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  Cracks in the Stone-walling, or More of the Same?

By Paul Cromidas
The Pokrov
June 19, 2010

http://pokrov.org/display.asp?ds=Article&id=1331

The pope and a prominent Australian archbishop recently made unprecedented statements about the clergy abuse issue that appeared to be significant breakthroughs in the church’s wall of denial. It seems, however, that the pope’s words, at least, may have been too promising to be true.

The statements came after the recent spate of revelations about child abuse in Ireland, Germany and Italy and unusually strong criticisms of the pope. A Pew Research study found that this spring’s news volume about the church abuse issue almost matched the 2002 Boston coverage.

While not proclaimed as an official policy, the pope had said that “forgiveness is not a substitute for justice”, thus indicating a break from what has been the church mantra about forgiving the perpetrator but never mentioning justice for the victim. When had any church official, let alone the pope, spoken about justice for victims?

The pope also acknowledged that “the sin is inside the church”, admitting that the problem is real and not just created by accusations from victims or the media. Most Catholic spokespersons are still quick to label any criticism as unfounded and only coming from outsiders wanting to “hurt the church.” The pope even elaborated that “…we see in a terrifying way that the greatest persecution of the church does not come from enemies outside, but is born from the sin of the church.” The headline on this story in The New York Times read: “Pope Issues His Most Direct Words to Date on Abuse.”

A veteran observer, John Allen of the independent National Catholic Reporter, said that “This is as clear an example of the pope changing The Vatican’s public tone as you’re going to see.”

The pope made his next pronouncements in Rome at a celebration of the Year for Priests, with thousands of clergy present. The back-tracking didn’t take long. The pope begged forgiveness from God, but did not mention justice. Although it was only a few weeks prior that he had spoken about the sin of abuse being within the church, he told the priests that the enemy or the devil was behind the abuse scandal and that it had emerged somehow in this Year for Priests because the devil wanted to see “God driven out of the world.”

Representatives of the American advocacy group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), were in Rome speaking out about the issue and urging the pope to follow up on his recent statements. After the pope’s words, SNAP’s executive director, David Clohessy, quoted an abuse victim who said: “No child in this planet is safer today because of what the pope said last week.”

It remains to be seen whether the pope will re-introduce the justice issue and, more importantly, what action he will take in that regard.

In Australia, Archbishop Mark Coleridge, who is based in the national capital of Canberra, also took an unprecedented step by saying that church culture played a significant role in the abuse by priests. Here, too, when had a church official acknowledged a role for the cultural factor? As a young priest, the archbishop said, he saw pedophilia as “tragic and isolated”, but later, and after serving five years at the Vatican, he came to regard child abuse in the church as “cultural.” (The culture of an organization has been defined as “the way things work”. In the case of child abuse in the church, this has included the cover-up of known offenses, for instance.)

In the news report from Australia, the archbishop indicated that the church’s culture of “discretion” and focus on ”sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment” ultimately led to the child sex abuse scandal and cover-up. He said that discretion, which has its proper place, “turned dark when it was used to conceal crime and protect the reputation of the Church or the image of the priesthood…”

While there have been statements from bishops in various places about the abuse matter, I doubt that any compare to this archbishop’s 4000-word open letter, in which he brought up the culture factor. In citing trust as a part of the culture, he observed that trust “…produced wonderful fruit in both priests and people, but it was the same trust which enabled the abuse to happen…” He said the …”urgent task is to go further along the path of understanding and action in a way that is deeply sensitive to the harm done to those who have been abused and determined to do everything possible to root the evil from the Church.”

In my view, the archbishop deserves a special thanks for addressing this matter. His sensitivity was also reflected in the title of his letter: “Seeing the Faces, Hearing the Voices.”

Part of the Catholic church culture has been the long-standing doctrine known as “Mental Reservation”. This allows a priest or bishop to use “misleading words…as long as a deliberate lie is not told.” When taking the Cardinal’s oath, one promises to keep secret “the revelation of which could cause damage or dishonor to the Holy Church”. That this practice has been widely used was brought out in the sickening reports about church child abuse from the Dublin Archdiocese in Ireland.

Interestingly, it was another clergyman, an American, who also brought the cultural factor to the public’s attention. That was Fr. Andrew Greeley, the well-known priest, novelist, sociologist, who promoted a scholarly book on this subject in one of his newspaper columns. The 2007 book was titled “Spoils of the Kingdom – Clergy Misconduct and Religious Community”, by Anson Shupe of the University of Indiana.

