Enough with the sex abuse reports

Thursday, February 10th, 2022

The Church does not need more sex abuse reports, but personal and ecclesial conversion.

Powerful, pandemic experiences and images have stimulated new respect for first responders who work selflessly to save others from harm, even at personal risk.

They have also shown the crucial need for research into the nature and causes of the harm so that prevention and treatment can be safe and effective.

These pandemic insights were vividly present to me as I participated in a panel called “National and International Experts Respond to Jean-Marc Sauvé”.

The panel was part of a symposium titled “Clergy Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: Listening to the Voices of Survivors”.

It was organised by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace,and World Affairs at Georgetown University and led by Father Gerard McGlone, a survivor of clergy sexual abuse.

The goal of our panel was to review international experience in order to discern imperatives and challenges in healing, reform and renewal.

Jean-Marc Sauvé, of course, was the man the Catholic bishops and leaders of religious orders in France asked to lead the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) in their country.

Its final report — “Sexual Violence in the Catholic Church: France 1950-2020” — focused on the experience of victim-survivors and intensive research into the staggering prevalence of such violence. The statistical analysis was complemented by identification of theological and ecclesial beliefs and practice fostering the abusive culture, particularly abuse of power, silence and secrecy.

The report was a media bombshell. While it was lauded by victims, members of the conservative Catholic Academy of France viciously criticised the report for making the numbers public and identifying fundamental theological and ecclesial issues.

Members of the CIASE were scheduled to meet Pope Francis and present the report to him. But the meeting was postponed, which only added to the controversy.

More recently a similar report was issued concerning clergy sex abuse in the Archdiocese of Munich, which implicated Benedict XVI for mishandling certain cases when he headed the German archdiocese from 1977-1982.

This has only confirmed the urgency of addressing this ongoing crisis in the Catholic Church.

Old News, not the “Good News”

Tragically, for all those committed to healing and renewal in the Church, this horrific contradiction to Jesus’s love and care for vulnerable children was old news.

Despite differences in the timing and authority of the reviews and reports, the methodology, focus and priority of addressing underlying issues are all part of the same very old story.

A study commissioned some years ago by the German Bishops’ Conference looked at the frequency of child sexual abuse by priests and religious. It identified structures and dynamics that might foster abuse. And it placed abuse at the heart of their Synodal Way.

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Roman Catholic Church explored the longstanding issue and elements of the Church’s structures and its unique culture with particular attention to the role of secrecy and cover-up.

There is an entire library of reports on clergy sex abuse in the United States, including national and diocesan reviews that have been issued since 1992 when the US Bishops’ Conference (USCCB) issued its Five Principles for responding to allegations.

Among the most extensive are the John Jay College of Criminal Justice Report for the USCCB, the National Review Board reports and highly publicised studies in places such as Boston and Philadelphia.

There is no national registry of clergy sexual abuse in Canada. As early as 1990, the St John’s Newfoundland Archdiocesan Report on Clergy Sexual Abuse of Minors by Clergy identified underlying factors fostering abuse that needed urgent study: “power, education (of clergy and laity), sexuality, support of priests, management, and avoidance of scandal” (p16).

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) further refined these issues in From Pain to Hope (1992) and Protecting Minors from Sexual Abuse: A Call to the Catholic Faithful in Canada for Healing, Reconciliation, and Transformation (2018).

Participants on the Berkley Center panel represented a small number of national experiences.

The Holy See Press Office has a twenty-six page “Timeline of the Church’s Response both at the Local and Universal Level” covering 1984-2019. It covers reports from Ireland and Chile to Belarus and Kerala.

The similarity of responses in each and every place demonstrates an ecclesial culture that transcends national differences and is, in medical terms, endemic pathology. Distinct from a pandemic, endemic pathology is pervasive and intergenerational.

Affected communities have no real experience of health and believe their situation is normal. Help from outside the culture is necessary to reveal the pathology.

All studies and reports raise serious issues underlying the clergy abuse crisis and cry out for reform and renewal.

My reflections on the Berkley Center conference are dominated by my experience as a paediatrician who has cared for abused children and youth since the 1970s. My clear and compelling duty in the face of a credible risk of harm is action to prevent and protect.

The longstanding issue of sexual abuse by Church personnel (including priests and religious) has been handled internally in canon law.

The Church did not acknowledge clergy sexual abuse of minors because of ecclesial examination of conscience. Rather, it was forced to do so by civil and criminal cases and investigative journalism.

Reports have gradually recognised the profound physical, emotional and spiritual harm done to victim-survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Responses have focused on necessary but not sufficient policies and protocols responding to allegations and safeguarding practices rather than personal and ecclesial conversion of mind and heart.

Recent reports have re-affirmed the role of the abuse of power, position and conscience, secrecy, silence and denial, avoidance of scandal, education of laity and clergy, the renewed morality of virtue and conscience, and the theology of sexuality.

Focusing obsessively on numbers can divert attention from the real issues. How much more do we need to know? How many children need to be harmed?

Challenges

We have a major challenge in restoring trust in Church leadership. There is a pervasive sense of futility in trying to bring about change because those in power are most affected by denial.

There are also deep divisions in interpreting the underlying pathology.

Everything that has fostered abuse of power against the most vulnerable must die so that conversion of mind and heart to “the mind of Christ” can occur.

We need to pray for resurrection and hope in new life where children are cherished and protected.

Nuala Kenny is a Sister of Charity in Halifax, Nova Scotia and a pediatrician. An officer of the Order of Canada since 1999, she has published several books, including Healing the Church (Novalis, 2012) and Rediscovering the Art of Dying (2017). She is co-author of Still Unhealed: Treating the Pathology in the Clergy Sexual Abuse Crisis (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2019). She has just published, A Post-Pandemic Church: Prophetic Possibilities (Novalis and Twenty-Third Publications, 2021).
First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.