Reflections

	Thomas P Doyle

CLERGY SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

REFLECTIONS --- 1984 TO 2010

Thomas Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C.

Defining the Context

Before looking at the saga of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the Catholic Church it is first absolutely essential to define the context, i.e., what precisely it is all about. The story is set in the Roman Catholic Church, the largest and oldest Christian denomination in the world. The major participants have ranged from relatively unknown children from the anonymous fringes of the Church to bishops and even the popes. The issues that have caused controversy, debate and animosity have run the gamut from dogma, moral theology and governing style to media bias, social deference and personal worth. Anger, emotion and convoluted politics have often simmered just below the surface, dominating the issue at many levels. Name calling, personal attacks, slander and deceit have been common and more often than not have caused the focus to shift from the fundamental issue to personal agendas. Woven through it all from start to finish have been power and money.

But this is essentially not about any of the issues that have caused the most heat and triggered the intense emotional reactions. This is about an unknown number of innocent, trusting and vulnerable girls and boys, men and women who have been sexually, emotionally and spiritually violated by persons in whom they had placed unqualified trust….deacons and priests, nuns and religious brothers, bishops, archbishops and even cardinals. This is about decent, devout Catholics whose innocence was turned into a living nightmare, a prison of shame, guilt, fear and pain from which they could not break free.

This painful, shocking and sad story is about the men and women in positions of power who not only looked the other way but enabled the shameful predators to continue on their path of destruction. It is about men and women who were twice and three times victimized by the very shepherds to whom they appealed for help and who did nothing or worse, re-victimized them by treating them as a threat to their security.

This story is not about a challenge to orthodoxy or the preservation of an institution. It is about people….people who decided to stand up and take back the dignity that had been stolen from them.

The First Years: Crisis and Beyond

The sex abuse “crisis” is a misnomer even though it is often the most convenient descriptive word for what has happened. A crisis is a temporary event that threatens personal or societal tranquility. The clergy abuse “happening” is anything but temporary and it is clearly not a case of a miniscule number of moral misfits in a population of otherwise stellar professional Church men and women. It did not begin in Lafayette Louisiana in 1984 or in Boston in 2002. These were peak moments or spikes in the gradual information shift from hidden to open. Credible historical sources tell us that deviant and harmful sexual behavior by clergy has been part of the Catholic Church’s culture from its earliest years. I distinguish between deviant and harmful for a reason. By deviant I refer to sexual

behavior that is classified as pathological or sick, such as pedophilia, ephebophilia, rape or ritual molestations. Harmful sexual behavior may not be officially classified as deviant yet it can be seriously harmful and even destructive to others. Here I refer to the use of one’s power and position to engage in unwanted sex with age-appropriate persons. In less convoluted or politically correct language I’m speaking of priests or bishops who use their power to seduce adults and use them as sex toys. Most of these are women but there are instances where the victims are men. The gender doesn’t matter. What does matter is that trusted clerics used the power given to them to do good and perverted it to hurt others while satisfying their selfish needs.

The remote origins can be found in the gradual evolution of the clergy as a privileged and powerful sub-culture. By the 12^th century the major distinguishing mark of the Catholic clerical world was mandatory celibacy and it has remained thus even to the present. My purpose is not to focus on the causal relationship between celibacy and sexual deviance by clerics even though there definitely is such a connection. In short, accurate historical evidence leaves no doubt that celibacy is anything but the “jewel in the crown of the priesthood” as Pope Paul VI referred to it.

Shortly after the initial revelations in the mid eighties, scholars from a variety of disciplines began studying the seemingly new problem. A rash of reports of sexual molestation of children by Catholic clerics and even worse, an apparent systematic cover-up by their superiors, the bishops, was not something that could be easily ignored or successfully minimized. While an increasing number of people sought answers to the basic question, “WHY,” the Vatican

appeared to ignore what was happening and the bishops back home concentrated on damage control. Between 1984 and 1986 there was a steady flow of detailed information to the Vatican with no response but silence. The pope’s first public utterance was not be until June 1993. During this period the Vatican’s spin was that this was an American problem caused primarily by our materialism, media sensationalism and lax morals.

