A Lost Opportunity and Much Unfinished Work

Despite the pope’s apology for the “pain” caused by the
sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy, the complicity
of the Roman hierarchy in the sex abuse crime/scandal
has largely gone unacknowledged, and the church’s
“pedophilic theology” remains unchallenged.

Some have been rhapsodizing about Pope Benedict’s public apology for the decades-long Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal, and his private meeting with six people (three of whom are pictured at left) who, as children, were victims of clergy sexual abuse.

I’m not so impressed, however, as I’ve yet to hear from the pope an apology for his own and other members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s complicity in the sex abuse scandal.

In October 2006 I had a commentary published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which I discussed who was to blame for the church’s sex abuse crimes, and who should be held accountable.

Part of my commentary reads as follows:

Pedophile priests must be brought to justice, that’s a given, as must members of the church hierarchy who knowingly ignore such priests’ criminal activity and simply transfer them to other parishes or dioceses.

Yet what of the structures and attitudes that surround, enable, and even encourage and reward such deplorable actions?

Could it be that the scandal is so overwhelming because of the church’s dysfunctional hierarchical culture – one more reflective of imperial hubris than of the egalitarian model of community offered by Jesus? It is a culture clearly prone to face-saving silence and conspiratorial efforts at covering up and scapegoating rather than acknowledging and reporting long-term abuse of children and youth.

It is clear that the Vatican has failed in many ways. It has failed in promoting a teaching that reflects the diverse reality of human sexuality; it has failed in encouraging GLBT people, in particular, to celebrate and integrate their God-given gift of sexuality, preferring instead to promote through groups such as Courage, a shame-based preoccupation with sexual repression; it has failed to protect children from sexual abuse by pedophile priests; and it has failed to hold itself fully accountable for its own complicity in this abuse.

I want to focus on this last point. In short, it appears to me to remain true. Members of the hierarchy have yet to hold themselves fully accountable and thus apologize for their role in various aspects of the sexual abuse scandal - a scandal that not only saw minors abused by members of the Roman Catholic clergy, but known offending clergy shuffled around from parish to parish, and survivors of the abuse, when they courageously step forth and seek justice, still often being treated more like criminals than the abusing priests.

As far as I can gather, the only thing the pope has said about the hierarchy’s complicity in the sexual abuse crime/scandal during his visit to the U.S. is that this scandal was “very badly handled.” I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough.

LaLonne Murphy, who was one of a number of Catholics featured in a recent Minnesota Monthly story about the “Fate of the Faithful,” had a powerful letter in yesterday’s Star Tribune in which she offered a much more just and healing way by which the pope could acknowledge and apologize for the hierarchy’s role in the sex abuse crime/scandal.

Murphy’s letter reads as follows:

Say more, please

Aboard “Shepherd I” on his way to the United States, Pope Benedict said he is ashamed of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Ashamed? That is the vocabulary of a victim. When the perpetrator speaks and acts as a victim, beware! It appears the Vatican continues to proceed as if this sexual-abuse scandal is more the fault of the media than abusive priests and complicit bishops and cardinals.

As a political and religious figure, the pope is obliged to offer a sincere apology to the families and victims of clergy sexual abuse. His predecessor, John Paul II, apologized to Muslims for the Crusades, Jews for anti-Semitism, Orthodox Christians for the sacking of Constantinople, Italians for the Vatican’s associations with the Mafia and to scientists for the persecution of Galileo. John Paul II issued 90 statements of contrition.

Why can’t this pope say, “I am deeply sorry for the wounds so many of you have suffered at the hands of your trusted pastors, teachers and religious leaders and the ensuing cover-ups and denials by church officials. I humbly ask forgiveness?” Does he not know that amends for grave sin and moral failures are required before harmony can be reestablished? I believe his failure to admit wrong-doing and apologize for this injustice from within the organization renders the pope impotent to call for justice and moral order in the world.

From the first sighting of the white smoke indicating a pope had been chosen, Vatican spokespersons were telling people to give Benedict a chance. Well, here’s another chance for His Holiness.

