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	We Need a New Catholic Reformation By Michael Higgins Globe and Mail November 4, 2010 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/we-need-a-new-catholic-reformation/article1784784/ In the past month alone, a child psychiatrist who headed the Belgian Catholic Church's commission investigating accusations of clerical sexual abuse of minors has called on Pope Benedict XVI to resign, the Chilean Church is reeling from disclosures of hierarchical incompetence in the face of sustained abuse by a revered priest, German Jesuits have begun victim-compensation initiatives, and the Archdiocese of San Diego is releasing thousands of pages of documentation chronicling personnel decisions made by church authorities in relation to allegations and charges. In other words, a month like so many others. Not surprisingly, many Catholics have grown exhausted, embittered and demoralized by an issue that seems to have no termination. "When will we have an end?" has become a mantra for clergy and laity alike. Short-term strategies – creating ad hoc bodies of inquiry, establishing new governance norms, putting in place guidelines that adhere to best practices – are both necessary and laudable. Repeated apologies by the highest authorities have their role, as does the imposition of severe sanctions on offending clerics. But what of long-term strategies? How do we guarantee – to the degree any institution can – that the infamies of the past will not be repeated? It's essential that the church, from office-holders to parishioners, steel themselves for reform. Damage control, legal gamesmanship, moral posturing and institutional denial don't work. Rooting out the evil that has flourished within us – Pope Benedict's "filth in the church" – has become a defining feature of the papacy. The universal episcopate understands the Pope's determination to purify the church, and there are numerous signs that church canonical practice is being adjusted to comply with accepted civil norms. But is this enough? In a conversation I had at a Jesuit retreat in Massachusetts with a psychiatrist working with the Archdiocese of Boston – a conversation I had a decade ago – he told me that, while he and his youngest son were out hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, they came across a party of cassock-clad junior seminarians, at which sight the psychiatrist opined: "There goes my future workload." Cynical? The religious order of which these seminarians were members has been the subject of Vatican investigation and the public disgracing of its founder. More recently, a French priest-hematologist and medical professor who deals clinically and canonically with clerical sex abuse cases told me that, in one diocese he consults for, new cases have emerged involving young priests not long ordained. A new cycle on the horizon, or a blip? Structural reform involves addressing the pathologies that make the abuse possible. We have, as the Canadian nun-pediatrician and bioethicist Nuala Kenny observed, "unfinished business" to attend to. And such business includes addressing optional celibacy for parochial clergy, the declining access to regular celebration of the Eucharist because of priest shortages, the dismantling of a culture of entitlement and secrecy, the demystifying of the ministerial priesthood, a reconsideration of the narrow rules that determine the selection of bishops, and the vigorous application of the ecclesial principles of collegiality and subsidiarity in all the operations of church governance. To put the horror behind them, Catholics must do more than lament their church. They must reform it. Michael Higgins is co-author, with Peter Kavanagh, of Suffer the Children Unto Me: An Open Enquiry into the Clerical Abuse Scandal.
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