it depends on who’s doing the defining. Maybe I’m just flagging at the end of a long day, but are you suggesting that because sins are irrational acts we cannot offer reasons for them?
This is all so depressing and predictable. A calling together of the bishops as a photo-op and then some vague and general statement released about concern and “omissions.”
I don’t know how many of you have seen the recent Virtus videos. I was infuriated when I attended a mandatory session and saw this stuff. They re-enact various scenarios of how to detect child abuse. All of them had to do with suspicious laypeople that alert parishioners reported to the pastor, who in all cases was portrayed as the solicitous guardian of the people who confronted the alleged predator. Get it? It’s the laity we need to be careful of, and it’s the priests who protect us.
This spin and clerical wagon-circling continues unabated. They think themselves quit clever, but everyone sees through it.
Grant: That’s pretty much what I’m saying. If you can give reasons for something, how can it be irrational?
Thank you, Bill deHaas, and Winifred Holloway: “we see no acknowledgment that the hierarchy’s obsession with secrecy and protecting its own reputation in any way is the underlying cause of this whole sad mess.”
It is the hierarchy’s ownership only of the solution that is so frustrating, instead of the heart of the crisis in clear, concise terms. We get the antiseptic language of public relations (failed “to act effectively” or “errors of judgements and omissions” vs criminal endangerment of children, or obstruction of justice).
We get theologizing about faith and sin, generalizing about lack of respect of the human person, as though diluting culpability in some theoretical framework. People sin because they do not respect Catholic principles. Well, yes, of course.
The actual exercise of power on the ground is absent from any reckoning. I just heard a BBC TV report on the multitudinous words about the horrors of abuse, but the broadcast noted the pope **took no action** in response to calls for greater bishop accountability.
Every Irish bishop, including even Donal Murray, believes he did nothing wrong personally. Are they that dense? Sorry, it all just happened. Bless me Father, for mistakes were made. Such a dysfunctional system right under their noses, and by the way, “the system made me do it.”
In the press release, prayers and hopes are for restoring the church’s credibility, holiness and strength in light of lack of trust and damage to her witness – all laudable petitions. But not one clear request for prayers for the healing of those molested in body and soul. Clerical narcissism at its naked best.
As to Crimens, other documents, and secrecy, per Tom Doyle, the only priest with the (Spanish term used by Madelyn Albright) to call a spade a spade for decades:
“One must delve deeper than the documents into the very nature of the ecclesial culture. The documents are indicators, but not the cause of clergy sexual abuse, nor are they the foundation of the official Church’s response to such abuse.
I do not believe now nor have I ever believed it to be proof of an explicit conspiracy, in the conventional sense, engineered by top Vatican officials, to cover up cases of clergy sexual abuse. I do not believe that the Vatican or any group of bishops needed a conspiracy.
The secrecy and cover-up was very much a part of the Catholic institutional culture and was, in fact, a policy. I have studied the files of hundreds of clergy sex abuse cases throughout the U.S., in Canada, Ireland and the British Isles….files produced by dioceses and religious orders…..and I can assure you that the common thread was an intentional cover-up enshrouded in secrecy. That is the way it was.”
The cover-up continues with Nuncio Leanza refusing to cooperate with Irish investigations. How many documents were sent to the nunciature to keep them out of reach of Irish law? Expel him for obstruction of justice; sadly, too much deference for that ever to occur.
Fr.OLeary. –
Do you trust a writer who talks about “Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger”? I’d as soon trust an article by a critic who said he was writing about “Edward Shakespeare”.
Fr. K,
Had you used the qualifying phrase “that gets us off the hook” at 3:14pm which you supplied at 5:03pm I do not believe Grant (or I) would have had a problem with there being no explanation for sin. Absent this qualifier the reason for all sins is the same: “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Deacon Carroll: Is “it seemed like a good idea at the time” a real reason? If it genuinely seemed like a good idea at the time, and that’s why you did it, then it’s not a sin. If the phrase is used as a flippant way of refusing responsibility, then, of course, it reinforces my point. Let’s say I lied at a moment when it was important to tell the truth, and later greatly regret that I lied. Someone may say: Well, it’s understandable that you lied; you would have lost your job; you would have lost face among your friends; you would faced such-and-such consequences if you have told the truth, etc., etc. But if I know I should have told the truth and didn’t, none of these gives a real reason why I lied. I failed to do what I knew I should have done. That failure is the surd of sin. The other “reasons” are rationalizations.
JAK said above, of the Pope’s call for more theological reflection, “The more general problem is the search for explanations of sin.”
To my mind, this perfectly illustrates the wrongness of the Pope’s call for more theological reflection, which is a red herring it seems to me. The proper response to the sex abuse crisis is not to dwell on the question of why there is evil in the world. It’s to do something about it. No one since Augustine has ever figured this “mystery of evil” out. So we should spend more time on it? How about changing structures? How about confronting the problem? How about building in some accountability?
There are plenty of things in the world that we can explain but we can’t change. There are things we can change that we can’t explain. In this instance, more theological reflection is, I’m afraid, a way to change the subject.
My summary of the text: Irish bishops were culpable of wrongdoings (by failing to act) in the past, which caused the present lack of trust from lay people. The bishops explained to the Holy Father that they have resolved all the problems of how to deal with sexual abuse of minors by clergy, but that there is still a lack of trust. The goal of the meeting was to support the bishops in their efforts to restore trust. The Holy Father told the bishops that they need to get their act together, said that such problems would not happen if people were more holy, suggested that the bishops get along with one another, do something concrete, and hinted at some “preparation” for seminarians and for ordained clergy (what kind of preparation? a course on human sexuality for example?)
I happen to be in the middle of reading “Electing Our Bishops” by Joseph F. O’Callaghan, professor emeritus of history @ Fordham. (Interestingly, in the copy that I have, there is no publication date).
It’s not the election part that I’m pushing; rather, it gives a good history of how the episcopate came to be what it is today. This is a perfect time to be reading it … and weeping regularly.
I fear that, once again, we will see that Isaiah has it right:
“Because you say, ‘We have made a covenant with death, and with the nether world we have made a pact; When the overwhelming scourge passes, it will not reach us; For we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have found a hiding place.’ ”
Isaiah 28:15
My comments: The text does not report any compliment or commendation given by Pope Benedict to the Irish bishops. My guess is that he is pretty unhappy with them. But then, what?
The text acknowledges the bishops’ wrongdoings. Those wrongdoings are hardly minor and have caused great damage. However there is zero request for them to be accountable. Such lack of accountability does not seem just to me.
Moreover, the buck stops there, it seems. The pope chooses the bishops and has some large amount of authority over them, but bears no responsibility himself when they do wrong. I don’t see how that can make sense.
Excellent, Rita, exactly! Theological reflection as red herring.
I have tried to wrap my mind around what is behind the clerical sense of remove from the reality of sexual abuse. I truly want to understand.
Fr. K helpfully quoted Fr. Twomey’s comment before about the furor at bishops’ reactions: “But the real cause – and it is frightening – is the lack of expected emotional response to reports about the abuse of children. Nowhere, as far as I can see, was there any expression of horror or outrage by those who were told. Horror and outrage are the natural passions of the good person which God gave us to ensure that we get up and do something in the face of injustice done to others.” My God, yes.
Please bear with me reproducing a reflection by a friend after meeting with chancery officials. I find it persuasive, and only slightly altered it to include a pattern of bishops responses. On target or not?
“Here is where I think bishops make their break with reality. I think they see this scandal as part of a transcendent drama (“it is the passion of the church”) but that they never, or no longer, see the material reality of the evil. They rightly see the transcendent importance of the scandal, but they have become blind to the suffering it has caused. That is to say, I believe bishops survive psychologically because they treat the whole matter of evil as a pure abstraction.
Think about the consequences. If someone sees real material suffering as a pure abstraction (not people starving and dying, but “famine,” not children being raped, but “harmed,” their favorite term in countless press releases; not criminal negligence or cover-up, but “errors of judgment,” not being beheaded, but “terrorism”) then the tendency is to talk and act in certain characteristic ways–ways which lead to the banality of evil.
One would, with this outlook, use generalizations, euphemisms, imprecise speech, the passive voice. One would, if necessary, try to forget certain things. What kind of things? Specific details about the real human suffering resulting from the transcendent reality. This IS what bishops do, and I have, I think, a better sense of that having sat with and observed them.
We can characterize this as sincere oblivion, willful blindness, banality of evil, whatever. What it amounts to, I think, is bishops seeing themselves as passive, detached, accident victims. These “things” have happened to them, just as they have happened to all in the church. They see this as a time of their own suffering.
That is the only part of the transcendent that breaks through to their reality (they even, at some points, refer to themselves as “a victim”). As for the rest of the scandal, the evil, they have accepted it only in the abstract.
To them it is just “the scandal,” or “the terrible time in the church,” — certainly a part of that larger transcendent reality, certainly not consistent with the kingdom of God, but also not accessible to them in real human terms. But they resist the encounter with the human toll of their own negligence. “Abuse” “scandal,” “molestation” these are, to them, still mere abstractions.
Here again, this is why I think they resist and resent us so much. Because all of our efforts have been to bring to light, and to confront them and others with, the reality of the specific human suffering brought about by their negligence.”
On target, Carolyn.
Rita, I think your friend hit the crucial matter. The Vatican is accustomed to issuing documents, so to them the solution to every problem is a document. Bigger problem? Longer document. They live in a world of concepts, not people.
Sorry, that response was for Carolyn!
Thanks, Carolyn. Passionate but to the point. It makes me reflect on sacraments – Rahner, etc. talked about sacraments as building on nature; yet, your analysis separates the fully human; nature; reality from conceptualization as a way to defend, accept, and compartmentalize the “sin.”
Fr. K – you speak about Sin…..many of my mentors and teachers defined sin only in the context of the community and forgiveness only in the context of the community. If sin or forgiveness become too individualized, it loses its sacramentality and its meaning. The paschal mystery has meaning only because of the community – our dying/rising only has meaning because of the church/community.
Where is this language when bishops/Rome consider the crimes of sexual abuse; of cover-up, omission & comission? Why is there no scriptural or historical context in the comments and the documents that address these events? It seems that hierarchy is incapable of feeling the pain – can you only understand abuse if you are a parent? or a victim? what is lacking in their clerical culture that robs them of their sense of communal sin?
A while back I read the 2008 deposition of Cardinal George of Chicago that was posted online as part of a settlement of an abuse case. It portrayed a man who repeatedly said he “wasn’t told” and he “doesn’t really know,” who was hesitant to act, who was obsessed with process except when he decided to ignore the process and intervene on his own, who royally aggravated his review process team, who lapsed into structure, and who was obsessed by legalisms. He parroted the right words about helping the victims but showed no human feeling at all except for the priests. The feeling that came across to me, except for the priests to whom he relates to as actual humans, is completely legalistic. His humanity only extended to the people in his family, his fellow priests.
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/depo/2008_01_30_Cardinal_Francis_George/
We’re not going to figure out appropriate methods of governance until we factor in the emotional lives of the people running the joint.
Wionderful, Jeanne! And it applies not only to the problem of sex abuse (and not just of children but abuse in general) but appropriate governance in all matters that touch people’s lives!
I can’t help but think how different things would be if these bishops had wives to slap a little sense into them ;-O
Fr. K,
Of course if it seemed “good” in the absolute sense there was no sin. Were I to have been less colloquial and more precise I would have said “It seemed at the time to be to my selfish benefit” (but somehow that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.)
Bob Nunz, you deserve a longer response, but I think what Carolyn Disco wrote above at 7:03pm (I think) in citing Tom Doyle on the culture being the problem rather than some smoking gun conspiracy is right on. I think Doyle goes over the top too often (and the good man needs a good editor) but I think he had a correct reading on those documents and the rather exaggerated coverage on some of them.
As you wrote, “It’s not only about Crimen, bu tabout the layers of insulation of responsibility and accountability up the line -just like what happens in giverning beauracracies.” Yep.
Re the Irish nuncio, I don’t have much insight. I’m not sure why he’d be that relevant to the inquiry unless he was around during the time of the Irish cover-ups, but the fact that he isn’t testifying isn’t great. He is, of course, an accredited diplomat, so there are legit reasons to worry about precedent. Again, I think they pretty well got to the bottom of the matter without him.
Anybody for adulation?
Goyo and Peter –
I don’t doubt that JP II shares some very basic ethical principles with Aquinas. But when it comes to the specifics of JP II’s “arguments” against abortions, frankly, i find them unconvincing. So far as i have been able to determine he doesn’t subscribe to a general Aristotelian natural law theory such as Aquinas did.
For Aquinas’ argument about the personhood of pre-embryos, see Thomas A. Shannon and Allan B. Wolter, OFM, “The Moral Status of the Pre-Embryo”, Theological Studies, Dec., 1990, pp. 603-626.
It is true that Aquinas’ biology does not hold up. But his argument includes principles of philosophy of science and of metaphysics which are still relevant. Roughly, his argument goes like this. Good Aristotelian that he was, he held that we know what a thing is by what it does. (Note: this same principle is assumed by the contemporary hard scientists.) This is a key point in identifying *what* the pre-embryo is. He argues that if the organism cannot do specifically human actions, then the pre-embryo is not a person. Expressed in the Aristotelian terminology that is still current in the hard sciences, if the thing does not have certain specifying properties proper to a certain kind, then it is not a member of that kind. That is, if it cannot act rationally, then it is not yet a person. The pre-embryo cannot perform specificqlly human acts until weeks after conception. It follows that the organism is not a person until then.
Note: this is essentially the same basic argument as Singer’s, except that Singer argues that the child does not do specifically human things until much later (3-4 years old?). Shocked?
Prediction: Singer is going to ask how the new natural law philosophers can tell when the little organism is a person. And if Aquinas were there I’m sure Singer would ask him too. (Yes, that does present a problem in Thomas, but not an insuperable one, I think.)
P. S.
Wolter was a very big medieval scholar. When I had him at Catholic U. he was simultaneously a visiting professor at Princeton. He was a friend of Anscombe’s. So you can trust his scholarship.
Ann Olivier, of course I don’t trust the BBC report — the whole conspiracy theory about the 2001 letter is just an urban legend.
I see the meeting with Benedict has met with a totally negative reaction in the Irish Times. It does look like massage for the clergy and for the scandal felt by the laity, and a brush-off for the spokespeople of the victims.
Joe: Maybe it would help to provide examples. Are all sins irrational? I’m not so sure. Is it irrational to lie to your boss about skimming profits? Is it irrational to move a known child molester to a place where he isn’t known? Is it irrational to conspire with the police to keep such information under wraps? Is it irrational for a bishop to ignore the advice of his own sexual-abuse review board and leave a credibly accused abuser in ministry?
Bill Mazzella said: “As the prefect for the CDF [Ratzinger] commanded secrecy about the sexual abuse crisis and is largely responsible for the coverup on this matter throughout the world.”
Since no evidence to support this statement has appeared, will it be withdrawn? Are comboxes speech, and so this is slander, or is this libel? I predict my answer will be in the form of a non sequitur.
I agree with all those here that Benedict is the guy with the sign on his desk that says “the buck stops here,” and that he is both a product of, and a continuator of, the culture of clericalism, secrecy, and cover up that is the cause of the scandal. Basically what David Gibson just said. But, how do these exaggerations help anyone? Anger that results in slander is not righteous anger.
The bulk of comments here means I have not had a chance to read everyone, so forgive me if I repeat some things already said.
Coming into this meeting, Abp Martin of Dublin was practically demanding the resignation of several bishops who had been implicated by the gov. report. With that context, the call for unity is not innocuous, even if it is standard boilerplate language. Will Martin be repudiated? Will he be made a Cardinal? Called back to serve at the Vatican?
Similarly, there is some bite to the comments on weakening of the faith. While it repeats B16;s prominent theme, it suggests a weakened faith among the irish bishops, or these things would not have happened. IOW, they have failed in the most central purpose of their episcopacy.
It remains to be seen what substance comes out of the meeting; the press communique is a pretty bland description of who was where and what topics they discussed, with little description of tensions or disagreements or passions.
Sorry, folks. Those posts belonged on a different thread.
The use of a comment box to make statements that are not grounded in the truth provides an opportunity for slander and libel to exist simultaneously.
Interesting comment by David Gibson saying that Pope Benedict does not “want to dig too deeply into the past.” Indeed, he seems singularly uninterested in answering the question: “How did this happen?” in a pragmatic way. He seems to have no interest in exploring the structure of sin in a down-to-earth manner. I have heard a similar criticism made of his references to the Shoah. Very strong condemnations in general terms, but little interest in drawing out exactly who did what when and why.
I am getting the impression that he is not cut out for executive power and does not have the kind of pragmatic, down-to-earth intelligence that it takes to run a big organization and make executive decisions. He would fit wonderfully in a role similar to that of the Queen of England – a symbol of unity who people look to for support in difficult times, and maybe ideally a person who will inspire her country and help give people a sense of direction; but in no way someone who makes executive decisions. In fact the pope’s lamentations about sin would be much more meaningful for me if he didn’t have the power to do something about it.
His spiritual leadership is weakened by his poor executive leadership. The problem would not arise if he did not have executive power.
I’ve got a raft of examples of bishops’ statements not grounded in the truth, delivered in legal depositions, their own secret archives, press releases, etc.
Bill M’s statement is far less exercising than those, since Ratzinger did indeed command secrecy (in church proceedings), and I believe exemplified the culture of corrosive secrecy from the top down. I recall Secretary of State Bertone speaking against reporting to civil authorities not that long ago. Maciel survivors were told outright by Ratzinger’s office not to speak to the press.
The point is the prevalence and malignancy of secrecy; whether documents by Ratzinger or others were indicators or catalysts of that seems almost irrelevant. As Tom Doyle noted, it was a policy, implicit in the culture, and documents were not needed to drive the point home.
Now it is certainly preferable to be fully accurate about no written smoking gun, but rising to slander and libel seems way over the top given the essential outcome is identical.
Grant: That’s pretty much what I’m saying. If you can give reasons for something, how can it be irrational?
When asked why he robbed banks, Willy Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”
Some Irish commentators are saying that this confirms that nothing is to be expected from Rome — and they add that now is the time to redeem that discredited phrase, “An Irish solution for an Irish problem”. Instead of bishops running to daddy we need bishops taking charge at home.
JC,
Everybody agrees that it was endemic in the hierarchy culture to cover up the abuse of clergy. We might say that Ratzinger did not entirely create the culture but on the other hand there is probably no one who has encouraged and affected Catholic cuture more in the past thirty years than Ratzinger. And if you believe in sins of omission how culpable must Ratzinger be in all this?
Secondly, JC, who is not willing to give your right name, you exhibit no outrage over the abuse and in all cases defend one side. Here is a link to a bishop who is willing to give constructive criticism to his church.
http://www.votf-li.org/robinsontour.pdf
Grant:
We say, “There is honor among thieves,” which doesn’t make thievery honorable. The Mafia may operate very intelligently and reasonably for irrational, sinful purposes. It took a great deal of intelligence to carry out the attacks on 9/11, but that doesn’t make them any less sinful, irrational.
Let’s say I’m preparing for a Lenten confession. I review my life since the last one, discover some acts which I wish to bring before God in the sacrament, wish to have forgiven by God. What distinguishes the acts which I classify as sinful from others for which I have legitimate excuses or reasons? I think it lies in the failure to do what I knew I shouldn’t do, or in the failure to avoid doing what I knew I should avoid. I can know what I should do and not do it. Knowledge of duty does not guarantee performance of duty. The acknowledgment of an “ought,” the perception of an “ought,” leaves one poised before the challenge of authenticity, of carrying through on the felt impulse towards authenticity, and then failing to meet the challenge by doing what your intelligence, reason, conscience have told you you ought to do.
I think there is irrationality in all the examples you give. There surely must have been some moments when the abuser of children admitted to himself the grave sinfulness of what he was doing, experienced the “oughts” of stopping it, getting help, avoiding near occasions of sin, and any other “oughts” one can think of. The basic sin was that of not doing what he ought to have done. I myself find it hard to imagine how a bishop could reasonably and responsibly reassign a recidivist child abuser or send him to another bishop without informing him of the priest’s past. It is very clear from all our many discussions of these tragic events that nothing, no excuse, no rationalization, no reason (e.g., to avoid scandal, to protect the good name of the Church, of the clergy, etc.) excuses the failure to protect children from sexual abuse by priests and others. Can one explain why in fact many bishops seemed either not to perceive this or not to act in accordance with it? There is a basic absence of intelligence, reason, and responsibility here, and I do not know how to render it intelligent, reasonable, and responsible. To appeal to clerical culture is simply to transpose the question to another level. The problem remains of a lack, a failure. That is the basic sin.
