Posted on 05/21/2009 1:17:37 PM PDT by MrEdd
To discuss the scandal of child abuse in the Catholic Church without factoring in the role of the Vatican is to miss the main point. Irish Catholics had been told in advance, by Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in his Holy Thursday homily, that the contents of the report of the commission of inquiry published yesterday would “shock us all”. But we may doubt whether all were sufficiently prepared for what’s emerged.
We are set for days of discussion of the different levels of culpability of priests, bishops, diocesan authorities, the institutional Church, society at large. Pope Benedict will likely issue a statement expressing dismay and distress. What he won’t do is accept share of the blame.
Benedict will take the long view. It has been well said that while other institutions measure the passage of events in months, years, decades, the Catholic Church sees the world in a perspective of centuries. Benedict knows there’s nothing new in what’s been brought to light by the inquiry under Mr Justice Seán Ryan. He will be confident that this, too, shall pass.
We used to be taught as children that the fact that the Church had survived all manner of scandals down the ages was proof positive that it was the One True Church. Benedict knows the history and will see yesterday’s headlines as another trial to be overcome with God’s help.
The oldest known instruction to Church officials, the Didache, dating from the second century, commands, ‘Thou shalt not seduce young boys’.
The earliest recorded gathering of bishops, the Council of Elvira, in 309, spelt out 81 Canons, of which 38 dealt with sex. Among those excluded from receiving communion were ‘bishops, presbyters, and deacons committing a sexual sin’, ‘those who sexually abuse boys’, and ‘people who bring charges against bishops and presbyters without proving their cases’.
Why would the Church have mentioned such things had they not already become problems?
Celibacy has had something to do with the proclivity for sexual abuse. Constrained to express their sexuality in secret, furtively, some have tended towards abuse of the vulnerable. When all sexual pleasure is deemed abominable, perversion and excess become nebulous concepts.
The Pope, custodian of Church teaching, is chief enforcer of clerical celibacy. So strongly is he committed to celibacy, he has seemed at times to suggest that the rule is part of the Magisterium, the infallible teaching of the Church, not open to amendment, ever.
Against that background, the suffering of children can be seen as part of the price to be paid for proclaiming Truth in a world stained by sin. It is not that Benedict or any of his bishops are not genuinely anguished at the thought of the agony of the innocent. But viewed in the context of the grand narrative of heaven, for them, this isn’t a decisive consideration.
The first US prelate granted a personal audience with Benedict following his 2005 election was Cardinal Bernard Law. Three years earlier, Law had resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston following revelations that he had systematically, over a number of years, moved predator priests from parish to parish, never alerting parents to the danger in which their children were being put.
Law’s case sparked a huge scandal. The Vatican had been bombarded with demands to explain why he was being retained in the ministry.
Yet this was the man Benedict chose personally to honour 12 days into his papacy. Whether with conscious deliberation or merely by instinct, he was making a point. The same approach emerged in his response to the report three years ago on abuse of children in Ferns, Wexford. In a 271-page document, retired Supreme Court judge Frank Murphy (inset below) identified more than 100 allegations against 26 priests.
He found that, in turning a deaf ear to the pleas of the victims while hiding the abusers from the law, the diocese had been following standard instructions from Rome. Responding, Benedict described the behaviour of the priests concerned as “incomprehensible” and declared that they had “devastated human lives and profoundly betrayed the trust of children.” But as to the finding against the Vatican, not a word of explanation, much less an apology.
In Ferns, as elsewhere, Church control of schools was key to the predators' access to children. “That fairly leaps out of the Murphy report,” commented Mary Raftery, whose 2000 documentary States of Fear sparked the firestorm which the Church hopes will soon now die down.
Says Colm O’Gorman, one of the victims of Ferns’ adherence to Vatican policy: “We still have a situation where an institution that was so entirely negligent in how it addressed child protection in the past, has full legal responsibility for child protection in the majority of Irish schools ... The State needs to do more in Ireland to take on that responsibility.”
But there isn't a mainstream party North or South which would risk the wrath of the Catholic hierarchy by making any such move.
The topmost and implacable priority of Benedict’s Church is at all costs to retain control of the formation of the next generation of Catholic children.
It acknowledges the sin while resolving to retain the occasion of sin. It has no firm purpose of amendment. Priests may be prosecuted, bishops may resign. But the buck stops with Benedict.
How refreshing to hear tell it LIKE IT IS!
After years excuses upon excuses that Pope had "nothing to do" this this or that... That he had "no authority" to intervene here or there... that dog "ate his homework!"
Geeeeeeeeeeeee.
Hmm, buggering little boys?
People should perhaps find out more about this before launching into the usual tired “pedophile priest” chants. Even the report is forced to admit that the sexual abuse in these reform schools was committed, in general, by the boys against each other, which is something that is common in all (non-Catholic) prison institutions and, in fact, even in upper class (non-Catholic) British boarding schools. The authorities do actually seem to have removed any brothers (these were Christian Brothers schools) who were preying upon the boys, and the complaint was that they would remove them and assign them to some other activity rather than turning them over to the police because the order treated it as a sin rather than a crime.