LaLonne Murphy
Bloomington

And then there’s the perspective of Barbara Blaine (right), a survivor of clergy sexual abuse and the president of the Survivor’s Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Yesterday, she told Newsweek that “the enablers — the church leaders who engage in the cover up and enabling of perpetrators — should be punished.”

“Bishops or church leaders who are found to knowingly lead a cover-up should be fired,” she said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to remain as bishops. The religious superiors around the world who are harboring fugitive priests and giving them sanctuary should be forced to resign, as well.”

Of course, there are some within the church who refute the idea that members of the hierarchy “aided and abetted” priest-abusers by not acting to remove them.

At a news conference yesterday, Cardinal William Levada (left), the former San Francisco archbishop who Joseph Ratzinger named to replace himself at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) when Ratzinger was elected pope, responded to such a suggestion by declaring: “I don’t believe that [was the case].”

He added, “I know bishops who have said to me, if I had known then what I know now, I would have acted differently.” He insisted that bishops who moved abusers around to other parishes or did not remove them from ministry were acting on bad advice from experts and psychiatrists.

“[This scandal] has been a learning experience for bishops,” he said. “I personally do not accept that there has been a broad base of bishops guilty of aiding and abetting pedophiles . . . If I thought there were, I would certainly want to talk to them about that.”


The cardinal’s words don’t convince everyone, of course. Thomas Doyle (right), for instance, posted the following on a BeliefNet message board:

Bishops have been shifting the blame to psychologists for a decade. This . . . is grossly dishonest. I have seen scores of reports wherein psychologists said that priests were not fit for ministry. Some bishops just ignored them and many others twisted them to interpret them in a way that would be favorable to their needs. The bottom line is that bishop were intentionally negligent. Any adult male leader of anything who claims that he did not know that grown men having sex with minors is wrong and insidiously harmful to minors, is either an idiot or a liar or both. Levada’s arrogant line is the same as everyone else in the Vatican and most bishops. Basically they are saying its someone else's fault and in reality, its their fault.

On the same message board, Augusta Wynn writes:

More than any other bishop, [Levada] and Cardinal Law knew all about the sex abuse crisis in 1985. His arrogance has caused the church billions and now he whimpers about psychologists being responsible. . . . Levada placed a known pedophile as his chancellor in San Francisco and put him in charge of creating sex abuse policies for the dioceses all over the U.S. Levada admitted under oath that he knew Rev. Gregory Ingels was a pedophile since 1996. Might someone want to mention this to him?

Meanwhile, Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether notes the following in a current blog discussion hosted by the New York Times:

Declaring himself to be “deeply ashamed” by the misbehavior of Catholic priests in the sexual abuse cases, the Pope said it “is more important to have good priests than many priests” . . . [However] when a church recruits its leadership exclusively from those who repress their sexuality and are taught to view sex as the opposite of sacredness, it is inevitable that some of those who take such vows have an immature sexuality that will be acted out secretly in sexual abuse of the vulnerable, young boys and girls. Until the Catholic Church faces up to the way its negative views of sexuality are connected with sexual abuse, it will continue to be faced with the problem of priests who are both not “good” and also not “many.”

Ruether’s remarks remind me of the observations and comments made by Simon Rosser, PhD, renowned researcher on sexuality and sexual health, during an interview I conducted with him in 2004 for CPCSM’s Rainbow Spirit journal.

As you’ll see from the following excerpts, Rosser has some interesting things to say about, among other things, the “pedophilic theology” of the Roman Catholic Church.

The theology of human sexuality that the church is teaching is seriously disturbed. [. . .] Part of the problem is that as the scientific world advanced, the church first didn’t keep pace with change, and then became a refuge for those frightened of change, including the psychosexually underdeveloped. I don’t think it’s fair to expect the church to be ahead of science, but when it lags so far behind, it loses credibility and starts becoming extremist.

Fundamentalists of various varieties – Muslim, Jewish, Catholic, and Christian – appear to perceive science and medicine as a threat, and seem to confuse their particular brand of God’s Revelation with ultra-conservatism. They all interpret their special brand of ‘truth’ to condemn homosexuality. Curiously, all of them are simultaneously displaying the scandals you get when ultra-orthodoxy runs amok – scandals of power, pedophilia, and abuse. What do the Taliban, Catholic clergy, and the ex-gay movement have in common? All of them are mired in sex abuse scandals – the Taliban in gang rape of Afghani boys, Catholic priests in child molestation of boys, and the ex-gay ministers in orgies and abuse of clients. Clearly, we Catholic don’t have a monopoly on abuse, but sadly, our sexual theology is very impoverished.

