In preparing to write my weekly post, I usually scour a number of sources around the world. I like to read a wide variety of sources so that I can try to inform myself of all the prevailing opinions of the day, rather than just one particular viewpoint.
It always disheartens me, however, when I search for “Catholic” and get results relating to sexual scandal. So, as you can imagine, I didn’t like too much of what was in the news feed yesterday when I was doing my research.
A report has been released detailing the results of investigation into the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and employees in Ireland. This is not to be confused with the similar “Ryan report” which was looking at the government sector as well. No, this sorry report outlines the cover-ups of child abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland from the mid-70’s to the mid-90’s.
As with the reports from elsewhere in Europe and the U.S., these cases deserve categorical damnation. The abuse of susceptible people – of any age – by our priests (and anyone in positions of heightened trust) is always to be deplored, for it is amongst the gravest of evils in my opinion. And the, at best, misguided and, at worst, calculated moves by the prelates at the time to cover up and move people along is just disgusting. Period.
The last time I discussed this topic, I called out for answers: specifically, how can something like this happen (repeatedly) and how can we prevent it from happening in the future? While there wasn’t much by way of a response to these questions in most of the media coverage I read, there was some very interesting points of view provided in a Telegraph article, somewhat provocatively entitled “Let’s get it straight: Irish child abuse was perpetrated by the trendy, modern post-Vatican II Catholic Church“.
I’m not saying that Mr Warner is correct in all his accusations or theories, but I do wonder if we are analysing these abuses from every possible angle? Because, in my opinion, that’s what we need to be doing in order to find a solution to this. As one of the comments by “spuds” on Warner’s article puts it:
Pedophilia is NOT just a problem of the Catholic Clergy in ANY country, it is a problem that runs the broad scope of Human experience!
It runs in families, first and foremost as a crime of opportunity. What is a church parish but another form of family? As is the local athletic team, scout pack, school class, where pedophiles trawl for victims?
To blame the church practise or lack thereof, whether post or pre Vatican councils, is to miss the root of the problem.
Someone at some point willfully chose to ignore the damage mental physical and emotional to a child/children to satisfy a curiosity and set into motion sexual pedophilia.
From the little I have seen of various films made concerning pedophiles, they are in most cases victims themselves.
I in no way, believe that because someone is a victim, that pity prevent justice from being enacted, when a victim turns to victimising to reassert their control over their life.
Forgiveness in its truest form is meant to prevent victims from victimising as a method of coping with powerlessness.
Forgiveness releases the victim from the control of the victimiser, in his/her heart and mind! Forgiveness does not release the victimiser from justice, punishment and removal from society, regardless of whether the perpetrators, are priest, teacher, coach, doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, uncle, aunty, brother, cousin, sister… get the point?
So given this is not a solely Catholic problem, are there any lessons to be learnt from other professions of trust where this apparently isn’t a problem? Or, more frighteningly, is it also still a problem prevalent throughout all of human society? In which case a) what do we do, and b) how do we make our Church the bastion of those who are different enough for this not to be a problem?
Of course disordered sexual views towards children exist across all society. It clearly isn’t a Catholic Church exclusive thing – but as these reports show, the Church creates the environment for it to become more prevalent.
Seems like the answers are out there: more transparency, more screening, support for disordered priests etc.
I’m sure the Church is doing these things these days no?
More important I guess is the question of what inherent characteristics of the Church led to all these issues? Can we pick on things like celibacy and rigid attitudes towards sex as causal factors here? My mind wanders there…but who knows.
fishe,
I think that celibacy is a contributing factor because the requirement for it tends to attract men with sexual problems to the priesthood. I don’t mean that all priests have sexual problems, but for men who do, especially homosexuals in times past, the priesthood can be an attractive career. With public acceptance of homosexuality today I think this has become somewhat less of an issue.
I would like to think the Church is doing better these days but there are some worrying signs in Dublin : the SCDF in Rome (what used to be called the Inquisition and later the Holy Office) and the highest innvestigative body in the Church (the same body which sat on accusations of abuse from Legion of Christ founder Fr Maciel) refused to answer requests for information from the investigating commission; and the Auxiliary Bishop of Dublin Eamonn Walsh is opposing a similar enquiry into abuse in other Irish dioceses.
Those are not hopeful signs – they appear to be signs of the same entrenched of attitude of covering everything up rather than properly investigating abuse claims and prosecuting where a case is found.
