By any objective standard, the sexual abuse crisis would have to rank
as the top Vatican story of 2010.
Though the crisis has been around for
a long time, this was the year in which critical attention came to rest
squarely on Rome, including the personal track record of Pope Benedict
XVI.
As fate would have it, two different assessments washed across the
radar screen this week, both from people whom any court would sanction
as “expert witnesses.”
The contrast suggests that while everyone can
agree the crisis has been devastating, the questions of what caused it,
and what to do about it, remain far from settled.
One of those assessments came from the pope himself, in the form of
his annual year-end address to the Roman Curia.
The other is from a
priest today seen as perhaps the church’s most determined in-house
critic on the crisis: Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, who has decades of
experience in documenting priestly abuse, working with victims, and
consulting with plaintiffs’ attorneys.
In some ways, lumping them together risks a classic
apples-and-oranges comparison. For one thing, the genre is different:
Benedict XVI was offering a pastoral and spiritual reflection, while
Doyle’s analysis, which he originally penned as a memo just for me, is
pitched at the level of policy and media coverage.
Naturally, there’s
also a vast difference in ecclesiastical standing between the pope and
Doyle – even if Benedict would be the first, I suspect, to concede that
the dogma of papal infallibility does not mean his assessment of the
causes and context of the crisis is beyond question.
However dissimilar they may be, these reflections both come from
people with unique standing on the issue.
(I suspect a “Top Ten” list of
people on the planet who have read the most case files of Catholic
priests accused of abuse would include both Benedict XVI and Doyle.)
Anyone who wants to think beyond pre-conceived notions, whether
hostile to the institutional church or supportive of it, would do well
to listen to both men.
I’ll recap their perspectives here, as a final
contribution to taking stock of 2010 – and, no doubt, previewing a
debate that will continue well into 2011 and beyond.
* * *
The Christmas address to the Curia is typically the moment in which
popes take a look back at the year.
The fact that Benedict spoke first
about the crisis reflects just how long a shadow it cast over 2010.
Sound-bites from the pope’s speech have been widely reported, but to
understand what Benedict was saying it’s important to bring the full
context into view.
Reading the pope’s words, there can be little doubt about his
personal anguish.
He quotes at length from a 12th century vision of St.
Hildegard of Bingen, which vividly describes how the “garment” of the
church is “torn by the sins of priests.”
The pope said the vision is
directly applicable to current events.
“The way she saw and expressed it,” the pope said, “is the way we have experienced it this year.”
June 29, 2010, marked the close of a “Year of Priests” called for by
Benedict XVI, and he situated his reflections on the crisis in the
context of appreciation for the “great gift” of the priesthood.
“We realized afresh how beautiful it is that human beings are fully
authorized to pronounce in God’s name the word of forgiveness, and are
thus able to change the world, to change life,” the pope said.
“We realized how beautiful it is that human beings may utter the
words of consecration, through which the Lord draws a part of the world
into himself, and so transforms it at one point in its very substance;
we realized how beautiful it is to be able, with the Lord’s strength, to
be close to people in their joys and sufferings, in the important
moments of their lives and in their dark times; how beautiful it is to
have as one’s life task not this or that, but simply human life itself –
helping people to open themselves to God and to live from God.”
Especially in that context, the pope said, we were “all the more
dismayed” by revelations about priests who “twist the sacrament into its
antithesis, and under the mantle of the sacred profoundly wound human
persons in their childhood, damaging them for a whole lifetime.”
Facing that ugly reality, Benedict called for an examination of
conscience about what went wrong, and offered a resolution to make
things right.
“We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible
the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in
our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to
allow such a thing to happen,” he said.
Benedict vowed “to make every possible effort in priestly formation
to prevent anything of the kind from happening again,” and also
expressed his thanks both to those who work to help victims, and to “the
many good priests” who exhibit humility and fidelity.
At the level of diagnosis, Benedict returned to a familiar theme,
asserting that mistaken theories in Catholic moral theology in the 1970s
helped make the sexual abuse crisis possible.
By downplaying absolute
good and evil and treating morality as a matter of weighing
consequences, the pope said, those theories opened the door to
justifying gravely immoral behaviour, including the sexual exploitation
of minors.
As a result, Benedict called for renewed emphasis in moral formation on Pope John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor,
which explicitly rejected theories such as “consequentialism” and
“proportionalism,” asserting that some acts are always “intrinsically
evil” and can never be justified.
I filed a story this week about the doubts some experts harbour as to
whether proportionalism forms part of the backdrop to the crisis, which
can be found here: Condoms not a 'lesser evil,' Vatican insists
The full text of Benedict’s address to the curia can be found here: Address to the Curia
The speech could profitably be read in tandem with the extended
comments from Benedict XVI in his recent book-length interview with
German journalist Peter Seewald, Light of the World, which devotes two
full chapters and portions of several others to the sexual abuse crisis.
* * *
Doyle’s take came in response to my Nov. 19 “All Things Catholic” column,
in which I wrote about a session for reporters led by George Weigel and
myself in Miami, under the aegis of the “Faith Angel Forum” of the
Ethics and Public Policy Center, on media coverage of the sexual abuse
crisis.
(The full transcript of that session should be available on the
Ethics and Public Policy Center Web site shortly after the New Year’s
holiday.)
Albeit in different ways, both Weigel and I suggested that coverage
of the response to the crisis by the Vatican and Benedict XVI in 2010
was a mixed bag, sometimes missing important bits of context which would
offer a more balanced perspective.
Both of us also said the media isn’t
entirely to blame – the Vatican’s underdeveloped communications
capacity is part of the picture.
In response, Doyle sent along a 21-point memo.
