Abuse of power applies to all institutions
The Roman Catholic church is taking flak from the mass media. The most recent attacks follow revelations from a grand jury in Philadelphia, described by Pennsylvania’s Attorney General as the "largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States."
According to the report, more than 300 "predator priests" in six Pennsylvania dioceses have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims over 70 years -- prior to 2002, when scandals involving Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston forced the U.S. Catholic bishops to adopt new rules for reporting abuse.
The reaction has even led to demands that the Pope himself resign, for failing to act sooner.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, a former Vatican ambassador to the U.S., claimed he had personally warned the Pope about allegations of sexual misconduct in the U.S. hierarchy five years ago.
During his recent visit to Ireland, Pope Francis apologized for centuries of failure to protect the most vulnerable members of the church community. He did not deal with specific allegations. But there was no doubt in Irish minds that he was referring to a massive exposé of Catholic orphanages and hospitals.
CNN gleefully listed some of the Catholic Church’s alleged transgressions, worldwide:
• Sexual misconduct investigations in seminaries in Boston, Nebraska, and Philadelphia.
• Resignation of the former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, after accusations that he molested seminarians and an altar boy.
• Conviction by a civil court of a Catholic bishop in Australia for covering up abuse.
• Resignation of six bishops from Chile after church investigations.
• Accusations by Ireland’s former president, Mary McAleese, that Vatican officials pressured her to "protect" incriminating church documents from investigation by civil authorities.
The litany of accusations led Think Magazine’s Anthea Butler to vilify the church as “a criminal syndicate… a pedophile ring.”
“Sexual abuse has been institutionalized, routinized and tolerated by the church hierarchy for decades,” Butler ranted. “Church authorities who documented the cases for internal use never used the word ‘rape,’ only ‘inappropriate contact.’ … Housing and funds were provided for priests, even when it was known they were raping children. Priests were moved from the area only if their communities found out, to other communities where the abusers and abuses were not known. Most importantly, the hierarchy was instructed to not inform law enforcement about abuses reported by parishioners, but to consider any such case an ‘internal personnel matter.’
“Rules, it seems, were for the Catholics who continued to sit in the pews, not the ones who stood at the altars.
The former were supposed to refrain from premarital sex, same-sex relationships, abortions, and masturbation. The sexual prohibitions of the church did not extend to the clergy raping children, and priests in Pennsylvania even got a pass to pay for abortions for young girls they got pregnant.”
The criticism has been directed in two areas: first, at the sexual abuse itself; second, at the decades-long cover-up.
I think they’re not being fair.
The problem is not the Catholic Church, but any large institution. Churches, corporations, charities, military, even governments – I’m sure that a serious probe into any of them would reveal examples of the same exploitation, abuse, and cover-up that the Catholic church is accused of. Consider Hollywood’s movie industry, if you doubt me.
Institutions are not physical things, even if they qualify as legal entities. You cannot imprison a corporation; a charity cannot catch colds; an army never sleeps.
Institutions are legal fictions, the products of human imagination. But that doesn’t make them any less real. Humans create institutions as compulsively as ants build colonies, wolves form packs, and fish gather in schools – all of them real, but not.
Institutions involve hierarchies. Hierarchies give some individuals more power than others. And some of those individuals will inevitably abuse that power.
Theoretically, a society’s laws hold those individuals to account. But only if the institution accepts outside authority. If, like the church, the institution holds itself accountable to a higher authority, secular law will be largely ignored.
The first reaction of all institutions, from hockey leagues to Walmart, is to defend themselves. They close ranks, squelch rebels, and profess innocence. Any investigations are internal, never open to outside examination.
With rare exceptions, a corporation will ever act to imperil its own survival. Big Tobacco didn’t, despite the evidence against it. Big Oil still hasn’t.
And the bigger the institution, the less likely it is to acknowledge its own shortcomings. And to change accordingly. Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca. This column appears Saturdays.