One is reminded of Pope Paul VI’s comment in Evangelii Nuntiandi :
I think that rigid attitudes towards sex (I mean Jansenism, long a problem in Ireland) can make the problem worse. But I think loose attitudes to sexual morality probably did exacerbate the problem for a period in the 1960’s and 1970’s during the peak of the “sexual revolution”.
God Bless
fishe,
It’s instinctive to look at celibacy and think that it’s part of the problem, but the fact this horrific form of abuse is prevalent in other religious and non-religious settings, e.g. education, where celibacy isn’t required, it means any difference must be minimal.
Things are a lot better than they were, thankfully. That’s not to say isolated cases of abuse won’t take place, but the Vatican is making major strides to correct problems under Pope Benedict — despite the scurrilous accusations from Mr Sullivan.
The loose moral attitudes in the ’60s and ’70s that Chris refers to above was a HUGE problem, with many men being told that celibacy was going to become a thing of the past — without any credible reason for that assertion. There was limited effort put in to preparing men for celibacy and helping them to understand its role in the priestly life. There was also homosexual infiltration of some seminaries, and the vast majority of the abuse was committed on teenage boys. Connect the dots.
While I’m not as hard-line on this issue as others, there is something to be said for ensuring that men preparing for the priesthood are at the lowest possible risk of failing to live a celibate lifestyle, whether they’re heterosexual or homosexual.
fishe,
Yeah, I’m not so sure that these reports do show that. I remember seeing a report a number of years ago that showed higher prevalence (per capita) in many other “professions” other than the priesthood – including education and medicine. I can’t put my hand on a link right now, but regardless I haven’t seen anything to conclude that the Catholic Church tops the list of offenders.
Is it just because the Church is a large organisation and, therefore, easy to target/investigate? I mean, you can’t really investigate “education” can you?
You have to focus on individual schools.
Anyway, as a cradle-Catholic, I haven’t seen anything in my experiences of the Church that point towards an environment encouraging this kind of behaviour…far from it!
Chris,
I think I know the answer before I even ask this, but do you have any facts/statistics/proof of that? Of course, you’re entitled to your own opinions, but when the second half of your sentence makes a statement like that, I’d like to know what you base that on?
Link? I’d like to read both sides of that story please.
Scribe,
Sure it’s a potential problem in any organisation/community, but I was saying that it is more prevalent in the Church. And that perhaps the “sexual factors” (lack of better term) of the Church could explain this.
And James, I also didn’t say the most prevalent
But yeah, a comparison between other professions and priests during those years would be interesting to give perspective.
These reports though do seem to indicate an incidence rate significantly higher than in “the general environment” (i.e. child abuse that happens outside of a church setting, or not associated with a priest/whatever). Otherwise these reports wouldn’t be so shocking.
But granted, there is likely to be an element of blowing the incidence rate out of proportion still…but it doesn’t seem to account for anywhere near the whole story.
You can find some good statistics here. Some will roll their eyes when they see the source of the analysis — the Catholic League — but there are footnotes galore. Just because a Catholic organisation produced a collation of various studies doesn’t invalidate it.
And singling out another faith and its recent problems, try this news story on for size.
Unfortunately it’s typical corporatist psychopathic behaviour that neglects courageous personal responsibility and abuses legal blind spots to cover-up, fudge, spin or defer responsibility to future accounting periods and yet-to-be-appointed senior management teams, viz. AIG, AUSSIEGOVT, and AIRNZ.
Unlike Hanover, Bridgecorp, or the faculty who educated Mengele, “corporate” organizations such as the Church or the Crown do not dissolve over time and can be made responsible for historic offenses by their members.
I think we all agree that sexual predators inhabit all walks of life, and the Catholic Church is no different in that respect. I think what I do find distasteful is that there were men at the top of the organization who tried (successfully for many years) to cover it up. You cannot preach one thing and act out another. We have a special word for that kind of behaviour don’t we boys and girls
KA
Scribe
“things are a lot better than they were, thankfully. That’s not to say isolated cases of abuse won’t take place, but the Vatican is making major strides to correct problems under Pope Benedict — despite the scurrilous accusations from Mr Sullivan”
Incorrect,”From the Irish Independent,Taoiseach (Prime minister) Brian Cowen yesterday stopped short of repeating Fine Gael calls for the resignations of serving members of the hierarchy. In a statement yesterday, he said it was up to religious organisations to determine the “appropriateness” of individuals to hold ecclesiastical office. Catholic bishops are expected to issue a statement on the report today.
