Archbishop links abuse scandal to church culture
The Roman Catholic Church's culture of discretion and focus on "sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment" were among ingrained factors that ultimately led to the child sex abuse scandal and cover-up surrounding the church today, a pre-eminent Australian bishop said Monday.
Archbishop Mark Coleridge, whose archdiocese is based in the national capital of Canberra, took the unusual step of writing an open letter attempting to explain the culture that led the church to turn a blind eye to priests accused of molesting children, the Associated Press reports.
Factors include a determination to protect the church's reputation, a culture of discretion, "institutionalized immaturity" of priests fostered by seminary training, and an outlook of "sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment," Coleridge wrote.
Clerical celibacy was not itself a factor but it "has its perils," he wrote. "The discipline of celibacy may also have been attractive to men in whom there were paedophile tendencies which may not have been explicitly recognised by the men themselves when they entered the seminary."
Coleridge said as a young priest in the 1970s, he regarded pedophilia cases as "tragic and isolated." Coleridge's view shifted when he was called to serve at the Vatican as chaplain to Pope John Paul II during a five-year period that ended in 2002. While there, Coleridge came to regard child abuse in the church as "cultural."
"There is no one factor that makes abuse of the young by Catholic clergy in some sense cultural," Coleridge wrote. "It seems to me a rather complex combination of factors which I do not claim to understand fully."
Coleridge, a priest for 36 years, said no one could now deny the scale of the pedophilia problem in the church.
"All can see that this is a time of crisis for the Catholic Church ... there will be no quick fix to this problem, the roots of which go deep and wide."
Coleridge said Monday that Pope Benedict XVI was the right church leader for the challenge. Before he became pope in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger held a key Vatican role in dealing with sex abuse.
"As cardinal and as pope, he has acted as vigorously as I think he can without claiming that he's got a magic wand or that the pope can just speak a word from on high and it all happens," Coleridge told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio Monday.
Canberra-based church historian Paul Collins said Coleridge's letter was unprecedented in Australia in that it openly admits the scale of the child abuse problem.
"Certainly Coleridge is the first bishop to have tackled it head on in this way in Australia," said Collins, an author and former priest.
Broken Rites Australia, a support group for victims of clergy sex abuse, said the church's failing as outlined by Coleridge was unforgivable.
"The archbishop's comments show how the Catholic Church hierarchy have covered up sex abuse and dealt very badly with the victims," group president Chris MacIsacc said. "But there is no excuse for not understanding that rape, sodomy and child sex abuse is a crime. To be more concerned for the perpetrator of crime than the victim is unforgivable."
Comments
Discretion is a good thing generally. Healthy organizations use discretion and privacy to protect their virtues. Virtuous action can often only be hindered by willy-nilly revelation of it. It only cheapens virtue, or makes it impossible. "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant, Success in circuit lies, " said the greatest female poet. Sometimes the greatest poetry is silence.
By contrast, the Roman Church has developed a "culture of discretion" which is not using privacy for virtue, but for vice or outright crime. The opposite of a healthy organizational tendency. It is commonsense that in any organization sometimes problems must be hidden, but not to the point of destroying the intact virtues. But in the Roman Church's case this is a concomitant of the tendency, which has only increased as the centuries have worn on, of acting as if its own virtues are self-evident to the world. Of course this makes no real sense for the followers of a religious genius who gave the world's preeminent advice for true spiritual advancement. "When you pray, go to your room, and close the door."
Posted by: Peter Fuchs | May 24, 2010 2:48 PM
I just thought of a better way to express the nature of the Roman Church's "culture of discretion" which this Archbishop has identified as the problem for them . And by the way, one wonders if the far-right of the Church will attack the Prelate himself. Will they call him an anti-Catholic bigot as they called anyone who points out the style of politics and administration which anyone who has been in the Church knows exists. They systematically have removed anyone with surprise connivings and underhandedness. That is why the normally valuable aspect of discretion has taken on a particular meaning for them. And it can bee summed up with a simple equation: Discretion = Subterfuge.
Posted by: Peter Fuchs | May 24, 2010 6:05 PM
I am so proud that the people who read The American Papussed really get it. Why should you deny people communion, like those Rainbow Sash people were denied on Sunday. here is one of the brilliant comments on my blog. This is the sort of thinking my father will be taking to Rome, the best of Catholic morality:
"Question asked: ” A classmate confides in him (a young EHMC) that he masturbates and does not think that there is anything wrong with doing so. This classmate presents himself for communion, along with his family, before our young EMHC on Sunday morning.
Ought they young sexual offender be denied communion in front of his family?”
Depends. Will the young sexual offender in question approach communion wearing a sash upon which are printed the words, “Proud Practitioner of Solitary Vice And Don’t Care Who Knows It!” in front of his family? If so, I would say his behavior was pretty damned out of line, disrespectful, divisive, irreverent, and scandalous, and he had no business coming into the Church making such a statement . . . or any statement. It’s up to the pastor and the bishop, of course, but I would support denying Communion to anyone who comes into church explicitly making a statement (verbally or non-verbally) contrary to Catholic moral teaching .'
See how simple the logic is? You see, as my father will show in Rome, the reason the Pope did not stop the sexual abuse is that the priests did not wear a sash saying "Practitioner of Sexual Abuse" That is why they could continue performing as priests and receiving the sacraments themselves. See, you have be especial edgeecated in Canon law to get this stuff. I am happy I can explain it to the public.
Thomas Blaise Peters, The American Papussed.
Posted by: The American Papussed | May 26, 2010 1:12 AM