Some U.S. bishops saw in the early revelations the beginning of a wider problem. Several bishops and religious superiors held mandatory training sessions for their priests and asked Ray Mouton, Mike Peterson and I to present lectures. In spite of the few bishops who showed a sincere interest the bishops’ conference (NCCB, later USCCB) as a whole reacted in an arrogant and defensive manner. In response to the “manual” prepared by Mouton, Peterson and I, they dismissed the offering and claimed they knew everything that was in it and already had protocols and procedures in place. Around this time the NCCB general counsel told the media that the “manual” and the suggested action proposals were really an effort by the three of us to sell the bishops a “costly” program in order to profit from the crisis.

Before the end of the eighties the lines were drawn. The victims for the most part were on their own. The Vatican remained aloof and let the word out that this was an American problem. A few diocesan bishops responded to individual victims with kindness but the majority either ignored pleas for help or limited their pastoral contact to either lame excuses trying to convince the victims that they were mistaken about what had happened to them, or they concentrated on convincing them to remain silent. The bishops’ conference (NCCB) discussed the

issue in executive sessions at their annual meetings but their over-riding concern was avoiding or at least minimizing liability and negative publicity. Throughout this period (1984 to 1990) no one in Church leadership from the pope down to parish priests publicly expressed even a passing concern for the emotional and spiritual welfare of the victims.

Priests’ reactions have been mixed. Some reacted defensively, upset that the criminal actions of a few tainted the image of all. Others were in denial, adamantly proclaiming that this was nothing more than a few isolated incidents that were multiplied and exploited by the anti-Catholic media. A few priests here and there courageously spoke out publicly, most in a respectful tone, simply asking for answers from their bishops. None of these were encouraged by their bishops and all were urged to back down lest they get in trouble. The majority of the priests remained silent, avoiding involvement. The National Federation of Priests Councils, an independent organization, said nothing until the bishops passed their ‘zero tolerance” measures in 2002. The NFPC suddenly found its voice, not in support of the innocent victims but to express concern that accused priests’ rights to due process might be compromised.

By the end of the first decade it was becoming clear that what was unfolding was far more than the discovery of a few seriously disturbed clerics previously hidden in the clerical world. The true nature of what was unfolding before us could not be limited by describing it as a “problem,” a “crisis” or a “scandal.” It was all of those and more. We were not seeing the revelation of a shameful aberration but the uncovering of a dimension of the clerical subculture, a complex pattern of thought and behavior that was a deeply embedded aspect of the

“institutional Church.” In other words, this was not some disgusting parasite that had come from the outside and attached itself to the Church. This was a dark and destructive force that had its roots deep in the essence of the institution itself. What was becoming clear was that the clergy abuse phenomenon consisted of one entity, one problem so to speak, with two sides: the aberrant and destructive sexual behavior itself which targeted children, adolescents and adults and the integration of this behavior in the institutional Church. The primary focus has been on the papacy and the bishops because their responses have been so dramatically contrary to what is expected of the trusted consecrated office-holders whom we have been taught to believe acted in Christ’s stead. But the rest of the Church community also reflected this unique aspect of Church culture. A significant number of lay people either adamantly refused to believe that the plague of sex abuse was even happening or worse, many reacted with angry and often irrational attacks on the victims and their supporters, inflicting even more pain. They had been betrayed by the perpetrators, by the bishops and now by their peers among the lay faithful.

Reports of sexual abuse came from dioceses and religious orders throughout the United States. The bishops’ responses revealed a pattern of behavior by individual bishops and by the hierarchical corporate body that was consistent and systemic in nature. It was neither haphazard nor random nor did it appear to be the result of a conspiracy to respond in a manner that was opposed to the norm. The cover-ups, the secret re-assignments, the failure to report crimes to civil authorities and attempts to coerce victims into silence have not been exceptional reactive behaviors but evidence of pattern and policy that was and is part of the clerical culture…not the exception but the norm. The bishops made it clear by the divergence between their public expressions of regret, sorrow and apology and the way they were actually treating victims that whatever the response to the growing problem was to be, it had to be on their terms. Their public utterances and the consistent refusal to accept any true responsibility (“If mistakes were made…”) made it obvious that they were entrenched in their belief that the institutional Church was willed by God and entrusted to them. Their fundamental mandate was to protect and defend this institution and their role in it at all costs. The salvation of humankind depended on the Church and its bishops. Joined to this core belief about the nature of the institution is the conviction that the priesthood, also of divine origin, alters the very nature of a man once he is ordained. This ontological change raises the man to another level of being because he is, to quote Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, “configured to Christ.” Both of these beliefs influenced the popes’ and bishops’ attitudes towards the victims in a way that was detrimental to them. These beliefs have been instilled in the laity and have a profound impact on the severity of the traumatic effects suffered by victims, especially the effects of a spiritual nature.