Bill de Haas: I tend to suspect sentences that have “only” or “all” in them, such as when your “mentors and teachers defined sin only in the context of the community and forgiveness only in the context of the community.” Within a community, I am the one responsible for what I do or fail to do, which, of course, may have consequences also for the life of the community. Of course, sin and forgiveness can “become too individualized,” but that does not mean we should ignore its individual, personal dimensions.
I agree that we need to stay grounded in reality. The reality is that the hierarchical structure of the church is not going to go away. Nor is the propensity to sin among those who hold positions of power and responsibility in the hierarchy. Nor will men who have been steeped in a sometimes-dysfunctional culture all be fired fromn their positions in a mass purge.
Given those realistic constraints, what should be done?
Jim, replace the word “church” by “kingdom” and you get a description that might fit 18th century France. Perhaps the current rumblings are precursors of revolutionary changes in the church!
There are things that you can do. You can act locally against secrecy and in favor of transparency. You can read the Murphy report (as to myself, that’s my personal Lent project.) You can be careful in your stewardship and in your financial contributions.
I have been complaining on this blog about the church hierarchy refusing to take responsibility, but at some level we also share that responsibility. We are the ones who have been contributing blindly for years financially and otherwise, who have been trusting whatever our bishops were doing without asking them for accountability, who have not tried to be informed. We can reflect on our own shared responsibility (in a corporate sense) and shame. Lent is a time for repentance…
And you can dream about the future. If enough of the faithful share a common dream, it could happen.
Fr. Joe, you say: “Can one explain why in fact many bishops seemed either not to perceive this or not to act in accordance with it? There is a basic absence of intelligence, reason, and responsibility here, and I do not know how to render it intelligent, reasonable, and responsible.”
I agree you cannot render such behavior intelligent, reasonable, and responsible because it is not. But I think you can understand it and explain it and I think we are morally obligated to do so in order to insure that it doesn’t happen again. This in no way justifies it but understanding it provides a framework for change.
I see evil as a lack of good, which I would guess you do too, when you say “a basic absence of intelligence, reason, and responsibility.” But I don’t see it as a total lack. I see the bishop’s behavior as the seeking of a lesser good (sympathy for the “family” of fellow priests and protection of the institution) rather than the seeking of a hugely more important good (protection of the innocent). This is exactly what evil is, the bad choice, the gap between the lesser and fuller good.
Claire, I agree. The faithful have money and voice and have been lax about using it. It’s time we woke up. The bishops’ disconnect from reality is mirrored by our acquiescence. One of my favorite books is by Josef Pieper, called Abuse of Language – Abuse of Power. In it he says:
“Instead of genuine communication, there will exist something for which domination is too benign a term. On one side there will be a sham authority, unsupported by any intellectual superiority, and on the other a state of dependency.” And the listener can be complicit. “… the world also wants the right to disguise so that the fact of being lied to can easily be ignored. … I also expect credibility to make it easy for me to believe, in good conscience or at least without a bad conscience, that everything I hear, read, absorb, and watch is indeed true, important, worthwhile and authentic!”
Claire – I’m greasing the guillotine :-)
I personally think the sisters’ reaction to the Cardinal Rode “visitation” (e.g., not filling out the questionnaire and just stapling their constitutions to it and sending it back, etc.) is a “Rosa Parks Moment.” Props to them! Maybe we all need to start practicing such acts of “papal” disobedience.
Wikipedia has an interesting quote from Martin Buber, after reading Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience:
“The question here is not just about one of the numerous individual cases in the struggle between a truth powerless to act and a power that has become the enemy of truth. It is really a question of the absolutely concrete demonstration of the point at which this struggle at any moment becomes man’s duty as man.…”
—”Man’s Duty As Man” (1962)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)
I had a rant on my blog a while back about the power of the laity and received this comment:
“I would put the first point even more strongly: just as God has given the laity money, just so far they are responsible for the use of that money as stewards answerable to God, and giving it to any ole Church outfit won’t be good enough. They (we) must start using the application of, and withholding of, money as befits our role as willing cooperators and co-creators of good.”
“This means we need to institute good mechanisms for knowing when an institution under the Church umbrella is sound and worthwhile. My suggestion is this: set up an institution that operates as an organizational CPA (well, Certified Public Christian Watchdog, say CPCW) for Catholic principles. If a diocese wants money, I want to see the CPCW report on their operations. I want to see how the report says whether they use the money the way they say they do, whether they have operational standards for (a) getting rid of bad eggs, (b) investigating heresy, schism, and bad morals in its officers (priests & chancelry), and (c) methods for protecting whistleblowers, and so on. No diocese is required to submit to audit – its purely voluntary. They just won’t get any of my money until they do. Just as I would not invest in a public corporation that would not do periodic public audits. (And who watchdogs the watchdogs – important question).”
Full rant and comment at:
http://www.aquinasblog.com/blog/2009/01/31/a-rant-on-the-power-of-the-laity/
Jeanne – a link to an article that echoes your sentiments from the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/17/catholic-irish-bishops-abuse
I have also been embarrassed by colleagues and priest friends given the almost universal lack of feedback, dissent, or objection by priests (diocesan and religious) in terms of both episcopal commission and omission. Realize that their vocation/lives are totally depaendent upon their bishop and/or religious community but they are ordained to serve the gospel truth and imperative.
Thanks, Bill. I think priests (incoming generalization) are often put in a very difficult position. This gets to questions of intellectual freedom. Garry Wills talks about this in his book Papal Sin:
“… superiors forbid open disagreement on any point along a line from the trivial to the tragic. … Priests are not allowed publicly to sort the sound from the silly … Everything comes under the same ban. Disagreements grow in secret. … freedom of discussion is outlawed.” (p 190)
There is a profound lack of pastoral insight, grounded in clericalism, and buttresed by encapsulated views that brook no disagreement with superiors (as pointed out above), by the hierarchy and the vatia
I think that sums up how we got here.
To change that would also open up further cans of worms on the profound topic of human sexuality that the Church leadership does not wish to see happen.
The reaction of negativity in the Irish press underscores how many on the ground see the problem -one victim called it a grand exercise in window dressing, about the two day meeting.
I think that’s pretty close to the truth.
Somewhere in here it was said let’s try to create change to deal with the problem.
Those here who think the Dallas Charter is the solutuion are delusional – read the grand hury reports, read the Litsecki explanation on line today of his actions, see how victimsare the ones who really suffered, not the good bishops etc. react to the Georges, Murphys, MCCormicks, Lennons etc.
I don’t think we can move on until there is a profound change of mindset among leadership and I’m not holding my breath.
jeanne –
To withold money from the diocese is to withold money from the poor. So I can’t see going down that route.
The most successful method for change of the various non-violent movements of otherwise powerless people were demonstrations usually against the government. But how to do it in the Church. Picket the papal nuncio? The chanceries? The bishop’s homes? The Vatican itself??
Itt isn’teven clear to me what our demands would be exactly. And given the blindness of the bishop’s who still don’t realize how much they have been shamed in the press world-wide. I’m not sure picketing would be effective. Even after the shaming in the media, and even after claiming they are truly sorry amajority of the American bishop’s voted in Cardinal George who in just the last couplevof years STILL moved a priest around against whom substantial accusations had been made. The NCCB, in other words, is corrupt.
Ann, I think it’s quite possible to construct a funding mechanism that doesn’t withhold money from the poor. Corporations thrive quite nicely being publicly audited; no reason diocese couldn’t do the same. Any potential loss of funding pales in comparison to the $3 billion (and counting) the Church has already coughed up in lawsuits. There’s a lot of poor that could have been helped with that money. Church governance is a problem that needs to be solved and we have the tools to do it; the “secular world” has learned a thing or two about organizations in the past few decades. We just need the hope and the will.
We say, “There is honor among thieves,” which doesn’t make thievery honorable. The Mafia may operate very intelligently and reasonably for irrational, sinful purposes. It took a great deal of intelligence to carry out the attacks on 9/11, but that doesn’t make them any less sinful, irrational.
By whose standard of reason is artificial birth control irrational? Anyone can define the reasonable by fiat. That’s what the Church does all the time. Where does that leave us?
Anyhow, the most charitable explanation for this cover up is cognitive dissonance, which people of intelligence excel at. If one’s identity is wrapped up in the institution then preserving the institution is the same as preserving one’s life. How far would you go to protect your life?
Protecting the institutional Church will always come first. As Germain Grisez said with regard to the Maciel affair, “No matter how corrupt the hierarchy may be, faithful Catholics cannot do without it, but we can do without any particular religious institute.” By analogy, if you’re the officer in charge of an overloaded lifeboat, how many people would you throw overboard to save the boat?
Jeanne, I am wondering, if you were a “Certified Public Christian Watchdog”, would Garry Wills meet your standard as an author whose writing is consistent with the Magisterium of The Catholic Church?
I don’t agree with this statement, “disagreements grow in secret…freedom of discussion is outlawed…” Perhaps heresy and error would be easier to recognize, however, if we stopped pretending it does not exist. I am wondering if we were to separate the authors who promote heresy and error from the authors who are consistent with the Magisterium, what The Catholic Theology section would look like, as these “disagreements” do not grow in secret, and in fact, are often presented as being consistent with Catholic Theology.
Jeanne –
To withhold money from the bishops is to withhold money from the poor. We need to find another way.
The various non-violent movements of the 20th century were most successful with demonstrations which shamed those needing shaming. But how would we do this? Picket the bishops’ homes? The chanceries? The papal nuncio? The Vatican?
Is there any reason to think any of this would work, even if demonstrations were coordinated world-wide? I doubt it. The American bishops just elected Cardinal George as president of the National Council of Catholic Bishops even though he was known (through sworm court proceedings) to have moved around a priest with subbstantial charges against him within the last couple of years. George is supposed to be a brilliant man, so stupidity is not an excuse. He has known from the 80s that psychiatry won’t change such men. I’ve read there were bishops who opposed him. But they didn’t have the guts to complain publicly about their brother bishops. They have no shame.
Would a campaign to involve all the local newspapers in shaming them work? We at least got some action after the Boston Globe and Irish newspapers led the way. But according to Sipe many bishops are gay, some of them even have been involved with minors, while others have been involved with women, leaving them open to blackmail by their “brother” bishops. They certainly don’t want such matters pursused. But what about the others who know of their misbehavior? Are they obligated in justice to reveal such hypocrisy publicly? Should the theologians study and publish articles about the moral obligations of bishops to make the sins of other bishops public? Or make public statements as a group?
So what to do? Use a carrot instead of a stick? Honor those priests and bishops who have the guts to speak out against the others? I can understand their not speaking out, especially the priests who have little retirement income. Should we offer to support them? Should we start a fund to support the young ones who need temporary finantial help and to support the old ones’ retirement?
I just don’t know.
Nancy, the “Certified Public Christian Watchdog” was in reference to funding issues, not theology. We already have one of those watchdogs for theology; it’s the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
What I would like to see the CDF do, rather than their secretive process of sanctions, is to engage in public argument with those they think have strayed. If we believe in the coherence of faith and reason, these things can be debated, like they were in the time of Aquinas. In his book Receiving the Council, Ladislas Orsy makes this point: “Disputations in the spirit of openness and charity always had a place of pride in the intellectual history of the Christian community. St. Thomas of Aquinas was a supreme master of it. He liked to preface his affirmations by contrasting questions. Such a venerable tradition should not become extinct. After all, the entire body of the faithful has been entrusted with the fullness of the evangelical message. Hence, no one should ever be left out of the process of seeking its fuller understanding.” (p. xii)
I think transparency is important and if we have to exercise the power of money to make it so, I think it’s worth it (again, the $3 billion pricetag for its lack), and who knows how much people aren’t now giving to the bishops precisely because of this scandal.
If the situation now is:
$$ of the faithful -> bishops -> poor, I don’t think it’s rocket science to figure out
$$ of the faithful -> poor.
From http://transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq
“Transparency” can be defined as a principle that allows those affected by administrative decisions, business transactions or charitable work to know not only the basic facts and figures but also the mechanisms and processes. It is the duty of civil servants, managers and trustees to act visibly, predictably and understandably.”
“Where institutional checks on power are missing, where decision making remains obscure, where civil society is thin on the ground, where great inequalities in the distribution of wealth condemn people to live in poverty, which is where corrupt practices flourish.”
Transparency.org’s focus is the effect of corruption on the poor but the comparable lessons apply to an impalance of power in the governance of the church.
“Corporations thrive quite nicely being publicly audited; no reason diocese couldn’t do the same. ”
I don’t know how many dioceses are audited by reputable outside auditors and make the results public. Ours is audited every year and puts its reports on its website, e.g. http://www.archchicago.org/pdf/annual_report/annual_report_2008.pdf
FWIW – I just poked around on the USCCB website a little bit to get a sense of whether there are standards for financial auditing and transparency to which dioceses are held. It appears there are recommendations but canon law locates responsibility for diocesan finance ultimately with the bishop, not the national conference.
Ann and Jeanne, withholding money from the bishops doesn’t necessarily mean depriving the poor. It’s easy enough to take money that you would have given to the diocese and redirect it to some other Catholic charity. The same amount still goes out of your pocket and to the poor, it even still is a witness to the Church; only, it does not go through the same people.
What Jeanne said (that I hadn’t read properly)
Mr. Gibson weighs in with his usual careful and thought-out analysis: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/02/17/after-clergy-abuse-scandals-ireland-needs-a-new-st-patrick/
David – if I may, you appear to point to added actions and decisions via Archbishop Martin and suggest that, despite two days of Rome meetings, we do not have a unified Irish episcopal front – behind the scenes are real differences in terms of defending the institution, priests, other bishops, etc.; working with government, school agencies; etc.
It is interesting that the press conference in Rome at the end of the visitation did not include Martin (excuse – he had to return quickly for Ash Wednesday). So, you agree with Doyle, et alii that it is an ingrained clerical and institutional culture that is creating issues.
So, given this initial tried and true response, what will change? The Irish church will not be the same given this weak and limp Roman response. Is there another shoe to be dropped?
Does Ireland wait for the nine bishops who reach the age of 75 this year? What about victims? What about episcopal accountability? resignations?
“Ann and Jeanne, withholding money from the bishops doesn’t necessarily mean depriving the poor. It’s easy enough to take money that you would have given to the diocese and redirect it to some other Catholic charity. The same amount still goes out of your pocket and to the poor, it even still is a witness to the Church”
This is true, but it’s also important to understand in what ways a diocese funds the church’s mission to the poor. Diocesan funds typically are used to keep parishes and schools open. Money that is donated to an agency like Catholic Charities or the St. Vincent de Paul Society would more likely be used for social services, food, shelter and so on. Both types of presence are important forms of Catholic witness and both are deserving of our support.
David Gibson wrote: I am not sure I understand this. Does the pope mean there has been a weakening of faith on the part of priests within the Church? If so, one would expect this to manifest itself not just in the sexual abuse of children but in other phenomena as well. What would they be?
The weakening of faith can take many forms. And it seems plain to me that many of these are easy to identify: the record numbers of priests applying for laicization beginning in the late 1960′s; the drying up of new vocations, insofar as priests play a role in inspiring and encouraging them (yes, yes, there are other causes at work out there); the virtual cessation of the sacrament of confession in many parishes; the poor (or worse) quality of catechesis and homilies in many parishes; the suspicion and lack of support for adoration and other traditional devotions, particularly in the 70′s and 80′s; the turmoil that many western seminaries underwent in the same period; and so on.
Which is not to suggest a simple narrative of “the Council is responsible for the sex abuse scandals.” Sexual abuse goes back…a long time, certainly before 1962 (Chaucer, anyone?). But the numbers are quite high in the decades afterward, and it’s hard to say it’s simply because the Boston Globe was on the beat. I would tend to call it a toxic combination of bad seminary formation, bad attitudes and theologies stemming out of the Sexual Revolution, and old-style clericalism to facilitate it all. The combination of the worst of the days before the Council and the worst after. I would also single out the problematic role of episcopal conferences, which have had the unintended effect of reducing accountability of bishops to either their laity or to Rome.
I think David Gibson’s summary of Pope Benedict’s actions to date is reasonably fair and accurate. Whatever his faults, the pope has taken a much more assertive role than his predecessor on this issue.
Claire –
Switching from one charity to another is no problem for the givers, but if considerable numbers of givers switched, say from our local Catholic charities to national ones, then it would be very difficult for the poor to manage to find a different local agency (if there is one) or an agency sponsored by a national group. I”m not even sure that the national groups duplicate all the services of the local ones.
The American system of help for the poor is much more complex than one might imagine. For instance, some agencies do duplicate the services of others (e.g., St. Vincen’ts, Goodwill and Red, White and Bue). But some services are specialized and small, and not likely to be duplicated by either another local or national agency, as with the Haitian service for undocumented Haitians who need legal help here in New Orleans that the Archdiocese sponsors.
Jim: I’d be very interested in a thread on that subject. Do Catholics have any moral duty to make financial contributions to their diocese in particular, rather than to Catholic organizations in general? Is there any reason why they shouldn’t pick and choose whatever target organizations best suit their sense of priorities?
Mr. Lender – facts basically negate most of your list.
” think David Gibson’s summary of Pope Benedict’s actions to date is reasonably fair and accurate. Whatever his faults, the pope has taken a much more assertive role than his predecessor on this issue.” This is not much of a statement – we compare a negative figure for JPII in terms of sexual abuse to a score of what – 1 or 2 on a 10 point scale for B16.
Hi, Claire, I would say that we do have a moral duty to support the church beyond our doorstep. (But I don’t have a document handy to quote from :-)). In our particular diocese, and presumably in other dioceses, the diocese actually levies a sort of tax on each parish, so if you are putting your envelope in the collection basket each week, some percentage of that money is going to the diocese.
Our archdiocese does an “Annual Appeal” fund drive every year, and I believe many dioceses do something similar. I don’t think you must donate to that sort of thing on pain of mortal sin. If you don’t have confidence in your diocese’s stewardship of treasure, you could do something like “adopt” a parish or school in a poor area and donate money to them directly. On the other hand, if your diocese practices good stewardship (and I believe that ours, on the whole, does), they are probably more aware than you or I would be of where such funds are most needed and could target them most effectively.
By the way, I want to be clear about this: I am strongly in favor of financial transparency for all church organizations, and if there are some orgs that aren’t transparent, the faithful are certainly right in raising their voices to demand more transparency. I think what we’ve learned in the last few years – and Commonweal has been on top of this – is that parishes tend to be more problematic than dioceses in this respect.
Jim: actually the tax is not levied on donations in kind, which makes it possible to support your local parish without supporting your diocese. I have recently stopped supporting my diocese, and I must admit that it doesn’t feel quite right — but I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong with it. I simply transferred my donations to other organizations (with a little extra thrown in to help alleviate this unsubstantiated feeling of guilt :) )
Note that my sudden stream of comments are all in reaction to your dispirited 9:59am post: “… the hierarchical structure of the church is not going to go away. Nor is the propensity to sin among those who hold positions of power and responsibility in the hierarchy. Nor will men who have been steeped in a sometimes-dysfunctional culture all be fired fromn their positions in a mass purge. Given those realistic constraints, what should be done?” Keep that in mind when weighing the pros and cons of withholding money!
Now, here’s a question for you, in your diocese that apparently gets regular financial audits but whose bishop has an abysmal record in terms of dealing with sexual abuse by clergy (or so I read). Would you consider withholding money from your diocese until it has reformed its ways regarding sexual abuse?
“Now, here’s a question for you, in your diocese that apparently gets regular financial audits but whose bishop has an abysmal record in terms of dealing with sexual abuse by clergy (or so I read). Would you consider withholding money from your diocese until it has reformed its ways regarding sexual abuse?”
No, I’m happy to donate money to the diocese.
Cardinal George’s record is not abysmal, actually. There have been a handful of spectacular failures under his watch but most cases seem to have been handled more or less properly. Any failure is too many, of course. But I don’t share the perspective of folks here who regularly castigate him and hold him up as a prime example of what’s wrong with the hierarchy.
