There is something rotten in Philadelphia – and it’s not the sports teams.
Ana María Catanzaro, the chairperson of the Archdiocesan Review Board
for clerical pedophilia has gone public of how the church has
systematically violated its own stated policy.
The issue here is not
that there is clerical abuse of children, but that even after putting
corrective polices in place, the official church hierarchy covered up such abuses.
Catanzaro said that the whole board contemplated resigning en masse in
March, but did not “because we had nothing to be ashamed of, and because
we felt we still had a lot to contribute.”
Her stance is more
courageous in defense of the church than the kowtowing to the hierarchy
in all matters because Catanzaro cites the Constitution of the Church,
Lumen Gentium
, that the laity is “equally responsible for building God’s kingdom on earth.”
The detail offered by Catanzaro in Commonweal magazine
is worth a direct reading. It merits attention because the problem is
not found only in Philadelphia.
Church officials insisted on monitoring
the procedures of the board and at the same time withheld key
information and prevented direct interviews that are normal procedures
in United States’ jurisprudence.
Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia has a
well-deserved reputation for good administration. Rigali, it will be
remembered, used both diplomacy and hard-headed decision-making for the
retirement of former Scranton Bishop Martino and was quick to retract previous claims when faced with a recent Grand Jury indictment of wayward priests.
He is also one of the most powerful of U.S. prelates in
the naming of bishops.
So his “mistakes” are important because they
disclose the thinking at the apex of American Catholicism, an issue not
directly addressed in the latest John Jay report that downgraded the role of homosexuality or celibacy as causes of abuse.
The issue is neither the cardinal’s sincerity nor his acumen: both
are spoiled, I think, by his theology.
Like many bishops, Rigali has a
top-down concept of church.
Instead of trusting decision-making by legal
professionals in the laity, the cardinal withheld information that
would likely have produced evaluations so clear he would have been
forced to accept the conclusions.
One key problem cited by Catanzaro was how current U.S. legal
definitions are replaced with jargon from canon law.
The criminal code,
for instance, classifies “grooming” of children to gain their confidence
before sexual activity as culpable.
The archdiocese, instead, insisted
on wording like “the Sixth Commandment of the Decalogue” and imposed the
age of 16 from canon law as the measure of adulthood rather than the
U.S. code’s age of 18.
I have little confidence that the latest
instruction from the Vatican on
how to run such review boards has fundamentally altered the power
structure that allows the hierarchy to side-step local law and lay
competence.
Resolution of the on-going scandal to Catholicism will not come by
repeating the apologetic cant of the Catholic League that “everybody
else does it,” pointed out in national and local media.
The real issue is that the moral authority of the church depends upon
meeting a higher standard.
The cover-ups by bishops made worse what an
individual cleric once did.
Moreover, it is unavailing to call the media
“anti-Catholic” and to disparage the faith of protesting Catholics.
As
Catanzaro suggested, it is time “for bishops to accept that their
attitude of superiority and privilege only harms their image and the
church’s.”
These are difficult times for all Catholics.
If you believe that the
Holy Spirit is working among us, then you might hope – as I do – that
the end is at hand for the clerical mentality that views all
decision-making in the church as top-down.
News flash: laypersons are
empowered by Baptism to provide leadership to the bishops because Holy
Orders do not confer infallibility.
Perhaps, as the new Vatican guidelines (III:f)
suggest the laity “cannot substitute” for the authority (potestas
regiminis) of individual bishops: but only a fool would say that our
input can never improve the bishops’ decisions.
Let them be humble and
ask our advice: we also are the church.