Clergy Abuse -- Part of the Essence of the Institutional Church?

The overall phenomenon can be considered in the form of four concentric circles:

The center: at the core the smallest circle is the actual physical and sexual assault on vulnerable children and adults. The sexual abuse constituted the essence of the first wave of scandal but this led to revelations of other forms of abuse perpetrated on the believing community, not the least of which has been the continuously emerging stories of various forms of financial abuse.

The second circle is much larger and actually enables the behaviors that make up the inner circle. This circle is made up of the men in positions of authority at various levels. Most are bishops but included also are major religious superiors of both male and female religious communities. As more and more victims approached the secular legal system for help the responses of bishops towards victims and their families and their behavior as unwilling participants in the legal process revealed a side of their personalities that many found almost impossible to believe because what we saw was so contrary to what we had been formed to believe about bishops. The evidence mounted as the legal discovery process produced documents and deposition testimony in case after case. Then came the grand jury investigations in the U.S. and the independent investigative commissions in Canada and Ireland. The combined information from the U.S civil courts and the Canadian and Irish secular commissions removed any doubt about the causal relationship between the abusing clerics and the hierarchical mishandling.

The third circle is comprised of the laity. Although well over 99% of the Church’s 1.2 billion members are lay persons (there are about 4500 bishops, archbishops and cardinals and about 408,000 priests or .00026% of the total), they have scant influence on the corporate behavior of the ruling class. The institutional Catholic Church is truly a stratified society with the bishops as a powerful aristocracy at the top and the laity beneath them. This description is not merely metaphorical but accurately describes the Church’s socio-political structure. In spite of the profound inequity in their respective standing the laity provides one hundred percent of the material/financial support for the clerical sub-culture and the hierarchical government yet lay persons have no effective voice in Church government. The laity has the potential to influence the course of the clergy sex abuse saga but thus far they have scarcely realized it. A small but very significant group of laity have been moved to the point of radical action in response to the continuous waves of abuse revelations. The majority however are either removed and indifferent or angrily reactive to the revelations of internal Church corruption and the consequent demands for accountability. The complacency or negative reaction of the laity is perplexing in light of the harsh reality of what the clergy abuse “crisis” is all about.

The fourth and outer circle consists not of persons but of the ideology that provides the basis for the way the papacy and hierarchy have reacted to clergy sexual abuse. This ideology is a combination of theological definitions about the nature of the Church, Canon Law and the theology of human sexuality. The perplexing response of the popes and the bishops is explained by the official teaching on the nature of the institutional Church and the role of the bishops. The Church’s legal system, Canon Law, has not only been inadequate but counter-productive because of its fundamental nature as a legal system in service to a monarchical government. Finally, the completely inappropriate responses of the bishops and clergy to the horrific accounts of all manner of dysfunctional sexual exploitation and their excuses that they did not realize the serious effects of molestation and abuse can be partially explained by the traditional teaching on human sexuality and the impact of mandatory celibacy on the emotional and psycho-sexual formation of clerics. In other words this teaching so distorted the nature of human sexuality that clerics failed to comprehend the destructive nature of sexual exploitation.

The popes and other defenders of the official Church assigned blame for this volatile phenomenon to a materialistic, hyper-sexual culture, to secular society’s rejection of traditional Catholic moral teaching and to the sensationalism created by an anti-Catholic secular media. Perpetrating clerics were said to be the products of the wave of liberalism that followed the Second Vatican Council, fueled by the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies. No one from the ruling elite ever suggested looking within for possible reasons for this problem that would not go away.

What We Learned in the First Decade: 1984-1994

By the end of 1985 it had become clear that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference was interested more in containing the growing problem than solving it. The attitude projected by the conference’s actions in the first years was that the rash of reports of sexual molestation from around the country was a mid-level nuisance. The anointed leadership of the Church in the U.S. was more interested in trying to influence U.S foreign policy and domestic health-care policy with little apparent realization that their influence was eroding in the eyes of a general public that was confused and scandalized by a Church that appeared to insist on a rigid and anachronistic moral code for its lay members while allowing the vilest form of sexual behavior by its clerics.