In addition, I’ve been on the receiving end of the controls that have been put in place to mitigate future occurrences – I’ve had Protecting God’s Children training, criminal background checks, mandated-reporter training. So I’ve seen first-hand that these programs aren’t just window dressing – they’re real.
I encourage you to find a way to support your diocese, if you can do so in good conscience. Try to find a way to target the money toward a ministry where it can be used for purposes you approve of. The need is great, I’m sure.
Canon 222.1 — The Christian faithful are obliged to assist with the needs of the Church so that the Church has what is necessary for divine worship, for the works of the apostolate and of charity, and for the decent support of ministers.
Perhaps the CCC has a paragraph/section dealing with financial support?
Although I formally left the Church of Rome more than 3 years ago, I still give annual donations to certain organizations controlled by the bishops, who may not (so far as I know) legally divert my contributions to purposes other than for what the organizations were/are set up to support.
I would like to see a third-party group/organization independent of the Catholic hierarchy conduct an in-depth cultural assessment of the Church of Rome, i.e., the kind of review that would look beyond the cultural artifacts and professed values and beliefs, in order to identify the underlying shared assumptions and other “taken for granteds” in the church. Some writers have shared their observations in this area, but I’d like to see a thorough assessment.
In the meantime, I ask folks to stop enabling by stopping tithing. In the Louisville archdiocese, for example, the faithful have a weekly church newspaper, but this official publication does not have — and has not had for many, many years — regular space set aside for reader input, negative as well as positive, disagreeable as well as agreeable.
No taxation without representation. No financial support without effective voice.
Maybe the nuns should do a reverse “visitation” of the Curia: announce it out of the blue, send a long questionnaire to each of the Congregations, Tribunals and Commissions, set up a series of interviews, AND THEN ask them to pay for the whole thing!
I think (for the last time, I hope, as this thread drags on);
-talking about withholding money is a sidetrack – many already withhold from establishment Church donations and give to what they think is worthwhile.
-The situation of the nuns and the visitation is just another of the pitiable actions emanating from Rome.
-I read David’s piece at Politics Daily. Noone can question it would be better to have a more open Church, more mature Catholics and real anger and action at abuse, as Bishop Martin suggests.
The problem is that Rome (like Nixon with Watergate years ago) stonewalled evil – but we are reluctant tp=o say in many quarters how terrible the Vatican, and, yes, Joseph Ratzinger is in this regard.
We also seem reluctant to really open up the issues of clergy and sexuality or the broader issues of human sexuality as well.
I can’t help but feel there’s still an aroma of tamping down scandal in the air and there’s a problem of “staying grounded” as Jim puts it – putting up with whatever horrors on high may perpetrate while they hold the vast majority of best cards.
That’s why we keep lurching towards :
Parallel Churches” within -not the divsions discused in nice theological/philosphical terms below, but on the ground – one which operates on the model of smaller purer model and another operating on its own approach that looks (as bishop Martin says for”integrity” or i would vanture acting in a Christ like way.)
Mr. DeHaas –
1. I admit I’m at a loss to know what facts you have in mind.
It seems self-evident that the priesthood, certainly in the U.S. but also in much of Europe, has had a rough time of it by almost any indices you care to name over the last few decades.
Certainly the Holy Father seemed to think so sufficiently to declare this Year of Priests: “I also think, therefore, of the countless situations of suffering endured by many priests, either because they themselves share in the manifold human experience of pain or because they encounter misunderstanding from the very persons to whom they minister.”
2. I don’t say that I don’t wish the Pope would deliver much more in the way of direct corrections of the scandals, particularly in regards to culpable bishops, most of whom I would think it fitting to be removed promptly from their current positions and dispatched to a remote monastery to work out a suitable penance. The fact remains that the USCCB, like many of its fellow conferences, has taken (belatedly) substantive action about abusing priests, but hardly any in regards to the *other* great scandal in this tragedy, the complicity of key bishops in enabling them.
But I think “1 or 2″ on a scale of 10 is selling him short. I think David Gibson’s comments are on point. I also think taking on the Legion took some real courage on his part. But I also think there is plenty of blame to go around, and the bulk of it is not in Rome – an ecclesiastic locus whose power many of the same critics would otherwise prefer to see much reduced.
When discussing the sexual abuse crisis we complain that Pope Benedict and the Vatican should actively and decisively use their authority over the bishops rather than just deplore what’s happened and merely “encourage” them in words.
When discussing the upcoming new missal translations we complain that the Vatican should let other entities (such as national conferences of bishops) be in charge rather than making the decisions authoritatively.
Isn’t that a bit inconsistent?
Claire,
your generosity shows in your qualifying adjective: “a bit.”
another bit of inconsistency: Paul VI is extolled regarding the liturgy, deprecated regarding “Humanae Vitae,” and ignored when he lamented the grievous rent in the body of Christ caused by defections from priesthood and religious life — one of the “facts” to which R.M. Lender alludes.
Apropos Mr. Nunz’ swipe at the comments on another thread, it is well to remind oneself that because I do not see the point, it does not follow that there is no point to be seen.
Bob Nunz: You wrote: “That’s why we keep lurching towards “Parallel Churches” within -not the divsions discused in nice theological/philosphical terms below, but on the ground – one which operates on the model of smaller purer model and another operating on its own approach that looks (as bishop Martin says) for”integrity” or i would vanture acting in a Christ-like way.)
Do your really think that the Church (think of it in terms of its members, laity and clergy) can be neatly dichotomized into just two groups? Could we not have at least three alternatives? Is there not a danger, when you work with only two groups, of a Cowboys vs. Indians over-simplification (with my group, of course, wearing the white hats)?
And in your own terms, those proposing “a smaller purer model” are doing so in order for the Church to be more “Christ-like”, while, if history or sociology is any gauge, those who integrally pursue Christ-like behavior usually are a smaller, purer group within the larger group of disciples.
Claire – you make a good point. IMO, the liturgy via the principles laid out by Vatican II, placed the liturgical development in the hands of bishops’ conferences – Rome has stopped that development and centralized it (for some of us – the reasons are suspect, at best).
The sexual abuse events and its history as traced through canon law and various dicastrery documentation to bishops and conferences basically thwarted conferences and individual bishops from taking appropriate action against priests. Trying to navigate the various departments to laicize a priest was almost impossible and not a timely process. (You are correct in your observation that very few bishops took the responsiblity to isolate, manage, and handle these perps. Some have also argued that Rome was only speaking about canon law and never restricted a bishop from co-operating or meeting civil law, reporting crimes, etc. Not sure that the our clerical system understood that fine distinction and they surely did not act on it)
Finally, Roman centralization, the manner in which bishops are appointed and made to pay homage to Rome, etc. stopped any chance of collegiality from Vatican II and subsidiarity from growing. Example – USCCB finally had to push through the Dallas Charter but Rome had to approve it. As you correctly point out, the bigger crime here is the cover up by bishops and by conferences of bishops.
So, in the examples you state, ultimately Rome still has the final say; we still confront the effects of centralization, clericalism, and a movement towards the status quo as outlined by Rome.
On another note, Mr Lender and Fr. Imbelli – there is whole other way at looking at men who made the difficult decision to leave the active priesthood – what if this is actually a different way of applying the call of Vatican II; that vocations and active ministry of and for the People of God do not have to be limited to the ordained – thus, no need to use the deplorable word (defections). Your comments reek a bit of the split between how apostolic communities of women interpreted and lived out the call of Vatican II and more conservative elements that deplore this and even investigate it.
In terms of Paul VI – liturgy – he should be thanked. HV – in reality, he did not follow the spirit of Vatican II nor his own committee and, out of fear, he choose the “safe” path. We also have the whole theological concept of reception – liturgy development was received by the People of God; HV was not and Rome has never acknowledged that.
Mr. Lender – that is what I mean by facts vs. sweeping generalizations.
I am reminded that the bishops and priests implicated in the sex abuse scandals remain our brothers. To the extent that they are culpable, they deserve and ought to receive castigation. Nonetheless, they also remain God’s beloved. They deserve and ought to receive our forgiveness, our unconditional forgiveness, forgiveness whether they repent or not. They are always worth more than whatever they do or fail to do. In that respect they are just like the rest of us, sinners and still beloved children of God.
Let me be clear. These crimes ought to be punished. But there is no Christian reason for any of us to cut them off from our love and compassion.
I think Paul VI’s talk of “dolorous defections” was just part of the abusive clerical mindset that is now so much under attack.
In general I think papal leadership should stengthen and support the mature and autonomous decisions of the local church. In the case of the Dublin sexual scandals we should remember that all the people involved are Irish. To see them running off to a German daddy in Rome reveals how much they have been infantilized and disempowered by the clerical mind-set.
The Pope should be a moral leader, not a micro-manager. And his moral leadership should serve to empower and liberate, not to tie people up in knots of scruple as the abusive birth control encyclical did, or tried to do.
Hello Mr. DeHaas,
As regards the nexus between Roman dicasteries and the episcopal conferences: I think perhaps we’re not quite so far as it might have seemed. You make a valid point when you say: “The sexual abuse events and its history as traced through canon law and various dicastrery documentation to bishops and conferences basically thwarted conferences and individual bishops from taking appropriate action against priests. Trying to navigate the various departments to laicize a priest was almost impossible and not a timely process. (You are correct in your observation that very few bishops took the responsiblity to isolate, manage, and handle these perps. Some have also argued that Rome was only speaking about canon law and never restricted a bishop from co-operating or meeting civil law, reporting crimes, etc. Not sure that the our clerical system understood that fine distinction and they surely did not act on it). I never meant to suggest that Rome – and here I mean mainly the dicasteries in question, and the canonical courts – was not always helpful in addressing this problem. And I think we are in some basic agreement that the “bigger crime” remains the cover up (and worse) by bishops and the conferences. No one should lose sight of that. These men have much to answer for.
But I remain somewhat perplexed by your comments about Roman centralization and the stillbirth (my term) of collegiality and subsidiarity. In the first place, subsidiarity is a term which never appears in Lumen Gentium. Collegiality, in terms of conferences, certainly does, at least implicitly. I think this is a crucial point – that the Council refused to use this rich term from the social teaching of the Church and apply it explicitly to its ecclesiological self-understanding.
Nonetheless, there is broad agreement that the Council did try to empower bishops and the conferences in some degree; the disagreement is in what forms and how much. But my contention, again, is that whatever was intended, how matters have actually played out has been a disaster – that is not too strong a word – in handling sexual abuse cases. And it cannot all be blamed on onerous Roman procedures and obdurate Roman prelates. Because Rome under John Paul II was essentially content to let bishops and conferences handle such issues (whatever else they did in other regards), the result was what I would call the worst of both worlds. All the alleged lack of accountability to the laity pre-Council was only underlined; and the new role of conferences had the practical effect of building up the clericalist old boys club in a new form. Not once has the USCCB condemned one of its own by name. And it has taken a complete catastrophe for some Irish bishops do so at all.
I am not sure where that leaves us. A Vatican re-empowered to knock heads and play an intimate role in the handling of such issues presents problems of its own, not least because it does not have the resources to closely oversee four thousand bishops.
The Vatican chooses to enter the sex abuse scandal when it will. The point is if they push on the side of avoiding hurting the hierarchy’s reputation, they should rather push for justice for the victims and correction. There is not inconsistency. If you exert your power one way you should certainly do it when there is incontrovertible evidence that harm is being done.
I do believe that ecclesiology is a viable topic. but there is a clear division on many lines in the Church which the current atmposphere makes most pressing.
I think it’s a valid generalization to talk of a major split then and the fact that a large number of Catholics have disaffiliated while others hang on is important.
The good intentions of those who want the smaller purer Church is not my point, but rather the fact that they see the Church as being only what they view as orthodox,
Are there good and bad guys within this? If one is speakingof “good intentions”, that’s one thing; if one is talking about moving the Church forward towards a more unitive body of Christ, that’s another.
The attempts at centrism I once saw are rapidly fading.
How has what’s happened and happening in Ireland affected the Church there?
Is it the “crisis of faith?”
I’ll leave it to others as to view how history will see we dealt with the divide in our Church today.
If we complain about the Pope because he doesn’t intervene strongly enough in the abuse crisis and complain about the Pope because he does intervene in the liturgy, the issue is not so much the particular behaviors, whose ‘goodness’ depends on your point of view, but in the fact that the nexus of power is in the Pope.
It seems to me that in the years since Vatican II, the Pope and the Curia has drawn administrative power to itself in many unfortunate and illogical ways, from John Paul II’s apostolic letter Apostolos suos, which declared that bishops’ conferences are constituted and regulated by the papacy, to a change in canon law which effectively excludes the non-ordained from governance of the church, to the whole business of oaths of “fidelity” and mandatums and the shady sanctions process combined with the new category of teaching, called ‘definitive,’ which is not infallible but irreformable (and which makes no sense at at all).
The Pope remains an absolute monarch and continues to exercise supreme legislative, executive, and judicial power in the church (e.g., no separation of powers). As long as this continues, we will continue to complain and the church will continue to suffer.
I also think it important to see questions of collegiality, centralization, sanctions, etc. as questions of power, not theology. Theology (and common sense) point to a much different structure of governance than the one we got. This is why I think the faithful should consider options such as alternative funding structures and acts of “papal” disobedience as a means of forcing change.
“I would like to see a third-party group/organization independent of the Catholic hierarchy conduct an in-depth cultural assessment of the Church of Rome, i.e., the kind of review that would look beyond the cultural artifacts and professed values and beliefs, in order to identify the underlying shared assumptions and other “taken for granteds” in the church. Some writers have shared their observations in this area, but I’d like to see a thorough assessment.”
Hi, Joseph, of course you probably recall that the Dallas Charter called for ongoing audits of dioceses in the matter of sexual abuse, and those audits have been happening. That is probably not as broad as what you’re envisioning, though?
Suppose there were some sort of independent auditing/accrediting agency that would review dioceses. I wonder: against what set of principles should a diocese be measured, and who would determine those criteria? I believe the church sees herself as the one to critique human society – not the other way around.
I suppose that ideally the bishops would “audit” one another, in the spirit of collegiality and, when needed, fraternal correction. A group like the USCCB would be the natural choice in the US to do something like this. It would all have to be with each individual bishop’s cooperation, though.
Canon lawyer Ladislas Orsy S.J. mentions something similar in his book Receiving the Council and attributes its lack to the fact that Canon Law since the Council has remained without a vital link with theology, has remained cut itself off from secular wisdom, and has remained static and unchanging:
“Every legal system must include provision for the ongoing renewal of the law. Civic communities … have legislatures sensitive to the needs of the community. In the church we have the Code, but, in practice, no organism endowed with the specific task of detecting emerging needs and proposing changes. Serious problems remain unresolved, tensions develop; these tensions lead to crises, and finally the situation explodes.” (p. 82)
“This is exactly what happened when the crisis of sexual abuse descended on the church. It was coming for some time, and there was no adequate preventive legislation. A sensible system of the ‘visitation of diocese’ by outside observers able to interview the people, the clergy, and the bishop separately could have discovered the problems much earlier.” (p. 82)
I don’t think, however, USCCB would be the natural choice for this — it would be like the fox watching the chicken coop.
Claire (and others who are interested in this issue),
You asked above whether it is inconsistent to want the pope to intervene with the sex abuse crisis but to oppose the pope’s intervention in liturgical translations. It seems to me the two cases are not alike, and must each be judged in its particularity. More on that in a minute.
But first, it’s worth noting that there are at least two strands of opinion which do regard the question of centralization vs. decentralization as primary and can be consistent in their application of whichever principle they favor. There are those who claim the best way through the sex abuse crisis to a position of more accountability is that the faithful should elect their own bishops. I haven’t heard these same people talk about translations, but I’d bet they would agree that translations are best left in the hands of local authorities. On the opposing side, we have the people who think along ultramontane lines, for whom Rome should be the arbiter of, well, everything. There is no question that the recent Roman interventions in the translation business were sparked by complaints from people who are of this mindset, which applauds the tighter control of ICEL and has also decried episcopal conferences for “going their own way.” This is consistent with the idea that whatever the pope does (or doesn’t do) about sex abuse is the measure of what the bishops themselves ought to be doing. Again, you rarely get into discussion of the same topics with the same people at the same time, but putting two and two together, one can see a consistent pattern.
For myself, I think the role of the pope with the bishops in the sex abuse scandal is and ought to be much more interventionist than in the translation business in principle, for two reasons.
(1) Translations are normal business. Sex crimes are (well, one can hope) extraordinary.
(2) Vatican II (Sacrosanctum Concilium 22.2, 36.3 and 36.4, and 39) established the role of territorial bodies of bishops in approving translations and adaptations of the liturgy. No such role is outlined anywhere, to my knowledge, about who deals with bishops who facilitate (or at least fail to stop) criminal behavior among the clergy.
A crucial difference also arises because of practical questions, i.e. the way things “really are” on the ground, so to speak. In our hierarchical structure at present, the bishops are appointed by the Pope and he is the one who accepts or does not accept their resignations. No one under a bishop has authority over a bishop, except the pope. So when one asks “Who will watch the watchmen?” the answer is, inevitably, the pope. In the sex abuse crisis, the pope is unimpaired by considerations of locale because sex abuse is wrong always and everywhere and equally. His competence is matched to the case.
In the case of translations, I don’t think the same is true. Translations are a delicate business best negotiated by the actions of many bishops working together. When Rome intervenes with a heavy hand, the natural checks and balances involved in coming to agreement are thrown off and networks of compromise and consensus are damaged. Translation issues are always deeply imbedded in local culture; they are not always and everywhere the same. And finally, the production and approval of the document Liturgiam Authenticam (LA) has, to my mind (others will disagree) shown that Rome is in fact poorly qualified to supply appropriate leadership in the area of liturgical translation at this time.
In support of this last point, I quote from Princeton Professor Peter Jeffrey, a chant historian with great expertise in Latin liturgical tradition. His study of that document showed that “Inaccuracies, misrepresentations and contradictions so abound in LA that anyone who tried to obey it religiously would find himself hopelessly mired in absurdities, demonstrating fidelity to Roman tradition by doing and saying things that are neither Roman or traditional.” Jeffrey, whose own sensibilities about liturgy are very conservative, goes on to say “It is particularly embarrassing that all this muscular Christianity comes to us vested and mitred in the most ignorant statement on liturgy ever issued by a modern Vatican congregation.”
Those bishops who reassigned a recidivist child abuser or sent an abuser to other bishops without informing them of the abuser’s past either didn’t believe that the abuser had committed the heinous crime of child abuse or they suspected or believed abuse had occured. Those bishops who were aware of the charges of child abuse need to be held accountable for their decision beginning with an explanation as to how they justified their response.
“No one under a bishop has authority over a bishop, except the pope.” Should read: “No one under a bishop has authority over a bishop. No one except the pope has that position.” Sorry!
Bill DeH.–
You refer to “the bigger crime”, the cover-ups. It seems to me that this is precisely what the bishops and some some other clergy still don’t get. They do understand the seriousness of the perps’ crimes. What they do not grasp or are unwilling to admit is that their cover-ups were terrible, terrible breaches of trust, worse, even, than the failures of trust of the perps. It is the bishops’ consciences that are disordered.
This is why the the rest of us remain outraged. We will remain so until they show by their actions, not just their words, that they also bear an awful load of guilt. Surely if they truly believed in their rights and duties to speak and act collegially they would use these powers to condemn their fellow bishops’ most egregious acts of betrayal and to criticise Rome for its shortcomings.
Or perhaps the basic problem is that until Rome accepts the Council’s teaching on collegiality the bishops’ Conference and Rome will continue pointing their fingers at each other and some children will continue to suffer needlessly.
Jim, thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my earlier comments.
I would like to see a “cultural assessment,” which should not be confused with compliance audits such as those conducted under auspices of the Dallas Charter. Audits are ongoing whereas what I have in mind would be a comprehensive one-time examination of the (a) artifacts (what we see, hear, feel, etc. in our experience of Catholicism), (b) espoused values and beliefs (what the formal leaders/teachers proclaim in word and print), and (c) the shared tacit assumptions (the unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that are the ultimate source of values and actions in/of the church).
