OPINION: Decline in respect and trust in the Catholic Church has produced a dangerous vacuum.
THE
CLERICAL sex abuse crisis continues to be a source of grief. Many are
angry at the injustice done and they view the church with revulsion.
Others grieve from a sense of shame and they too experience a form of
revulsion – better known as guilt.
Revulsion is an instinctive
reaction to that which humiliates us. We are frozen into self-protective
mode and we want to flee or, if that is not possible, to attack and
destroy.
This helps short-term survival but, in the long run, it leaves
us fixated and unable to adapt.
Certain realities are clear.
First, children were violated by Catholic priests and religious.
Second,
this abuse was covered up at leadership level within the church.
Third,
the damage done is a long way from being remedied.
People are
suspicious and no amount of apologies and new structures will rebuild
damaged trust, without some unquestionably personal gesture.
In
May 2010 Pope Benedict described the damage being done to the church by
the sex abuse
crisis as “truly terrifying”.
He was standing in front of a
television camera in the confined space of an aircraft cabin and
talking into a microphone. His focus on his own fear, rather than then
on the victims, could be seen as self-centred.
But the fact that he was
speaking directly from his own vulnerability makes what he said
unquestionably personal.
On a flight to Lisbon, in May 2010, he
told the world that he was terrified by “the sin inside the church”.
It
is one thing to be afraid and to act in a manner dictated by fear. To
acknowledge that fear in public, however, is quite different.
Such
a gesture only makes sense as the result of a decision to ask for help.
This gesture – unprecedented for its public and informal manner – could
help us to move beyond revulsion and shame in relation to the Catholic
Church.
If there is to be any significant response to this gesture
it will have to be by people of global stature who live with the
possibility of losing it. They alone would be in a position to convince
the Pope that they have a practical insight into the challenge faced,
not just by him, but by his office.
There are people in this
country who are part of an international network of current and former
political office holders.
They bring to that network the experience of a
country that has a unique heritage of democratic innovation and whose
contribution to the church throughout the world is inextricably bound up
with its international standing.
There are good reasons why
international political leaders might respectfully and publicly consider
the role which the parliamentary process might play in the life of the
church.
First, the Pope has acknowledged a deep crisis.
Second, a
significant part of the cultural heritage of humanity preserved by the
church and indifference to its current difficulties serves no one.
Third,
the church is an important advocate for marginalised groups throughout
the world.
Fourth, it has played a creditable role in the overthrow of
tyranny in parts of the world in recent decades.
These factors could
usefully be acknowledged in any dialogue between political leaders and
the church.
It would also be timely and fair to reappraise the
church-state conflict which marked the emergence of democracy. Neither
side has had a monopoly of right or wrong. If each stage in this story
was marked by resistance on the part of a dominant and oppressive
church, it was also marked by flagrant religious persecution.
Britain’s
“glorious revolution” of 1690 gave the world that bedrock of personal
liberty – an independent judiciary – but it also led to the exclusion of
generations of Catholics from public life. One century later, the
French revolution triggered the massacre of Catholics in the Vendée
region – an atrocity which one commentator has compared to the killing
fields of Cambodia.
Throughout the 19th century anti-clerical
regimes in Europe and South America went far beyond a fair dismantling
of church privilege to the outright expulsion of religious orders and
the exclusion of Catholics from public service.
In the 20th
century, the much-romanticised Spanish republicans may themselves have
been victims of atrocity, but they did their own share of killing –
7,000 priests and religious and tens of thousands more singled out for
being practising Catholics.
Given the vindictive behaviour of their
opponents, Catholics had good reason to be suspicious.
Nor were
the “democrats” as enlightened as they would have claimed. For a long
time parliaments were far from representing everyone. Until the late
19th century, the cherished right to vote was only given to those with
property.
This goes a long way to explaining one particularly
unpalatable feature of the anti-clerical regimes: when they dismantled
church structures, not only did they dismantle the only forms of social
welfare and education available, but they did little to replace them.
In
spite of all this troubled history, the church and the democratic state
have a lot more in common than might appear at first sight. Each
depends for its existence on a hierarchically structured self-selecting
elite, which is charged with preserving and developing an inherited body
of wisdom.
Without the legal profession and independent courts much of
what we take for granted in our democratic world – elections, parliament
and personal liberty – would not survive.
A democratised church would need a similarly stable hierarchical structure which, of course, it already has.
There
is one further and more immediate similarity between church and
democratic state.
If the church is going through a time of crisis, so is
democracy and, with it, the nation state.
It is in the interests of
both and, more importantly, of humanity that they provide an effective
counter balance to the emerging global oligarchy.
The three crises
referred to in these articles relate to the breakdown of trust between
elite groups and the wider population. In the past that trust was
generated by a confident facade behind which problems were resolved in
secret.
People were happy to live under the imposing shadow of
church and state. But the facade is crumbling in Ireland now and
throughout the world. This is to no one’s advantage because, without
trustworthy institutions, we are all vulnerable.
If trust is to be
restored, elite groups will have to learn a new respect for those whom
they serve, but no one knows how to achieve this.
It will take time –
with moments of misjudgment and setback – but it is in everyone’s
interest that we face this challenge together.
Fr
Edmond Grace SJ has lectured in law and social ethics at the National
College of Ireland and is author of Democracy and Public Happiness.