This extremely serious act - which the Catholic Church of France euphemistically translated as "voyeurism" - is exactly what Bishop Michel Santier did when he was the director of a School of Faith and leader of a new community.

One is initially stunned after hearing of such abuse and perversion.

Then comes the anger.

How can a priest and future bishop - who has taken post-graduate courses in theology and has received a "solid" formation in seminaries aimed at preparing the "ruling class" of Catholicism - fall into such confusion, mixing sin, nudity, undisclosed sexual attraction and religion?

And then one thinks, not without a certain horror, that so much of the sexual abuse committed in the Church is a perversity that is sometimes based on a so-called spiritual vision of sexuality and the flesh, which questions the capacity to show, in the literal sense, an understanding of faith...

Certainly, sexuality - that is, the relationship one has with his or her own body and that of another - remains a complex matter.

Current events, from #MeToo movement to all the abuse cases, offer almost daily proof of this.

There is no reason why the Church should be spared, especially since it has a long tradition of rigid morality where everything related to sexuality has been considered evil.

But for more than half a century, the Church has been indulging in a groundless rhetoric that has not favoured - to say the least - a proper understanding of the sexual revolution and its implications that we are going through in the West.

This is not the least of the paradoxes for an incarnate religion like Christianity!

A certain "theology of the body", one that undoubtedly relies clumsily on the writings of John Paul II, has totally sublimated this relationship to the body.

It has made sexuality a kind of ideal, sacralized by a vision of marriage (conjugality) that is often overly theoretical.

It is a perspective that does not see all there can be in sexuality - dissatisfaction, failure, ambiguity, and, obviously, relationships based on power.

Sexuality can also be a place of great violence, especially among clerics who undergo an imposed chastity and exploit the confessional and their sacramental power to satisfy certain desires.

Here again, we must be careful not to generalise.

But why is there such an inability to speak of sexuality in its complexity, in its humanity, dare I say?

Why make it a kind of sacred place which opens the door to all forms of deviance?

Here again, the Church is not alone.

Such a reflection cannot be done in a vacuum.

On the contrary, the difficulty of holding a discussion about sexuality crosses all of society; one only has to see the way in which the pornographic industry has invaded the world of children.

It is a pity that, in view of the controversies and internal divisions on questions of homosexuality and, more broadly, on new sexual behaviours, the Church has deserted this field.

Its moral teachings have not confronted human sexuality in its complexity, its lights and shadows.

The apostolic exhortation Amoris laetitia, which Pope Francis published in 2016 following the two Synod assemblies on the family, opened the door to a more realistic vision, starting from people's real, lived experiences.

But it is still far too timid.

• Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Vatican correspondent.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

Bishop Michel Santier (pictured), was quietly disciplined by the Vatican and, in 2021, he reported to his diocese he resigned for "health reasons".

However, the weekly Famille Chrétienne revealed Santier was also removed for "using his influence over two young adult men for sexual purposes" in the 1990s and abusing the sacrament of confession.

The Vatican ordered him to live "a life of prayer and penance" in an abbey in Normandy.

However, Archbishop Dominique Lebrun, Santier's metropolitan archbishop, announced last week that "other people" have since had come forward with allegations against Santier.

They claim the retired bishop had sexually abused them when they were young adults.

"Yesterday (October 19) after having heard directly from one of these victims, I immediately sent a report to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith via the apostolic nunciature," Lebrun said.

"There is no doubt that the dicastery will conduct a new investigation in the face of revelations that accentuate the seriousness of the facts of which Bishop Michel Santier is accused."

Santier resigned from his post two years earlier than the customary age of 75.

In a letter to his flock in June 2020, he explained that "the polluted air of the Paris region" did not suit him and had led to diagnoses of asthma and sleep apnoea.

He had been hospitalised with COVID-19 in April that year.

"I don't have the physical strength to continue my ministry among you until I am 75 years old", he said at the time. He also hinted he had undergone "other difficulties," but didn't specify what these were.

These difficulties, Catholic magazine Famille Chrétienne reported earlier this month, were linked to the "spiritual abuse for sexual purposes perpetrated against two adult men" in the 1990s.

French bishops confirmed that Rome took "disciplinary action" against Santier in October 2021 for the acts, which emerged in 2019. The two men asked to remain anonymous.

Last Friday, the French bishops' conference president, Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, acknowledged the revelations had provoked "shock" among French Catholics.

"The feeling of betrayal, the temptation to be discouraged are emotions that I understand and that run through us, as well as the incomprehension and anger of many before the acts themselves," he said.

"I also hear and receive the criticisms made about the lack of communication of the Roman measures when they were enacted.