In my opinion, several of the Church’s recent statements on sexuality read as if they were written by a 12-year-old, or someone attracted to 12-year-olds. This places bishops like Archbishop Flynn, who has one of the deepest commitments to addressing the problem of pedophilia in the priesthood, in an untenable position. He has publicly declared he will do whatever it takes to address the sexual abuse in our clergy; yet he is ordered to defend a sexual theology that experts predict will perpetuate another generation of abuse.

[We need to remember that] the same people who attempted to cover up clergy sex abuse are the one’s formulating the church’s current sexual theology condemning homosexuality and same-sex marriage. This isn’t a coincidence. The homophobia inherent in the current articulation of church policy mirrors the homophobia in pedophilic clients, pre-treatment.

Rosser sees hope in the fact that the situation is so bad that American Catholics “will be forced to think for themselves.” And that’s a good thing, he insists. “Whether it’s homosexuality, contraception, premarital sex, divorce, masturbation, or HIV prevention,” says Rosser, “the official church position is now so extreme, so negative, so ultra-conservative, and so ill-informed that I’m confident that less than five percent of Catholics actually believe or follow Catholic sexual teaching.”

In terms of remedying the sex abuse crisis and the overall impoverishment of Roman Catholicism’s sexual theology, Rosser suggests that “the first step is for the scientists and the bishops to sit down at the same table and talk. I spent over ten years treating pedophiles and incest families. Watching the church is like watching a giant incest family play out its dynamics. It’s deeply dysfunctional, it’s really sad, but it’s also fascinating. And it probably has to fall apart some more before real reform can be initiated.”

And what will “real reform” look like? According to Rosser, “signs of real reform, as opposed to cosmetic cover-up, include reform of the Vatican level – holding the Congregation of the Faith responsible for overseeing both the sexual abuse by clergy and the promotion of pedophilic theology, “mainstreaming” of Catholicism from ultra-conservative positions to more moderate ones, and the establishment of genuine dialog between scientists and bishops on this issue.”

Either the church will reform or it will die, says Rosser. Yet, “given the ability of the Catholic Church to survive, I’m confident it will reform,” he declares. “But,” he adds, “we have to do our part. American Catholics need to think for ourselves, to distinguish pedophilic propaganda from Catholic teaching, to support bishops and specifically to demand they reform or close down the Congregation of the Faith, and to commit to prioritizing a healthy adult-focused sexual theology. It has to happen. So, it’s a great time to be Catholic and, hopefully, to be part of the change that must come.”


Image 1: Three of the six survivors of the Roman Catholic sex abuse crime/scandal who met with the pope on Thursday, April 17, 2008. From left: Olan Horne, Faith Johnston and Bernie McDaid. (CNN)
Image 2: The Blade/Lisa Dutton.
Image 3: Source unknown.
Image 4: The Blade.


Recommended Off-site Links:
Why This Pope Doesn’t Connect - Lisa Miller (Newsweek, April 21, 2008).
Abuse Victims Warily Consider Pope’s Words - Richard G. Jones and Abby Goodnough (New York Times, April 18, 2008).
Empty Promises - Daniel Stone (Newsweek, April 18, 2008).
Archdiocese Blocks Bills to Help Sex Abuse Victims - Paula Ruddy (Progressive Catholic Voice, January 2008).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
The “Perfect Papal Visit” Will Require a “Listening Pope”
Ghostwriting for the Pope
Assessing the U.S. Catholic Church
A Church That Can and Cannot Change
Agreeing with the Vatican
Uta Ranke-Heinemann on the Future of the Catholic Church
Authentic Catholicism: The Antidote to Clericalism
Listen Up, Papa!
What it Means to be Catholic
The Two-Sided Catholic Crisis
Crisis? What Crisis?
The “Underground Church”
A Catholic’s Prayer for His Fellow Pilgrim, Benedict XVI