He intended it as
feedback for me, but he was gracious enough to give me permission to use
it in this column.
The memo is too long to reproduce in its entirety, but what appears
below is a line or two from most of Doyle’s points.
In some spots it’s
strong medicine, but it articulates convictions that are deeply held in
some sectors of opinion, and which must be part of a serious
conversation about where things stand.
1. “The overall impression of the article is an apology for the
Vatican’s response and for its communications with secular media. … The
real subject is the widespread sexual violation of minors and the
systematic, inadequate response of the institutional church.”
2. “Defenders of the papacy, as well as most if not all [members of]
the curia and hierarchy, lack an essential credential for credibility:
an understanding of the victims and their families, especially parents.”
3. “By my estimation [Benedict XVI] has met with approximately 20
victims in the U.S., Great Britain, Malta and Australia, with an average
of one minute or less with each victim. These encounters were carefully
planned and the victims carefully chosen. This hardly qualifies for
gaining any level of understanding.”
4. “None of the criticism of media stories about cases involving the
Vatican provided any evidence that the facts upon which the stories were
based, were erroneous … These were but a small sampling of many other
priests guilty of sexually abusing minors whose cases were delayed or
buried in the Vatican.”
5. “I seriously question George Weigel’s credibility as an expert on
clergy sex abuse. Weigel’s current remarks about the crisis of 2002 are
at variance with the numerous statements he made at the time,
statements that defended Cardinal [Bernard] Law and tried to shift the
focus from what it was, sexual violation of children and cover-up, to
cultural and theological issues.”
6. “Weigel’s claim that Pope John Paul II received deficient
information through Vatican channels doesn’t hold water. … I prepared an
extensive report in 1985 that was personally given [to John Paul II] by
Cardinal [John] Krol. I also recall giving a detailed briefing to [a
top Vatican official] in May 1985. … I am quite certain that since that
time much more information has found its way to the Vatican.”
7. “Defenders of the Vatican, including you, regularly fall back on
the standard defenses: the Vatican does business in a way Americans
don’t understand; the Vatican wants to let the U.S. solve its own
problems; the Vatican uses a unique form of communication which
Americans don’t ‘get.’ … If it wants to be understood, the Vatican
should abandon its convoluted language and have someone help them learn
how to speak directly and to the point.”
8. “Appealing to the fact that the incidence of abuse among Catholics
is no higher than other groups makes as much sense as one of the Wall
Street financial giants trying to save face by claiming, ‘Why pick on us
when we cheated no more than the other banks down the block?’”
9. “It’s misleading to say, ‘The Catholic Church is arguably the
safest environment for young people and adolescents in the country.’
First off, there are no data to support this. More importantly, all of
the procedures and programs have been put in place after the Boston
revelations of 2002. [They] were put in place because the bishops were
forced to do so.”
10. “The question of reliable sources is most important. This
crisis began in 1984 and continued to simmer, with occasional events of
major magnitude such as the James Porter case of 1993 and the Kos trial
in 1997. … Very few people are still on the playing field who were
involved at the beginning and have continued involvement. … I have never
been contacted by defenders of the institutional church, no doubt
because I am written off as totally biased. This tag is unjustified
because I have struggled from the early days to understand and accept
the institution’s response. “
11. On plaintiff’s lawyer Jeffrey Anderson: “The accusation that Jeff
is in it only for the money is based on subjective opinion and
certainly not facts. The number of victims Jeff has helped ‘pro bono’
is unknown because there have been so many. Jeff has given away huge
sums of money to organizations that help children and to individuals in
need. He is sometimes flamboyant and passionate, but he is committed to
bringing justice to victims and a safe environment for children in the
future.”
12. “Over the past 22 years I have worked with over two hundred
attorneys in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, the U.K. and Australia, all of
whom represented victims in civil suits. I vividly recall one attorney
telling me that he had served in just about every capacity in the legal
system, from public defender to State Supreme court judge, and had been
both a defense attorney and a prosecutor. He remarked that he had never
encountered an organization as duplicitous and manipulative as the
Catholic Church.”
13. “Benedict is not a great reformer. I believe he is personally
shocked and possibly even devastated by what he has seen, [but] his
responses have been very limited. They have concentrated on the
canonical prosecution of accused priests, but they have remained mute
about the core issue, namely the lack of accountability of complicit
bishops and the lack of penal measures against bishops who have
themselves sexually abused minors.”
14. “The response to the crisis by the late John Paul II is indeed a
serious stain on his legacy. … John Paul’s personal theology of
priesthood is that of a highly mystical state consisting of an
ontological change at the time of ordination, which he often referred to
as a joining with Christ. What this amounts to is the belief that it
is acceptable to sacrifice the spiritual and emotional welfare of
innocent children for a theory that would return priests to their
theological pedestal.”
15. “I have had firsthand experience with hundreds of victims, if
not thousands, and second-hand experience with countless others. I have
not once learned that a bishop’s first response on receiving a report
of alleged sexual abuse was directed at the welfare of the victim.”
16. “The secular media are not anti-Catholic, nor are they biased
against the hierarchy. They do not set out to make the institutional
Church look bad. The institutional Church needs no help at that…it has
done a thorough job on its own.”
* * *
My bringing these perspectives together is, of course, a media
exercise.
As a holiday wish, here’s hoping that 2011 will bring an
honest-to-God conversation among thoughtful voices on all sides of the
issues raised here, one not conducted primarily through the press or the
blogosphere, and in the context of shared concern both for victims and
for the church.
That would mark an important step indeed towards the examination of
“what went wrong … in our whole way of living the Christian life” which
the pope has invited.
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