This model is based on the work of noted organizational/social psychologist Edgar Schein at MIT. Jesuit George Wilson, who has a background in organizational behavior/development, seems to come closest to what I have in mind in his CLERICALISM: THE DEATH OF PRIESTHOOD. Other writers, like Wilson, have addressed ecclesial/clerical culture, but none of them to the degree that I think might be helpful (and perhaps eye-opening) to ordained and laity alike.
Link to recent talk by Jesuit George Wilson from his book, Clericalism: The Death of Priesthood: http://www.elephantsinthelivingroom.com/files/George_Wilson_text.doc
This picks up on a number of comments from some of the bloggers above:
- Rita’s distinctions between what Vatican II properly placed within a bishops’ conference’s ability and responsibility vs. universal church issues such as sexual abuse; canon law (altho, it would be nice if some of canon law was collegial and culturally based)
- my comments and Mr. Lender’s in terms of describing men who left the “institutional church” – some of them have continue to be “priests” in the truest sense of the word; while many men stayed with the institution and have remained morose, depressed clerics (not priests) as they put in their time
- etc.
Rita, I largely agree with your analysis re: consistency in approaching questions of centralized vs. collegial and local authority.
One thought that this discussion has brought to mind is: is there even a provision anywhere in church law (either canon law or elsewhere) to charge a bishop with a crime, bring him before a church court, and try him? I’m sure I’m not the first to note that this is a huge missing piece in the puzzle! There is a Congregation for the Clergy – are they not vested with any power to regulate bishops, and/or to bring charges against them for negligence?
(And I would want such proceedings to be public and transparent).
Ann said:
You refer to “the bigger crime”, the cover-ups. It seems to me that this is precisely what the bishops and some some other clergy still don’t get. They do understand the seriousness of the perps’ crimes. What they do not grasp or are unwilling to admit is that their cover-ups were terrible, terrible breaches of trust, worse, even, than the failures of trust of the perps. It is the bishops’ consciences that are disordered.
Yes, exactly. On the head.
A few of the Irish bishops show signs of getting it (or faking it) now. There are a few American bishops who seem to get it now. But they remain a distinct minority.
Hello Bill,
I just wanted to clarify my reference to priests who left the priesthood. I readily concede that leaving the priesthood is not a sign of loss of faith per se – but there are enough cases out there where that *did* happen.
I might agree with you that these men remain priests insofar as ordination results in an ontological change. But it is hard to use the word “true” when they abandoned solemn vows they took. But I am sure some still believe, and they (all) need our prayers.
Joseph: I think it would be fascinating to see a comprehensive one-time (or ongoing!) “examination of the (a) artifacts (what we see, hear, feel, etc. in our experience of Catholicism), (b) espoused values and beliefs (what the formal leaders/teachers proclaim in word and print), and (c) the shared tacit assumptions (the unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that are the ultimate source of values and actions in/of the church).”
When the secular wisdom of organizational behavior / development / culture hits the structures of governance in the church, things will get quite interesting. This could be the new “modernism,” what the study of historical context and biblical textual analysis, etc. was in the days of the Syllabus of Errors — to be railed against for decades and then grudgingly accepted.
This is where the parallel Churches that Fr. Joe talks about (e.g., mystical Body of Christ // hierarchical society) need to be distinguished and not conflated. Restructuring methods of governance in the Church is an earthly matter and shouldn’t be protected as though it was divine.
See William Powers’ end piece “The Reunion” in the current Commonweal.
On another tac, i just want to say that in the 1970″s the importance of vivtim impact stements became a salient factor in the sentencing process and remains so.
Strikes me that there really is very little room for victim voices in the Church onm the “heinous” crimes of sex abuse.
From the 1980′s onward, more and more sophistication was developed in the knowledge of sex ofense and the management of offenders in criminal justice.
It strikes me that Church governance, including the Dallas Charter, has full ycomprehended what’s at stake as well.
This may be too lat or not applicable, but I just came across the use of Crimens in a case that is being litigated now with implications for the Vatican. The Vatican’s hands are all over the case, as shown in documents obtained through discovery. These are the kinds of documents that must exist in Ireland as well, but there is no way to get at them there apparently. Vatican not above the fray.
The Newly-Discovered Evidence in a Wisconsin Case Confirms the Findings in Ireland
by law professor Marci Hamilton. (She get first names wrong: Robert for Rembert and John for Joseph Ratzinger but the facts are clear.)
The Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy has been credibly accused of abusing over 100 deaf boys, and now there is solid proof that the bishops of Wisconsin and the Vatican were more concerned about the Church’s internal procedural niceties than bringing Murphy to justice or protecting children. There is also proof that the Vatican’s primary response to these issues is ice-cold. Higher-ups either neglect to respond to requests for guidance from the American bishops or they put the demands of elderly abusing priests above the need for internal fact-finding and justice. Nowhere is there a trace of concern about civil law or legal obligations.
On July 17, 1996, Archbishop Robert Weakland of Milwaukee wrote to John Cardinal Ratzinger — who was, at the time, the head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (he is now, of course, Pope Benedict XVI) — for guidance in handling multiple instances of abuse at St. John School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. The offending priest had solicited sex from children in the confessional.
Then, having heard nothing by March 1997 from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Weakland wrote a letter on the same matter to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. Again, he asked what he was supposed to do with respect to Murphy, whom he now suspected of having abused many more victims.
Within the same month, Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, responded. He instructed Archbishop Weakland to follow the procedures set forth in the 1962 Crimens Solicitationes document in which the Vatican. directs Catholics to avoid “scandal” by keeping sexual abuse of children and animals (as well as homosexuality) secret, and to follow specific, secret procedures for handling these issues – or face the threat of excommunication. One of the persistent themes of Weakland’s missives to the Vatican is his fear of impending “scandal.”
Even though the Church’s internal statutes of limitations on the charges against Murphy had expired, a trial of Murphy was still set. Nor was Weakland the only bishop seeking guidance regarding this prolific abuser; the Bishop of Superior, Raphael Fliss, also wrote to the Congregation of the Faith, saying that he thought an internal trial of Murphy was necessary. Yet, Murphy himself then wrote to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, admitting his transgressions, but asking to be relieved from having to undergo a trial, because he was elderly and ill and the alleged conduct had occurred decades before. He just wanted to live out his life as a priest in good standing.
A month after Murphy had made his plea to avoid the Church’s internal procedures, Weakland and Fliss flew to Rome and met with Bertone and his staff. The notes from the meeting indicate that the Congregation decided to follow Murphy’s reasoning, and did not encourage them to carry through with a church trial. The end result was that no action was ever taken against Murphy within the Church. And, there was certainly no criminal action pursued outside.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20100204.html
A juicy headline here:
http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2010/02/popes-blame-misplaced-as-irish-faith.html
Money quote: “Indeed, it was because Irish faith was so strong that the victims were so vulnerable and the abusers so powerful.”
Now people are banking on the pastoral letter — which is bound to be another damp squib, at best.
Speaking of the “shared tacit assumptions (the unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings that are the ultimate source of values and actions in/of the church)” that Joseph suggests be comprehensively studied, ya gotta wonder what taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, and thoughts would make an Archbishop think he had to turn to Rome to figure out what to do when he finds out a priest is soliciting sex from deaf children in the confessional. Duh.
As Ladislas Orsy points out in Receiving the Council, it’s not just the papacy that needs reforming; bishops, priests and the rest of us need to take responsibility. “…reform in the exercise of primacy is possible only if it is balanced by corresponding transformations within the community at large. … the bishops who shun personal decisions and turn to Rome for guidance, opportune et importune, contribute as much to centralization as any Roman office can.” ” (p. 12)
See Msgr. Harry Byrne’s latest post at Archangel on this, especially on the role of the nuncio.
Also, the new Tablet editorial I think rightly indicates far more is at stake here in terms of the issues of sexuality.
The Tablet editorial does not seem particularly deep to me. There has been intense controversy between Abp Martin and many Irish bishops and priests. The Tablet presumes the right is all on his side, but on the basis of what knowledge does the Tablet make this judgment?
As to sexuality, everyone seems to be riding their own hobby horse on this topic, using the clerical scandal as a pretext. I think one could argue in any direction. One could say, for example, that a lax attitude to sexual ethics is the cause of the whole debacle and that we need to go back to the rigors of the past. Or one could say that the over-strictness of church teaching has generated a culture of hypocrisy and taboos that fed into the present situation. One could say that the full discipline of celibacy needs to be vigilantly restored, as happened at Trent in response to the sexual scandals that has partly contibuted to the Reformation. Or one could say that celibacy has become part of the problem, creatiing an image of the priesthood that has a deep attraction to men of adolescent sexuality.
WHAT IS THE REAL STORY WITH DIARMUID MARTIN?
1. <> (From a Catholic News Service report on Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s meeting with survivors of clerical sexual abuse after returning to Dublin from the high-profile summit in Rome with the Pope.)
Or…
2. <> (From Ireland-Online)
The archbishop has, after all, spent most of his priesthood as a Vatican bureaucrat. But, then, do did Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli…
Oops. The citations were someone eliminated.
From CNS: Another survivor, Marie Collins, told RTE News that she was “totally depressed by what transpired at the meeting” with the Dublin archbishop. She said Archbishop Martin “seemed like a defeated man. He told us he had passed on our concerns to the pontiff, but that none of them were addressed.”
From Ireland-Online: Groups representing victims of clerical abuse are accusing the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin of “rowing back in his support for them”. It comes following a meeting in Dublin where Archbishop Martin — who has spent almost all of his priesthood as a Vatican bureaucrat — briefed the abuse survivors on the summit between the Pope and Irish bishops in Rome earlier this week. The victims said the Archbishop has changed his stance after having “his wings clipped”, but Diarmuid Martin is rejecting the accusations.
Jeanne Follman puts it very well:
“The organization has a sorry history of protecting its structures of governance over everything else, causing it to compromise in a very real way its basic relationship to reality and of reason and evidence as a means to understand it.
There is no evidence that pedophilia in the Church and the scandal of its coverup was caused by “lack of respect for the human person” and “the weakening of faith.” Yet that is what Benedict is saying, ignoring issues such as clericalism, secrecy, structures of governance, etc. etc. etc. This is willed ignorance and it corrupts the papacy’s and hierarchy’s very relationship to truth.
The idea that faith and reason are coherent, that truth cannot contradict truth, lies at the heart of the Church’s intellectual tradition. Corruption of reason and evidence is therefore corruption of faith itself.”
Jeanne’s comment put me in mind of Orwell’s brilliant description of the method party apparatchiks in “1984″developed for setting reason to one side when it became inconvenient or “disloyal.” Here’s Orwell’s description of the state of mind induced in the expert “double-thinker,” who is able to:
“ know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it. . . . to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed.”
Of course, all of this is designed to produce a malleable functionary, a poor creature who would not see himself as blamable for anything he might say or do in the interest of the organization, since his moral compass has been spinning so wildly he can’t tell right from wrong anymore.
O’Leary: “damp squib” of a pastoral letter is what is coming – preach it brother. The facts in his comments are compelling. I am grateful for the background.
What is very hopeful is the laying bare of the Vatican’s PR strategy, and that finally no one is being fooled by its willful blindness.
The Tablet is just out with an excellent editorial http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/14311
“The Catholic Church’s entire attitude to human sexuality is called into question by such scandals as these. Certainly nothing it says on the subject is likely to carry much weight in Ireland for the foreseeable future. And the fact that that may not be such a tragedy says it all.
“There is also need for an affirmation of the Pope’s full confidence in Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin…Archbishop Martin understands that the root cause of the present crisis was the way the relationship of the Irish Church towards Irish society and culture had become toxic, with an overbearing authoritarianism displayed by church officials towards a cowed and infantilised laity.”
Apparently Martin had his wings clipped by the Vatican which is not standing behind him the way it had. Martin denies it of course, but the reality is there in his report to survivors.
“Another survivor, Marie Collins, told RTE News that she was “totally depressed by what transpired at the meeting” with the Dublin archbishop.
She said Archbishop Martin “seemed like a defeated man. He told us he had passed on our concerns to the pontiff, but that none of them were addressed.”
My fantasy: Martin speaks out about the Vatican’s shameful response in no uncertain terms. Just do it, and let the Vatican and B16 bear the PR consequences at least. Of course, they would want to be rid of Martin, but imagine the effect if Martin is forcibly removed but Drennan and complicit bishops remain untouched. He has some wiggle room, and I hope he capitalizes on it.
Something drastic is necessary to awaken the hierarchy, a/k/a the institutional church, to its untenable corruption. Theory and practice about who and what is church need to converge instead of conflict. The gap grows with each Vatican self-protecting maneuver. I see no common ground worth measuring. Maybe they need to implode completely before the light dawns.
Orwellian it is, Susan.
Garry Wills lays out the history of the papacy’s distorted thinking in Papal Sin.
Josef Pieper’s book Abuse of Language — Abuse of Power is also a gem, not specifically on the Church like Wills’ book, but completely applicable. “The very moment that someone in full awareness employs words yet explicitly disregards reality, he in fact ceases to communicate anything to the other. The listener turns into an object to be manipulated or dominated, handled or controlled. This is not communication; it is speech without a partner; speech as an instrument of power.”
It is quite possible that the Vatican were offended by the letter from the victims’ group and their demand for a billion euros in compensation. It is quite possible that they have drawn back from Abp Martin’s approach. It is astonishing that the Roman meeting did not address a single word of apology or anything else to the victims.
Incidentally, it is libelous to call Martin Drennan a “complicit bishop”.
“Do you trust a writer who talks about “Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger”? I’d as soon trust an article by a critic who said he was writing about “Edward Shakespeare”.”
Likewise, do you trust a writer who talks about “John, Cardinal Ratzinger” “Robert Weakland” and who cannot spell “Crimen Sollicitationis”?
On the other hand, “put not your trust in princes”.
And as Archbishop Paul Marcinkus once said, “That goes especially for princes of the church.”
I must admit I have sympathy with bishops who have been wrong-footed on this issue. If a priest who misbehaved with a minor came to his bishop and pleaded “do not throw me to the wolves” (Charles Steward Parnell), I think the bishop might well hesitate to apply the full rigors of the law for humane and Christian motives. Now applying the law is all about protecting the church from litigation; it is not the shining virtue that the vigilantes believe it to be.
Oops, Stewart.
The only unpardonable aspect is to expose young children to known pedophile offenders. In one Dublin school in the 1980s everyone knew that the priest was a groper of the kids but no one did anything about it. People did not take this seriously enough.
Just for the record, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was not a Vatican bureaucrat for decades. He spent only a short time in Rome before being sent for decades to Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece where, as he was gratefully to note, he gained experiences not common among Vatican bureaucrats.
O’Leary: Incidentally, it is libelous to call Martin Drennan a “complicit bishop”.
That is still to be determined. Questions about Martin Drennan’s record, and the call for Murphy-style investigations in other dioceses where he served – would the results be that much different from Dublin’s, based just on geography?
“…But of course all this was before Bishop Drennan’s time. Not his responsibility.
But as soon as it did become his responsibility – in September 1997 – did he seek to discover the new location of the parish priest who had so recently and so abruptly been transferred from one of his parishes – a highly unusual event at any time? Noel Reynolds of course had been not been moved far. In fact, he remained within the bishop’s geographical area of responsibility, and had been appointed chaplain to the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dun Laoghaire, which had 94 child patients.
We know that the rehab hospital had not been informed by anyone in the archdiocese of the concerns and complaints surrounding Noel Reynolds when he was assigned there as chaplain. He served in the hospital for one year before finally being removed in July 1998, when further allegations were made. It was to be 2002, in the wake of the Cardinal Secrets programme, before the rehab hospital was made aware of Noel Reynolds’s past crimes.
It is of course possible that Bishop Drennan knew nothing of the seismic events that had taken place at the heart of his direct area of responsibility. The Murphy report, after all, makes no reference to him in this context.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/1228/1224261303150.html
“…During all of this, Bishop Martin Drennan was part of the governance of the Dublin archdiocese.
Was he aware of information available to the archdiocese about Fr Reynolds while he was chaplain at the National Rehabilitation Institute in Dún Laoghaire up to July 1998 and which was located within his area of the archdiocese? If so did he do anything about this?
Was he aware of the allegations of the abuse of Martha and Mary made by their mother in February and November 1998? If so, did he do anything about these?
Was he aware of the meeting attended by priests of his own area of the archdiocese in 1999 concerning Fr Reynolds? If so, did he do anything relevant following that meeting?
Was he aware of the legal stance adopted by the archdiocese against Martha and Mary after they initiated legal action in 2001? If so, did he do anything about it?
We should know.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1229/1224261353909.html
AT a Mass in Dublin’s St Michan’s Church marking the opening of the law term, in October 2000, a Catholic bishop ascended the high moral ground in his sermon to the legal and judicial luminaries when he lambasted the British media tactic of “naming and shaming” convicted offenders.
This lamentable practice “has had frightening consequences”, intoned the bishop to an audience which would have included Frank ‘Ferns’ Murphy, Sean ‘Industrial schools’ Ryan and Yvonne ‘Dublin’ Murphy, all three shortly to become immortalised for “naming and shaming” archbishops, auxiliary bishops and religious superiors who covered up heinous crimes against innocent children by paedophile priests.
That day’s preacher-bishop was an Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin, Dr Martin Drennan, …
Where and when during his eight-year stint in Dublin from 1997 to 2005 is Bishop Drennan on the public record as speaking out to challenge that system of cover-up which was embedded under the equivocating authority of Cardinal Desmond Connell? Please supply chapter and verse, Bishop Drennan, if your conscience is as undisturbed as you claim.
For his silence, Bishop Drennan should read the repentant words from Bishop Moriarty that “The Murphy report covers far more than what individual bishops did or did not do. Fundamentally, it is about how the leadership of the archdiocese failed over many decades to respond properly to criminal acts against children.” …
In the immediate aftermath of the shocking Ferns report in October 2005, Dr Drennan, as the new Bishop of Galway, appealed to victims of child sexual abuse by priests to contact him if they needed help. But what is more striking was his admission under media pressure that six Galway priests had been the subject of a total of 13 allegations of child sexual abuse since 1950. **Two of the six were still in ministry, and one was convicted by the courts.**
Bishop Drennan’s personal mentor and so-called Metropolitan in the western province, Dr Michael Neary, the Archbishop of Tuam, shoved out the dire news that, since 1940, allegations of child sexual abuse were made against 27 priests in his archdiocese.
Do Bishop Drennan and Archbishop Neary not believe that a Murphy-style probe is merited for the diocese of Galway and the archdiocese of Tuam? I certainly do.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/bishop-drennan-its-time-to-fall-on-your-crozier-and-quit-1991539.html
Suggestions from Paddy Agnew about how the Vatican might have palliated their no-win situation: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0220/1224264879783.html
“That is still to be determined. Questions about Martin Drennan’s record, and the call for Murphy-style investigations in other dioceses where he served – would the results be that much different from Dublin’s, based just on geography?”
In the absence of such evidence, it remains libelous to call him a complicit bishop.
The questions quoted from the Irish Times in letter 147 above were answered one by one by Bp Drennan in a subsequent issue of the Irish Times.
Drennan is right to preach against the British media’s naming and shaming campaign. You know that British police had to admit to 100 false convictions of pedophile offenses. That is some index of how dangerous it is to stir up mob hatred of pedophiles.
Drennan’s answers are here: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0102/1224261526478.html
I knew Martin Drennan from 1966 to 1972 — he was a young man of great integrity, as he still is.
” I think the bishop might well hesitate to apply the full rigors of the law for humane and Christian motives.”
And he would be a gutless complicit coward.
O’Leary: “In the absence of such evidence, it remains libelous to call him a complicit bishop.”
Our definitions of complicity are very different.
What a surreal system as was the conduct of its participants. Know nothing, did nothing, not my responsibility, sorry, it just happened, others made decisions, I was powerless, and we are all innocent. This is living the Gospel? The wounded came to them and got what?
“At the time of my appointment, I was not furnished with information concerning priests working in my pastoral area.” And that was fine with him?
My read: I didn’t attend that meeting; besides, only some of the priests there were in my area of responsibility, not all of them (so what?). I attended another meeting — without reference to the substance of any action he took or did not take, or his expressed or unexpressed views if he had any about Reynolds’ case.
What a revealing example of where everything is so diffuse that nothing has meaning. I wish I had the fluency to formulate the alternate reality people lived in that meant untold suffering went unanswered.