In another development Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin is considering calling the Papal Nuncio to account for ignoring requests for information from Judge Yvonne Murphy.
A source close to the minister said that he is considering the unprecedented diplomatic move in view of the Murphy report’s revelation that the Nuncio, the Pope’s ambassador in Ireland, ignored a request to disclose files to the Commission. A second request to the Vatican for files passed to it by the Dublin office was also ignored. A Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, was quoted as saying that the commission did not go through the proper diplomatic channels.”
Not only was the Heirachy in the Catholic Church in Ireland complicit in this scandal but it would appear that the Vatican may also be involved.
hi helen,
i think that we need to try and not be fundamentalist about this
we don’t know if the vatican was involved, and how it played out
james,
i am deeply saddened by the serious failures by the irish clergy
i think that their first priority was to try and protect ‘holy mother church’ from looking bad, but really it seems more likely that they were just protecting their own good names, and those of their friends in the priesthood
in the middle-ages, there are documented cases where bishops acted mercifully and justly, by removing the priest from the situation, sending him to a monastery to do penance for the rest of his life, and if he didn’t like it, then he would be defrocked. that removed the priest, but saved him from public attack, and protected the church, and the name of Christ from disrepute, and helped bring the abuse to an end
it seems that these bishops in ireland wanted to protect the name of the church, but mainly because their names are in it, ie, they were protecting their own names, and utterly failed to protect the children, ie, failed to remove the priests from the occasion of sin, and failed to be true pastors
they should be leading the country (catholics) in a series of public acts of repentance, and penance, begging forgiveness from Almighty God, and offering reparation – but will there be any frank admission of failure, of guilt, or sin? or any acts or reparation?
if they can’t actually say “we messed up, sorry, we’ll make up for it as much as we can, and we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again…” as well as public gesutures of recompence, then there are still serious problems
in america, the bishops issued reforms and corrections for everybody else – EXCEPT THEMSELVES – : a sign of corruption indeed, when an institution can’t reform itself
let’s hope that ireland does a bit better
this is a terrible episode in our history: all catholics feel and share the shame of this terrible failure in pastoral love, and human decency
peace bruvvas and sistas
That is a very interesting article James the Least.
While we are stuck blaming celibacy despite the evidence to the contrary (that is; rates of paedophilia or more correctly ephebophilia, is not increased among Catholic priests) we will never solve the problem. Not for us, the Catholic Church, and not for all organisations in positions of trust with teenagers.
It appears that no other organisation/profession has tried to combat this problem except to try and patch it up with compensation (as the Catholic Church has done). I imagine this is partly because, having missed the media spotlight, they are in denial about how prevalent the problem is. So the Church has the chance to redeem this shameful chapter of it’s history by coming up with solutions.
In a uniquely Catholic way, we should bring back 3 Hail Mary’s before we go to sleep at night for holy purity.
It’s quite simple really – if bishops aren’t willing to address the angry feminist dissenters working down the corridor in their diocesan education or liturgy offices, and if they aren’t willing to tackle the seriously deficient religious education happening in their schools, and if they aren’t going to do anything about the liturgical abuses happening in their dioceses, then are we really surprised to find out that they haven’t properly addressed the sexual abuse of young people going on within their dioceses either?!
This latest sexual abuse scandal is simply another sad reflection of the secularization of diocesan administration and leadership that has been happening all over the world, but particularly more noticeably in the West.
When a secular organization is accused of some scandal, the first thing they do is lawyer up, deny everything (admitting liability costs lots of money you see) and then they try and limit the harm to their organization – this means that if they can get away with it, they’ll withhold information or engage in all sorts of quiet personnel reshuffles – basically they try and make the problem go away as quickly and as quietly as possible, for PR reasons.
Many dioceses have been trying to apply a PR solution to the problem of sexual sin and criminal offending.
Sadly, this sort of scandal is the end result of all of that secularization and deficient leadership.
swwb
“This latest sexual abuse scandal is simply another sad reflection of the secularization of diocesan administration and leadership that has been happening all over the world, but particularly more noticeably in the West.”
Absolute Rubbish!Sex among the clergy goes way back to the Fifties,Latin Masses,the Churches historical problem with SEX.
The Church in Ireland today is still in denial,as well as the Church in the West and to try and blame women is laughable and pathetic.
Helen’s Bay,
Please read swcwb’s post carefully; no where did he ‘blame women’.
