Every time Pope Benedict XVI says something about the never-ending
sex abuse nightmare, he inches closer and closer to the dark reality
that has been like a black cloud over the church for more than two
decades.
And although he is slowly moving forward, he always stops short
of the most important and no doubt for him, the most painful issue: the
complicity of the world’s cardinals and bishops.
With his talk to the assembled Vatican curia on Monday 20th. he showed
courage in the presence of many who are still in denial, by admitting
the extent of the violation of minors “to a degree we could not have
imagined.”
I suspect that this admission was fueled in no small part by
the explosive revelations in Europe especially the mishandling of a
serious case during his very own watch as archbishop of Munich.
After
that blunt admission Pope Benedict unfortunately retreated to the same
set of excuses we have been hearing for years.
First, the focus is on
the offending priests but never a word about the bishops whose
culpability for the cover-up cannot be diminished because of a sexual
disorder.
Second, he wondered what it was in the living out of the Christian
life that allowed the plague to happen. It’s not clear to me if he was
referring to the clerical life or to the entire church.
In either case
his question is off base.
He should have urged his audience and the
hierarchy in general to ask what caused their understanding of the
church to become so distanced from fundamental Christian values that
bishops were willing to sacrifice the innocence of the most vulnerable
for the protection of the institution.
He could also have urged or
better yet insisted that they all look long and hard into the style of
episcopal governance that enabled hierarchs and priests to live under
the delusion that because of their holy orders, they are above the law.
Third, he could have clarified that this is not a problem the
responsibility for which rests on the entire church. It is not the
laity’s fault that priests abused and bishops enabled.
Fourth, the Holy Father should back off from persistently trying to
attach some of the blame to secular society and what he sees as a
perversion of morality. His statement that in the 1970s pedophilia “was
theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with
children” is mind boggling. Whoever gave him that piece of nonsense
should be fired.
There have always been very small groups of people
whose brains are so convoluted that they think sex with children is good
for the children and good for society. Some of these people are still
on the loose, such as the members of NAMBLA and not a few are long-term
residents of correctional institutions.
On this point a personal
recollection: In 1971, I did several months training in a maximum
security state prison. I vividly recall that the inmates most despised
and most persecuted by other inmates were the child abusers.
The
“context of these times,” child pornography, the sexual revolution and
the other major targets of the era are not to blame for the existence of
compulsive sexual disorders and they surely are not the reasons why the
bishops intentionally stiff-armed victims.
It is not a misguided
secular culture that compels them to continue to protect abusive clerics
in so many different ways, spending millions of dollars to defeat any
proposed civil laws that would benefit all victims, and steadfastly
refusing to disclose the documentary records of confirmed abusers.
John Allen, in his response yesterday, “On the Crisis, does the pope
have it right?” sums up the pope’s theological argument:
proportionalism.
There surely was a lot of proportionalist thinking in
the revolutionary ’60s and ’70s but it never surfaced as a reason why a
priest or bishop systematically groomed and then seduced a victim.
Why
not try giving the proportionalist excuse another twist. If the morality
of an action is never cut and dry but depends on the “good versus evil”
of the circumstances, what can be said of those so-called church
leaders who relativized the good or evil of disclosing a child rape by a
priest against the good or evil of protecting the institutional church
from a serious blight on its image?
Pope Benedict made another qualified breakthrough by actually
thanking those who “stand alongside those who suffer and have been
damaged.”
He singled out “the many good priests” but limited his
gratitude to those who assist by helping victims restore their trust in
the church and their “capacity to believe her message.”
I have tried to
be a support for hundreds of victims over more than two decades …
victims from several countries.
Trying to reconcile men and women who
have been raped or molested by priests, with the institutional church is
nothing short of a particularly cruel form of re-victimization.
The
pope may have learned a lot about victims over the past few years but
it’s clear that he still needs to understand the profound nature of the
spiritual damage done to them.
Benedict’s praise for priests who have helped victims is an insult to
the many priests, brothers, religious women and even bishops who have
stood publicly with and for the victims and openly named the causes
rather than sticking up for the institution.
Every one of them has been
either marginalized by the clerical culture, penalized by the system or
as in the case of two bishops, forced from their positions by the
Vatican.
Cheerleaders for the hierarchy lavish praise on the pope any time he
speaks out about the sex abuse debacle.
At the same time many of the
same cheerleaders criticize victims and survivors who react with
pessimism asking “will they ever be satisfied.”
These people need to
know that the most important recipients of any papal message are the
victims.
The pope’s words must be seen from the perspective of the victims for
to evaluate them from any other source of reference is to miss the
point of why he is even addressing this topic in the first place.
The
credibility of any statement made by a pope or bishop stands or falls on
the perception of those who have been devastated by abuse and those who
have survived.
In the beginning, and in the end, this is really only
about them.
[Tom Doyle is a priest, canon lawyer, addictions therapist
and long-time supporter of justice and compassion for clergy sex abuse
victims.]
SIC: NCR/INT'L