Tom Roberts at the National Catholic Reporter reflects on the failure of the hierarchy:
Danneels was generally seen as one of the last of the Vatican II generation who knew that council intimately and supported its reforms. He would be, for lack of a better term, a liberal by many of today’s ecclesiastical measures. But it doesn’t matter. So was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and his handling of some abuse cases was notoriously callous, and in his own attempt to hide a homosexual liaison he saw fit to lift nearly a half million dollars from archdiocesan coffers without telling anyone.
By contrast, Cardinal Anthony Bevelacqua of Philadelphia was a noted conservative, one of those who could be described as leading the reversal on Vatican II reforms. The Philadelphia Grand Jury report on his role in hiding sexual predators and using the law to avoid accountability is deeply disturbing reading. So are the documents in which Cardinals Bernard Law and Edward Egan are depicted overseeing the handling of abuse cases in their respective dioceses. Both are staunch conservatives and would be considered by many as protectors of a traditionalist approach to ecclesiology and church teaching.
Wherever members of the hierarchy are on the political, theological or ecclesiological spectrums, they meet first as brothers in a unique culture of celibate men who have sworn oaths of allegiance to the papacy and who have repeatedly acted to protect the institution while shunning the plight of thousands of child victims of abusive priests.
“I came to think that the problem was in some way cultural,” wrote Australian Bishop Mark Coleridge of the sex abuse crisis. “But that prompted the further question of how; what was it that allowed this canker to grow in the body of the Catholic church, not just here and there but more broadly?”
Coleridge does not provide a magic answer in that pastoral letter prepared last spring for Pentecost. However, he raises a number of issues – inadequat seminary training, the church’s “culture of discretion,” seminary training that creates “a kind of institutional immaturity, “a certain church triumphalism,” and the church’s tendence to see things in the light of sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment – that deserve far wider discussion and examination.
He includes in that list “clericalism understood as a hierarchy of power, not service.” It is one of many influences that caused so many in the hierarchy to confront the abuse crisis in ways they now say they regret. Perhaps it ought to be at the top of the list. Danneels is merely the latest sorry example, though a current one, demonstrating that for so long the actions of many of the community’s leaders were drastically out of step with what they were preaching.
Roberts identifies clericalism as the attitude that caused bishops to protect abusers. Even more disturbing, and Benedict has touched on this in his remarks on repentance, is a distortion in Catholic attitudes and teaching on sin, repentance, punishment, and expiation. Unconditional forgiveness is preached: God forgives unconditionally, we are repeatedly told (without our repentance?) and therefore victims must unconditionally forgive their abuser and oppressors, even if the abusers and oppressors remain unrepentant and unpunished. There is something seriously wrong with this, as the first word of the message of the Gospel is “Repent,” but it needs someone more learned in doctrine and history than I am to sort out what went wrong.
Leon, the whole thing is rather simple: Those within the group will protect their own. Group identity and group solidarity mean more than truth or honesty. That has nothing to do with theologies of forgiveness or other theological perspectives. It has *everything* to do with human nature.
I’m reminded of a line in the movie “Doctor Zhivago.” Komarovsky (Rod Steiger) is talking to Lara (Julie Christie) about her boyfriend, Pavel (Tom Courtenay). “There are two kinds of men,” Komarovsky says. “One is like your young man. High-minded. Pure. The kind the world says it wants yet, in fact, despises.”
People do not like truth; that’s why Christ was crucified. Who those people are, what they believe and where they worship are quite incidental.
It has nothing to do with forgiveness but in practice which is where suffering Catholics are forced to live daily, that clique try to make it look plausible that it has. They take out lots of column inches in the “catholic” (which isn’t) media to convey that viewpoint. Most of the laity are duped. Has the holy revolt begun now?
Michael and Leon, the fundamental problem is the regal, monarchistic pretentions that the bishops and even monsignors (just look at the title) like to wrap themselves in. Those pretentions encourage arrogance and discourage accountability. That’s why bishops get away with what they do and how they mishandle people. As St. John Chryostom put it, “the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops…”and, might I add, the blood of the apologists serves as the mortar.
Men, living all together and professing celibacy, allowed child sex abuse to thrive because they had no visceral reaction to the nature of that evil. That is the long and short of it.
Cardinal Law, for example. Wouldn’t you think that at some point he would have known not to promote child rapists? Like so many of his colleagues, he had no visceral response to the raping of children.
Men, cut away from the heart of life, die inside. They place obedience to their “superiors” as the highest value, completely contrary to the teachings of Our Lord.
Soulless men are not priests, no matter what title they hold, and should not be performing religious ritual.
AW