Arrogant, corrupt, secretive – the Catholic church failed
to tackle evil
The Observer , Sunday 21 March 2010
The cover-up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic church is not about
sex and it is not about Catholicism . It is not, as Pope Benedict rightly argued
in yesterday's distressingly bland pastoral letter, about priestly celibacy.
It is about power.
The urge to prey on children is not confined to the supposedly celibate clergy
and exists in all walks of life. We know that it can become systemic in state
and voluntary, as well as in religious, institutions. We know that all kinds of
organisations – from banks to political movements – can generate a culture
of perverted loyalty in which otherwise decent people will collude in crimes
"for the greater good".
In none of these respects is the Catholic church unique. What makes it different
– and what gives this crisis its depth – is the church's power. It had the authority,
indeed the majesty, to compel victims and their families to collude in their own
abuse and to keep hideous crimes secret for decades. It is that system of authority
that is at the heart of the corruption. And that is why Benedict's pastoral letter,
for all its expressions of "shame and remorse", is unable to deal with the central
issue. The only adequate response to the crisis is a fundamental questioning of
the closed, hierarchical power system of which the pope himself is the apex and
the embodiment. It was never remotely likely that Benedict would be able to
understand those questions, let alone answer them.
It is this contradiction that explains why the church has been trying, and failing,
to put the abuse crisis behind it for well over a decade now. There is something
symbolically apt, for example, about the way the grotesque figure of the dead
paedophile, Father Brendan Smyth, has returned to threaten the position of
the head of the Irish church, Cardinal Sean Brady.
Smyth emerged as a public figure in 1994, when he was convicted in Belfast
after almost half a century of child abuse. He almost destroyed the reputation
of Brady's predecessor, Cahal Daly. He even contributed to the fall of Albert
Reynolds's government in 1994. It makes a kind of grim sense that his horrific
career, and the failure of the church to take any real steps to stop him,
has re-emerged to haunt another cardinal.
For the shock that Smyth's exposure delivered to Irish Catholicism has not
yet been absorbed by the hierarchy. Both in Ireland and worldwide, the
institution's all-male leadership refuses to face the fact that its own
existence is at the heart of the problem. A closed system of authority
in which democracy is a dirty word, secrecy is a virtue and unaccountable
individuals combine spiritual prestige and temporal power is a breeding
ground for abuse and cover-up.
The universal nature of the church's response to abuse, from Belfast
to Brazil and Australia to Austria, tells us the institution itself is the problem.
Much of the criticism has focused, understandably, on the actions of individuals
such as Brady when he investigated Smyth in 1975 or Benedict
(Joseph Ratzinger as he then was) who sent an abuser in his Munich
archdiocese for "therapy" in 1980. But the system for dealing with
these crimes was the same everywhere: swear the victims to secrecy;
send the abuser to be "cleansed" in a clinic; shift him to another parish
(or in extreme cases like Smyth's to another country); and, above all,
do not tell the police.
It is not a coincidence that the cover-up worked in the same way
throughout the church's vast domain. It was a fully thought-through
system with a clear set of goals, defined by last year's devastating
Murphy report on the Dublin archdiocese as "the maintenance of
secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation
of the church, and the preservation of its assets".
Why did bishops, who were not monsters and who presumably
believed themselves to be exemplars of goodness, choose to send
child rapists out into parishes rather than bring the institution into
disrepute? The brutally truthful answer is: because they could.
There is no starker illustration of the corrupting influence of excessive power.
That power was, in Catholic societies or communities, all-encompassing.
It included the notion that they themselves and their priests belonged
to a special caste, which was not subject to the civil law. This idea is
deeply ingrained. Only last week, one of Ireland's leading canon lawyers,
Monsignor Maurice Dooley, insisted on RTE radio that priests do not have
to report child abuse: "Priests are not auxiliary policemen… they do not
have an obligation to go down to the police." On the contrary, he insisted,
Brady, when he learned of Smyth's crimes, "was dealing with a particular
in camera investigation within the church. It would be a violation of his
obligations if he went to the police".
That appalling arrogance was bolstered by an even more sinister knowledge.