KA:
”
” You cannot preach one thing and act out another. We have a special word for that kind of behaviour don’t we boys and girls
Yes, I think the summary word you’re looking for is “normal”.
Synonyms might include, “Parati dwelling finance company rich lister” or “CEO of AIG or Bears Stern”. Ya know, preaching competition, free market, deregulation, bonuses, all that jazz until the music stops and a government bail out is required…
What some call “hypocrisy”, and gosh, who isn’t these days, I call tediously normal.
As I opined above, these episcopal ejits aren’t exceptional. They displayed typical behavior of sociopathic corporate technocrats and Dante has a place for them.
The Catholic League report doesn’t even sit well with Catholics.
It claims “According to a survey by the Washington Post, over the last four decades, less than 1.5 percent of the estimated 60,000 or more men who have served in the Catholic clergy have been accused of child sexual abuse.”
But the official investigation by the US Catholic Bishops found 4% of priests have been accused of child sexual abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jay_Report
God Bless
It’s not just me who is saying that the Vatican refused to provide information to the abuse enquiry in Ireland. It’s the Roman Catholic bishop of Dublin.
We’ve seen this Vatican refusal to investigate and take action many times before.
For decades the Vatican had very credible accusations (forwarded thru Bishops via the papal nuncio in Washington) that Legion of Christ founder Fr Maciel had sexually abused many young men in seminaries but they refused to take any action. Fr Maciel was never put on trial as he ought to have been under Canon Law.
Pope John Paul II refused to meet delegations who wanted to meet with him about sex abuse in the Church.
Those who are saying that Canon Law has been neglected and that is part of the problem with the cover ups are correct and the problem goes right to the very top of the Church in Rome.
We are still not getting the transparency and accountability from the leaders of the Church that we ought to be getting.
God Bless
morning cobbers and coberettes,
ebc,
yes, i agree with that assessment. they have become administrators, and managers, more than bishops.
chris,
really, were you there?
from what i understand, cardinal sodano (secretary of state under jpii) was largely responsible for not doing anything, and filtered a lot of this out, and kept jpii in the dark. i have a few books about the 3rd secret of fatima, and it is clear that there were men in the vatican (not the pope, but others) who placed large pressure (ibncluding threats) on priests who were talking about the fact that the full text of the third secret hasn’t been released. cardinal sodano was behind a lot of this stuff.
also, a few years back, the nz catholic ran an interview with mons gainswein (secretary of pope benedict) and he said quite frankly in it, that “it is well known that jpii did’t look after the roman curia.”
helen, i agree with 2 thing here.
the sexual abuse problem started earlier than the ’60s. there is clear evidence of homosexuals entering the seminaries in the 40s and 50s. there have been several prelates who have written books on it – they were witnesses to stuff.
i also agree that due to jansenism (a harsh, rigid, and uncompromising version of christianity, imbued with puritanism), certain sectors of the church was coloured with a very negative view of the body and sex; and ireland was one of the main centres fo this distorted view.
the church does not have a historical problem with sex. you’re being far too obtuse.
recently, the problems have arisn out of jansenism, then modernism, and then the sexual revolution. these all have produced a climate where: (1) people reacted against the puritanism of the 19th century, (2) people thought that the church’s eaching on sexuality could evolve, (3) then people just went and did what they wanted during the ’60s (licentiousness), thinking that they were ‘free’ and ‘uncontrolled’ and that in fact, ‘you just had to be yourself’ – and God was pleased with that. all this entered the seminaries in force in the ’60s and ’70s.
the latin mass has nothing to do with the sexual abuse crisis. the latin mass goes back to the 7th century (in it’s fundamental structure) and as it stand at the moment, it is very much (90%) the mass of pope pius v (1570). so it’s silly to try and blame the traditional latin mass
yeah, true oxy. the way they handle these things is a terrible example to the modern world of how not to take responsibility for one’s own house; and it further drives people away from the church
i wish some of them would just say, “yep, i failed, i’m going to as the pope if i can step down…”
peace bruvvas and sistas
I know the people behind http://www.countmeout.ie/
The number of requests to officially leave the Church have skyrocketed in recent days…
‘Peversion of power and trust’ exposed in Dublin archdiocese handling of sex-abuse complaints
pretty much as guessed
it just proves the ancient principle: “the best always corrupts to the worst”
this is going on europe at the moment: a magnificent christian culture corrupting and turning against itself