WASHINGTON (DC)
Catholic News Service
April 10, 2019
By Dennis Sadowski
Amid the legal wrangling surrounding the long-standing clergy sexual abuse crisis, Barbara Thorp, a social worker who formerly led the Archdiocese of Boston’s office that supports and cares for abuse survivors, wants Catholic leaders to know that healing among survivors is a far more important path to pursue.
Greater transparency related to church procedures and changes in canon law to focus on the needs of victims will demonstrate that the Church truly cares about survivors, Thorp said during an April 9 panel discussion on the role of civil law and the action of lawyers in hiding and uncovering the abuse crisis sponsored by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life.
Right now, Thorp told an audience at the Georgetown University Law Center, many survivors feel abandoned by the church, especially since new revelations of the Church’s response to alleged abuse and the actions of some prelates emerged in 2018.
When the abuse crisis exploded in 2002, abuse survivors felt a sense of betrayal, Thorp said. As church actions since then in many cases have failed to fully address the needs of survivors, the survivors realize that canon law is preventing strict action to address wayward clergy, she said.
Thorp credited changes in civil law and even some actions among church leaders that have led to greater transparency and steps to support the spiritual needs of abuse survivors. But she charged that canon law “is lagging far behind in terms of seeing itself as another opportunity to bring real healing and real confidence that the Church understands the depth of the harm in the damage that was done.”
Pointing to the upcoming Holy Week in which Jesus felt betrayed and abandoned, Thorp called on church leaders from Rome to local dioceses to remember that abuse survivors carry Christ’s passion “in our midst.”
“Now, if we can have that sense of urgency, not to let this moment pass, not to let Jesus be alone in the garden, not to let him walk the path without attending to those that feel a deep sense of betrayal and abandonment,” she said.
Two attorneys on the panel reviewed the legal side of the Church’s response to the crisis.
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