In reading the cases of sexual abuse, I pity the victims, but I often pity the abusers, who are often psychopaths on a straight path to hell. They must be punished, both to affirm justice and to waken them to the enormity of their acts. Punishment is necessary for justice, and justice is necessary if the universe is to be rational and life is to be worth living (see this blog). But only a psychopath can inflict pain, even necessary pain, without feeling anything.
When I awake at three in the morning from troubled dreams after working on cases of sexual abuse, I turn to the sermons of John Chrysostom. In his Sermon 43 on Acts, he has these thoughts:
Let us have a soul apt to sympathize, let us have a heart that knows how to feel with others in their sorrows; no unmerciful temper, no inhumanity.
God punishes, and shall I grieve for those that He is punishing? Year, verily: for God Himself that punishes wishes this: since neither does He Himself wish to punish, nay, even Himself grieves when punishing.
We see men–slayers, wicked men, suffering punishment, and we are distressed, and grieve for them. Let us not be philosophical beyond measure: let us show ourselves pitiful, that we may be pitied; there nothing equal to this beautiful trait: nothing so much marks us the stamp of human nature as the showing pity, as the being kind to our fellow-man.
It is this sympathy, this empathy, this feeling for the sufferings of others that abusers (and bishops) almost universally lacked. Research is being done on whether brain structure affects the ability to feel empathy, and there is more and more evidence that it does. I wonder whether they psychology tests that are being given to prospective seminarians are misdirected: they should not be looking so much for sexual disorders as for signs of psychopathy. I wish prospective bishops also had to undergo such tests.
Leon, I wonder if the answer is that complicated? I don’t doubt there’s a psychopathological component to it but given the prelates’ nearly universal response to the problem, perhaps psychopathology isn’t the fundamental factor. Then what is? The fact that the Church has long viewed itself as fundamentally superior institutionally, that it has become a church “of the clergy, by the clergy and for the clergy” (with the laity playing a distinctly second-class role), that it fosters a sense of arrogant entitlement among many of its leaders and excessive deference for those leaders among the laity.
I just finished reading parts of Malachi Martin’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church.” I have a lot more to read but I get the sense that Martin’s ecclesiology reflects the Church’s fundamental arrogance and sense of being self-benighted.
Ask yourself this question, Leon: Until Mikhail Gorbachev came on the scene, how many Soviet apparachiks felt genuine concern for the proletariat they claimed to serve? Who held those bureaucrats accountable? And how different was that situation from the prelates’ response to clerical sex abuse?
When a man can contemplate the sexual abuse of a child without batting an eyelash, when his first reaction is to deny and guard assets and accuse and stifle investigation – and this is the reaction of the bishops, all of them that I know of, even JPII – there is more wrong than clericalism and bureaucracy. This reaction betrays a fundamental loss of manliness, an inhumanity that is hard to face. Because which of you, if asked for food, would hand your child a snake? If even the evil know how to give good things to their children, what sort of people are we ordaining? This absence of normal human reaction marks them as traitors to humanity, capable of anything.
Well said, Mary. Extraordinarily well said.
‘But only a psychopath can inflict pain, even necessary pain, without feeling anything.’
Still some bishops acts ‘without feeling anything.’
‘Bishop Douglas Crosby said it is up to the complainant to decide if he wants to report the alleged abuse to the RCMP, since he is an adult.’
Mary makes a very important point. I would go one step further, and ask whether any genuinely Christian soul could acquiesce, much less be complicit, in such horrific crimes as these. It seems to me that anyone sealed with the Holy Spirit, and thereby possessing even the least bit of divine grace, could not help but be deeply revolted at this victimization of Christ’s little ones. The fact that so many priests could do the things they did, and that others knew of their crimes but did nothing about it, strongly suggests that a significant number of our clergy are simply not Christians at all–a possibility contemplated by none other than St. Jerome, who once warned that “ordination does not make a man a Christian.” And the fact that so many bishops could so easily do little or nothing about it (except, in far too many cases, to further victimize the victims with stonewalling, threats, gag orders, and endless legal maneuverings, while sending guilty priests elsewhere to abuse again) suggests that many of them suffer from a similar problem.
But if one is not a Christian, then one cannot validly receive the sacrament of ordination; and if a bishop is not validly ordained, then neither can he ordain others. Given that this problem has apparently been going on for a long time, is it within the realm of possibility that the whole structure of apostolic succession has simply broken down, much as it did in England after the Reformation there? It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?
St. Paul lays down the criteria for the ordination of bishops in the Epistle to Titus: “A bishop must be blameless, not arrogant or quick-tempered … a lover of goodness, prudent, upright, devout, and self-controlled.” Of how many of today’s bishops can it honestly be said that they come anywhere close to meeting these criteria? Judging from their response to the abuse crisis, I think it’s fair to say: far too few.