While it is true that from 1985 on the bishops discussed clergy sexual abuse at every plenary meeting, usually in executive session, their major output consisted in several policy statements produced by the Office of the General Counsel. The first ad hoc committee was created in 1993 and its sole accomplishment was an ineffective three-part handbook issued between 1994 and 1996. It is clear that the diocesan attorneys were working together to devise strategies to counteract the growing number of civil suits around the country. There was a striking dichotomy between what the bishops were saying and what they were doing. The public expressions of regret and apology were not accompanied by actions that reflected these sentiments. While bishops often provided psychological counseling to victims, there is scant evidence that more than a handful actually reached out in a sincere, compassionate manner. Although bishops hold themselves out to be experts in the care of souls none seemed to have a clue even to the nature and extent of the spiritual damage from sexual abuse by a cleric much less how to heal the wounds to the soul.

The Popes

We learned the painful truth that Pope John Paul II and his Vatican bureaucracy were not interested in responding to the thousands of abuse victims other than as a faceless group of people that threatened the image and power of the bishops. John Paul II made 12 public statements about clergy sex abuse, all with basically the same theme. They reflected his attitude as defensive, dismissive and either unwilling or incapable of comprehending the viciously destructive nature of sexual abuse. During the many years of his reign it was clear that he was far more concerned with doctrinal purity and unquestioning obedience than he was with the violation of the bodies and souls of the Church’s most vulnerable. From John Paul II’s first statement in 1993 up to the most recent statements by Benedict XVI, it has remained clear that the papacy firmly believes in its intrinsic holiness and infallible judgment on all issues. The Vatican was aware in detail of the sex abuse problems in the U.S. from 1985 onwards yet chose to remain aloof and when they did respond publicly it was to minimize the problem or shift the blame. The popes have been primarily interested is defending the ecclesiastical status quo and in recovering from the massive loss of trust and esteem. The Vatican gave numerous signals clearly showing its priorities but the strongest signal was the debacle involving the papal patronage of the late, disgraced Marciel Maciel-Degollado, founder and leader of the Legion of Christ until he was removed by Benedict XVI. The whole story is accurately laid out by Jason Berry and Gerry Renner in Vows of Silence. Maciel’s chief patron was the pope who was joined by several other high ranking officials such as Cardinal Sodano, former Secretary of State, Cardinal Rode, Prefect of the Congregation for Religious, Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, former Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy and most important, Father Stanislaus Dziwisz, John Paul’s personal secretary and gate-keeper and now a cardinal). Jason has uncovered in current research that this patronage was not only prompted by edification with Maciel’s sanctity and devotion to the “See of Peter” but also by his expansive monetary expressions of loyalty, known as bribes in most cultures.

The Civil Courts

Civil and criminal cases continued around the country. Although a significant number of clerics were charged with a variety of felonies and misdemeanors related to sexual abuse, the number sentenced to prison terms proportionate to their crimes was noticeably less than convicted lay persons. Victims had been turning to the civil courts since 1983 when Jeff Anderson filed the first known civil suit against a diocesan bishop. Insensitive and uninformed voices claimed the suits were all about greed….plunging into the Church’s deep pockets, draining the coffers and severely crippling all of the Church’s ministries especially its schools and extensive outreach to the poor and disenfranchised. Behind these preposterous defenses, all of which originated with the hierarchy, there was no evidence whatsoever that much deserved payments to victims were putting any aspect of Church life out of business. Although several bishops tried blaming sex abuse victims and their attorneys for the rash of Church closings in several dioceses, the truth was that many had been planned in advance of the “crisis” and all were due to changing demographics and a serious shortage of priests with little signs of a reversal of this trend in the future. A more sinister reason was forced into the open by enraged parishioners in several dioceses: bishops were closing some parishes that were thriving because they wanted to sell valuable property to shore up dwindling financial resources. An additional fact that pushes these claims further into the realm of pure spin is the unquestioned data that approximately 80-88% of the funding for Catholic Charities across the U.S. comes from government grants.

Accused clerics have been extended “special treatment” by prosecutors and law enforcement officials. Bishops and dioceses have been treated with deference not shown to any other institution. The discovery process in clergy cases throughout the U.S has revealed documentation of numerous examples of deferential treatment which benefitted the institutional Church and kept the problem hidden, at least for a time.

