Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church (continued)

Part VII in a series that looks at Clergy Abuse in the Catholic Church from 1984-2010
By Tom Doyle J.C.D., C.A.D.C

Around the country few if any of the diocesan review boards received any acclaim from victims. The boards, the membership of which is determined by the individual diocesan bishops, have mixed reviews. Some appear to be compassionate but are ineffective and no more than window dressing. Others are reported to be non-responsive, cold or even defensive. One of the more offensive steps taken by some bishops is the appointment of lawyers to occupy positions on diocesan boards or even worse, to serve as diocesan victim outreach liaison. 

Between 2002 and the present there have been countless criminal and civil cases in the secular courts of the U.S., Canada, Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, Australia and Mexico. Several U.S. grand juries have investigated the bishops’ complicity. In Ireland, three government-sponsored commissions have returned devastating reports. In spite of mountains of clear evidence that there is something drastically wrong with the hierarchy and with the institutional Church, the papacy and the bishops remain defensive, arrogant and primarily concerned about themselves. Twenty six years have passed and no one from the pope to the local bishops has raised a cry of alarm or indicated a sense of concern for the profound spiritual damage done to the victims of the very ones who have promised to bring them spiritual security.  In truth the hierarchy has had nothing to offer the victims that would lead them to healing.  The official statements of regret and apology have generally been dismissed as empty and insincere. The traditional rituals especially the sacraments and a return to the “practice” of Catholicism have only re-victimized the victims because it has returned them to the confines of their original abuse.

The search for spiritual healing starts with a recognition of the spiritual dimension of the trauma and the elusive yet profound damage that has been done. For many the path to healing has started with questioning Catholicism and everything it stands for especially the sacrosanct role of the clergy. This step often brings additional waves of guilt rooted in the years of toxic indoctrination that convinced the individual that to question much less reject anything taught by the Church brought divine disfavor and possible damnation. Having passed through this excruciating pain many discovered that healing could only begin with the explicit rejection of the traditional image of the Catholic “god.”  The victims often found effective resources and sympathetic companions to walk with them along the path to emotional and psychological recovery. The process to spiritual wholeness has been far more precarious.

Many of the beliefs dogmatically proclaimed by the institutional Church were at the root of the devastation and pain. The standard but historically unsubstantiated claim that the institutional Church, epitomized by the bishops, was directly established by the Almighty plunged victims into a whirlpool of guilt as they contemplated revealing abuse, challenging bishops or suing the Church. The standard teaching on the mystical nature of the priesthood, likewise shaky in its historic foundation, and the unique configuring of the priest with Christ pushed many victims to the perverted belief that the responsibility for the abuse was actually theirs. The Vatican’s (and the hierarchy’s) belief in its intrinsic holiness and its infallibility over all issues made any honest acknowledgement by them of the Church’s causal connection to the abuse plague all but impossible.

Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II in April 2005 and said and did more to acknowledge victims of clergy abuse in one year than his predecessor did in his entire twenty-seven year papacy. In spite of Benedict’s efforts and his apparent sincerity he still does not “get it.” Fleeting meetings with a dozen or so carefully chosen victims in the U.S., Australia and Malta may be good publicity but they hardly serve to educate the pope about the plight of the abused. His direct orders to the U.S. bishops to “bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust” (Address to bishops, April 18, 2008) were never taken seriously if they were listened to at all. Faith in the pope’s commitment has been eroded in light of the fact that he has done nothing to effectively change the bishops’ standard approach to the “crisis.” In short, the pope was long on words but nil on action. 

In his favor he did shake the dust from the Maciel case and when John Paul II lost touch with reality he brought the investigation to a close. Not long after his election he banished the sociopathic “efficacious guide to youth” and then initiated an investigation into his cult-like Legion.

Over the years since 1985 the clergy abuse “phenomenon” has continuously ebbed and flowed through the Church and through society. Inevitably each time a high ranking archbishop or cardinal confidently declares that the “crisis” is over due to the heroic efforts of the bishops (e.g., “The terrible history recorded here today is history” – Wilton Gregory, 2004), reality moves in to shatter the delusion. Nothing, including media fatigue, conservative neo-orthodox backlash or even the crudely offensive fulminations of Bill Donohue has been able to alter the fact that the clergy sexual abuse epidemic is far wider and deeper than anyone ever imagined.           

Although John Paul II tried unsuccessfully to isolate the “problem” to the U.S. and shift the blame to the secular culture it was inevitable that this shallow myth would soon be shattered. As the voices of the clergy’s victims spoke out in country after country it was only a matter of time before the thin veneer of cultural protection would cease to cover this dark side of the institutional Church in the traditionally “Catholic” countries as high up the hierarchical pyramid as the Vatican. By the summer of 2010 even the pope had been implicated in a cover-up from his time as archbishop of Munich. 

The Vatican’s chaotic responses to the steady stream of reports of intentional mishandling at the very top betrayed a papacy that had visibly lost even the appearance of the control it never really had in the first place.  The obviously unorganized efforts at countering the media revelations with press responses or policy changes (e.g., Revision of the 2001 norms for processing abuse cases, July 15, 2010) has only gotten the Vatican into deeper trouble since every effort is way off the mark of what is needed.  The non-stop defensiveness of official Vatican spokesmen, the whining that the media is picking on the pope and the insulting and offensive statements of several Vatican officials (e.g., Cardinal Sodano, Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, Cardinal Bertone and Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the pope’s preacher) and above all the stubborn refusal to order the bishops to cease their destructive tactics toward survivors in civil cases all show that the Vatican continues to insist on doing things their way. 

This of course is consistent with the official ecclesiological description of the Catholic Church as a stratified society with the bishops on top and the laity beneath, hopefully fulfilling their duty to “…allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.” (Pope Pius X, Encyclical Vehementer nos, Feb. 11, 1906).  Unfortunately for the Vatican, the flock is no longer docile and if any group is leading in this matter, it is the survivors. 

Next issue: Conclusion – The Hope