Clerical child abuse, a shocked president and a silent Church
DURING a recent meeting with top members of his Cabinet, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. expressed shock and dismay over the prevalence of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children as young as 3 years old. This is because of the inaction of telecommunications corporations (telcos) that defy Republic Act 11930, which mandates them to stop it.
The most frequent violators and abusers of children online and in the home are their parents and relatives. They are responsible for about 42 percent of online child abuse cases. The Catholic Church and President Marcos and his Cabinet know the shocking truth that the Philippines is a hub for such abuse. And that child abuse, be it committed by members of the family or clergy, is a crime ignored and left unaddressed by both the Church and the state.
The root cause of this is the failure of telcos to install artificial intelligence (AI)-powered blocking and detection software on the internet service providers’ (ISPs) computers. This failure allows the livestreaming of child abuse to go undetected as they are sent over the internet to paying local and foreign customers.
This is where President Marcos and his Cabinet, with all the powers of government, meet their match. They are outsmarted, outmaneuvered, outfoxed and outplayed by the telcos that make billions by streaming child sexual abuse online. They flout RA11930, which orders them to install blocking and detection software.
The United Nations Children’s Fund said that as many as 7 million Filipino children are abused every year. Most remain silent about it since they are “trained” to keep secrets. They are wrongly taught to “huwag magsumbong (don’t squeal)” — that is, never report the abuse. As a result, these children grow up carrying the hurt, pain and anger of being abused and not allowed to report, complain or speak out. The psychological damage is enormous. Their learning is impaired, and their personalities are affected.
Recently, cases of underage boys raping underage girls are becoming more common as they see such crimes being shown on their mobile phones. The decline in the moral teaching on the dignity and rights of the child by the Church is also responsible for this increase. Philippine Catholicism is morally weak. Christian values rarely affect the behavior of most people. There are too few leaders to stand against child sexual abuse and human rights violations. Catholicism, it seems, has become reduced to just praying and kneeling in church and listening to an irrelevant sermon at Sunday Mass.
Reducing the Gospel to rituals without social commitment to action for justice contradicts its message. The sacraments should be a source of spiritual strength for followers to challenge corruption, abuse and injustice. Without social action, they are in danger of becoming like magical rites without a prophetic voice speaking truth to power and standing up for moral values.
This is clearly seen in the proliferation of crimes against children, human trafficking, online child sexual abuse, sex bars, drug dens and pornographic material featuring children. The government allows it by issuing permits to the bars and dens where minors are abused. Law enforcers are paralyzed, not knowing what to do or how to do it.
The Church ignores social evil, it seems, to the extent it has withdrawn from the real world of sin.
Silence and permissiveness are sins bordering on the social acceptability of child abuse. It could be a serious failure of religion to uphold the dignity and rights of children and a failure by the clergy and lay Christians to openly oppose these crimes and the evil that causes them. If the Catholic faith means anything, it is taking a stand, as Jesus of Nazareth did, against such evil and giving protection and justice to the child victims.
The relative silence and absence of Catholic social action today are glaring. Many years ago, youth leaders could rally thousands to protest injustice and protect children’s rights. If we believe with conviction that working for truth, justice and goodness will overcome evil, we will win.
The Kingdom of God will be a reality. That is what Jesus of Nazareth taught by His words and actions. Living out the beliefs that are the bedrock of the Christian faith is the only true authentic Christianity. Without that action, faith is dead, Saint James once said. We are left with empty rituals and millions of children abused.
Jesus of Nazareth himself has made it absolutely clear that the most important thing in the king
dom here on earth is children, and unless adults are as innocent as children, they will not enter the Kingdom. In Matthew 18: 1-7, Luke 46-49 and Mark:11:33-37, Jesus said we must be as innocent as a child, and to accept such a child was to accept Him and the one who sent Him.
For the abusers of children that destroy their faith in Him, He declared that they must be brought to justice with a millstone around their necks and thrown into the deep sea.
Strong words, indeed, but mostly ignored by some Church leaders who prefer to deny and cover up the widespread reality of child sexual abuse, especially the most shameful of all: clerical child abuse. This has to change, as Pope
Francis has tried to do. If enough people have the faith and conviction that goodness and truth in social action will move mountains of evil, then they will win.