Did anyone object to the archdiocese’s legal stance when they learned of it? Does or did Drennan find it offensive in any way? How about not just an explanation of what it was – a clever twisting to avoid culpability in any oversight role – or is that the appropriate response of a shepherd?
I cannot understand why every bishop is not hanging his head in shame instead of articulating how he did nothing wrong. The disconnect is monumental, and I am tired of banging my head against a concrete wall where justice is a mirage and genuine pastoral outreach to survivors is a sham.
F.Y.I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontifical_secret
Carolyn Disco, by your logic all Irish priests and any lay person who did not speak up should resign. “Did anyone object to the archdiocese’s legal stance when they learned of it? Does or did Drennan find it offensive in any way? How about not just an explanation of what it was – a clever twisting to avoid culpability in any oversight role – or is that the appropriate response of a shepherd?” Drennan probably learned of the legal stance the same time as everyone else. I don’t know if he criticized that stance or if anyone else did. Your supposition that he didn’t even if it were founded would entail that everyone else who learned of it and didn’t speak up should resign as well.
Recall that Martin Drennan was an auxiliary bishop, mainly used for confirmations, little more than a parish priest. He probably knew no more and probably less than any Dublin priest, since he came in from outside the diocese.
The search for individuals to blame really becomes an exercise in throwing bodies in the river if it is based merely on guilt by association.
Joe McFaul, if a member of your family confided to you that he had groped a minor, would you run to the police to denounce him?
Thanks, Carolyn. Confusing and sad turn of events. Picking up on Mr. Mickens, prior threads by Mr. Gibson, Carolyn, Fr. K – a number of questions seem to emerge:
- Rome seems to pick and choose when it wants to be involved; take responsibility; or control….so, Rome dictates; sets out canon law; etc. but when crimes surface, then it blames the bishops or the national conference….how convenient?
- Fr. K….good point that we need to be direct about naming either hierarchy if they are responsible or need to ask forgiveness as distinct from Rome/pope saying that the “Church” asks for forgiveness. Yet, it appears that Rome carefully guards against blaming the church but in the process never once takes responsibility as the power, authority, or hierarchy. Why no accountability for the pope?
- e.g. Mr. Gibson stated that in his research no direcct link exists that directly points to Ratzinger/B16 as part of the sex abuse crisis. He stated that Crimen Solitcitationes can not be laid on B16; but I am not so sure that the 2001 communication clears B16. Some of you agreed with the broad fact that there is a clerical climate that provided cover up, secrecy, abuse of power, etc. but stated that no one document is a smoking gun. Yet, B16 has been in the arena of power for more than 25 years. Where is his accountabllity?
- May 18, 2001 Letter from Ratzinger: link – http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=41630 Highlight: “It seems fairly clear from what Fr. Sean McDonagh said in his letter to the Irish Times that this was understod by the clergy that it precluded those to whom such allegations were reported from going to the police with the evidence. That is an understandable inference from the letter.
Now in fairness to the Pope, one could say that this was all just a misunderstanding, but it is very difficult to say that.”
So, as we move forward, will Archbishop Martin use his skills and leverage (as Carolyn hopes) to bring hope and healing to both Irish church and victims or will he fall victim to the Roman curia?
(side note: Fr. O’Leary – you knew Drennan personally more than 30 years ago – none of us will ever know exactly who knew what, when, or where. And yet, the current and past pattern of the hierarchy with sexual abuse suggests that men such as Drennan need to be accountable even if they may personally be innocent in their own eyes. History is filled with examples of good people who have taken brave steps because the situation called for change even if that meant that their own careers, etc. were impacted. It is a truism but where there is smoke; there is fire.)
A follow up to the May 2001 letter as interpreted, applied (well they tried), and understood specifically by the bshops of Ireland: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2010/0220/1224264877938.html
Highlights: “7.13 Msgr [John] Dolan went on to say that the understanding behind the Framework Document, was that each diocese or religious institute would enact its own particular protocol for dealing with complaints. This in fact never took place because of the response of Rome to the Framework Document. According to Msgr [Alex] Stenson, Rome had reservations about its policy of reporting to the civil authorities. The basis of the reservation was that the making of a report put the reputation and good name of a priest at risk. Msgr Dolan told the Commission that the Congregation for the clergy in Rome had studied the document in detail and emphasised to the Irish bishops that it must conform to the canonical norms in force. The congregation indicated that “the text contains procedures and dispositions which are contrary to canonical discipline. In particular ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”. Msgr Dolan said that the congregation regarded the document as ‘merely a study document’.”
We have had two further Catholic Church child protection documents since the Framework Document in 1996, Our Children Our Church (2005-2008) and now Safeguarding Children. The Vatican has not to this day approved any of these documents or the mandatory reporting of every complaint of child abuse to the civil authorities.
Until the Pope gives his recognitio to this process each bishop can ignore the child protection policies and there will be no sanction from Rome.”
Bill, you beat me to it. Here is more from the same text:
“Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway on Wednesday in a radio interview claimed that full and proper child protection procedures had been followed since the introduction of the Framework Document (Green Book) in 1996 and so were in operation during his period as auxiliary bishop in Dublin.” Reassuring?
A survivor leader says, not exactly. “I have heard the bishops of this country since 1996 make claims that all allegations are reported to the civil authorities, their child protection policies rigorously followed. Do they feel comfortable in making these claims as the majority of people in the country may never read the following section from the Murphy report covering this issue?”
Then it picks up with the text you cover.
Keeping secrets is still the official modus operandi because of canonical and moral objections by the Vatican to informing police about the crime of sexual abuse. Mandatory reporting is a necessity according to experts in the treatment of abusers, and was something long sought from US bishops.
Ireland needs to pass a mandatory reporting law. Would Irish bishops support it over the Vatican’s objection?
Bill, expanding your comment from catholica and Ratzinger/Bertone as authors of that 2001 letter follow-up to Crimen – apologies if this text appeared here before.
The 2001 letter is at ba.org:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/churchdocs/EpistulaEnglish.htm
“There have been a number of defenses of Benedict XVI, raised on Catholic websites, claiming that this letter was only dealing with the Church’s internal disciplinary processes. And the provision of secrecy applying to them only applied to those processes. It did not constitute a direction from Ratzinger that sexual crimes from minors by clergy should be kept from the police. It is true that the letter does not say explicitly, “don’t go to the police”.
I have not heard the Pope himself, the writer of the letter, give the explanation that it was only meant to apply to the internal tribunals of the Church, and was never meant to be a direction not to go to the police. Nor have I read anything where his spokesman has said that. But I could be wrong, and would appreciate someone correcting me.
However, when you read the letter and the three separate headings referred to below, you can understand why members of the hierarchy, Ireland included, would come to the quite reasonable conclusion that the obligation of “pontifical secrecy” applied not only to the Church’s internal disciplinary processes, but to any allegation that was made to the Church by a member of the faithful.
The first deals with “delicts” against the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the second with the Sacrament of Penance and the third with:
“the delict committed by a cleric against the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue with a minor below the age of 18 years.”
None of the activities mentioned in the first two headings could be regarded as offences of the criminal law of any country, and so the requirement of “pontifical secrecy” is neither here nor there.
This third category is a serious criminal offence in practically every country, requiring reporting according to most systems of criminal law. **Yet no exception to the requirement of “pontifical secrecy” is provided.” ** http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=41630
Crimen, and I assume the 2001 letter, are in the lawsuit as smoking guns. A generalized policy is hard to prove even if it is pervasive, but I think a decent argument can be made with these documents as indicative, even if not a directive, for a policy of secrecy contrary to criminal law. A directive was not needed anyway for the illegal conduct (endangerment, failure to report, obstruction of justice, reckless disregard, etc) to occur.
Canon law means nothing in court – just like golf club rules or PTA by-laws. Would any reasonable person reading the letter conclude that a bishop should report abuse to civil authorities?
And with the Vatican balking at Irish bishops reporting…
Bill DeHaas, a good point about Rome picking and choosing what to take responsibility for. Bishop Geoffrey Robinson said that since Rome has concentrated all power and authority in its own hands it now has the responsibility of using that power, and has signally failed to do so when it might have helped — indeed totally thwarting the bishop’s efforts at every step.
When churchmen like the Bishop of Galveston say that the 2001 letter does not forbid bishops going to the civil law, surely their interpretation must hold water? In addition he refers to a 2002 Vatican document which says that bishops must report credible allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. See the quote sent by Nancy Danielson:
“These matters are confidential only to the procedures within the Church, but do not preclude in any way for these matters to be brought to civil authorities for proper legal adjudication. The Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People of June, 2002, approved by the Vatican, requires that credible allegations of sexual abuse of children be reported to legal authorities.”
correction, a 2002 Vatican-approved document
Fr Komonchak, thank you for your correction. My point was simply that Pope John XXIII (ordained in 1904) was in the direct service of the Holy See from 1921-1953, before becoming a diocesan bishop. Archbishop Martin (ordained 1969) worked for the Holy See from 1976-2003 before being appointed to Dublin.
Wonderful truth when Catholics dare to use their power of thinking!
I hope my last thoughts on this:
-Joan Chitister has a powerful coumn on this that is full of good sense.
-There seems to be a triple standard in the way clergy are treated in sex abuse matters: one for priests who are protected until the matter is public; one for bishops who can be even brought to the woodshed(Rome) for chastisement but not removal; one for the Pope and his advisors who must admit aheinous crime was committed but just act according to the previous two.
I think this triple standard tends to be common among many clergy (who, like the police, when someone does wrong) close ranks and do damage control.
I repeat finally that when a crime is committed, it is critical that victim’s voices be heard and really listened to (which also means not just picking apart small mechanical errors in what they say.)
“Joe McFaul, if a member of your family confided to you that he had groped a minor, would you run to the police to denounce him?”
Unbelievable that such cluelessness rages. Obviously you are a “Father” and not a “father.”
Defining “grope” as oral, vaginal or anal sexual intercourse, which it was, then I would not “run” to the police and “denounce” anybody. I would however PICK UP THE PHONE and FILE A POLICE REPORT OF A SEXUAL ASSAULT. Oddly, I would then expect my relative to be proseucted to the fullest extent fo the law.
I would also fund the relative’s legal defense if necessary and fund any psychiatric counseling that may be helpful and I would visit him in prison and take care of his family.
If you had children, you’d understand my strong feelings on this subject. My relatives understand I have a zero tolerance for this type of behavior.
Murphy Report: “The congregation indicated that “the text contains procedures and dispositions which are contrary to canonical discipline. In particular ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”.
That’s for Ireland.
For the US, it’s obey the reporting law after Dallas Charter. Beforehand, there was widespread violation of reporting laws. Also, opposition from bishops to make clergy mandated reporters.
Different strokes for different countries.
F.Y.I.- from Crimen Sollicitationis
# 13 “The oath of keeping the secret must be given in these cases also by the accuser or those denouncing (the priest) and the witnesses, TO NONE OF THESE, HOWEVER, IS THERE SUBJECTION TO A CENSURE…”
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Sir Edmund Burke, I believe.
Irish, US, and bishops in general – good men all perhaps – did nothing effective to prevent the molestation of children.
Where is the repentance in soul-piercing realization of their personal failures?
I hear instead, “Not I, Lord, not I” in numbing denial from each individual that he did anything wrong.
The excuses are offensive. Final word.
Every time the hierarchy takes a stand on anything related to sexuality (e.g., the ban on artificial contraception, the ban on IVF, the attitude towards gays, the issue now manifesting in Wash DC with the withdrawal of adoption services from Catholic Charities), the term “natural law” pops up. Yet the logical relationship between natural law and the particular stand in question is never made clear.
My (non-professional philosopher) understanding of natural law is as follows: It’s natural for existing, living things to flourish and grow and the measure of this growth and flourishing is what we call goodness. So the primary natural law, upon which all other laws must be based, is that good be done (i.e., flourishing occur) and evil avoided.
Natural law is supposed to be founded in our nature and revealed to us by our reason. It should, then, by it’s very nature be *understandable.* Yet it seems that whenever it’s trotted out by the hierarchy as the rationale for a stand, it is the endpoint of the argument, not the beginning. It is garbed in this gnostic, magical aura which we are all just supposed to accept (e.g., revealed, esoteric knowledge necessary for salvation, etc.).
I would love to see some of our more learned friends take apart these alleged natural law claims, since the whole point of natural law is that it is in fact understandable and thereby debatable via reason. The foundation of so many of the hierarchy’s stands about things sexual are intellectually corrupt, it would be a blessed relief to see them lanced once and for all. If this happens, it’s possible the whole delusional house of cards might collapse and we can avoid catastrophes like this abuse cover up scandal in the future.
“Along with Scripture, the teaching of the church on sexuality is based on what is called ‘natural law.’ By no means do I want to dismiss this tradition. Indeed, in its positive dimensions, the natural-law tradition is compatible with my argument that moral thinking should begin with what God discloses to us in creation.
But I add three cautionary points:
(1) appeals to what is “natural” are often in fact appeals to what is culturally constructed (Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 11 on the veiling of women comes to mind), and must always be challenged on the basis of actual human experience;
(2) determining what is “natural” or the “order of creation” is often-as in recent Vatican theology-far removed from the analysis of actual human existence, and instead represents a form of essentialist thinking on the basis of Scripture;
(3) appeals to the order of creation need to be chastened-as Paul himself recognized in 1 Corinthians 11-by the recognition that the “new creation” brought about by the Resurrection of Jesus has real implications for our understanding of the body and sexuality (see 1 Corinthians 6-7).”
Luke Timothy Johnson, Commonweal, June 15, 2007
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/article.php3?id_article=1957
Jeanne: I agree entirely that no one should claim that something is against the natural law without being able to provide reasons for the judgment. Isn’t it one of the definitions of natural law that it is the law of “right reason”?
Jimmy Mac: I am not so sure that the distinction between cultural construction and “actual human experience” is as clear or as easy to make as your quotation of Johnson might suggest. Besides the question of whose “actual human existence” is to the point–I’m not sure that there is a universal “actual human experience”–does not cultural construction also affect what is humanly experienced? Are there any “actual human experiences” that are not culturally embedded?
JAK ==
Aquinas explicitly says that people are influenced by their cultures to think that what is actually against natural law is OK. He gives the example Germans who think that lying is permissible. My problem with that is: how does anyone know when his/her thinking is simply culturally determined? Is that questions decidable/ If so, how?
Some obligations and prohibitions are obvious because they attempt to guarantee the sine qua non of a good life no matter what the culture. For instance, the right to life and education. But specific, contingent goods that are not required by everyone that so hard to judge, especially when it seems that what leads to fulfilled lives of the people in one culture does not lead to fulfillment for everyone in another culture.
For instance, it might be a condition of survival of the very young members of a primitive culture on a very small island that they learn to fish, while in Manhattan this would be ridiculous. Only the general principle is universal (parents ought to teach their kids to learn survival techniques) while the specific rules are not universal. Perhaps this specific non-universality is at the root of the ethical problem of homosexuality. In a primitive society which needs children for survival of the group perhaps it ought to be a requirement that everyone marry and procreate, while in our over-populated world it is better that marriage not be required, and it might follow that homosexuality ought to be permitted.
Of course, this raises another question — what if the demands of the community do not match the requirements for happiness of individuals.
Even though I think that Catholic natural law ethics needs work, I still think that basic Aristotelian natural law ethical principles are the best we have.. And just because the Church has been mistaken about some secondary natural law principles that is no reason to throw out the basics as well.
Finally: beware complaining about nat’l law if you haven’t studied its philosophical foundations. Try A. MacIntyre’s “After Virtue”. It is both authoritative (he’s a great scholar) and understandable.
Oops — JAK, only the first part of that post was addressed to you. Sorry. I know you know your Thomas:-)
Sorry yet again. )
“But specific, contingent goods that are not required by everyone that so hard to judge,” should have been”
But it’s the allowability of specific contingent goods which are not required by everyone that is so hard to judge.
Joe McFaul, you are avoiding my question when you say “Defining “grope” as oral, vaginal or anal sexual intercourse” — this is not a common definition of “grope”, and priests have been sent to jail and demonized and harried from place to place after their release for “the offense of touching” — not oral, anal or vaginal intercourse.
By the way, since you invoke your experience as a father, would you go so far as to report your own son to the police if he admitted to offense with a minor — thus ruining his reputation? That is what you expect bishops to do to their spiritual sons.
I don’t say you shouldn’t — I just say it is not an easy decision.
F.Y.I.-
http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/
http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/response3.pdf
I don’t think the natural law tradition should be dismissed, I think it should be applied, rigorously, with the full light of reason, in light of actual human existence and modern knowledge, and as distinguished from cultural construction, on all topics related to human sexuality. I don’t think this has happened yet and I think it should happen, and it isn’t going to come from the bishops. It’s a job for the faithful certainly one of the activities that would help pop the bubble of delusion surrounding too many members of the hierarchy.
The lack of modern, transparent justice in the Church is an evil that cuts both ways, sacrificing both innocent children and innocent priests on the altar of intellectual corruption. The solution is the same. Drag the absolute monarchy with its secrecy and lack of separation of powers into at the third millennium.
The Ladislas Orsy book Receiving the Council has a section on the “justice” utilized by the CDF when it goes after theologians. Pretty shocking. I know this lack of justice pales in comparison to the lack of justice manifested in the abuse scandal, but a more free intellectual life would cure a lot in the Church, including the goofy clerical culture and structures of justice and governance we’re currently stuck with.
Jeanne: I would ask you the same question that I asked Jimmy Mac above: do you think it’s easy to distinguish what you call “actual human existence and modern knowledge” from “cultural construction”? Is it ever possible to describe “actual human experience” from “cultural construction”? Isn’t the problem in part at least how to compare two “cultural constructions”? St. Paul thought that “nature itself” teaches that “it is dishonorable for a man to wear his hair long, while the long hair of a woman is her glory” (1 Cor 11:14-15). We probably would agree that what he thought was “natural law” is a cultural construction; so, of course, is the way in which hair-length is viewed in our culture. Is “actual human existence” going to settle the issue? By the way, whose “actual existence”? As for “modern knowledge,” I’m not sure what that means, whether it’s something distinct from both “actual existence” and “cultural construction.”
Fr. O’Leary and Mr. McFaul: it is quite a stretch to equate a father’s love for his son/daughter to what a bishop or religious superior feels for a cleric. Yes, it is difficult to have to face a child’s failure even to the point of seeking legal intervention. There are articles and stories published daily about the hard choices parents must make for their adolescent children (adolescent meaning from 14- 28 years old) whether this be drugs, alcohol, sexual activity (pregnancy), etc.
My friend, a religious provincial, gave a talk two years ago in Rome around the topic of religious/church superiors having to deal with their priests who have behaved inappropriately even to the point of criminal activity. His point was that the church/superiors have leaned way too far to protecting and acting as “big brothers” rather than as superiors – thus, allowing or denying or explaining away time and agin behaviors that should have been confronted. His point was that the failure is in church leadership; the way it defines its role and its reponsibilities. Church leaders have traditionally taken the easy path or applied spiritual remedies/sacrament of reconcilation in areas where it actually required both brotherly support but also the hardness of consequences, removal from office; observation, etc.
I think of bishops such as Egan who tried to tell the courts that his priests were contract workers and responsible for their own behavior – so, how does that compare to what you said to Mr. McFaul.
Clerics are adults not children; clerics are not the sons and daughters of bishops or religious superiors. Let’s use another image – what would a bishop do if a lay person in a parish came to him about sexual abuse – do you really think that bishop would have pause and concern about turning him over to the authorities (of course not, in fact the bishop would quickly do this). Yet, that parishioner is as much a son or daughter of the bishop as the cleric. Your argument only underlines the basic clericalism of your statements and approach. It is a double standard – bishops/superiors treat their clerics different than the people of God who they are also “spiritual fathers” to?
Your reply to Mr. McFaul only highlights the basic crisis – clericalism; non-accountability of bishops and Rome; blaming and passing the responsiblity on every time another case surfaces.
Why should these bishops resign – because they failed the people of God; they sat in denial, silence, or escapism. They treated their clerics differently from the rest of the church.
