THE TABLET: "A CHURCH IN NEED OF SCRUTINY"

Editorial

A church in need of scrutiny

The sexual-abuse crisis which has engulfed the Catholic Church is, above all, an occasion of profound regret at the damage done to the victims. But it is also an occasion of anger at the way the Church has treated those victims. The pain caused by clerics has been exacerbated by the misgovernance of bishops. So deep is the hurt that the victims feel, that it is understandable that attention has turned to the role of the Pope himself in the crisis. Calls for Pope Benedict’s resignation have come from victims and groups representing them, for only such a cathartic action would be proportionate to the anger and hurt they feel. Nevertheless, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster was right to say on television last weekend that there were “no strong reasons” for Pope Benedict to resign.

Contrary to the impression given by recent, increasingly aggressive coverage by the media, Pope Benedict’s actions have reflected concern for the victims and a deep desire to clean up the Catholic Church. The Pope’s letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland was unsparing in his condemnation of offenders and of bishops who failed in their leadership and made grave errors of judgement.

Also to his credit, as Archbishop Nichols also said, are tough measures he instituted as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to tighten up the Church’s procedures for dealing with such cases. The most important of these was an instruction to all bishops issued in 2001 that they must from then on inform the CDF of every case, and await orders on how to handle it. The orders that subsequently came down from the CDF were to start proceedings under canon law with a view to suspension or dismissal of the priest concerned, in some cases almost instantaneously.

Questions have been asked, however, about the time when Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich and a priest accused of paedophilia was transferred to a house in the archdiocese for therapy, and later resumed his offending. Then there was the occasion when Cardinal Ratzinger was head of the CDF and canonical proceedings against a notorious paedophile priest in Wisconsin were halted when it became known he was dying. Some in the media have tried to weave these cases into a damning indictment, but they have clearly fallen some way short.

A serious question about the CDF does remain unanswered. Why did it take the Congregation in particular and the Vatican in general so long to realise that such an instruction about reporting all cases to Rome was necessary? By then, hundreds of priests had been dealt with on a pastoral or administrative basis, and were subsequently reinstated, often after reference to a therapist, but many then resumed their abuse of children. What triggered the change of approach? Is there any truth in the suggestion that Pope John Paul II held the CDF back from the action that was necessary? This certainly seemed to be the case concerning Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who had long been under suspicion and was swiftly dealt with once Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.

After the 2001 instruction was issued, there seemed uncertainty as to whether the secrecy it imposed on all parties prevented cases being reported to the police. Archbishop Nichols has made it clear that no such interpretation was put on it in England and Wales, and indeed the Nolan report commissioned by his predecessor, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, had no difficulty in insisting on police involvement in every case. But the Murphy report into abuses in Dublin, published last summer, painted a different picture in Ireland, stating that confidentiality in a canonical process “could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others. It is not clear from the evidence or the documents available to the Commission whether the obligation of confidentiality relates only to what takes place during the canonical process or whether it extends to the underlying details of complaint.”

The report was written with expert advice from leading canon lawyers. The CDF has since stated that it was not the intention to prevent cases being referred to the police. But that was not obvious to the authors of the Murphy report – nor apparently, in Ireland at least, to victims and others. It will be interesting to see what view was taken of the secrecy issue in the cases now coming to light in Germany and elsewhere.

Cardinal Ratzinger headed the CDF from 1981 to 2005. The Murphy report describes, in the words of one reputable witness, how in 1996 the Irish bishops “did not feel Rome was supporting them in dealing with this issue ... they were meeting an onslaught of complaints and Rome was pulling any particular solid ground that they had from under them”. So far there has been little evidence that the Vatican accepts responsibility for what went wrong. Exactly what that was remains to be seen, and there is a clear requirement now, in the interests of transparency and justice, to get to the bottom of it. A great service to the Church and to the truth would be done if an international commission of distinguished jurists and ­others were to be invited to review what occurred and why, in order to make recommendations for the future. This is what happened in England and Wales with the Nolan Commission, and a great deal of good has flowed from it – as Pope Benedict, on more than one occasion, has himself acknowledged.

Two other things need to be acknowledged. The first is that while ecclesiastical and even civil authorities refused at first to listen to what the victims of sexual abuse had to say, the only people to give them a hearing were in the media. If the voice of the victims seems unduly amplified now – and it is by no means easy to say how much volume is too much – this is some compensation for the silence that reigned before. The second point is that the Nolan inquiry would never have happened without investigative journalism, initially on the part of the BBC. It exposed the grave mistake made by Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor in one notorious case when he was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, which he quickly admitted with deep regret. He did not blame the press, or claim a media conspiracy, and he eventually emerged with his reputation restored.

Any institution under sustained media attack is tempted to retreat into a fortress mentality, but it is never edifying and cures nothing. It is usually accompanied by an indifferent or poor public-relations operation, and the Vatican’s handling of media interest in these matters leaves much to be desired. Cardinal William Levada, the current head of the CDF, has been virtually invisible. If the CDF has a good story to tell, let him tell it. Indeed, Catholics all over the world are pretty desperate to hear it. But it must be based on the truth, including an admission of failure where failure occurred. That way lies recovery; only that way, indeed, will the Church be led from its long Good Friday to an Easter Resurrection.