Well, we know that for Ordination to be valid. A person must be a baptized Christian, not necessarily a Christian in behavior or in the state of grace. The question of whether a state of sin in a priest causes the sacraments administered by the priest to be invalid was settled early on by the Church. A bad man can be ordained, and validly function as a priest.
What we are seeing, or have seen, rather, is the colonization of the priesthood by people with another agenda, either a corporate one or an individual one. Anything from Bela Dodd’s scenario to Satanism to opportunism by sexual predators. I would say all three, each using the other.
It is important to note, though, that we don’t need to connect all the dots. It would suffice (and would have sufficed) to do justice in each and every case….and then the big picture would take care of itself. That justice, which is charity to the victim and the perpetrator, has simply not been done.
Very well said Mary. You have a gift for seeing and expressing the truth.
Being a baptized Christian is certainly a necessary condition for valid ordination, but is it a sufficient one? If a bishop laid hands on a newly baptized infant and said the words of ordination over him, would that really make the infant a validly ordained priest with the power to absolve sins and confect the Eucharist? We must be careful not to try to turn the sacraments into magic spells which somehow force God’s hand no matter how outrageous or absurd the results.
We know there are some circumstances in which a sacrament may not have the expected effect even if to all appearances everything has been done correctly. For example, ordinarily a consummated marriage between two baptized Christians is indissoluble, but there are instances in which the Church will annul a putative marriage if some element was lacking that is essential to a sacramental marriage (free consent of the parties, sobriety and sanity of both parties at the time the vows are exchanged, at least a minimal understanding of what marriage entails, and so forth). Ordinarily confession and absolution are sufficient to effect the remission of sins, but not if the sinner is only feigning contrition in order to be restored to the visible communion of the Church while fully intending to continue sinning in the same way as soon as he is out of the confessional. By the same reasoning, there must surely be some elements beyond mere baptism that are similarly essential to a valid ordination.
In general, while it is true that the efficacy of a sacrament is not dependent on the holiness of the minister, it is to some extent dependent on the disposition of the recipient. For example, the Council of Trent, while affirming that the sacraments “contain the grace which they signify” and that through them grace is conferred “through the act performed” (ex opere operato), it nevertheless qualifies this by adding the condition that the recipient “not place an obstacle thereunto”; and this is confirmed by paragraph 1128 of the Catechism, which says that “the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.” Thus while a corrupt bishop may be capable of validly conferring ordination, a corrupt recipient of ordination might nevertheless fail to receive the grace of that ordination simply because he is not properly disposed to receive it–in which case he would not be a priest at all.
The fruits are different from the action of the sacrament. For instance, a corrupt person truly receives the Eucharist, but not the grace – no benefit to him (“he eats and drinks condemnation”). Canon law says that the requirements for valid orders are that the ordinand be a baptized male. To be legally ordained he should have good character, be well-formed in the faith, instructed, confirmed and free (In order for one to be ordained he ought to possess the required freedom; it is unlawful to force someone or to deter one who is canonically suitable…), etc. That’s odd – you would think lack of freedom would render it invalid, not illicit. And then there is the interesting note about those who due to perpetual impediment “are prevented from receiving orders” (not sure if that means can’t or barred): the insane, apostates, schismatics, and heretics, and people in attempted illicit or invalid marriages, a murderer or one who has procured an abortion or helped (that eliminates at least a third of American Catholic males right there – wonder if anyone asks or follows that canon?), someone who has mutilated himself or another or attempted suicide, or someone who has …oh well, it goes on and on about some other impediments, but it appears that they can be dispensed from. I don’t think the Church every got her theology of the priesthood quite cleared up since Trent. I have a relative who has researched this and she says the debates on orders were all locked up til the 20th century, and since they are in Latin they are not much studied.
Similar problems occur with Matrimony. According to canon law, any marriage in which one or both parties are Catholic is invalid if it does not conform to canonical requirements as to form, witnesses, presence of clergy, etc. On the other hand, these requirements apply only to Catholics; if two non-Catholic Christians marry without following these rules, the Church nevertheless considers their marriage to be valid and sacramental.
This makes no sense at all. If the Church is claiming that the canonical requirements for a valid marriage are of divine institution, then those requirements should apply to all Christians without exception, and perhaps to the entire human race as expressions of the natural law. Furthermore, if they are of divine institution then the Church would lack the power to dispense from them, which it nevertheless claims the power to do under certain circumstances. On the other hand, if these are just matters of discipline, then it would seem that the divine mandate should have precedence–“what God has joined together, man must not separate”–in which case the Church might reasonably declare that noncanonical marriages are illicit, but certainly not invalid.