"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."

Source

• La Croix

The "Appeal for a Renewed and Trustworthy Church", was posted on Monday. It is an online petition calling for the en masse resignation of the country's bishops.

"As a sign of hope and renewal, we ask for the collective resignation of all the bishops in office.

"It is the only gesture commensurate with the catastrophe and the loss of confidence in which we find ourselves," says the petition website.

"Faced with this bankruptcy, the resignation of the bishops is the only honourable solution," said Anne Soupa, a theologian and married mother of four adult children who "applied" last year to become Archbishop of Lyon.

Soupa is one of three leading reform-minded Catholics in France behind the drive.

The other two are François Devaux, co-founder of the abuse victims' group "La Parole Libérée", and Christine Pedotti, editorial director of the progressive Catholic magazine Témoignage Chrétien.

During its first 24 hours online, the appeal/petition had gathered nearly 3,200 signatures.

It comes six days after the October 5 publication of the damaging report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE).

Also known as the Sauvé Report, the massive document revealed that some 330,000 children and adolescents were victims of sexual violence in the Church in France between 1950 and 2020.

"In any other association or company, resignation would have been demanded even for something 100 times less damaging. All the leaders would have had to resign," said Soupa.

"Undoubtedly, not all French bishops have covered up crimes. But the very structure of the Catholic hierarchy assumes continuity and solidarity between each bishop and his predecessor. As such, though not all are guilty, all are responsible," says the online petition.

To support their demand, the three signatories point to a "precedent" in the Catholic Church.

In 2018, the group resignation of 34 Chilean bishops occurred after they were directly challenged by Pope Francis for mishandling sexual abuse cases. The pope eventually accepted the resignation of seven of them.

Pedotti, Soupa and Devaux have received the support of Reverend Pierre Vignon, an expert on tackling sexual abuse in the Church.

"What would have had panache and would have made an impression would have been to collectively resign immediately," said Vignon. He is a priest who is known to be a straight-shooter and a bit of a maverick.

"They (the bishops) can still do that at their next plenary assembly in Lourdes in November," he said.

Sources

• La Croix International
• The Economist