Catholic and Loving it!

By now I'm sure everybody has heard about the Dublin Report, the latest in a long line of similar reports on sexual abuse of Children in the Catholic Church. Each time a report such as this comes out (what a grim thing to be able to write) it reminds us of the same inescapable fact: The days when we could say "every organisation has it's bad apples" are gone.

The uncomfortable truth is this: That the Catholic Church has a culture which is favourable to abuse.

There are, right now, priests in the Catholic Church in England and Wales who are abusing their power in all sorts of ways. I am not aware, thank God, of any abuse of children. If I were, I would not be writing about it on a blog but calling the police. No, I'm talking about other, lesser kinds of abuse. Priests who use their position to teach their own personal theory on Christianity rather than the Catholic Church's version or who re-write prayers to match their political ideology.

Don't get me wrong. I am most definitely not suggesting that any of these things are even comparable to the rape of a child. My point here is this: We have priests doing things that they shouldn't and we have widespread knowledge behind the scenes that priests are doing things they shouldn't. Yet nothing happens?

Why?

For the exact same reason that nothing happened in Dublin these last forty years.

It is my strongly held belief that the underlying causes of the sex abuse cover ups are alive and well in the Church today, I know because I have experienced them firsthand. I think it's important to flag up three major areas of concern, ways in which the Church in Dublin acted that allowed child abuse to continue. These are all ways in which the Church in England and Wales continues to act today.

1: Maintain secrecy, avoid scandal, protect the reputation of the Church

I have made complaints to priests and Bishops and I can tell you that the following paragraph makes hairs stand up on the back of my neck. The stench is familiar, the same evil is at work.

1.15 The Dublin Archdiocese‟s pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.

As somebody who has on occasion suggested that priests and Bishops may have done something wrong I can tell you that the response is usually along the lines of "careful what you say, that's a priest you are talking about". Usually this is followed by the suggestion that if I criticise a priest I might damage the mission of the Church.

It is a terrible thing to believe that the Church, the mission of Jesus Christ on earth, depends upon lies. To believe that Priests and Bishops can only be respected if we lie and pretend that none of them ever do anything wrong, yet this seems to be a belief widely held in today's Church. The big problem is that the lie generally ends up doing more damage than the original problem. Most people can accept that mistakes are made and some people do bad things, most people can accept a few bad priests, nobody can accept institutional cover ups.

Step 2: Require explicit complaints before you do anything about anything

1.29 One aspect of this was the refusal to acknowledge or recognise an allegation of child sexual abuse unless it was made in strong and explicit terms. There were some anonymous reports which were ignored. A number of bishops heard suspicions and concerns but they did not take the obvious steps of asking precisely what was involved or challenging the priest concerned. A mother who contacted the Archdiocese to report that her daughter had been abused as a child was told that the daughter would have to make the complaint. When the mother made it clear that the daughter was unlikely to be able to make such a complaint, she was not even asked for the name of the priest.

One of the symptoms of a world in which everbody feels compelled to pretend that there are no problems is that we end up with a situation where it seems everybody knows about problems but nothing is done. I've been aware of situations where plenty of laypeople know about a priest and many other priests also do and it's hard to believe the Bishop isn't at least aware that there's a hint of trouble. Yet these situations can go on for years, am I seriously the only person who feels the need to pass these things higher?

Of course, it would be hard to tell if the Bishop did do something about it...

Step 3: Never tell people who complain what you did about it.

1.31 The American phrase, "don't ask, don't tell" is appropriate to describe the attitude of the Dublin Archdiocese to clerical sex abuse for most of the period covered by the report. The problem as a whole never seems to have been discussed openly by the Archbishop and his auxiliaries, at least until the 1990s. Complainants were told as little as possible. The note "Gain his knowledge, tell him nothing" for dealing with complainants and witnesses, discussed in Chapter 4, typifies the attitudes of the Archdiocese.

One of the more frustrating things about writing to a Bishop is the response, which will always be that he is looking in to it and please rest assured he is just as concerned about these things as you are. This is widely accepted as perfectly reasonable, he is the Bishop and you are not, so why should he tell you anything? The problem is that from the point of view of the person making the complaint - nothing happened. You wrote a letter and nothing happened. So why bother writing letters?

I understand that sometimes discretion is reqired, but often there is no reason for this, especially in the case of very public infractions which ought to have a public response. If Fr X has been using cheese in place of communion bread then there will be laypeople wandering around saying "I don't see why we can't use cheese, Fr X does it..." I know because I hear people say things like that all the time.

Looking at the culture...

I think that all three of the problems above are related. Bishops wants to maintain the impression that priests never do anything wrong so they couldn't possibly say that one of them has. As a result, the Church doesn't implement it's own canon laws or do anything about anything unless somebody takes it upon themselves to make a highly specific explicit complaint. Even then, the desire to keep appearances means that the person making the complaint will never know if anything happened.

I don't for one moment think this is the bad practice of one man. I'm not pointing the finger at any particular Bishop and saying "this is what he does" because frankly, they all do it. Not only that, but the vast majority of Catholics expect them to do it and think it perfectly reasonable and for the best. Some of those Catholics go on to be Bishops...

The Dublin report demonstrates how dangerous this culture is, because the culture doesn't make any differentiation between differnt kinds of abuse. These days we have child protection and safeguarding but these measures amount to an exception, we are basically saying "we will allow priests to abuse their power, but only if they do so in ways that are not illegal and expensive".

It's a good thing that we have safeguarding against sexual abuse of minors, but we don't have have any sort of protection against the priest who wants to tell your children that Jesus probably didn't feed five thousand people (they probably shared their lunch) and the tide was probably out at the red sea and basically this religion stuff, well, it's mostly made up and the important thing is to be nice and don't worry about confession because you haven't committed any real sins.

As parents we feel rather helpless.

The answer...

I'm not going to double the length of this blog entry by attempting a solution here. I don't know what the solution is but I think it's an important start to identify the problem. Perhaps we could have a discssion in the comments?

I would like to extend a special invitation on this occasion to any priests reading and the people who read this in our diocesan curial office. I'd be very interested to know their views because they are inside the system and I only see it from the outside.

Still, if some more seasoned commenters could get us going...

Come on everybody...

Please?