Shupe held that clergy misconduct “occurs in a systematic, or structured, context and is not merely the result of ‘a few bad apples in the barrel’, however discomforting that thought is to any religious apologists…”

Cultural conditions that contribute to abuse in religious organizations are also present in other denominations, of course. The public has learned, particularly since the Catholic scandal erupted in 2002, that any number of other religious groups, including Orthodox Christian, Protestant and Jewish, also have problems with denial, secrecy and cover-up in the abuse area, though their numbers may not match the Catholic experience.

Even though the pope retracted some of his words, the “justice” and “culture” issues have been placed on the table. Perhaps there is now hope that a form of “permission-giving” has occurred and church leaders will take the cue and pursue justice for victims and work toward changing the culture which enables the abuse. The increase in questions and criticisms this spring has included calls for strong action to be taken by the church and its people. One Catholic writer has urged that Vatican III needs to be convened in order to address changes. Certainly, the justice and culture statements should also prompt more of the laity to pursue changes, without waiting for church officials to act.

That seeking changes will continue to be an uphill battle seems certain. At this juncture in American society, we can observe how difficult it is to hold financial institutions and corporations accountable. (“Too big to fail”, “Must not be allowed to happen again”.) Holding religious organizations accountable to the larger society seems no less difficult. In addition, the Vatican, unlike “regular” religious bodies, has what it regards as a trump card in claiming immunity as a sovereign state. The advocacy group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has called this an”Unholy Immunity”. And, there is already enough disadvantage for the laity in judges shying away from “interfering” in church administration, as a number of court cases have shown.

Other Catholic writers have also had the courage to speak out, and in strong terms. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit, wrote recently that “What needs to die is a clerical culture that long fostered power, privilege and secrecy. What needs to die is an attitude that had placed concern about a priest’s reputation above that of a child’s welfare.”

A professor and former priest, Anthony T. Padovano, questioned the hierarchical structure church, as well. He said that “True repentance demands the reform of the church’s structure of domination and laws of privilege. It requires the dismissal of all those who use children for their own gratification. It is possible to make the church a safe zone, a sanctuary where abuses of life and power become almost impossible. Such a possibility exists in a collegial church, not in a monarchical church; in a church of all God’s People, not in a hierarchical church with no accountability to those it serves. The church cannot be truly reformed in the form and under the legal code it now embraces.”

Padovano added that what leads to child abuse in the church has “something to do with domination, a sense that a child is property, an assumption brought to later development in the definition of lay people as inferior. A culture of privilege and elitism fosters the waste of life and the use of others for the sake of those in authority. The deep desire of some church leaders for deference and absurd titles of respect, for flamboyant attire and unquestioned obedience, creates an environment for the exploitation of the child and the denigration of the laity.”

The two oldest Christian churches, the Catholic and the Orthodox (they were one church until the “Great Schism” of 1054) like to say that change in the church only comes slowly over the centuries. Scholars have told us that the abuse issue has been part of Christian history since the days of the early church. For popes and patriarchs and other religious leaders to now be questioned and for their institutions to change must be a “culture shock” in itself, especially in the context of “24-7” news cycles.

One can hope that the former cozy relationships between bishops and police chiefs, for instance, and bishops and the press are history. There was a time, not all that long ago, when a bishop would call an editor and a negative story about the church would not be printed. Growing up in Massachusetts, I can recall that the Boston press and others would tread very lightly about any negative church stories, if they ran them at all. But, with the 2002 news explosion and subsequent revelations, it would appear now that there’s no turning back and that the churches must enter the new era of “transparency and accountability” to the public.

It may indeed be naive to think that positive changes may result from the pope’s and the archbishop’s statements, but one must continue to work toward making such changes possible. The pope’s statement about justice and the archbishop’s about culture would not have been made had it not been for the pressure that has been applied.

The pope and the archbishop did not speak in some vacuum.

There must not be any let-up in this pressure. To insure that such abuse “never happens again”, what has been termed a “philosophy of persistence” should be adopted by lay-people seeking changes in their places of worship. They cannot trust the churches to police themselves. They must provide a watch-dog function as part of the “regulation” and “oversight” of this institution.

Let us not forget that, ultimately, we are talking about the rape of children, for God’s sake.

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(Mr. Cromidas is a retired social agency director. He has served as a parish council president in a Greek Orthodox church and on the board of the Greater Dallas Community of Churches and the City of Dallas Commission on Health and Human Services. Mr. Crominas has written many articles about abuse in Orthodox churches. Other pieces by him can be found by using the search features on Pokrov.org and on Orthodox Christian News.)

 
 

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