Greg Daly
Pope Francis’ letter to the world’s Catholics on clerical sexual abuse has been praised for its strong language but criticised for lacking promises of action against clergy who have committed or concealed abuse.
The 2,000-word letter, coming against the background of last week’s Pennsylvania Grand Jury report that revealed over 1,000 children were abused by clergy in the US state over a 70-year period, acknowledges the suffering of minors due to sexual abuse and the abuse of power and conscience by clergy and religious, describing these as “crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness”.
Accepting “with shame and repentance” how the Church had “showed no care” for children and “abandoned” them, the Pope criticised a tendency towards clericalism that can help perpetuate abuse.
The Church as a whole needs to “acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable”, he said, calling for solidarity against all forms of corruption.
“Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated,” he said.
Reactions to the letter have, however, been lukewarm.
Dubliner Marie Collins, formerly a founder member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, praised the letter’s strong words on clericalism, but questioned its lack of promised action.
“The condemnation of clericalism in the letter is good to see as it plays a big part in the ignoring of the laity, survivors and experts,” she said. “It gives rise to the ease with which Church leaders can feel comfortable protecting fellow clerics despite their crimes against children.”
Criticising the letter’s failure to include a concrete plan of action, she said: “Statements from Vatican or Pope should stop telling us how terrible abuse is and how all must be held accountable. Tell us instead what you are doing to hold them accountable. That is what we want to hear.”
Speaking on RTÉ, Raphoe’s Bishop Alan McGuckian called on Pope Francis to introduce structures to hold bishops to account, and said he believed action will be taken.
“I too felt when I read the letter that I wanted something more concrete, but by Pope Francis’ actions in recent months he has shown that in one specific case where he did become clearly and unambiguously aware of that kind of failure on the part of bishops, he has acted…and I believe he will act.”
Strong words, but promise of action must be fulfilled
Nobody should expect this week’s letter from the Pope about child abuse to be Pope Francis’ last word on the subject.
Two thousand words long, the letter seems primarily intended to stress that the Pontiff is under no illusions about the horror of abuse, most recently as detailed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report. He describes abuse as “crimes” and “atrocities”, and even as “part of the culture of death”, placing the abuse of children solidly alongside the abortion of unborn children as something the whole Church must fight against.
In some ways it is perplexing, of course. “I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable,” the Pope says, but as survivor and campaigner Marie Collins says, this seems to make little sense, given claims that only the Pope can hold bishops accountable – and specific references to bishops are conspicuous by their absence from the letter.
Answer
The answer to this, perhaps, is buried and implied in the Pope’s subsequent sentence, where he says the Church has delayed “in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary”. It seems the Pope believes that it is civil society, much more than the institutional Church, that has developed the necessary means to implement zero tolerance and hold to account those who commit or conceal crimes.
This, then, forces us to look more carefully at his praise for those abuse survivors whose outcry proved louder than efforts in the Church to silence them. “The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands,” he said, clearly seeing the actions of civic society here as doing God’s work.
Not, the letter says, that the Church must continue to lag. “Looking ahead to the future,” the Pope writes, “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated”.
Fine words, of course, butter no parsnips, but this is at least a strong statement of intent, a commitment to catching up, to doing everything necessary to prevent abuse and to prevent the concealing of abuse. Is this, it’s worth asking, the first time a Pope has spoken of ‘cover up’? The term appears twice in the letter, at any rate, a clear acknowledgement that the tendency to conceal abuse has been rife in the Church.
While the Pope is suitably damning of tendencies to put priests on pedestals, making his own the 2005 words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger that the Church and indeed the priesthood is full of ‘filth’, perhaps the most controversial aspect of the letter among Catholics has been its suggestion that the Church should engage in prayer and fasting in response to the abuse crisis.
In doing this the Pope is calling on the Church as a whole to join in solidarity with the wounded and with God himself through the classic spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting “to see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence”. For this to work, he says, the whole people of God must come together in prayerful solidarity to uproot cultures of abuse in our communities.
He’s right, surely, but this appeal might have been better received if it were accompanied by decisive action. That can’t come quick enough.