Who does not recognize the recycled heresy for what it is?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-clericalism
It is important to note that our Founding Fathers recognized that the Truths that are self-evident are self-evident because they are consistent with the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God(G), and for this reason, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
“The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam,in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased.” -Alexander Hamilton
Nancy –
Alexander Hamilton died in a dual. How much about natural law do you think he really knew? Duelling was thought at the time to be a matter of “honor”, and virtue requires that we be honorable –be truthful, pay our debts and keep our word, etc. Do you think he could have been mistaken about the specifics of natural law?
If a lay person came to me as a priest to talk about his or her problems with attraction to minors and in the process revealed that they had done things that could get them in jail, I would certainly not hand them over to the police. My instinctive feeling here is indeed part and parcel of the clerical mindset, but I think there is a lot to be said in its favor.
“By the way, since you invoke your experience as a father, would you go so far as to report your own son to the police if he admitted to offense with a minor — thus ruining his reputation? That is what you expect bishops to do to their spiritual sons.
I don’t say you shouldn’t — I just say it is not an easy decision.”
Why don’t you ask me a hard querstion, not this easy softball?
Your quesiton precisely demostrates the issue. Your problem and that of your gutless clerical brothers is that you refuse to unpleasant—but very easy– decisions. Grow a pair, please.
Your “hypothetical” quesation was not at all hypothetical for me.
As a matter of fact, I did call the police, have my son arrested, handcuffed and removed from my front porch when he presented a hazard to the rest of my family. The mere arrest meant he was in violation of his probation in another matter and would expose him to a one year sentence for that other matter, plus whatevere sentence would be imposed for the arrast offense.
That said, he is still my son. I love him and I offer him help. But the message to him and to all my family is that I will protect the safety of my family without fear of “reputation damage” to anyone.
This “ruining of reputation” concern when you are talking about sexual abuse is, frankly, B.S.
Your attitude is 100% of the problem. It is a sin–a mortal sin. To the extent it’s held by bishops and the Pope, they are in grave danger of losing their souls.
Sic et non:
Posted by Joseph S. O Leary
on February 18th, 2010 at 10:19 am
I think Paul VI’s talk of “dolorous defections” was just part of the abusive clerical mindset that is now so much under attack.
Posted by Joseph S. O Leary
on February 21st, 2010 at 3:15 pm
If a lay person came to me as a priest to talk about his or her problems with attraction to minors and in the process revealed that they had done things that could get them in jail, I would certainly not hand them over to the police. My instinctive feeling here is indeed part and parcel of the clerical mindset, but I think there is a lot to be said in its favor.
In general, I suspect the clergy sex abuse crisis (I intentionally do not call it a scandal) has been caused by an intentional institutional church misinterpretation of the word “celibacy.”
There are two meanings of the word:
1. “Refraining from sexual activity.” This is the meaning that most lay Catholics of my generation (born in the ’50′s) and preceding generations assumed was the working definition in practice.
2. “unmarried with no publicly acknowledged offspring.” This is the definition that is unoffically understood to be the standard among a vast number of bishops and priests. That’s why Fr. Maciel could be considered a holy person–he was a model of celibacy according to church accepted practice.
The institutional church is comfortable operating under definition 2. Therefore any exposure of sexual aactivty on the part of officallly celibate persons is concealed to avoid “scandal” or to protect “reputations.” This conduct has to stop.
For some reason, neither Pope of the past two decades has been able to conjure up the fortitude to make such a simple statement.
“Alexander Hamilton died in a dual.” This does not change the fact that The Truth is The Truth.
Fr Imbelli, do you think the attitude I voiced is abusive? I accept that in the case where the penitent or counselee presents a public danger the police should be notified (unless the seal of the confessional is involved). However, I don’t think that things are usually that black and white.
A priest who is sexually involved is not such a scandalous thing nowadays as a young man branded as a pedophile. Pedophiles are the favored scapegoats of our sexually permissive but still puritanical age (especially in the punitive USA), so to expose someone to that opprobrium is a very grave matter. Priests who are sexually active are a dime a dozen.
Again, I see a big difference between sex with a 16 or 17 year old, where the minor is a willing partner, and rape of children. But the anti-pedophile rhetoric refuses to countenance any such distinctions. If we ask “What would Jesus do?” I suggest that he would be on the side of the pedophiles against the violence and hatred they face, and I don’t see him as willingly handing people over to the police.
Joe McFaul, again you avoid my question. You reported your son to the cops when he threatened your family. Of course most people would do that.
But suppose your son had had sex with a minor — perhaps a minor who was in love with him — would you hand him over to the cops, as you expect priests and bishops to do?
A friend of mine interviewed a man who had had sex with my friend’s 15 yo daughter. Did he report him to the cops? No, he gave him a scolding.
You would say my friend has no balls — what violent, macho language. I would say my friend behaved decently, sensibly and non-destructively.
My friend was not an American.
Fr Imbelli you seem to have misread my last sentence. “Its” refers to “my instinctive feeling” not “the clerical mindset”. But instead of witticisms, I would like you to state your own opinion on the topic under discussion.
Fr. Joe: “do you think it’s easy to distinguish what you call “actual human existence and modern knowledge” from “cultural construction”?
Not easy but certainly possible — that’s where the light of reason comes in, and the need for open debate and intellectual freedom. I would tag most of the papal attitudes toward things sexual (e.g., contraception, women’s ordination, attitude towards gays) as cultural constructions and would like to see a Church in which these topics could be freely debated without fear of interdict. Also, in a global world, cultural constructions are easier to parse since there’s so many different cultures; things that are common among cultures may be less likely to be cultural constructions, especially as time goes on (e.g., increasing freedom for women correlated with development). And science can weigh in independent of most cultural construction. If for example biology tells us that gay people are born that way and to accept that identity is to fully self-actualize, then natural law will throw a different light on the question than it did before we knew that.
Fr. O’Leary – there are always “gray” situations. Unfortunately, as you and I both know we have priests who are not emotionally mature getting involved with “older” adolescents – both may be homosexual in nature. The adolescent may be 17 yrs. old – thus, legally in some states a minor.
In this day and age of sexual abuse (public schools, public institutions, churches, etc.), in this age of gross sexual trafficking, etc. to call the US “puritanical” is almost ridiculous – in fact, we have a gutless political establishment that has so skewed reporting and SOL laws in favor of the pedophile, that society is at risk – follow any large public school district. Your statements make no sense.
Months ago, some of these Commoweal bloggers cited their stance on SOLs because of the danger of one priest being accused unjustly and having his name destroyed/damaged. It is beyond my comprehension on this point given that probably 30=50% of all abused are afraid to report their abuse; that less than 1% of all accused have been shown to be innocent; that there is a legal process and now Dallas Charter in which a priest can be put on leave and an open investigation can be done (look how often a parish rallies around a priest who ultimately is found guilty – it does not change how they feel about their priest/pastor). Given our current system, the victim has almost everything against him/her – the pendulum has NOT swung to the other extreme except in your dreams.
If not for the media, the victim would have little recourse…..internal reporting bodies for schools and even churches are not independent; they are appointees of the system that they are supposedly investigating. How objective is that?
“I would tag most of the papal attitudes toward things sexual (e.g., contraception, women’s ordination, attitude towards gays) as cultural constructions.”
“Things that are common among cultures may be less likely to be cultural constructions, especially as time goes on (e.g., increasing freedom for women correlated with development).”
“If for example biology tells us that gay people are born that way and to accept that identity is to fully self-actualize, then natural law will throw a different light on the question than it did before we knew that.”
Abortion throws a spanner in the works here; I know many non-Catholics who see the taboo on abortion as a cultural-religious thing rather than as bedrock morality. Again, William LaFleur’s book on abortion in Japan (“Liquid Life”) portrays a culture in which abortion is seen as a regrettable sending of the baby back to the gods rather than as intrinsically evil. Can you claim that the Japanese attitude here is mere cultural construction?
Another question. If the Church has had so much difficulty in discerning natural law beyond cultural conditioning, in the cases of contraception, homosexuality, women’s ordination, how can we be confident that natural law can ever be discerned at all? Perhaps we have at best approximations to it. We declare natural law according to our best lights in given cultural contexts, but the future may correct this.
The Church got natural law wrong on usury and slavery, and now it seems on some aspects of sexuality. Does this undercut the value of all Catholic natural law discourse? Or does it prescribe a more subtle discourse that appeals to natural law more reservedly?
“Fr. O’Leary – there are always “gray” situations. Unfortunately, as you and I both know we have priests who are not emotionally mature getting involved with “older” adolescents – both may be homosexual in nature. The adolescent may be 17 yrs. old – thus, legally in some states a minor.”
I think it is rather puritanical to treat this as if it were the end of the world. There are lots of men who actually boast about such relationships in later life and who claim that they took the lead in them when they were minors.
I think we should somehow be able to focus on serious abuse of young people, rather than on randy behavior that offends our morality (where the minor involved is often punished as well).
Carolyn Disco claims that the age of consent is 18 in most countries — but I doubt if this is so. In some European countries it is 14 or so.
Surprise! According to this http://www.avert.org/age-of-consent.htm the age of consent is a high as 18 only in a handful of countries, and only in a handful of American States!
Fr. O’Leary, there are people who are warped for life because they were abused as children. Groping and fondling counts. You seem to think that calling the police on them is a matter of harrassing the abuser. It’s a matter of stopping further crimes from being committed. It also says to the child (or teen) that this is serious and that the parent is serious about protecting the young person and is not complicit in their exploitation. Of course it’s tough to call the police to arrest relatives, because it racks up the family system. But tolerating abuse racks up the system even worse. Looking at the church through the lens of family systems is helpful for seeing how difficult it is to change the family — but also for seeing how they must change.
Father O’Leary,
yes I took “its” to refer to “the clerical mindset” when you wrote:
“My instinctive feeling here is indeed part and parcel of the clerical mindset, but I think there is a lot to be said in its favor.”
But if your feeling is “part and parcel of the clerical mindset,” then it seems to entail that there is something to be said also in its favor.
You also wrote:
“However, I don’t think that things are usually that black and white.”
I agree, including simplistic appeals to “the clerical mindset.”
Mr. DeHaas,
you wrote concerning your friend who gave a talk two years ago in Rome and said:
“the church/superiors have leaned way too far to protecting and acting as “big brothers” rather than as superiors.”
I wish that had been said 30 to 40 years ago when it seems that in many cases there was not a surfeit of the exercise of authority, but its absence — neither desired by the membership, nor exercised by those “superiors” who supposedly bore responsibility in the community.
Mr. McFaul,
In the 70s there was talk in some religious communities of a “third way” between celibacy and marriage. Talk of willful self-deception.
O’Leary: Sorry, I have no memory of indicating the age of consent is 18 in most countries. If my senior brain is amiss, I would like to see how this impression was given.
Regarding O’Leary’s other comments:
Assuming that 16 and 17 year-olds, those vixens seducing older men, are not troubled minors who may even be from abusive environments themselves, or acting out in the aftermath, is shortsighted. Even if they beg for sex, it is still a misuse of power by the adult, and thankfully a crime where 18 is the age of majority.
It is frightening to see a priest refer to “where the minor is a willing partner” – such a definition of consent is breathtaking.
Also, to “perhaps a minor who was in love with him” reveals a startling definition of love in any meaningful context.
Re: “If a lay person came to me as a priest to talk about his or her problems with attraction to minors and in the process revealed that they had done things that could get them in jail, I would certainly not hand them over to the police. My instinctive feeling here is indeed part and parcel of the clerical mindset, but I think there is a lot to be said in its favor.”
I can see no thought here of the victims, a typical enough response of the clerical mindset. How many, and what are they coping with, or what help do they need for the abuse they endured? How many more might be affected? Not even on the radar screen,are they?
For over 30 years I have worked in a field called “Employee Assistance Programs” – short term counseling provided at no cost to employees/family members by the company they work for. In 95% of all cases, strict confidentiality is followed. But over the last 30 years, the field, states, and legal courts have combined to define limits, reporting requirements, etc.
Thus, a counselor can lose his/her license if:
- knowingly counsels with a client who is a danger to themselves and fails to report this
- knowlingly counsels with a client who is involved in abuse of children (physical, mental, or sexual) and fails to report this
- knowingly counsels with a clinet who is a threat to others and fails to report this
In my days, there were restrictions placed upon certain clerical positions in terms of the sacrament of reconciliation; thus, formation directors could not be confessors. Why, because formation directors were accountable for the safety and common good of the total community – kids were smart enough to know that if they came to you in confidence or try to confess, your hands as a formation director were tied. Thus, would not allow them to do this.
These same type of restrictions were or should have been in place for diocesan clerical personnel – the mixing of roles (confessor and superior) was and is tragic (Fr. Imbelli = it is not just 30-40 years ago – this behavior continues today). There used to be an outdated concept called “particular friendships” in which private room doors could not be left closed with visitors; relationships that were very closed, isolated, and completely directed to only one other person raised red flags. Now, a lot of this was ridiculous but at its heart there was wisdom. Unfortunately, the pendulum swung from that level of immaturity to another level of immaturity.
The sacrament of reconciliation – how do you give absolution if the person who is confessing as a pedophile is unwilling to abide by society’s and now the church’s law in terms of reporting him/herself; taking steps to use the legal system to seek healing, consequences, etc. If you, as a priest, are unwilling to do this; or make excuses to avoid this, then you fall into the practice of “Cheap Grace” – everything becomes protected by the seal of confession. There are no boundaries; no limits; no consequences, no accountablility – in all honesty, in that environment, there is no truth and there is no forgiveness. It is a game and now the confessor is part of the game. In counseling terminology, you have become an “enabler” – we can lose our licenses when we are responsible for that type of behavior.
Your comments concern me – they are indicators that you do no understand ADULT relationships; the harm done by abuse; the conflicting personality stages of growth that teenagers go through, etc. (Rita – you said it very well – unfortunately, the clerical mindset continues to rule – how immature and unaccountable can one be!)
Fr. O’Leary –
No one would deny, I’m sure, that there are 15 year-old boys who willfully seduce older men and some are proud of themselves. BUT how many of those particular boys do you think would report the priest (and himself) to his parents? The odds for that happening are next to zero. So there is no reason *whatsoever* to assume as you do that there have been any such cases at all, much less a significant number of them.
Your proposal is a particularly clear example of your willingness to grasp at straws if necessary in order to protect your fellow priests.
Apologies, Carolyn Disco — I was confused about the age of consent remark.
I knew a man who was the active partner in a sexual relationship with his parish priest from the age of 15 to 20. He said, 20 years later, that he still loved the PP, 20 years later. It is doctrinaire to say that he cannot have been in love with the PP or a willing partner in their relationship. Just this kind of puritan dogmatism is what is not helpful. As someone said, there are lots of gray areas — and in the absence of any clear protocol it is not surprising that many bishops made mistakes.
Another case is a teacher in a lifelong relationship with a young professional — they first met 25 years ago when the younger partner was 13. Say what you like about the morality but don’t say that they are not in love.
“Fr. O’Leary, there are people who are warped for life because they were abused as children. Groping and fondling counts.”
Of course.
But there are many people who were not warped for life or even damaged at all by sexual encouters with adults when they were minors — and who are quite ready to tell us so if we give them an ear. A psychoanalyst friend assures me that this is so. The instant experts who sprung up in the wake of the pedophilia scandals ritually talk as if all such sexual events made the minor a “victim” and “survivor” –t his frozen vocabulary is typical of witch-hunts, not of humane thinking.
” You seem to think that calling the police on them is a matter of harrassing the abuser. It’s a matter of stopping further crimes from being committed. It also says to the child (or teen) that this is serious and that the parent is serious about protecting the young person and is not complicit in their exploitation.”
It may be so, and in some cases it may not be. There was a story in the New Yorker 10 years ago about a priest who took photos, in silence, of a boy at the public baths — the boy willingly posing. As the priest headed off, the boy called “Hey, Father, you’d better destroy those pics!”
The pool janitor reported the incident. Next scene: the boy testifies against the priest in count, in tears. Now he regards all adults as diabolical.
Sometimes it is destructive to pursue a puritanical ideological purity.
“No one would deny, I’m sure, that there are 15 year-old boys who willfully seduce older men and some are proud of themselves.”
Actually. I think a lot of people deny it. or at least never allow it as a factor when they talk of ALL minors in such situations as victims and survivors.
“BUT how many of those particular boys do you think would report the priest (and himself) to his parents?”
I don’t see the relevance of this question. Parents, of course. often find things out without being told.
” The odds for that happening are next to zero. So there is no reason *whatsoever* to assume as you do that there have been any such cases at all, much less a significant number of them.”"
Again, I am not sure what you are trying to say.
“Your proposal is a particularly clear example of your willingness to grasp at straws if necessary in order to protect your fellow priests.”
Not sure what proposal you mean. Anyway, I am not concerned just with fellow priests; I am trying to argue for a more humane attitude all round.
The French review L’Infini had a special issue a few years ago in which a long line of writers recalled their desire of or experience of sexual relationships with adults when they were minors. None of them claimed to be victimized or traumatized.
“The sacrament of reconciliation – how do you give absolution if the person who is confessing as a pedophile is unwilling to abide by society’s and now the church’s law in terms of reporting him/herself; taking steps to use the legal system to seek healing, consequences, etc.”
So the legal system offers healing to pedophiles? Really? They are murdered in jails.
” If you, as a priest, are unwilling to do this; or make excuses to avoid this, then you fall into the practice of “Cheap Grace” – everything becomes protected by the seal of confession.”
That is the whole point of the seal of confession. The forgiveness of Christ is not cheap grace, it is free grace. Confession cannot be tied into the legal system.
Bishops and priests are not policemen.
” There are no boundaries; no limits; no consequences, no accountablility – in all honesty, in that environment, there is no truth and there is no forgiveness. It is a game and now the confessor is part of the game. In counseling terminology, you have become an “enabler” – we can lose our licenses when we are responsible for that type of behavior.”
In the confession the priest can only speak in persona Christi — as Christ does in the Gospels — Your sins are forgiven; go and sin no more. To establish licenses limiting this would be wrong. Also in the case of psychoanalysts it would be destructive to establish such licenses. For instance, in some countries suicide is a crime; but a psychoanalyst who would treat suicide according to this category would be a very bad one.
“Your comments concern me – they are indicators that you do not understand ADULT relationships; the harm done by abuse; the conflicting personality stages of growth that teenagers go through, etc. (Rita – you said it very well – unfortunately, the clerical mindset continues to rule – how immature and unaccountable can one be!)”
This is defensive name-calling and pseudo-expert tosh, nothing more. You are quite closed to the empirical data I brought to your attention, which is an indicator of a witch-hunt mentality.
“If a lay person came to me as a priest to talk about his or her problems with an urge to commit murder and in the process revealed that they had done things that could get them in jail, I would certainly not hand them over to the police. My instinctive feeling here is indeed part and parcel of the clerical mindset, but I think there is a lot to be said in its favor.”
I changed one word in the above. Now reread what Rita Ferrone said:
“I can see no thought here of the victims, a typical enough response of the clerical mindset. How many, and what are they coping with, or what help do they need for the abuse they endured? How many more might be affected? Not even on the radar screen,are they?”
This is unfair pouncing, and dismisses the point I was making.
Oops, not Rita Ferrone, but Carolyn Disco.
O’Leary:
“It is doctrinaire to say that he cannot have been in love with the PP or a willing partner in their relationship. Just this kind of puritan dogmatism is what is not helpful.”
“There was a story in the New Yorker 10 years ago about a priest who took photos, in silence, of a boy at the public baths — the boy willingly posing…Next scene: the boy testifies against the priest in count, in tears.”
The same sentiments were expressed by Paul Shanley, and are part of the platform of North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). You would make a good publicist.
Your apologia for man-boy love is revealing. It may be shared by Vatican bureaucrats who requested assignations be prepared when they accompanied JPII on one of his visits to the US. Maybe it is a commonplace view. An American priest who worked for the Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission at the UN reported to me that his Continental associates found such liaisons casual matters.
Again, your definitions of consent and love are breathtaking. Your emotional map of the young boys’ developments is so distorted in ignorance, I am speechless.
Critics of what I said about priest-counselee relations do not seem to notice what I said: “In the case where the penitent or counselee presents a public danger the police should be notified (unless the seal of the confessional is involved).”
I added (and fellow-priest Robert Imbelli agrees): “However, I don’t think that things are usually that black and white.”