Academic Interest

There were stirrings of academic interest in the first decade. Although the institutional Church reacted defensively, claiming it was a temporary aberration involving a “few bad apples” scholars who looked beyond the actual events saw much more. The most intense interest focused on the cover-up by the institutional Church. The focus broadened to include the Church’s governmental style, the meaning of the priesthood as it was infused into the Catholic laity, the relationship of mandatory celibacy and the Church’s understanding of human sexuality. The revelation of countless cases of sex abuse by clergy was a lurid symptom of a malady that permeated the entire Church structure.

There were numerous civil and criminal cases in courts throughout the United States between 1984 and 2002. We learned much from the legal engagements between victims and the bishops. We learned that the bishops were and continue to be willing to expend vast sums of the money donated by the “faithful” to defend themselves and to utilize every manner of stonewalling imaginable. At the same time we learned that the Church learned that the secular legal system is a power greater than itself in spite of all efforts at cultivating deference. Entreaties of all kinds, appeals to various Church teachings and even to the Gospels had little or no effect on the bishops’ unchristian response to victims. However the power of the courts made them move….reluctantly, but it made them move.

The Survivors Band Together

By the end of the eighties something happened in the U.S. that would have a profound impact on the future directions of the clergy abuse phenomenon. Victims banded together and formed support groups. Frustrated by the institutional Church’s response to them and convinced it would do nothing to help them, they decided to help themselves. Two organizations, SNAP and VOCAL (later known as Link-Up) were founded in Chicago in 1988-89. Without these organizations, especially SNAP, it is doubtful that the momentum to face clergy sex abuse in the U.S. and worldwide would have survived. These organizations were followed by others including several from other denominations. Their influence inspired victims in other countries to step forward. The persistence of survivor organizations, especially SNAP, has been the foundation of what is perhaps the most important development in the world-wide “happening:” the clergy sex abuse “problem” is no longer in the control of the pope and the bishops as it always had been in the past. The victims and their supporters now controlled the development and eventual outcome of the “scandal.”

The Second Phase: 2002 to 2010

Between 1984 and the end of 2001 revelations of clergy sexual abuse surfaced throughout the U.S. Canada and in several foreign countries as well. Many of these revelations were explosive and attracted intense media focus and public interest. Yet after a few weeks of front page coverage the public indignation seemed to subside, things quieted down and the Church returned to its dominant position, able to withstand the exposure of all types of inner corruption and despicable clerical behavior.

Looking back on this period a number of major explosions come to mind. In 1989 the Mount Cashel scandal in St. John’s, Newfoundland captured world-wide attention. The gut-wrenching story of the Magdalene Asylums in Ireland became public in 1993 and in 1994 the “Brendan Smyth Affair” succeeded in shaking loose the reality that child abuse by clerics and religious was deeply embedded and widespread throughout piously “Catholic” Ireland. The Irish nightmare continued and in 1999 Mary Raftery produced a shocking three-part series, “States of Fear,” that exposed the dreadful abuse that had been inflicted on countless boys in the country’s industrial schools, most of which were run by the Christian Brothers. In Australia Christian Brother Barry Coldrey was highly influential in exposing the institutionalized abuse perpetrated by his own community.

In the U.S. a series of highly publicized cases flashed and then subsided with little apparent change in the overall imbalance between the institutional Church and the vast community of victims. In 1993 a group of adult survivors of Fr. James Porter pursued him and eventually received monetary settlements from the Diocese of Fall River and most important, saw Porter convicted and imprisoned. The same year there were major explosions at two minor seminaries, one on the west coast and the other in the midwest. Widespread sexual abuse of young boys by a number of clergy faculty members was uncovered at St. Lawrence Seminary in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and at St. Anthony’s Seminary in Santa Barbara CA. In 1997 a group of adult victims from St. Joseph Orphanage in Vermont joined together and sued the diocese of Burlington and the Sisters of Charity of Providence, a Montreal based order of nuns, for the physical and sexual abuse inflicted on them while they were institutionalized. Possibly the most dramatic and explosive event of the nineties was the “Rudy Kos” trial in Dallas, TX. Twelve plaintiffs faced off with the Diocese of Dallas over sexual abuse perpetrated by former priest Rudy Kos, now in prison for life. After 8 weeks of testimony a jury found the diocese of Dallas guilty of conspiracy, negligence and a number of other charges. They fixed actual and punitive damages at $119 million dollars. Although the amount was later reduced in settlements, the verdict and the award were a major breakthrough.

