Two weeks ago the Irish taoiseach, Enda Kenny, openly criticised the Vatican
for what he said were attempts to frustrate the Cloyne inquiry into
child abuse, thereby launching a row between Ireland and the Vatican
that led to the Vatican recalling its Irish ambassador.
But why are the
governments of historically papist countries suddenly at war with the
Holy See?
The reason behind this is wider historical shift,
namely our changing view of the nature of sin.
Acts such as child abuse
that were once, just 20 years ago, perceived as terrible sin that
needed be hidden and treated secretly, are nowadays valued as what they
actually are: disgusting violations of the law.
This is the
symptom of a major cultural change.
During the cold war, the Vatican
was considered the moral arm of western values and, to some extent, a
part of the anti-communist security system.
The need to shield Europe
from the Soviet Union granted the Catholic church indulgence from civil
authorities for the behaviour of some of its members and priests.
The
fact that many communist regimes actively persecuted religion, and tried
to defame Catholic priests and bishops as paedophiles, to some extent
gave political justification to such indulgences.
Even if
the public did not wilfully ignore these scandals, they allowed them to
be handled in the shadow of dioceses.
But now communism, as an
ideological and military enemy, is over.
Cultural paradigms have
changed.
American strategic, military and financial monopoly is strongly
and dramatically on the wane.
At the same time, the moral monopoly of
the Vatican is deeply under scrutiny too, if not finished.
As a
consequence, public opinions in the western world require the Vatican
and Catholic bishops to treat sexual crimes for what they are, and to
collaborate with the judiciary.
The first signs of the
secularisation of sin came in 2002, from the US.
A sex abuse scandal in
Boston, which eventually led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law
and large compensations for the victims, indicated that the old Vatican
culture of secrecy did not work any more.
But at the time the Holy See
either couldn't or didn't see the signs.
It tried to dismiss and
downgrade the scandal as an "American problem", connected with the
diversity of US catholicism and culture, and disconnected from the
reality of worldwide catholicism.
Actually, what happened
in Boston was only the start of the moral tidal wave that would hit the
Vatican at global level in the years to come.
What we are seeing now is
just the long tail of the scandals that emerged at the turn of the
millennium: a very old problem, but perceived today in a totally
different way.
That even the Irish government is now rebelling against
the Vatican is a symptom of this big cultural change in state-church
relations.
The Vatican's refusal to accept this new
situation speaks volumes about its inherent culture of secrecy.
And it
frustrates the courageous steps taken by Benedict XVI to fight the Curia's habit of shrugging off scandals as "plots against the church".
This
struggle will go on for a long time, and it will be a painful one.
But
if the Vatican does not come to terms with the secularisation of sin,
the foreseeable perspective is a unilateral rewriting of the relations
between some states and the Holy See.
If the lack of co-operation to
fight the scandals continues, secular authorities will be tempted –
forced, even – to act against the Vatican by infuriated public opinion.
And that would be a negative outcome for the west as a whole.