In fact anyone who has a mature sense of the complexity of human nature and human situations –that is anyone who has studied psychology or literature or has had dealings with human beings in confessional situations — must recognize that there are millions of gray areas, and that to expect salvation and transparency from the law and the police is folly.
Carolyn Disco — I do not believe that adults should have sexual relations with minors — but I suppose groups like NAMBLA or researchers like Kinsey do provide some valid empirical observations.
You have discredited the lifelong love relationship between two human beings on the basis of doctrinaire presuppositions.
Your story about assignments and liaisons — are you suggesting that the papal staff sets people up for sexual encounters with minors? I think that is a ridiculous suggestion.
In the case of the couple I mentioned, the senior party graduated out of a pedophile lifestyle by falling in love with his present partner when the latter was 13. I think this is an instructive trajectory. Of course there are many cases of people falling in love with very young teenagers and marrying them the moment they reach legal age. As Pushkin remarks, “Love is no respecter of age!”
I would not be as harsh as Fr Imbelli on “the third way”. I think it is perfectly possible for two people to support one another in a loving relationship confining the physical expression of their affection to hugs and kisses. After all, even married couples express their love in this way most of the time, and sometimes abandon the more laborious business of “sex” totally.
I am checking out now, preparing for a 3-4 hour test of heart functioning at a hospital tomorrow morning after failing a previous test. The old ticker needs some respite from these blog forays, but my absence does not indicate a lack of interest, or lack of censure at some of the contents here. Actually, I probably have nothing more to say.
““BUT how many of those particular boys do you think would report the priest (and himself) to his parents?”
I don’t see the relevance of this question.”
Fr. O’Leary –
The point is that even if there have been boys who have seduced priests (and I dare say there have been) THEY are NOT in the group of boys who have told their parents about abuse, therefore, they are NOT among those suing the Church, so they are NOT relevant to the issue being discussed: bishops covering up *reported* cases of sexual abuse. They’re a red herring, a distraction from the children who have suffered. All you’ve done with the topic is dodged the issue, suffering children.
Fr. O, quoting Ann: “Your proposal is a particularly clear example of your willingness to grasp at straws if necessary in order to protect your fellow priests.”
Fr. O.: Not sure what proposal you mean. Anyway, I am not concerned just with fellow priests; I am trying to argue for a more humane attitude all round.
Ann: I mean your proposal that a significant number of cases involved unfortunate priests who were actually seduced by boys and your assumption that such cases are relevant to the matter at hand, viz., suffering children and bishops’ covering up reported cases.
I agree with what you said earlier that it is possible that (in some rare cases) a young adolescent might fall in love for life. My grandmother told me she fell in love with my grandfather when she was 12 and never loved another man. One of my best friend’s fell in love at 13, married at 16 and her marriage was also a long and very happy one. But they just lucked out. Any parent with any sense would discourage such a relationship.
To say “poor priests, they were seduced” might be deserved, but it is not at all germane to the issues being discussed –children who were emotionally devastated by priests and the bishops who covered-up the priests’ crimes.
As to being humane to all, what you don’t seem to realize is that men who sexually abuse children do not change and if not stopped will continue to abuse. Not to report one is in the vast majority of cases to let him continue with his crimes, to let even more children suffer dreadfully, quite possibly for the rest of their lives. To shift a priest around from parish to parish is to be complicit, to be an enabler in crime, a crime which injures children dreadfully. Granted, groping isn’t rape, but the physical act is not the only consideration when priests are involved: they are generally role models especially for children, and the priests’ betrayal of trust is emotionally devastating to most of the children. Some children have even killed themselves.
The operating word here is *devastating*. You are claiming to be humane to them, but your lack of empathy just perpetrates the system. And, yes, you have displayed no empathy — you have called our accusations “rhetorical” when they simply express fact. I conclude the reason you do so is because you have not yet looked at the facts, and so you lack empathy.
What about the children who are left emotionally devastated, Father? What about them?
O’Leary:
“Your story about assignments and liaisons — are you suggesting that the papal staff sets people up for sexual encounters with minors? I think that is a ridiculous suggestion.”
From “Celibacy in Crisis” by Richard Sipe, 2003, p. 242, and the author told me personally about such arrangements:
“John Paul II has visited the United States on several occasions during his reign as pope. The preparations for his visits take years of preparation. Even the color and type of vestments as well as each detail of his schedule are orchestrated by a team of emissaries, mostly priests from Rome. A diocesan team headed by the local bishop or cardinal coordinates the myriad details.
I have fielded complaints from local workers that they had to respond to requests for sexual companions – usually young boys – from priests based in Rome. Can there be any other word than evil for this behavior and the contamination of faith that it represents?”
“But there are many people who were not warped for life or even damaged at all by sexual encouters with adults when they were minors — and who are quite ready to tell us so if we give them an ear.”
Fr. O’Leary, it seems that you are arguing against criminalizing sex with minors. Or you are against enforcing the law in every case, only in some cases.
But how do you choose? If, as you say, sometimes there is damage, sometimes not, how long do you wait to find out? Do you wait until the maybe-victim’s life unravels? Until s/he attempts suicide? If you, as an adult, remain “open-minded” about whether these events are abusive or not, aren’t you are placing the burden of proof on the victim? Given the influence of shame, manipulation, and other ways that adults hold the upper hand, I can’t see any wisdom in this.
I also don’t really understand why you offered the example of a priest taking pictures of a boy (presumably nude) in the baths. The boy knew the man was a priest. Because the boy posed willingly, you are saying — what? That it was all fine that the priest did what he did until the janitor reported it? That possession of child pornography shouldn’t be a crime if the models pose willingly? Maybe you should clarify what you are trying to say here.
It sounds to me as though you regard ephebephilia in particular as morally ambiguous, rather than wrong. There are people in this discussion (including me) who disagree, and they happen to have the law on their side. I would not say this makes the proceedings a “witch hunt.”
Ephebophilia as an affective disposition I see as morally neutral or good — for that I have Plato on my side (see the Lysis, the Charmides, the Phaedrus and the Symposium).
As already stated I disappove of sex between adults and minors.
“Fr. O’Leary, it seems that you are arguing against criminalizing sex with minors. Or you are against enforcing the law in every case, only in some cases.”
There must be laws, but in practice no law is applied in all cases. How many people would turn themselves in to be punished for breaking laws about safe driving for example?
Because something is morally wrong is not always a good reason for legal incrimination. I cannot forget that up to 17 years ago adult homosexual relations were punishably by life imprisonment in Ireland (commuted to 2 years). Homosexual pedophiles or ephebophiles at that time did not see themselves as belonging to a different category from the incriminated homosexual population in general. Now we make a massive distinction between the two categories and retrospectively apply the demonization to the ephebophile that we formerly applied to all homosexuals.
My point in referring to the New Yorker report was not to justify the priest’s foolish behavior (the boy was not nude, but posed lewdly, in a public place) but to point out that the intervention of the law was destructive, and especially destructive for the boy. I thought the point was clear.
“The point is that even if there have been boys who have seduced priests (and I dare say there have been) THEY are NOT in the group of boys who have told their parents about abuse, therefore, they are NOT among those suing the Church, so they are NOT relevant to the issue being discussed: bishops covering up *reported* cases of sexual abuse. They’re a red herring, a distraction from the children who have suffered. All you’ve done with the topic is dodged the issue, suffering children.”
Well, my experience is very limited. I have never met a victim of child abuse, except some girl students in Japan who related encounters with flashers. I have met a handful of people, male and female, who recounted their sexual encounters with adults as minors and none of them expressed any sense of traumatization. So my deduction is that there are two sides to the story. Morally it is never licit for an adult to involve a minor in sex, but from the human and psychological point of view the results are not necessarily always damaging, as you seem to agree.
The vast field of literature offers me some secondary experience — and here again it is surprising how many writers remember with gratitude the experience of being seduced by their nannies or whoever.
You say that only devastated young people offer complaints. That is not necessarily so. We saw on another thread that a priest groped a 15yo, a habitue of a gay dancehall, and the parents made a public demonstration outside the church; 15 years later the boy was contacted by the Director of Public Presecutions to bring charges, which he declined to do; 15 years later again the whole affair is aired anew in the Murphy report. There is no evidence that the boy was devastated.
Also there is a massive financial inducement to make complaints. The naughty 15 yo who I referred to above, if he had been a nastier person, could have blackmailed the priest later or brought a legal complaint.
I think there are a great variety of cases, sometimes very grave and devastating abuse, sometimes molehills magnified into mountains, and there should be a differentiation and discernment brought to bear. Of course no adult in his senses will expose himself or a young person to the dangers of sexual proximity today. But note that there is a shadow-side to this too: warmth and friendship between adult and adolescent is frozen out by our paranoia about “pedophelia”. The more relaxed world of Plato’s Athens was surely healthier. (Don’t scoff — it’s the foundation of our civilization.)
“I have fielded complaints from local workers that they had to respond to requests for sexual companions – usually young boys – from priests based in Rome. Can there be any other word than evil for this behavior and the contamination of faith that it represents?”
Well, this is just individuals, not papal policy, and I doubt if such behavior is typical.
Good article here: http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2010/02/theres-no-roman-solution-to-irish.html
I tend to agree with Fr Imbelli — phrases like “clerical mindset” are just part of the meaningless jargon we all tend to end up mouthing when this issue is discussed.
Father O’Leary: I agree that not all is black and white, so let’s report offenders to legal authorities and let them deal with the intricacies of each case, The confident of the priest who had sex with a minor is not in a position to judge and is biased to give the molester the benefit of the doubt, as those reports have amply demonstrated. It is time for the pendulum to swing back. Judges and lawyers are trained to exercise the kind of fine judgment needed in those gray situations that you are referring to. Who are you to know better than them?
At least, that’s the principle. I understand that it is difficult to apply when the law is unjust, when the person in question is your friend, when he tells you a plausible story of (from his perspective) love rather than of abuse, when he is close to you whereas the minor is merely a distant stranger. But it is very dangerous to rationalize this natural tendency to be reluctant to report to the police.
I hardly trust lawyers and certainly not the police in general, but in that realm, where abuse has been committed by people in positions of power against powerless minors, and where the self-policing efforts have failed spectacularly, it is a necessity, even if the pendulum swings too far in the other direction.
The continuing arguments here almost make me weep.
Sex abuse (of minors, adolescents, adults -all ) is a crime.
There are varying degrees and criminal law provides therefore.
One of the foremost defenses used by abusers is minimization.
I’m not sure why folks don’t trust the criminal justice system, though obviously it has its human limitations – limitations that may have protected clergy in the past, but now that things are out in the open…
I thought this thread was about the meeting of the Bishops in Rome.
Today at NCR aother post about victims despairing of that meeting.
As I’ve said, criminal justice recognizes the importance of listening to victims, not defending a class or the power structure -though a power structure can certainly try to minimize damage.
And minimization is a classic defense in these matters.
Whether “clerical mindset” is the right name for it or not I don’t know, but the organizational or corporate culture of the Church has played a huge role in how the hierarchy has handled the abuse crisis.
From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_culture
Organizational culture is an idea in the field of Organizational studies and management which describes the psychology, attitudes, experiences, beliefs and values (personal and cultural values) of an organization. It has been defined as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”
This definition continues to explain organizational values also known as “beliefs and ideas about what kinds of goals members of an organization should pursue and ideas about the appropriate kinds or standards of behavior organizational members should use to achieve these goals. From organizational values develop organizational norms, guidelines or expectations that prescribe appropriate kinds of behavior by employees in particular situations and control the behavior of organizational members towards one another.”
Dr Pádraic Conway in the Clericalwhispers post you reference hopes the following:
The bishops should declare, without further delay, a time-bound intention to review and reform all relevant ecclesial structures and systems.
This should be done both to minimise the risk of repetition of past events and, on the broader scale, to rebuild the faith and morale of their shattered communities.
The process should be a transparent one, open to the widest possible public discussion and input.
It should be led by a small representative group with a clearly identified and appropriately skilled spokesman.
Its recommendations should be agreed publicly by all Irish bishops and implemented, again in a timed and measured fashion, in all dioceses.
What are the odds of this actually being initiated by the bishops, of them escaping from the culture that created the problem in the first place. I agree the Irish church (or the American church for that matter) can’t look to Rome for an answer. I don’t think we can look to the bishops either. These are men, like all bishops, who have been specifically selected for their jobs by Rome because they toe the party line on all the third-rail topics in the Church (e.g., contraception, collegiality, women’s ordination, gays, etc.). They are either authentically orthodox or have accepted limits to their reason and freedom of intellectual thought and expression to get where they are today.
If it comes it will come from the people, who choose to exercise the power they have to make change happen.
Dr Conway’s suggestions are, btw, great suggestions; the faithful on this side of the pond should take them up, ala the Joseph Jaglowicz post on February 18th, 2010 at 12:54 pm.
Back to natural law and distinguishing it from cultural conditioning.
Fr. O Leary says: “If the Church has had so much difficulty in discerning natural law beyond cultural conditioning, in the cases of contraception, homosexuality, women’s ordination, how can we be confident that natural law can ever be discerned at all?”
The Church has gotten these things wrong, the hierarchy has, and the Church has steadfastly refused to accept the hierarchy’s point of view. That’s a clue. Also, they fail the test of reason: the arguments are intellectually bogus because they end with natural law rather than begin with it. Also, they fail the test of the fullness of evidence. Look at the footnotes in the latest USCCB letter on marriage — all previous papal documents — like that’s the only reality that needs to be looked at. And look at the scope of evidence in the Commission on Birth Control’s Majority vs. Minority report. Finally, and most importantly, they fail the test of compassion.
Is natural law another one of those things, like canon law, that progressives blow off because it’s not progressive enough? I was quite surprised to read in Ladislas Orsy’s Receiving the Council that just like the Council failed to create any serious ongoing structures for collegiality, it seems the progressives pretty much blew off the whole domain of canon law. “Opus Dei, on the other hand, fostered the cultivation of this discipline; the University of Navarre became the seedbed for a school of canonists, and from the very moment of the creation of the Committee on the Revision of Canon Law, Opus Dei took an active role in it.” (p. 86)
Ooops with the italics.
“Ephebophilia as an affective disposition I see as morally neutral or good.”
Yeah I thought so, it explains your entire “rationalization.” I can’t call it a moral argument
Stay away from my family.
I think we have pretty well exhausted this topic. It’s simply become repetition. Except for the stuff on natural law, which perhaps I could make a separate thread.
There is another topic implicit in this thread that I think warrants consideration sometime — why should the common experience of a majority ever determine (by means of laws) the behavior of individuals who are convinced that in their specific cases the laws are unjust? In other words, should there be exceptions to laws when the laws in particular cases seem to be unjust to an individual?
It involves the justification of civil authority and the principle that an unjust law is no law at all.
Respecting the Dignity of the Human Person requires that we do not condone any sexual act that is not consistent with Sexual Love. Joseph O’Leary’s comments are more than just disturbing. They are reflective of the manipulation and deceit that is often used as an attempt to justify that which can never be justified.
Claire, thanks for your thoughtful comments. In the case of the New Yorker report, the Law took its course impeccable. The priest received a suspended one-year sentence for his foolish behavior in photographing the boy. (By the way, my faithful account of this article received the accusation that I sounded just like NAMBLA advocate Shanley — another casual libel from someone who probably had not read the article.)
The Law was in no way unjust, and the priest made no complaint about the Law.
Despite this, the boy’s life was ruined — to judge from the article. Not by the original incident but by the intervention of the Law. If the janitor had foreseen these consequence would he have called in the cops?
Nancy Danielson, your insulting comments are based on pure wall-eyed fanaticism. If you find manipulation and deceit in my honest commentary, be so kind as to indicate where.
Joe McFaul, I should modify my comment — *exclusive* ephebophilia I would not see as a desirable psychological disposition. But readers of Plato know what I mean. By the way your angry sneer is typical of the attitude that prevents any rational discussion here, and makes the issue a no-win one. Just a few years ago the same attitude was taken to homosexuality, with the result that many young people’s live were ruined by homophobic parents — indeed, many American young people particularly are cast out on the streets by homophobic parents even today.
Jeanne Follman, I agree that the procedures by which the hierarchy claim to discern Natural Law do not meet what we today regard as criteria of rationality. There are no credible procedures of dialogue, consultation, critical reflection. Discussion is cut short by stalinistic slogans — “The Authority of the Magisterium!” “The Church is Not a Democracy!” “If you don’t like the Church’s Teaching go and join the Anglicans!”
Is there a community of philosophers or legal and political theorists somewhere who proceed in a rational way and thus identify Natural Law with clarity and certitude?
Or do we rather find a diversity of views, all with reason on their side, with the final choices being made on the basis of culturally constructed concerns?
I’m about ready to bring this long, debilitating conversation to a close. But before I do, a few points:
I’m troubled by Fr. O’Leary’s confidence in the moral benefits of ephebophiliac relationships. On the one hand, he calls them morally neutral or good. On the other, he says he disapproves of sex between adults and minors, all while complaining that the law is a blunt
instrument–and sometimes harms the younger member of the ephebophilac pair. He says:
All these mental calisthenics–post after post after post–to arrive at the bland truism that there are two sides to every story? Almost as incisive as the observation that the law can be a blunt instrument. It seems to me that O’Leary has not attended to the side of the story that complicates his rosy view of ephebophilia–namely that a lot of kids are terribly damaged by it. I say that as someone who has read letters from hundreds of victims of priest-abusers. I spent several days pouring over them. Confessions, lamentations, angry diatribes, pleas for justice, some poignant, many articulate, many more incoherent. Men and women who were violated by true pedophiles. People molested as they were going through puberty, and immediately after–and broken by it. Yes, a self-selecting group. We don’t hear much from the people who found themselves terrifically edified by their ephebophilac sexual adventures–at least not from the younger partners.
No doubt O’Leary will turn his nose up at the whiff of American prudery, but he might have a different view if he’d spent more time learning about what victims–yes, victims–have to say about their own experience of getting raped, groped, duped, fondled, whatever by people old enough to be their parents and grandparents.
Finally, O’Leary says that if, in his capacity as a priest, outside the sacrament of penance, someone came to him and admitted having sex with a minor, he would not report the person to the authorities–provided that he deemed them no risk to the public. That is not his call to make. If Fr. O’Leary did keep such a crime to himself and his bishop found out, would he be allowed to keep his faculties?
“If Fr. O’Leary did keep such a crime to himself and his bishop found out, would he be allowed to keep his faculties?”
Why should he be treated any differently?
Thank you, Grant.
O’Leary only THINKS he has never met a victim. I have been in a group as small as 30-35 people and had two approach me, when they heard of my advocacy, to indicate they were abused.
I’m flippant only becasue the poitnof this post is the Vatican’s statemetnon themeetignwithteh Irish Bishops is nothign more than the same PR spin that has been excreteed in many of the several hundred comments to this post.
Here’s the Pope’s comments:
“For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image.”
Wow. I imagienthe courage it must ahve taken to make that observation. Was he speaking ex cathedra?
“While realizing that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly, he challenged the Bishops to address the problems of the past with determination and resolve, and to face the present crisis with honesty and courage.”
Why did teh bishops go to Rome in the first place? Does the Pope ahve the authority to remove or reassign a bishop? I beleive th answer is yes. http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P5A.HTM
Has the curernt Pope ever exercised such removal or reassignemt?
Probably. See Fernando Lugo and Jeacques Galliot.
These bishops’ crimes? Running for public office–but not an ackowledged paternity; and calling for an end to madatory clerical celibacy, fair treatment of homosexuals and suggesting that female ordination should be considered.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, will get a member of the clergy “fired” faster than a call for female ordination.
Widespread worldwide clergy sex abuse? Barely worth a press release.
“Finally, O’Leary says that if, in his capacity as a priest, outside the sacrament of penance, someone came to him and admitted having sex with a minor, he would not report the person to the authorities–provided that he deemed them no risk to the public. That is not his call to make. If Fr. O’Leary did keep such a crime to himself and his bishop found out, would he be allowed to keep his faculties?”
I don’t know what his bishop or any bishop would do in today’s climate, nor what they would be required to do by their own laws and norms. I do know this:
* In the State of Illinois, all clergy are considered mandated reporters, and so if a member of the clergy learns, in a non-confessional setting, of an adult having sex with a minor, he MUST report it, or run the risk of criminal prosecution if it is learned that he kept it to himself. In the Chicago Archdiocese, the expectation is that all clergy must comply with this state law.