Boston, January 6, 2002

The clergy sex abuse saga changed dramatically on January 6, 2002 when the Boston Globe published the first of a long series of articles about a massive cover-up in Boston. This pivotal event had a profound influence on all aspects and all players in the clergy abuse drama not only in Boston but world-wide. The nationwide uproar forced the bishops into a corner. Their general meeting in Dallas in June was the first concrete result. It was entirely devoted to the sex abuse issue. The dynamics of the assembled hierarchy revealed their underlying feelings and their motivation as they responded in a variety of ways to the “problem.” First, the reaction of the bishops to the survivors present at the meeting and to the overall pressure placed on them revealed an arrogant disdain for victims. It also revealed the inability of the bishops to think and operate clearly when under pressure from forces they could not control or dismiss. Second, the bishops focused their action proposals on the priest/deacon perpetrators culminating in their “Zero Tolerance” posture. They completely ignored the more serious issue of the responsibility of the hierarchy for the cover-up. They also ignored the fact that among the perpetrators several were bishops. Nothing was said about them with the exception of some paltry mumbo-jumbo about fraternal correction. Third, the Vatican forced the bishops to soften their approach in the “Essential Norms” which told us that justice for the victims was a far second to protection of the clerical caste.

Since 1985 the bishops had been urged to establish effective policies to respond to reports of abuse. Their token efforts were nothing more than ineffective public relations moves. After the Dallas Charter and the Essential Norms, proposed in June 2002, the bishops’ conference established a “National Review Board” and an Office for Child and Youth Protection. The individual dioceses were mandated to set up similar structures. To their credit the Church authorities throughout the U.S. established a variety of programs and procedures aimed at child and youth protection. These structures were the basis for the bishops’ claim that the Catholic Church had done more than any other public or private institution to protect children and young people. What they left out of their self-congratulatory rhetoric is the fact that every step taken by the bishops including boards, procedures, policies and purges of suspected clerics, was the result of direct, powerful pressure from the media, the courts, the outraged public and most important, the survivors. Had there been no Boston revelations, no civil suits or no embarrassing media coverage the bishops, regardless of the mound of undisputed information staring them in the face, would have done nothing. The plight of sex abuse victims in 2010 would differ little from their plight in 1960.

The bishops’ commitment to healing and the safety of children sounds convincing on paper and in their articulate and well-crafted rhetoric. It is however, hollow and hypocritical. Their individual and collective actions rob their words of any credibility. The depth of concern for victims’ welfare is proclaimed more by the destructive and frustrating tactics employed in civil suits than in their empty promises. Their pledge that children will be safe today and in the future is trampled under by their ruthless and costly efforts to defeat any State legislation that would protect children. The celebrated National Review Board, composed of prominent Catholics from various professions, was little more than a front created by the bishops to satisfy public anger. The board’s illusion of credibility was soon shattered when the first chairman, former Governor Frank Keating, resigned out of frustration with the bishops’ non-cooperation with their own creation. Gov. Keating was succeeded by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke who also resigned for similar reasons. Both Keating and Burke did not leave quietly but spoke publicly in criticism of the bishops’ contradictory actions. Since its inception the National Review Board has done nothing effective to promote the cause of victims. Rather it has served as a source of validation for the bishops’ continuing recalcitrance. The hierarchy’s contradictory actions and the obvious underlying anger reflect fear. More than anything else the clergy abuse phenomenon has threatened the security of the bishops’ ecclesiastical-clerical world and what is more, the source of this threat cannot be controlled.

Around the country few if any of the diocesan review boards received any acclaim from victims. The boards, the membership of which is determined by the individual diocesan bishops, have mixed reviews. Some appear to be compassionate but are ineffective and no more than window dressing. Others are reported to be non-responsive, cold or even defensive. One of the more offensive steps taken by some bishops is the appointment of lawyers to occupy positions on diocesan boards or even worse, to serve as diocesan victim outreach liaison.

