Arthur McCaffrey: Forgiveness must be earned, Bishop Perez

By Arthur Mccaffrey
Ohio.com
September 15, 2017

https://www.ohio.com/akron/editorial/commentary/arthur-mccaffrey-forgiveness-must-be-earned-bishop-perez

Bishop Nelson J. Perez, Bishop of the Diocese of Cleveland.

WALTHAM, MASS.: The Beacon Journal recently reported on the formal installation of the new Catholic bishop of Cleveland, Nelson Perez (“ Cleveland rocks,’ new ‘bishop tells the faithful,” Sept. 6). The story highlighted his personal appeal to the laity for forgiveness for the church’s “horrendous” history of child abuse, as if this was a novel gesture after the dour administration of his predecessor Bishop Lennon.

Earlier this year Beacon Journal also published a column, “An innocent man still looks for justice,” about two men spending 16 years in prison for a murder they did not commit. Their $4.9 million settlement from the state didn’t “come close to just compensation for what they lost.”

And when an innocent child looks for justice? What is just compensation for innocence lost after being raped by a priest? Surely it must be more than just a gratuitous plea for forgiveness by the new guy on the job? What compensates for an abuse victim’s lifetime of suffering and PTSD dysfunction, while criminal priests walk free and the bishops and cardinals who colluded and covered up the crimes still get to keep their jobs, titles and privileges?

Instead of cost-free calls for blanket forgiveness, perhaps a more genuine gesture of sympathy and sorrow would be for bishops like Perez to resign out of shame for being associated with such criminality. Another bishop, Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, teaches us a more honest lesson about how to respond to abuse and injustice. After President Mandela appointed him to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1994, Tutu said decades of institutional injustice against victims of apartheid needed to be remedied in four ways: Apology, Punishment, Compensation and Reconciliation.

How does the Catholic Church’s response to its “horrendous” history of child abuse stack up against Tutu’s metrics of reparation? Well, we are knee-deep in church apologies and cash, with billions of dollars paid out for victim compensation, nationally and internationally — compensation not usually freely offered but litigated out of church coffers by civil lawsuits initiated by victims and their attorneys!

Punishment and jail time are rare; when they do occur they usually apply only to privates not generals. As for reconciliation, that still seems a long way off for most victims.

As for Perez’s call for forgiveness, Tutu insisted that forgiveness isn’t a freebee that victims hand out: The criminal has to earn it to deserve it. Only then might true reconciliation happen.

Part of the problem of achieving justice for abuse victims is that their plight is often misrepresented. The Beacon Journal story about Perez, for instance, used a worn cliche — child abuse “scandals.” Scandals happen in Hollywood: abuse is not a scandal, it is a crime.

Moreover, punishment for abuse crimes gets distorted in Catholic theology behind a smokescreen of “forgiveness,” “sorrow,” and “repentance,” helping rationalise the church’s in-house handling of child abuse as an absolvable sin rather than the heinous crime that needs to be prosecuted first and pardoned later.

A very nuanced theology of sin and forgiveness may work well for life in the hereafter, but here below we need a theology of crime — one that identifies the offense, the offender, the victim and the secular punishment that meets the standards of civil justice. So please, Bishop Perez, don’t whitewash crime with calls for forgiveness, as if the latter were some kind of holy water detergent that could wash away the permanent stain created by clergy abuse of children.

And don’t misunderstand victims. Most are not looking for vengeance or cash, but they are looking for retributive justice which assigns public penalties for wrongdoing and prescribes reparation. Their peace (like forgiveness) comes with a price.

Modern society is full of harrowing stories about victims (both inside and outside the church) struggling with a lifetime of emotional distress after childhood abuse. Glib calls for “forgiveness” do not begin to address the reality of victimhood, and even sound insulting from a man wearing the robes and finery of a guilty institution.

Guess what Bishop Perez? Victims rock!