Church must come clean on abuse

News of 300 cases involving priests in Pennsylvania has people reeling

In my four years as columnist in this space, and as a critical thinker, most often appreciatively critical, I have on a few occasions written about the institutional Catholic Church with deep indignation.

I was taught critical thinking first by my parents, then my studies in philosophy and theology at a Catholic college in Toronto, then as a writer and editor, watching this Church for many years.

In what Italian journalist Massimo Faggioli has called the “greatest crisis since the Reformation 500 years ago," even more grievous than that one because it is written on the backs of children and the vulnerable, new data is pouring out of a Pennsylvania Grand Jury investigation that took two years, heard 500 witnesses and unearthed thousands of pages of incriminating documents.

Even though we have for 50 years been uncovering clerical sex abuse … ours in St John’s, Newfoundland at Mount Cashel orphanage in 1990, then in London, Ontario with offender Charles Sylvestre, and Peterborough not immune in the 1980s.

For the same number of years, feminist Catholics have been calling for deep restructuring of this church and they do so again today: build an egalitarian church at last, and do away utterly with the clergy-lay division.

Call Constitutional congresses in every diocese; all options open; divest the all-male ,celibate College of Cardinals and all their inappropriate decision- making processes. Look at modern forms of leadership: temporary posts, elected, inclusive of all members. Dare I say democratic? I do. Build in accountability, financial and moral.

Radical? Perhaps. But people are reeling in horror at the release of this report on 70 years of child molestation and ecclesial cover-up in six of the eight Pennsylvania dioceses (Canada has 61 dioceses). Three thousand American Catholics have demanded in a powerful letter, dated Aug. 20, that all bishops, guilty and innocent, resign, since this is systemic sin.

This necessary excision of past and recent history, shocking and dismaying, must lead to some conclusions about systemic dysfunction, even corruption. The investigation found 1,000 cases of child abuse by 300 priests, living and dead. By legal means, 24 names have been blacked out. The rest appear.

I follow several American reform groups. One of them, the Women’s Ordination Conference said: “For many of us, those earlier stories were happening somewhere else: now we know it happened everywhere.”

The grand jury described a “criminally and morally reprehensible betrayal of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith. The priesthood was treated like a ruling class in a failed experiment, with horrible ramifications for children.”

This is all happening 20 years after the Spotlight crisis in Boston, where the newspaper rooted out evidence of widespread abuse by clergy and cover-up.

The jury recommended that statutes of limitations for prosecution, both civil and criminal, be lifted. It described church behaviour as a “playbook for concealing the truth. We have had to pry information from a church that has placed its reputation as a holy institution above the pain of helpless victims.”

All 61 dioceses in Canada must come clean. Now. Open files, reveal financial settlements and report the movements of perpetrators. Clarify penalties for failure to report child abuse.

Globally, do away with the clergy class. Empower the people to elect leaders. End mandatory celibacy. Withdraw harmful, outdated sexual teachings.

Said Marianne Duddy-Burke of Dignity, a group of LGBT Catholics: “No official in the Catholic church has a shred of credibility when speaking of issues of sexuality, gender or relationships. They do not deserve to be consulted by public policy- making bodies.”

Patriarchal gender stereotypes are falling apart everywhere, and the patriarchal priesthood must go with it.

It is a moment of truth for the institution. Concrete action is demanded. Whether leadership, existing in an echo chamber of its own supporters in Rome, and headquartered in docile chanceries around the world, can muster the daring is a question for the next few months.

‘All 61 dioceses in Canada must come clean’