One of the Catholic Church’s leading experts on sex abuse and its prevention has given a major lecture in Paris at the invitation of the French bishops.
“I’m going to scandalise you,” Father Hans Zollner SJ warned his audience as he started his talk about the clergy sex abuse crisis.
“The Church’ does not exist. It is not a monolithic block.
“On the contrary, in the same room, same parish and same diocese you have victims and abusers – responsible people and irresponsible people.”
His was the final lecture in a series of conferences themed “CIASE, thinking together about the Church”.
Last October, CIASE – the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church – issued a devastating report on decades of clergy sex abuse in France.
Zollner, who besides being a priest is a psychologist, made sure his audience understood how badly Church officials handled cases of abuse in the past.
His aim – to inform so that the same mistakes are never again repeated.
The first cases of sexual abuse emerged 40 years ago, Zollner explained. After a while, complainants appeared from across the globe.
“Now the whole world has heard about the horror of abuse and the failures of the hierarchy in the management of the problem,” he said.
“And now questions are being asked about why those in charge reacted the way they did, including the ‘untouchables’ – bishops, cardinals and the pope himself.
“The same mistake was made, that of not listening to the victims. And the experience of this or that episcopal conference has not been transferred to the others.”
Having a single strategy for the Church would be difficult, he acknowledged.
There are 1.4 billion catholics, 24 Churches, 5,300 bishops, 2,900 dioceses and an unknown number of religious congregations.
There are also cultural differences.
“In Africa, in families, villages and tribes, sexuality is taboo. Even moreso when it concerns authority figures such as priests.
“In Asia, saving face is vital for living together. And criticising an authority figure was impossible until recently.”
Zollner says there are many paradoxes in the Church.
One is a system of government marked by a “strange tension between authoritarianism and a lack of clear rules, a lack of personal accountability”.
The current synodal process must help “us to get out of this back-and-forth between high-and-low.
“The question is above all how we control power. The greater the power one has, the more that person should be held accountable.”
“What is the focus of our attention – our institutions and our reputation or the victim, the vulnerable, the other and the Wholly-Other?” he asked.
Another paradox is that the Church seems to invest more in the intellectual formation of its clerics than in their human formation.
Changing norms isn’t enough – we need a true conversion that engages spirituality and theology, he said.
“I await the moment when we understand that caring for victims is at the heart of our ministry.”
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