Between 2002 and the present there have been countless criminal and civil cases in the secular courts of the U.S., Canada, Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, Australia and Mexico. Several U.S. grand juries have investigated the bishops’ complicity. In Ireland, three government-sponsored commissions have returned devastating reports. In spite of mountains of clear evidence that there is something drastically wrong with the hierarchy and with the institutional Church, the papacy and the bishops remain defensive, arrogant and primarily concerned about themselves. Twenty six years have passed and no one from the pope to the local

bishops has raised a cry of alarm or indicated a sense of concern for the profound spiritual damage done to the victims of the very ones who have promised to bring them spiritual security. In truth the hierarchy has had nothing to offer the victims that would lead them to healing. The official statements of regret and apology have generally been dismissed as empty and insincere. The traditional rituals especially the sacraments and a return to the “practice” of Catholicism have only re-victimized the victims because it has returned them to the confines of their original abuse.

The search for spiritual healing starts with a recognition of the spiritual dimension of the trauma and the elusive yet profound damage that has been done. For many the path to healing has started with questioning Catholicism and everything it stands for especially the sacrosanct role of the clergy. This step often brings additional waves of guilt rooted in the years of toxic indoctrination that convinced the individual that to question much less reject anything taught by the Church brought divine disfavor and possible damnation. Having passed through this excruciating pain many discovered that healing could only begin with the explicit rejection of the traditional image of the Catholic “god.” The victims often found effective resources and sympathetic companions to walk with them along the path to emotional and psychological recovery. The process to spiritual wholeness has been far more precarious.

Many of the beliefs dogmatically proclaimed by the institutional Church were at the root of the devastation and pain. The standard but historically unsubstantiated claim that the institutional Church, epitomized by the bishops, was directly established by the Almighty plunged victims into a whirlpool of guilt as

they contemplated revealing abuse, challenging bishops or suing the Church. The standard teaching on the mystical nature of the priesthood, likewise shaky in its historic foundation, and the unique configuring of the priest with Christ pushed many victims to the perverted belief that the responsibility for the abuse was actually theirs. The Vatican’s (and the hierarchy’s) belief in its intrinsic holiness and its infallibility over all issues made any honest acknowledgement by them of the Church’s causal connection to the abuse plague all but impossible.

Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II in April 2005 and said and did more to acknowledge victims of clergy abuse in one year than his predecessor did in his entire twenty-seven year papacy. In spite of Benedict’s efforts and his apparent sincerity he still does not “get it.” Fleeting meetings with a dozen or so carefully chosen victims in the U.S., Australia and Malta may be good publicity but they hardly serve to educate the pope about the plight of the abused. His direct orders to the U.S. bishops to “bind up the wounds caused by every breach of trust” (Address to bishops, April 18, 2008) were never taken seriously if they were listened to at all. Faith in the pope’s commitment has been eroded in light of the fact that he has done nothing to effectively change the bishops’ standard approach to the “crisis.” In short, the pope was long on words but nil on action.

In his favor he did shake the dust from the Maciel case and when John Paul II lost touch with reality he brought the investigation to a close. Not long after his election he banished the sociopathic “efficacious guide to youth” and then initiated an investigation into his cult-like Legion.

Over the years since 1985 the clergy abuse “phenomenon” has continuously ebbed and flowed through the Church and through society. Inevitably each time a high ranking archbishop or cardinal confidently declares that the “crisis” is over due to the heroic efforts of the bishops (e.g., “The terrible history recorded here today is history” – Wilton Gregory, 2004), reality moves in to shatter the delusion. Nothing, including media fatigue, conservative neo-orthodox backlash or even the crudely offensive fulminations of Bill Donohue has been able to alter the fact that the clergy sexual abuse epidemic is far wider and deeper than anyone ever imagined. Although John Paul II tried unsuccessfully to isolate the “problem” to the U.S. and shift the blame to the secular culture it was inevitable that this shallow myth would soon be shattered. As the voices of the clergy’s victims spoke out in country after country it was only a matter of time before the thin veneer of cultural protection would cease to cover this dark side of the institutional Church in the traditionally “Catholic” countries as high up the hierarchical pyramid as the Vatican. By the summer of 2010 even the pope had been implicated in a cover-up from his time as archbishop of Munich.

The Vatican’s chaotic responses to the steady stream of reports of intentional mishandling at the very top betrayed a papacy that had visibly lost even the appearance of the control it never really had in the first place. The obviously unorganized efforts at countering the media revelations with press responses or policy changes (e.g., Revision of the 2001 norms for processing abuse cases, July 15, 2010) has only gotten the Vatican into deeper trouble since every effort is way off the mark of what is needed. The non-stop defensiveness of official Vatican spokesmen, the whining that the media is picking on the pope and the insulting and offensive statements of several Vatican officials (e.g., Cardinal Sodano, Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos, Cardinal Bertone and Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, the pope’s preacher) and above all the stubborn refusal to order the bishops to cease their destructive tactics toward survivors in civil cases all show that the Vatican continues to insist on doing things their way.

