AFRICA
Spotlight Africa
September 10, 2018
By Chris Chatteris SJ
The growing state of crisis in our Church leads Fr Chris Chatteris, a Jesuit priest who has held many positions of leadership in the Order, to critique the Catholic ways of power. He chastises religious superiors, bishops, formators and mentors who have allowed abusive ministers to stay in the system for so long. They desperately need to review the instruments of accountability which have clearly failed.
Every unaccountable system of power will attract abusers – embezzlers, bullies and sexual predators. The thing we are painfully learning about the Catholic system of power, the hierarchy (it means ‘rule by priests’) is that it provides the perfect camouflage for such nefarious activities because the common assumption has been, that the bishop, priest or deacon is a man who is above such things. Indeed, he is called by God into a vocation of selfless service.
It seems that our hierarchical system of government in the Catholic Church has become functionally unaccountable. There is very little oversight. The bishop, whose first job is to care for and oversee (Bishop means ‘overseer’) his priests, sometimes does not do this or is unable to do so.
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