Bishops and priests knew that, because of their spiritual authority, they
could manipulate the victims into feeling guilty. Kindly priests would offer
those who disclosed abuse absolution of their sins, as if they were the
ones who had stains on their souls. And parents who reported the
violation of their children were often fearful lest they themselves be
seen to be damaging the church they loved. As a previous archbishop
of Dublin, Dermot Ryan, noted in internal case notes: "The parents
involved have, for the most part, reacted with what can only be
described as incredible charity. In several cases, they were quite
apologetic about having to discuss the matter and were as much
concerned for the priest's welfare as for their child and other children."
It is that capacity to place yourself above the law and to make those
who have been wronged feel "quite apologetic" that is peculiar to
the church. These are the factors that explain, not just why the
institution put its own interests above those of children, but also
why it succeeded for so long. The church is not alone in believing
that evil could be tolerated for a "good cause". But it was unique
in the democratic world in its ability to get away with doing so in
case after case and for decade after decade.
To cut out the source of the corruption, the church would have to
attack its own authoritarian culture. Had Benedict done so in his
pastoral letter, it would have been the most dramatic moment in
the history of Christianity since Paul fell off his horse on the road
to Damascus.
Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was one of the key figures in the
Catholic counter-revolution. His career has been all about rolling
back the democratic ideal of the church as the "people of God"
that emerged from Vatican II and re-establishing hierarchical
control. Indeed, in the pastoral letter he slyly suggests that
Vatican II itself was responsible for the church's collusion with
abusing priests – which, given the existence of precisely the same
system long before the council, is patent nonsense.
So, for all the breast-beating in the pastoral letter, there is no
acknowledgment of Benedict's own culpability. (If the "credibility
and effectiveness" of Irish bishops have been undermined, as he says,
by the scandals, what of his own standing as a bishop, as the power
behind John Paul II's throne and now as pope?)
There is no explicit endorsement of the new protocols in Ireland demanding
that all suspicions be referred to the police. Indeed, the demand that
"the child safety norms of the church in Ireland" be "applied fully and
impartially in conformity with canon law", and the weasel-worded
injunction to "co-operate with the civil authorities in their area of
competence", seem to reinforce the notion that canon law matters
more than criminal law.
There is no rowing back on the line enunciated by the Vatican's
secretary of state, Tarcisio Bertone, last week that "the church still
enjoys great confidence on the part of the faithful; it is just that
someone is trying to undermine that". That "someone" is, in fact,
the church's own leadership and its unshaken commitment to hierarchical
power. The faithful have known that for a long time now. The pope,
their supposed leader, is still floundering, far, far behind them.
Fintan O'Toole is an assistant editor of The Irish Times and author
of Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger
THIRTY-FIVE YEARS TO BREAK THE WALL OF SILENCE
1975 Two young victims in Ireland sign oaths cementing their
silence over allegations they were abused by Father Brendan
Smyth. It later emerged that (now Cardinal) Sean Brady was
present at the meeting.
1986 In Germany, Father Peter Hullerman is convicted of the
sexual abuse of minors and receives an 18-month suspended
sentence, but continues to work in the church. It is alleged that
he had previously been suspected of abuse, but had avoided
detection by being transferred to another diocese. Pope Benedict XVI,
then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, was allegedly
responsible for the transfer.
1997 Following his arrest in 1991, Smyth admits to 74 cases of sexual
abuse over 35 years. He is sentenced to 12 years in prison, but dies
shortly after sentencing.
2000 The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse is set up by the
Irish government to establish the extent of sexual abuse of children
in Roman Catholic institutions since 1936.
2001 Pope John Paul II orders bishops to report all cases of abuse
directly to the Vatican and to prevent those accused from having
further access to children.
2002 Cardinal Bernard Law, archbishop of Boston, resigns amid
allegations he failed to act on cases of abuse within his diocese.
Following his resignation he moved to work within the Vatican.
2004 The Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order associated
with boys' schools in Ireland, successfully sues the commission to
keep the identity of all of its members, dead or alive, anonymous.
2009 The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse publishes its
investigation. Known as the Ryan report, it details the findings
gathered from 2,000 victims and the extent to which the institutions
had covered up these cases.
20 March 2010 Pope Benedict XVI responds to revelations in a letter
to Irish Catholics, as new cases of abuse emerge in Germany,
Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Mexico and Brazil.