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In late October 2005 the long-awaited report into the handling of
clerical child sexual abuse in the south-eastern diocese of Ferns
(Wexford) was published. Instantly eclipsing all other Irish news
events it told us of the most horrific catalogue of abuse so far
revealed in any diocese in Ireland.
Churchmen vied with one another to express shock and horror at the abuse
itself. None commented on the failure of bishops - yet again - to
protect children. The most important lessons for the church had
still not been grasped.
(This article is a slightly extended version of one that appeared in
Reality
in January 2006)
~~
Clericalism and Unaccountability - Why These Twin Evils Must Go
"Bishops placed the interest of the church ahead of children ..."
The Ferns Report, Page 256.
Although everyone knows what Judge Murphy and his colleagues meant by
this verdict on two former bishops of Ferns, there is something strange
and contradictory - even outrageous - about it also.
First, those children, and their parents, were also full members of the
church - so the church itself, as a society of human beings, was
grievously harmed by what those bishops did, or failed to do.
Second, the Irish Catholic church, as a community of faith, has never
been so grievously hurt - not even by the Cromwellian persecution. If we
cannot trust that our bishops - whose banner is 'the faith' - will put
the basic law of the church before everything else - the law of love -
then our faith too will be deeply challenged. Had those bishops
deliberately set out to injure 'the faith' they could not have been more
effective.
So, if it wasn't 'the church', what interest exactly was it that those
bishops placed ahead of children?
It cannot have been Catholic teaching, because the church has always
taught that the family is the basic social unit. For over four decades
now it has also taught that all are equal in dignity. In favouring
erring priests before children, those bishops were denying, not
upholding, strict Catholic teaching.
What interest was it, then, that they placed ahead of children?
We discover what it was by reflecting that it had to do not with
revealing the truth, but with concealing it. What was it that was
concealed?
That Catholic ordination - the distinctive attribute of Catholic
clergy - does not guarantee sinlessness or virtue in those who receive
it.
Most importantly, ordination does not guarantee sexual abstinence - true
celibacy - to those who receive it. It is clear now, in fact, that some
of our clergy have sought ordination precisely because it has allowed
them to prey upon children, sexually.
It is clear also that, faced with this reality, bishops have, far more
often than not, sought to conceal that truth from the wider church - as
though it was diametrically opposed to faith itself. They were
able to do so, for decades, because they were accountable to no one for
their actions. And they were made accountable in the end only by
secular institutions - the media and the state - not by church
institutions.
Yet nowhere does the church officially teach that the sacrament of
ordination is a guarantee of virtue, or even celibacy. That odd notion
has always been contradicted by experience anyway. Yet, for some strange
reason, far too many bishops have nevertheless felt obliged to preserve it - at the
expense of children..
The reason is clericalism - the felt obligation, transmitted for
centuries in the culture of the church - and especially the Irish
church - to uphold the myth of the moral and intellectual
superiority of clergy.
Clericalism is at the root of the Catholic clerical child abuse scandal -
for three reasons..
First, clericalism empowers the abusive priest and disempowers his
victims. This is proven by many of the stories told in the Ferns report,
reflected in the summation on page 261:
"Frequently it is the respect in which the abuser is held which
affords the opportunity of perpetrating the crime...."
The unquestioning respect in which clergy have been held in Ireland
rests squarely on clericalism - taught to children by the attitudes and
behaviour of their parents and teachers. Put simply, the priest was the
man of God, the one closest to God whom the child should trust
implicitly to give access to grace, the gift of God. He was also
the person you must never question.
Clericalism deliberately cultivates an attitude of deference to clergy.
Deference - the habit of submission and compliance - gave abusive clergy
virtually total power over their child victims.
Second, clericalism gave abusive priests power also over the families of
those children. Irish mothers especially have tended to feel honoured
that any priest would "take an interest in our Johnny" - even if
'Johnny' was asked to stay in the care of the priest overnight. It could
not enter most parents' heads that the priest could do any harm -
illustrated in the poignant story of a mother who denied to the Ferns
inquiry that an abusive priest could have molested her daughter, even
though he sometimes occupied the same bed!