As for the brutality, that was common at any institution in the 1930s and 1940s, and while the religious orders should have acted with standards that were higher than those around them, everybody at that time thought that severe corporal punishment was good for erring young people and would set them straight. Maybe it did; most of the people who are complaining seem to have gone on to live productive lives in the intervening 60 or 70 years, until the lure of lawsuit money encouraged them to remember their severe trauma...
The report was developed after interview 1090 victims and ranged over 86 years. This is (if the figure of over 30,000 students attending these schools is correct)less than 4% of the students who were in these schools. Also the term abuse ranges from severe physical beatings which lead to permanent damage to what was once routine corporal punishments in schools such as paddling. The sexual abuse too can mean rape or fondling.
This does not excuse any of the behaviors. But putting things into perspective might help put a more realistic view on the claim this problem was endemic. Also in interviewing former students and relying mostly on their memory of events how can the interviewers be certain time has not altered those memories?
“This does not excuse any of the behaviors. But putting things into perspective might help put a more realistic view on the claim this problem was endemic.”
So much for sack cloth and ashes.
1) This thread will go 3000+ responses.
2) No more than thirty responses before somebody accuses somebody else of "Catholic Bashing" because they said "anyone who does this should go to jail."
3) No more than fifty responses before somebody else says "well, sure, but IT'S ALSO HAPPENING ALL THE TIME IN PROTESTANT/ATHIEST/WICCAN/STATE-RUN DAYCARES!!!!!!
So, here goes:
Anybody who molests children, destroying their innocence and trust in Christ's world, is evil. I don't care if you are gay or straight, man or woman, Catholic or Protestant...it's evil, and those who do should rot in jail with no parole, ever. Counseling? Sure, you bet. But statistics show you're gonna repeat, and in jail we'll know right where you are. The people who did this are evil to begin with, and twice as damned because they did it under the cloak of the church. The people who covered it up are TEN TIMES AS EVIL because Christ said that anyone who harms his little ones would be better to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the sea then to know what waits for them in God's eternal judgment, and if Jesus said that, it's good enough for me.
That said, I have no other gripe against the Catholic church or any church, so shut up in advance. I despise the people who did these crimes and if you don't, you should be ashamed of yourself. And if you can make excuses for those, of any faith, gender, philosophy or creed that have done these horrible, horrible crimes, than you should be ashamed of yourself. If you love an institution of any kind under any circumstances so much that you cannot say, "this is an abomination before God that has been allowed to fester and poison like a cancer, hurting those least able to protect themselves, and it should have been rooted out years ago rather than be excused away" then you need to take a long look at yourself though Christ's eyes, and decide who you serve.
It's evil. Don't bother writing me a billion "oh,yeah?" responses. It's evil, it cannot be excused (although it has been by lots of people) and the only response should be locking up a bunch of corrupt and evil people ASAP.
THANK YOU!... Is it so difficult to see?...
BS. An old, specious, long ago refuted argument.
Actually I agree with you. My only argument was in using such a small percentage to “prove” the problem was endemic. And in the report not being clearer about the range of abuses.
Thanks you! It gets so tiring to hear people attack a faith they know nothing of when the insidence of this is much higher among other religions and places where children gather but it seems the Church is the favorite target.
The author of this piece, Eamonn McCann, is a Northern Ireland radical in the mould of Trotsky or Saul Alinski. This faction, North and South will seek to exploit this report in Ireland’s “culture war”, which is far more intense and pitiless than even the US. The target is the role of the Church(s) in education (how can we now trust them with children?) and Health, and to remove the strong Pro-life and Pro-family elements from Ireland’s written constitution.
Since it became legitimate, legally, to attack the deepest pockets as "restitution", that became the focus of the problem. The pervert lottery. And what better way to keep it alive than to assure a constant drumbeat about the horrible crime that gets little or no attention. It's like pretending that by removing the exposed tip of a humungous iceberg, the problem has been solved. In fact, I don't think there has been an effort to determine the incidence of child abuse outside the religious arena, since there's no profit in it.
Willful ignorance of how the churches operate contributed to the problem. The penalty has been paid by the parishoners everywhere, and benefactors long dead who made the construction of all the churches possible; not the bishops or cardinals or the vatican.
The parishoners are no more guilty than the victims themselves, which should raise the basic question of equity and justice. Or is justice only measured in dollars, regardless of who is forced to pay?
I am a lifelong catholic, and I see this clearly as church bashing.
You will be surprised that I agree without qualification with your statement above.
If you are a member of the "pervert lottery" victims, that would ruin the whole exercise, wouldn't it. That would be justice, but that's not what this is about.
The second abuse on parishioners should be transparent, but alas, that would just ruin the entire scam.
The Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy were more brutal than normal society of the time.
That's interesting. I think you're right, btw, that this is actually part of a strategy to remove the Church from any participation in education. The left followed a similar strategy in Spain years ago, as far back as the 19th century, because it wanted the State alone to control education. Things don't change much over the centuries.
I could never say the way you did!
Oh, PLEASE do! I have had to defend myself in here so many times just for saying that that it is getting to be boilerplate for me. And I’m in the “green woood”!
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