* Any sexual words or activity between a member of the clergy and a minor (or even an adult parishioner) is inappropriate and must be presumed to be abusive, even if the minor consented, even if the minor initiated it – regardless of the circumstances. Clergy are in a position of authority, and sexual activity of this nature is an abuse of that authority.
“He stated that the adult is not the seducer– the “kid” is the seducer and further the kid is not traumatized by the act per se – the kid is traumatized when the police and authorities “drag” the kid in for questioning.”
Report to hierarchy about Paul Shanley
I hate to say it that,as intelligent as he is, Fr. O’Leary is devoid of insight on this topic and is wrappedup in the clerical culture.
I think it’s good for folks to pile on here.
Hence, let’s break the record with this thread and go for 300 posts.
Seriously, i don’t think the topic of how Rome handled this matter was exhausted.
We’re seeing serious strains in the Irish Church and beyond and I suspect talking about impacts down the road is important in shaping how we even view things in ou rown back yard.
J O’Leary on 4/22 – 4:18PM: “The priest received a suspended one-year sentence for his foolish behavior in photographing the boy. (By the way, my faithful account of this article received the accusation that I sounded just like NAMBLA advocate Shanley — another casual libel from someone who probably had not read the article.)”
Jim – after 238 comments we hear from you. A couple of additions:
- almost every state has the same type of reporting laws for clergy now
- unfortunately, your good Cardinal still seems to be unable to understand these reporting laws of the state of Illinois
- the Dallas Charter basically states the same thing and that was 8 years ago
As Grant states: “All these mental calisthenics–post after post after post–to arrive at the bland truism that there are two sides to every story? Almost as incisive as the observation that the law can be a blunt instrument.” There are not two sides to the story when it comes to the three statements above…..of course, guess you could argue that the law is unjust….after 240 comments, we have come a long way from the initial post that the Irish bishops met in Rome and it appears that we have started a process – that is the true mental calisthenic here and the tragedy is that we only hear one side of the story – Rome’s and instead of the law being a blunt instrument; Rome’s intransigence is.
‘I’m troubled by Fr. O’Leary’s confidence in the moral benefits of ephebophiliac relationships. On the one hand, he calls them morally neutral or good. On the other, he says he disapproves of sex between adults and minors, all while complaining that the law is a blunt instrument–and sometimes harms the younger member of the ephebophilac pair.’
Sorry you lost me straight away. I do not say that sexual relationships with minors are good. I referred not to relationships but to ephebophilia, and if I were to refer to relationships I would refer to Platonic relationships, as my specific references to Plato indicate. Ephebophilia is at the heart of European civilization — see Michelangelo also.
I accept fully that sex with minors can lead to tragedy, and I have stated above that no one in their senses would expose themselves or minors to such. On the other hand it is only honest to admit that it does not always lead to tragedy.
As to handing over counselees, or sexual partners of your children, or your children themselves, to the police, I would not think that is necessary unless some real social harm is to be prevented.
I think mandatory reporting of such matters is an Uganda-type law that leads to a Puritan witch-hunt culture. I do not see how a priest or psychoanalyst could function in such a society. If the USA is now such a society, that is something whose negative aspect will come to light in due course.
“He stated that the adult is not the seducer– the “kid” is the seducer and further the kid is not traumatized by the act per se – the kid is traumatized when the police and authorities “drag” the kid in for questioning.”
Just because Shanley said that does not make it untrue of all cases. If you can find the New Yorker report I referenced you will see that the kid was the initiator of the playful poolside behavior and was clearly not at all traumatized. Later he gives signs of being radically traumatized — due to the chain of events set off by the police intervention. It is very dishonest to associate me with a demonized pedophile merely because I report what is in an article, which you yourself have not read.
* In the State of Illinois, all clergy are considered mandated reporters, and so if a member of the clergy learns, in a non-confessional setting, of an adult having sex with a minor, he MUST report it, or run the risk of criminal prosecution if it is learned that he kept it to himself. In the Chicago Archdiocese, the expectation is that all clergy must comply with this state law.”
Which must mean that no pedophile who has any blot on his escutcheon will ever bring his problems to the priest. Suppose the same law was in place as regards other crimes and misdemeanors such as theft, violence, tax evasion, in my opinion you might as well shut down churches altogether. The drafting of the clergy as a supplementary arm of the police spells the end of the priesthood.
“* Any sexual words or activity between a member of the clergy and a minor (or even an adult parishioner) is inappropriate and must be presumed to be abusive, even if the minor consented, even if the minor initiated it – regardless of the circumstances. Clergy are in a position of authority, and sexual activity of this nature is an abuse of that authority.”
Of course. Did I deny it? We need to keep in mind the distinction between Law and Morality.
“Nothing, absolutely nothing, will get a member of the clergy “fired” faster than a call for female ordination.”
That’s not true. I call for female ordination all the time and no one says boo! You are thinking of Fr Bourgeois, but his crime was to take part in an illicit ordination, which is a very serious breach of church order.
“a lot of kids are terribly damaged by it. I say that as someone who has read letters from hundreds of victims of priest-abusers. I spent several days poring over them. Confessions, lamentations, angry diatribes, pleas for justice, some poignant, many articulate, many more incoherent. Men and women who were violated by true pedophiles.”
I thought you were criticizing my “rosy” view of ephebophilia, but now you have slipped to “pedophilia”. And I don’t at all deny that sex with minors, whether children, pubescent or adolescent is a highly dangerous and antisocial behavior that is likely to involve such abuse and tragedy. But as people here now accept, “there are two sides to every story” and “the law is a blunt instrument”. Banalities, but ones suppressed by zealots.
“People molested as they were going through puberty, and immediately after–and broken by it. Yes, a self-selecting group. We don’t hear much from the people who found themselves terrifically edified by their ephebophilac sexual adventures–at least not from the younger partners.”
Who are “we”? In fact I have heard both at first hand and second hand (reading) plenty from younger partners who give a positive account of their adventures.
Oddly, our culture is totally ambivalent about this. Bernhard Schlink’s to my mind objectionable novel “Der Vorleser” (The Reader) has pages of lush prose glorifying the sexual relationship between a young adolescent and an older woman (it’s also a movie) — I have seen no one object to this!
There are no two sides to the story re the Dallas Charter? I thought it was a highly controverted document.
Cardinal Avery Dulles criticizes the Dallas Charter in an essay on the Rights of the Accused.
It’s interesting to remember that Jesus refused to apply the Law in the case of the woman taken in adultery. How can we follow that Gospel and at the same time subscribe to mandatory reporting? The two are logically incompatible.
About the possibility that the Pope might remove a bishop from office — What should be the criteria?
It seems obvious that if a bishop continued/continues to move perps around even after it has been clearly established that psychiatric teaching wouldn’t help, then that bishop has displayed either incredibly incompetent judgment or has actually colluded with the perps. In either case, such bishops should be removed.
How many such bishops are there? Well, the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago has rather recently done just that, and the NCCB has elected him their president. I infer that there must be dozens. But so be it. They should be forced out.
Bishop Drennan has not done anything like that. I do think that the campaign against him has become pathological.
Here, now, is the golden voice of reason, from a senior Dublin priest, a liberal and an advocate of women’s ordination. Read him without anger, please: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2010/0223/1224265029991.html
While I’m at it, I”ll add this –
Sipe maintains that there are many gay bishops, some sexually active. If this is true, the latter should be outed. Then, with facts established, they too should be removed from office.
“The report assesses 45 cases. Handling by the diocese in 25 of them receives approval from the commission, even by today’s standards. Not good enough, definitely, but far from media impressions that the report is simply unrelieved disaster.”
The author’s long essay in this month’s Furrow is also a must-read.
Ann Olivier, sexually active gay bishops — out them and expel them, you say.
But many sexually active gay priests have found a practical accommodation with the celibacy regime, a discreet, mature friendship, with a male or a female, which actually enhances their ministry (see the somewhat stereotyped one in the Antonia Bird movie “Priest”).
Would you out and expel them as well?
Oops, I meant “sexually active priests” not “sexually active gay priests”.
The basic problem seems to be that priests have the same attitude to Sacerdotalis Coelibatus (1967) as married couples have to Humanae Vitae (1968).
Fr. O’Leary –
The artiicle says, “The report claims (1,7) that abuse of children by priests was “widespread” in the diocese. Diocesan statistics (November 2009) show that 5 per cent of priests between 1940 and 2009 have had allegations made against them. This is 5 per cent too much, but 5 per cent is not “widespread”.
Of course its “widespread”. 5 percent is one in twenty. If one in 20 people in Ireland had cholera it would be considered an epidemic.
From the article: “The report does not set its findings in the context of Irish (and world) society. We cannot know whether the diocese was worse or better than other bodies without more information. Diocesan records were very well kept”
Given the deviousness of the bishops, why in the world should we trust their records?
I’m not going to waste any more time on such blind excuse-making.
Fr, O’Leary tells us: “But many sexually active gay priests have found a practical accommodation with the celibacy regime, a discreet, mature friendship, with a male or a female, which actually enhances their ministry ”
“Oops, I meant “sexually active priests” not “sexually active gay priests”.
The basic problem seems to be that priests have the same attitude to Sacerdotalis Coelibatus (1967) as married couples have to Humanae Vitae (1968),”
Ann replies: The difference is that the married couples are honest about their practice. And anybody who thinks that a woman is well-served in a secret liason which either precludes having children or precludes the protection of marriage laws has little respect for women and children. Sex outside of marriage is still sex outside of marriage, and for a priest it involves breaking his vow as well as lying about it and giving hypocritical sermons.
“Ann replies: The difference is that the married couples are honest about their practice. And anybody who thinks that a woman is well-served in a secret liason which either precludes having children or precludes the protection of marriage laws has little respect for women and children. Sex outside of marriage is still sex outside of marriage, and for a priest it involves breaking his vow as well as lying about it and giving hypocritical sermons.”
I agree that the “system” is more accommodating to gay relationships than to heterosexual ones (though the rise of gay marriage will change this, and deplete the priesthood still more). However, that is not the case in Latin America and Africa, where priests live openly with common law wives and children.
“Breaking his vow” — you refer to the promise of celibacy, make before subdiaconate (or now diaconate) ordination. It is not technically a vow. Many priests regard it as non-binding because not administered with due regard for their freedom. Others say it merely means one cannot marry.
“Lying about it” — not necessarily.
“Giving hypocritical sermons” — not necessarily.
Married Catholic priests (ex-Anglicans) who practice contraception do not necessarily give hypocritical sermons. They may not trumpet their discord from church teaching, but that does not mean they lie or are hypocritical.
Basically people function better when they have a domestic partner of some kind. The disappearance of priest’s housekeepers and the thinning of presbyteral fellowship, along with the stupendous relaxation of mores about sex outside marriage, has brought impossible strain to bear on the celibacy system.
The trouble is that both celibacy and the contraception ban are seen as negative rules that have no intrinsic meaning — and this despite constant propaganda from the Vatican. Nobody believes the propaganda.
The solution to this debilitating situation is obvious: abolish mandatory celibacy and restore to priests their natural right to marry.
I asked a British historian what he thought of making clergy mandatory reporters. He snorted, “What, snitches for the Stasi?”
If priests are mandatory reporters they should in justice have a notice in their offices warning people who come to them for counseling that any revelation of wrong-doing will be reported to the police.
This is what I mean by saying that America is still Puritanical. Americans have great faith in their legal system despite the facts that “death is the backbone of American justice” and that minors are regularly raped in American jails. The cult of total extirpation of evil, total transparency, full accounting of every crime creates a society of suspicion and litigation, where professionals have to spend huge amounts of money and energy defending themselves against the pitfalls.
I wrote: “In the State of Illinois, all clergy are considered mandated reporters, and so if a member of the clergy learns, in a non-confessional setting, of an adult having sex with a minor, he MUST report it, or run the risk of criminal prosecution if it is learned that he kept it to himself. In the Chicago Archdiocese, the expectation is that all clergy must comply with this state law.”
… to which Fr. O’Leary replied: “Which must mean that no pedophile who has any blot on his escutcheon will ever bring his problems to the priest. Suppose the same law was in place as regards other crimes and misdemeanors such as theft, violence, tax evasion, in my opinion you might as well shut down churches altogether. The drafting of the clergy as a supplementary arm of the police spells the end of the priesthood.”
If the pedophile brings his problem to the priest under the seal of the confessional, then the confidentaility of that communication is respected under current law. (I’m not a lawyer but that is my understanding). And aside from the sacrament of reconciliation – clergy can become aware of the sexual abuse of minors in many ways other than via a direct communication from a perpetrator. If we observe something, if the victim says something ot us, if we learn about something via a third party – we’re bound to report it.
This law doesn’t target clergy. Teachers, medical professionals, and a number of other professions are under the same obligations, apparently without changing the nature of what they do. I don’t know of a reason that clergy should be held to a lower standard.
The Sacrament of Penance requires restitution for our sins.
I found the New Yorker piece I referred to: http://www.somis.org/unholy__acts.htm
Jim, you talk of “a lower standard” but I do not see how psychoanalysts, for example, can be made mandatory reporters. Maybe the state of Illinois has no psychoanalysts? Or perhaps they are emigrating in droves.
If a priest or psychoanalyst now has to say to his or her client, “I must advise you that anything you say may be used against you in a court of law”, then that is simply the end of the priest and psychoanalyst professions. Jesus Christ himself would not have been able to fulfill his mission if such “standards” were imposed.
On Saturday, January 11, 1992, Father Provost had taken a group of boys and girls, aged between six and sixteen, to swim at a public athletic facility in Gardner, a town about fifteen miles away. A man who had been lifting weights saw the priest taking pictures of one of the boys as he dressed in the locker room, and reported the incident to the lifeguard, and the lifeguard called the police. On Wednesday, January 15th, Detective Sergeant Richard Morrissey, of the Gardner Police Department, called the priest to investigate the complaint Father Provost voluntarily went to the Gardner police station, handed over his camera, which contained an undeveloped roll of film, and gave a statement That statement prompted Morrissey to have the film developed immediately. Morrissey accompanied the priest back to the rectory in Barre, where he lived alone. Father Provost led Morrissey to his second-floor bedroom and there he handed over more than a hundred pictures of nude and semi-nude boys, dating back to 1977. (Later, diocesan officials came to clean out Father Provost’s room, after he was sent to St Luke, and they discovered a collection of child pornography magazines. They also found a collection of baseball cards, the most prized of which were attached to his kitchen wall and his refrigerator door.)
According to his affidavit, Father Provost told the police he had “taken pictures of kids in the nude, mooning,” and added, “when I look at these pictures I have sexual tendencies. I have fantasies of having sex with the boys.” He said he would often masturbate while looking at the pictures. “1 have had the problem of sexuality for about twenty years. I admit that I have a problem and intend on getting help with it,” the affidavit said. Father Provost was ordained in 1970; if his confession was true, he had been involved with this kind of voyeurism for virtually all his priestly life.
The mother of the boy in the locker room pictures told the Worcester newspaper that her children belonged to a youth group that the priest had organized. “He was wonderful with the children,” she said, noting that he had sent her son cards and gifts. The mother, who asked not to be named, went on to say that when the police identified her son in the pictures and came to her, the boy at first defended the priest, saying, “But, Mommy, he told me he was a priest, and it was O.K.” She told the newspaper, “Father Ron spent about two years seducing my son.”
HERE IS AN ASPECT OF THE STORY I DID NOT RECALL: THE PHOTOS WERE TAKEN WITH PRIOR GROOMING BY THE PRIEST.
I flipped through the document to Exhibit A, a copy of the indictment. There, for anyone who cared to consult the public record, was the name of the ten-year-old boy whom Father Provost photographed that January day at the public pool in Gardner. Exhibits B through M were the photographs of the boy, arranged three to a page. The original color prints had been photocopied in black-and-white, so the collection had an added starkness. The pictures were now streaked with black lines, and virtually all contrast had been lost. There was the boy listed in the indictment, his expression denied any nuance, his features just blobs and lines, almost like the elements of a caricature. In the first picture, Exhibit B, he stands with his back to the camera, hands on hips, his face grinning in profile, his buttocks clearly exposed above cotton jockey briefs, which have been pulled down. Exhibit C presents a similar picture. In Exhibit D, the boy turns full face and grimaces. His briefs are now pulled up. His right middle finger pokes out over the edge of his underwear in a “Fuck you” gesture. The next three pictures depict the boy looking wistful and pensive, and still wearing only his briefs. In Exhibit H, the finger pokes up from his briefs. Exhibit I is another middle-finger shot; this time it is a blurry white mass, defiantly thrust into the air, shoulder high. In Exhibit J, the boy looks as though he were jogging. K is another middle-finger shot, this one in profile. In Exhibit L, the boy is making peace signs with two fingers of each hand. In the final picture, Exhibit M, he poses as a muscle man, his scrawny arms and taut leg muscles rigidly flexed.
From the newspaper description of the photographs on which the charge against Father Provost was based — and from his own unsolicited comment to me on the phone had assumed them to be a series of quickly snapped candid photo opportunities unobtrusively and casually exploited by a man who sought to add a new erotic jewel to the treasure chest in his rectory bedroom. But these twelve pictures were hardly that. There had been an interchange – spoken or unspoken – between photographer and subject. There had been encouragement to go on.
….
The boy testified that on seeing the camera he had “posed” for the priest and had “mooned.” He said that the priest had not spoken to him while taking the pictures. After the man who was lifting weights happened to walk by and confronted the priest, the boy had dressed quickly. On his way out of the pool, he had said something to Father Provost. The boy testified, “I told him that he’d better throw away those pictures.”
“And what did he respond to you, if anything?” Gecewicz asked the boy. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, I will.’”
***
Before sentencing, the boy’s father, as was permitted by Massachusetts law, read an “impact statement” that his wife had written, which bitterly castigated the priest, told of the horrors of the past year and of the therapy their son was now undergoing, and concluded by saying, “I feel that every tune he looked and photographed my son, he was raping him with his eyes.
The boy’s head, which had bowed slightly when the defense counsel spoke of his willingness to pose, and had drooped still further as Mary Gecewicz thrust the blowups into the air for all to see, now trembled slightly. He was crying.
…
sentenced to ten years in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at West Concord, with five years of the sentence suspended outright and the other five years to be a period of probation. Father Provost was not to go near this child or any child under sixteen; his future employment would have to be cleared with his probation officer; and he was to continue his outpatient therapy. James Reardon had assured the court that his client would never function again as a priest. (Provost has now filed an appeal of his conviction.)
***
As Father Provost left the courtroom, the mother of the boy confronted him before the statue of Moses. “At least you could have said you’re sorry. Sorry! Do you hear me?” she said, her smoldering eyes fixed on the priest.
Father Provost gave that vague smile I had seen so many times. “I’d love to apologize,” he said, his voice flat But he did not. He hurried past her to join Reardon down the hall.
***
Those needs at the moment do not include a public apology to that young boy and his family, or an offer to pay for his therapy as he tries to sort out what has happened to him.
According to his family, he now runs away from home when frustrated; formerly an open and accepting child, he now fears adult strangers, and fantasizes that they are murderers and robbers.
DOES THIS NOT SUGGEST THAT THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN KINSEY’S CLAIM THAT CRACKDOWNS ON PEDOPHILIA CAN DO MORE HARM TO KIDS THAN PEDOPHILIA ITSELF?
Many thanks to Grant for his lucid and pointed comments above.
Thank you to everyone who has posted out of concern for, and knowledge of, the victims of abuse. I have known several myself, people whose lives have been wrecked and who are self-harming. Anything that can be done to protect people from sexual abuse is worth doing.
I have followed this thread with interest and dismay. I’m sure I can listen to the spinning out of justifications for pathology as much as the next person, but I am hoping Grant will make good on his promise to close this thread down. Enough is enough.
Rita Ferrone, no one here is justifying pathology. What comment have you to make on the effect of the case reported on the boy?
I’ll take the bait. Fr. O’Leary suggests it was the fact that the priest was brought to justice–or, as he put it, made the target of a “crackdown”–that scarred the boy, not the fact that the boy’s priest had him pose nude for the cleric’s sexual gratification. Most anyone who has spent any time talking to or reading the testimony of sexual-abuse victims would recognize the effects of such abuse. Often the lasting effects of sexual abuse manifest absent “pedophile crackdowns.”
The end.