According to news sources, the Holy
See is instructing bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report
accusations of clerical child abuse and that ultimately victims or their
families should make the decision to report abuse to police. The document, produced by the Pontifical
Council for the Family, advises bishops that while they must be aware of local
laws that require allegations to be reported to civil authorities, as far as
the Holy See is concerned the only duty of the bishop is to deal with the
matter internally.
Now, despite the impression the
news agencies are giving, the Vatican isn’t telling the bishops that they can
break the civil law in those places where it is required for social workers,
teachers, and other authorities to report abuse cases. And I can understand the
dilemma of a bishop who becomes aware of an allegation against a member of the
clergy or a Church employee but also is confronted with a victim or a victim’s
family that is reluctant for the matter to be made public. But the directive obviously shows that some
people in Rome are still tone-deaf to the crisis of credibility that is facing
the institutional Church.
And, of course, this story follows
up on the the suspension of clerical sex-abuse survivor, Peter Saunders, from
the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors. Saunders was “voted off the island” by an all
but unanimous vote of his fellow commission members. (There were sixteen votes against, one
abstention, none for Saunders.) Now,
again, this was not an executive decision from above but a decision by
peers. And we have all served on
committees where one member keeps gluing up the works with his or her own
agenda. But again, however justified the
commission members might be, it is a matter of tone-deafness that brings
considerable scandal on the Church and undermines our credibility.
And now we have the president of a
Catholic University, fortunately in this instance a layman and not a priest,
comparing under-performing students to “bunnies” who “should be drowned.” Boy, where in the Gospel do you get
that???? I realize that good academic
management requires weeding out those who will not succeed so that more viable
candidates can take their space—but again, how does the murdered bunnies image
play in Peoria?
Why is the Catholic Church on a
suicide mission? If there is a failure
in regard to implementing the mandate of the Second Vatican Council for the
Church to take its place on the modern world, it is this: the presupposition
that we, as Church, are not accountable to the larger human community among
whom live and work. How can we be that
“light of revelation to the nations” if we maintain that we are somehow exempt
from the standards of behavior we ourselves set with our Christian ideals?
And I must admit that as much as I
admire Pope Francis he too seems at times to have become bogged down in
protecting the institution rather than witnessing to the integrity of the
Gospel. The Pope’s appointment and defense of Juan
Barros Madrid as Bishop of Osorno, Chile, despite Barros’ ties to notorious priest-abuser
Fernando Karadima, is another case of Rome being tone-deaf. Barros’ installation in his cathedral church
turned into a huge fracas as the vast majority of the faithful made their rejection
of their bishop public. Moreover, the
vast majority of his brother bishops in Chile, including the two Chilean
Cardinals, refused to attend the installation, signifying that few, if any,
supported the Pope’s appointee. Francis
allegedly referred to those who opposed Bishop Barros Madrid’s appointment as
“lefties” and “dumb.” Holy Father, we
know you can’t carry a tune in a basket, but get to a hearing-specialist and
get your ear canals cleaned out. We
can’t afford to have a tone-deaf Pontiff sitting on the chair of Peter.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is
that hearing confessions desensitizes the clergy to the evil of certain
sins. This isn’t just a Catholic
problem. I suspect that many Protestant
clergy and rabbis after years of
pastoral counseling ministry, also become somewhat immune to the impact of
evil. The problem is that most of the
evil encountered in confession or counseling is done by basically good people. Bad
people—and there some—generally don’t come to see the priest or rabbi. Most
people sin to, in some way or other, escape the pain they feel in life. (Pardon the split infinitive in the above
sentence; I too am a sinner.) The
husband who finds himself continually rejected by his wife (or the wife, by her
husband), turns to an illicit relationship. This is not right but the sin is most
often the result of the pain and anger of rejection. Beneath the abuse of alcohol or drugs is often
a huge amount of psychological pain. And
when it comes to physical or emotional or sexual abuse: how many abusers have
themselves been the victims of abuse?
None of this justifies the evil we choose, but the priest or minister, becoming aware of
the complexity of people’s lives, puts sin in a context that not only involves
judgment but compassion. In pastoral
care that is most probably a good thing.
But it can’t leave us, as a Church, in a world of moral ambiguity. It is a difficult balance to achieve,
especially without risking the sin of phariseeism ourselves, but we need to
find it. Our integrity as a Church
demands that while we deal compassionately with sinners we keep true to the moral
compass of the Gospels.
Perhaps the problem is, at least in
part, that the bishops and clergy have no idea that they are in any way
accountable to us, the People of God. We
are still an overly hierarchic Church rather than a true community of the
faithful. There are still too many
working on the pyramid model of Church where the Pope is over the bishops, the
bishops over the clergy, and the clergy over the people. In this model, communication is one way—top
down and the role of the laity is still perceived to be “to pay, pray, and
obey.” And need I say that for many of
us, those days are over.
We need to develop an ecclesiology
in which we—and I mean all of us, not just the laity—see ourselves not in a hierarchic pyramid but in a communal
model of concentric circles with the bishop at the center, the clergy around
the bishop, the faithful around the clergy.
In the same way the larger perspective is viewed with the Bishop and
Church of Rome at the center surrounded by the communion of local Churches with
their bishops at their center. This
model of Church is far from new and was the predominant ecclesiology in the
patristic period from the second century through the thirteenth.
To a certain extent we have already
begun to move towards this model of Church.
The decrees of the Second Vatican Council, particularly Lumen Gentium (the dogmatic
Constitution on the Church) and Christus
Dominus (the Decree on the Bishops), and to a lesser extent in Apostolicam Actuositatem (On the
Apostolate of the Laity), actually lay out this theology. Unfortunately, as we all know, John Paul II
didn’t much care for this model and pretty much smothered it in its post-Paul
VI cradle. Francis has given us hope of
reviving it, but the above-mentioned actions on the part of the Holy See show
not only some back-pedaling but even the Pope’s failure to see the implications
of his actions. Hopefully his remarks
about “lefties” and “dumb” is only another case of a live-mike picking up an
indiscreet comment from a world leader, but it is still troubling that the Pope
doesn’t see the profound theological issue when not only the faithful but the
regional episcopate reject a candidate for bishop.
Today’s adults are not going to
continue to belong to an organization—even a Church—that doesn’t take them
seriously. I am not advocating a
democratic Church but one in which there is genuine communication so that those
whose ministry it is to speak the faith of the Church know what is in the mind
and the hearts of the Church’s members. The
consensus fidelium needs to be
restored as an essential part of the dynamic of the Church’s teaching and
governing mission.