Why could it not enter their heads? Because Irish Catholicism has so far
not properly distinguished between faith in God and faith in clergy. For
far too many Irish Catholics, to doubt the priest was as grave a sin as
to doubt God - and too many of our church leaders have found it all too convenient
to leave this confusion intact. It is the root of Catholic deference -
and deference is - or rather was - the root of much of the social power
of the clerical church in Ireland - and the powerlessness of children.
Third, it was clericalism also that presented the bishop with the
opportunity, and the obligation, to protect the myth of clerical
sinlessness. It gave him that opportunity because it always counselled
lay people to give the priest - and the bishop - the benefit of any
doubt. It gave him the obligation to do so, because the power to which
the bishop believed himself to be above all accountable - the papacy -
is clericalist also - intent on ruling the church through clergy, and on
protecting the myth of clerical sinlessness.
Nothing else can fully explain the virtually universal failure of
Catholic bishops throughout the world to deal effectively with clerical
child sexual abuse. Or the failure of the Vatican to deal with it also.
Or the failure of both to give lay people the structures they have
needed for forty years to develop their own role and mission in their
own church.
Yet so far, regrettably, no Catholic bishop has identified clericalism,
or his own unaccountable power,
as primary factors in the problem - as the reasons for the lack of
integrity in our leadership. This is the real measure of the failure of
the leaders of our church to grasp the nettle.
It is also the measure of the challenge facing the current papacy on
this issue. It is of first importance for the recovery of the church
that the myth of clergy be expressly contradicted in church teaching. We
need, as a matter of great urgency, an encyclical against clericalism -
an encyclical that will emphasise that faith in God does not require
faith in clergy also - or deference either.
But there is the problem. The power of the church in the developing
world is largely based upon clericalism also. Clericalism flourishes
wherever there is a clear educational gap between the priest and the
bulk of his congregation. And Rome tends to point to the developing
world as evidence of the continuing health of the church - even to the
extent of proposing that the priest shortage in the west could be
supplied from Africa!
So it seems unlikely that clericalism will be tackled as a problem by
the church leadership soon.
But meanwhile in Ireland, as elsewhere, we must develop a church culture
that is safe for children. This surely must involve the warning of every
child, at an early age, that no adult is to be deferred to when personal
boundaries are at stake. To make sure the child is clear on what 'no
adult' means, we must deliberately and expressly abandon the Irish
Catholic habit of automatic deference to clergy.
We must also challenge the unaccountable power of bishops - and their
continuing failure to address the weaknesses in a system that
leaves the institutions of the secular state to call bishops to account
only decades after they have caused irreparable harm.
Can our bishops rise to the challenge of telling us this? Will they be
allowed to? Will they even rise to the challenge of meeting with
their people to discuss freely any of the major issues that arise out of
these events?
Who can say? Given the extraordinary slowness with which our bishops
have learned anything in recent decades, it seems likely that there will
be continuing tension between the needs of child protection, and the
clericalist bias that has so endangered our children since Vatican II.
Catholic adults - lay and clerical - will need to pray hard to negotiate
this minefield without further pain and grief. And the authority
and prestige of the office of bishop seems set for further decline.
However, there is great comfort to be gained in the realisation that
although ordination does not guarantee virtue, most of our priests are
virtuous anyway.
The reason is that they do obey the basic law of the church - the
law of love. And pray hard for that virtue of virtues. That is why they
are, mostly, genuinely loved by their people also.
Clericalism will not be needed to hold the Irish church together if we
let truth and love, and prayer, and the sacraments, do so instead. If
our bishops cannot rise to the challenge of teaching us this, and of
becoming accountable to us, we - priests and people - must rise to the
challenge of teaching these things to them.
For, whatever else may happen, the death of Catholic clericalism, and of
clerical unaccountability, in Ireland is now assured. Our Irish Catholic
church will either survive - and flourish - without these, or perish
with them.
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VOTF™
Mission Statement
To provide a prayerful voice, attentive to the Spirit,
through which the Faithful can actively participate in the governance
and guidance of the Catholic Church.
Our Goals
1. To support
survivors of clergy sexual abuse.
2. To support priests of integrity
3.To shape structural change within the Catholic Church.
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