"There can be no impunity in the Church, regardless of the function of the person involved."

Moulins-Beaufort said the French bishops would be reflecting on the way investigation results are communicated to Catholics when they meet at their plenary assembly in Lourdes next week.

"We will bring to Rome the fruit of our reflections and our proposals to improve what can be improved," he said.

French Catholics have learned of a series of abuse scandals in recent years.

The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) concluded in 2021 that as many as 330,000 children were abused from 1950 to 2020 in the French Catholic Church.

The French bishops then promised to undertake "a vast programme of renewal" of their governance practices.

Source

• The Pillar
• The Tablet

While abuse of power can take many forms, many abusers rely on the excessive and, let's say it, clericalist use of secrecy.

For decades many Church bodies, including the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, have repeatedly called for removing the pontifical secret.

On December 17, 2019, Pope Francis finally lifted it for cases of sexual violence and abuse of minors committed by members of the clergy.

Nevertheless, this is just one step.

A culture of secrecy still exists in the Church, for reasons not always justified and or even healthy.

This culture continues to contribute to authoritarianism, clericalism and patriarchalism - all attitudes deeply disrespectful of equality among the baptized.

We can cite three examples.

Crimen sollicitationis, a text that remained secret for more than a century

We know today, without yet knowing all the twists and turns, the journey of the text Crimen sollicitationis, aimed at setting up procedures to respond to the case where a cleric solicits sexual favours in the context of confession.

The issue was explosive. The Church first addressed it in 1741 and included it in the 1917 Code of Canon Law.

But the text explaining the procedure to be followed in case of the "crime of solicitation", which gave its name to this document, was published for the first time in 1922.

Yet it remained secret. We only learned of its existence in 1962!

This document contained practical procedures to follow when dealing with an abusive cleric. But it was never officially published. It was sent only to a few episcopal conferences.

Which conferences and why?

Is it enough to invoke a certain idea of "harm done to the Church" to justify this secrecy?

Was it not, on the contrary, a question of doing "good" to the Church at a time when it had to face up to the evidence of reality?

Crimen sollicitationis remained in force until 2001.

The lack of transparency surrounding the condemnation of contraception

The second example has been investigated many times.

At the time of Vatican Council II, Pope Paul VI reserved the question of birth control for himself.

He appointed a "Papal Commission for the Study of Problems of the Family, Population, and Birth Rate". Its work was to remain secret.

But in June 1964 the pope revealed the commission's existence.

Catholic public opinion was overwhelmingly positive.

Successive leaks have revealed that experts known for their conservatism had rallied around the idea of new directives, and thus Paul VI felt compelled to enlarge the commission several times.

But in the end, the majority of the commission's members agreed that "contraceptive intervention", i.e. the pill, was permissible!

But the text was not published, nor were the negotiations that took place from October 1966 (when the commission submitted its report to Pope Paul) until the July 1968 publication of Humanae vitae.

That controversial encyclical, of course, did not endorse the commission's report. Instead, it condemned the use of artificial contraception.

As Martine Sevegrand reminds us, "the encyclical is the revenge of the men of the curia... disavowing practically all the experts and a strong majority of bishops".

Two conclusions can be drawn from this.

First, according to the words of Christ, "nothing is hidden that will not be revealed, nothing is secret that will not be known" (Luke 12,2), and at the moment of revelation, the scandal is twice as bad.

And then, was Humanae vitae never welcomed because the People of God (and even the fathers of the council) were not ultimately involved in this reflection that took place in the shadows?

Female diaconate, a report never published

A third example is both a protest and a demand for today.

It concerns the commission for the female diaconate set up by Pope Francis on April 9, 2020.

Following the 2003 work of the International Theological Commission, Francis appointed a commission in 2016 in response to numerous requests, including that of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG).

It finally submitted its report in May 2019.

But this document, which was supposed to provide arguments, was never published.

Why?

What were they afraid to disclose?

The pope himself was not satisfied and appointed a new commission.

But what will come of it? Will this commission finally make its arguments public?

The question of the diaconate, like that of birth control, and like many other issues, cannot be confined to the secret archives of the Roman Curia.

These texts are not secret, since they must be rooted in the Word of God and the practices of the early Church.

All their arguments must absolutely be published and made available to the People of God. If they are not, the people cannot accept them.

Wanting to maintain the secrecy of texts that should not be kept secret is to further contribute to the logic of collapse highlighted by the recently published report on the sexual abuse in the French Church.

• Marie-Jo Thiel is a physician who teaches ethics in the theology department at the University of Strasbourg (France). She is an award-winning author of numerous books and essays.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.