A recently recovered 1997 letter from the Vatican to Ireland’s Catholic priests documents beyond a doubt the Vatican’s cover-up of sexual abuse by clergy. The late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II’s diplomat to Ireland, informs Irish bishops that their new policy of mandatory reporting of suspected crimes “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature.” In other words, such allegations must be handled within the church only, and that any bishops who tried to go outside church authority would face the “highly embarrassing” probability of having their actions overturned by Rome.
The Catholic Church’s response to sexual abuse by priests is the “good ole boy system” writ large. The Catholic Church is not the only place the “system” operates, of course–it is endemic. A doctor is reluctant to call out the errors of his colleague. A policeman is unwilling to rat on his partner. A coach is all too familiar with the girls on his high school team, but no one really wants to call him on it. Until about 25 years ago, many male ministers had sex with vulnerable female congregants. Then more women entered the profession of ministry, and the professional ethics started to shift.
It is one thing for individuals to go along with destructive societal norms–that is, to keep silence when they should speak out. That is wrong, yes. But it is a far graver crime for an institution to knowingly and consciously lie in a systematic fashion, covering up the misdeeds of generations of priests and passing the offenders on from one parish to the next, to continue their evil ways.
Sexual abuse has the power to destroy lives–that is, to destroy a sense of self-worth, confidence, and power in the individual who is abused. When the perpetrator is clergy, the abuse also takes away the God of the abused child, because clergy, for better or for worse, are God’s respresentatives, the very symbols of the Holy, for their parishioners. And make no mistake–it was not just this one letter from this one Vatican official: the corruption has been consistent and persistent, through the years of many Popes and many bishops and many priests. In other words, the sexual abuse of children has been part of the culture of the Catholic Church.
Only one response is appropriate in such a situation: a complete and total confession of what has been done, accompanied by repentance, including monetary compensation whenever possible for the suffering of the victims–followed by reform that is institutionalized and unequivocally supported throughout the hierarchy of the Church.
I was raised Roman Catholic, and even though I left the Church at age 14 because of theological reasons, I have come to value much about the church. I am drawn to the aesthetics of the church–the beauty of the vast cathedrals, the statuary, the smells and bells. It is the church of Dorothy Day and Archbishop Romero. Nuns and priests still give their lives freely in the service of others, and some die, speaking truth to power, as in South and Central America, in recent years. This is the Church of Liberation Theology. This is the Church that speaks out, when others have been silent, about poverty and economic inequity.
It is tragic that such an institution has been so drastically sullied by those who have been called to protect and to serve. May God have mercy on her institutional soul and bring her round right.