A major part of the Vatican response to investigations into sexual abuse of minors by priests in Germany and more specifically into a sacerdotal abuser in the Munich archdiocese when Pope Benedict XVI was Archbishop Ratzinger, in charge of that diocese, has been “poor me.” The NEW YORK TIMES titled its article of March 13 “Vatican Sees Campaign against Pope“.
Perhaps what the Vatican sees as “a campaign” might be the effort of the press to do with the Pope and bishops what it does with all public officials: it holds them accountable to the values and claims of their office. This should be even more expected of public officials of a religious organization that holds itself up to the world as a defender of values such as honesty, compassion, integrity. The Pope has a carpet on which he calls many of his underlings to account. The people of the Catholic Church, and the media, have their own carpet on which they call the Pope to account.
Besides, “poor me” responses to accusations really don’t work. What the Vatican needs to do is stop calling all these accusations a “campaign” and instead show that they are false . If they really are false, it should be possible, if not easy, to show that they are false.
May I suggest two accusations that really need to be proven false:
1) In 1980, a German priest who had been accused of sexual abuse of minors in the diocese of Essen was transferred to the archdiocese of Munich for therapy; that was with the express approval of Archbishop Ratzinger. It seems that the priest never received therapy but was immediately given a new pastoral assignment in the archdiocese. (He was later accused and convicted of sexually abusing children.) The then Vicar General, Gerhard Gruber, claims that Ratzinger, even though he was in charge of the archdiocese, knew nothing about this assignment of an abusive priest to a new parish. THAT’S WHAT HAS TO BE PROVEN. Father Thomas Doyle, who is a canon lawyer and knows a lot about how sexual abuse cases have been handled, made this comment: “Pope Benedict is a micro-manager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.” THAT’S WHAT HAS TO BE SHOWN TO BE NOT TRUE!
2) More seriously, the Vatican needs to provide more information on why the Vatican insisted, during the height of the revelations of sexual abuse by priests in the US, that all the cases be sent directly to Rome to be handled by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. The Vatican has declared as “false and calumnious” accusations that Benedict covered up abuse cases when he oversaw investigations for four years as the boss of that Congregation . More information is needed to show that such accusations are indeed false. This is especially urgent when some of the accusations are coming from within the Catholic Church. Archbishop Weakland has said that while he was in charge of the Milwaukee diocese and duly sent in a number of such cases to Rome, many of them were never acted upon. Why?
So rather than “poor me,” I suggest that the Pope provide more transparency.
And I say that as a struggling Catholic who is very concerned about the well-being, not just the image, of my church.
Dr. Knitter,
You’re absolutely correct. The Catholic Church needs to take these cases far more seriously and treat them more transparently than they have done in the recent past. Having lived in Boston during the major explosion of scandal there, I can say that neither Law nor his replacement O’Malley seemed particularly interested in honestly facing the issue. Cover-up and misdirection were the watch words of the day.
Other officials, priests and laypeople in the North-East joined in complicity: I had family members claiming that the Boston Globe was biased against Catholics. The Globe is the “paper of record” for the two most Roman Catholic states in the Union (Rhode Island and Massachusetts). Rather than face the possibility that the allegations were true, these family members reached for the untenable hypothesis that the Globe found nothing more delicious to bite than the hand which fed it.
The cries of “witch hunt” (again, highly ironic in Massachusetts) miss the mark widely. The Salem trials, McCarthy’s hearings: these were ways of silencing dissent from the mainstream/normative/dominant culture. While U.S. culture likes to imagine itself as largely Protestant, the census-based fact remains that Roman Catholicism is the largest single confession of Christianity in the country. True, all Protestants lumped together out-number Roman Catholics. By that reasoning though, every church can claim status as a minority religion: no single church contains >50% of the U.S. population.
We need transparency and honesty more than wounded cries from the Church hierarchy. The wounded ones are the people who have been abused or chased from their church, not the abusers and chasers.
Peter, Your last sentence is particularly powerful. Who are the wounded? Who should receive the church’s preferential option?! — Thank you.
My experience with this ugly business here in Anchorage started when I happened to work with a ex-police officer who told me he had investigated (and had “the goods” on) then-Msgr Murphy. This was pre-Globe stories and the subsequent release of Murphy’s file (Murphy was shuffled off to Boston from Anchorage by our now emeritus AB Hurley.) Our children were in church groups & camps, etc. and I was furious when I found out that they were potentially at risk. My inquiries about the truth were met with a patronizing pat on the head.
Fortunately the Globe broke the story, Murphy’s (ugly) files were made public, and the AB continued to lie to us.
The local press had a field day, a high-profile victim commited suicide, many others came forward, and since then many more cases have come to light – but only because lawyers and money were involved. Not conscience, compassion or love. Those of us who subsequently tried to get groups like Call to Action, etc. going are met with derision and told we can’t even discuss issues like optional celibacy or married priesthood on church property.
I can only conclude that the Church as an institution is nearing a state of collapse. Institutions that can’t (or won’t) evolve will die.
But The Christ lives on in the suffering hearts and lives of those who were abused. As for the abusers and cover-uppers? They continue to wander the around in their foolish garb blaming everthing on “modernism” and “secularism” and never taking responsibility unless their lawyers say it’s OK.
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I can’t help but feel that the Vatican’s response comes from the kind of untouchable arrogance that is to often demonstrated by the Catholic hierarchy. While, I don’t think it is alone on this, the Catholic hierarchy is my primary experience of such, and I have never understood this sense of being above the law, above suspicion, and entitled to impose its own interpretation of all situations without question. Nor can I understand a church community that is willing to be complicit with this or even take refuge in it.
Thanks Paul and Peter for your thoughtful posts.
Jim, The word “complicit’ in your last sentence shakes me up. It’s what all Catholics have to ask themselves: how much are we complicit with a church-system that, all too often, seems to offend basic Gospel values (like the equality of all God’s children, whether they are male or female, straight or gay). The only way to avoid being complicit is to keep speaking up and keep being a pain in the papal purple.
Chris, Thank you for your personal, pained comments. They remind me of the necessity of affirming and owning the understanding of the church given to us in Vatican II — that the Church is primarily NOT the bishops but the people. The campesinos of Nicaragua used to tell us during the time of the Sandanistas when most of the bishops were on the side of the wealthy landowners that “if we believe in Christ and are good Catholics, the bishops will follow along.” That calls for a tremendous amount of trust.
Paul, you’re right, it is “what all Catholics have to ask themselves,” especially when as a group we blame the victims or vilify the messengers, as both Peter and Chris described from the situations in their local churches.
In my own experience, there was sexual abuse with in my early seminary years. I was not one of the direct victims, but as an 18 year old friend of some of the victims, I experienced the classic silencing of victims and their advocates, both at the time of the abuse and years later when it came to light (barely). To this day, there are those among my classmates who still choose to bury the story because the abusers “have suffered enough.” For me, it’s not a question of making someone suffer, but that real healing only takes place when the whole truth is told and victims (direct or indirect) stop being victimized further by a system that ignores the truth. There is a difference between handling such situations sensitively and total repression, and I think the Catholic church is too frightened to learn the difference.