This of course is consistent with the official ecclesiological description of the Catholic Church as a stratified society with the bishops on top and the laity beneath, hopefully fulfilling their duty to “…allow themselves to be led and, like a docile flock, to follow the pastors.” (Pope Pius X, Encyclical Vehementer nos, Feb. 11, 1906). Unfortunately for the Vatican, the flock is no longer docile and if any group is leading in this matter, it is the survivors.

The Church authorities and their defenders among the laity ask with increasing frustration: “What more do they want? No matter what we do it is never enough!” From the beginning the survivors have not been satisfied with the Church’s response and with the steps taken precisely because these are not enough. As long as the pope and the bishops insist on doing it their way, avoiding risks and claiming the dominant role, they will never be able to comprehend the true nature of this terrible plague. Their failure to “get it” is manifestly obvious from the efforts to shield the bishops from any accountability. Over the years John Paul II and Benedict XVI as well as numerous bishops have tried to frame clergy abuse as a problem for the entire Church, often calling on the laity to join in doing penance and asking forgiveness. While it is true that plenty of lay persons have been complicit in supporting the cover-up, the essential truth is that this is not the “Church’s problem.” It is the bishops’ problem. They created it and they have intentionally avoided fixing it.

The Hope: Today and Tomorrow

The hierarchy have turned the “crisis” into an adversarial struggle, a move supported and encouraged by the papacy. Hope that the revelations of sexual molestation of children and minors in 1984 would be recognized by the bishops for their horrific nature quickly dissolved. Rather than respond immediately in a compassionate and open manner they circled the wagons and directed all energies towards self-protection. The fact that the victims and survivors refused to be controlled and silenced resulted in a face-off from the start. Over the years this posture has led survivors and their supporters to the conclusion that the institutional Church is unwilling to comprehend the deep-seated and destructive nature of the problem because it is incapable of doing so.

The clergy abuse saga has had an impact on the whole Church. It has prompted many lay people, formerly docile, quiet and unquestioning, to wake up, look realistically at the Church structure all around them, and challenge what they know to be wrong. This process, the steady maturation of the laity from infancy to Catholic adulthood will not be reversed. The sexual abuse phenomenon is a fundamental dimension of the wider paradigm shift in the Catholic Church. The traditional model of a hierarchical monarchy supported by hordes of silent, obedient and generous lay people is slowly dying. This process has been accelerated by the inability of people to reconcile what they had been taught about the sanctity of the bishops and the hypocrisy of their response to clergy sex abuse.

The Catholic restorationist movement, with its beginnings in the early years of John Paul II’s papacy, provides the illusion of a secure, triumphant ecclesiastical kingdom for those who cannot face the inevitable prospect of the Catholic Church as a community existing in the real world. The myth that the abuse scandal is rooted in the post-Vatican II liberalism and dissent from “authentic Church teachings” has been destroyed by the exposure of widespread sexual abuse during the pre-conciliar period. A number of proponents of the retreat to the golden age have defended the protection of cleric perpetrators drawing into sharp focus the fact that this movement disproves the Thomistic axiom that there cannot be accidents without substance. On the contrary the response to clergy abuse has shown that the gilded hierarchs’ comprehension of compassion and justice is overshadowed by their fascination with the robes, trappings, rituals and attitudes of a Church-kingdom long gone. Beneath the exterior trappings, the accidents, there is little substance of authentic Catholicism.

The survivors and all who join them along the path toward charity and justice are an integral part of this paradigm shift as the Church moves from an irrelevant monarchy to a living Christian community. The survivors of clergy abuse have shown without a doubt that the institutional Church is sorely deficient in its ability to move true charity and justice from words to action. The past twenty-six years have proven without a shadow of a doubt that this institution will not change on its own from the top down. The change is happening in the real Church that exists apart from the clerical enclave. It took the harsh realization that the traditional Church is incapable of responding to the toxic corruption of sexual abuse to shake countless people loose from their fear of challenging the institution and to embracing the risky belief that the true Body of Christ is not imprisoned in the hierarchical monarchy but alive in all believers.

The momentum that was started decades ago may slow down at times but it will not stop. Perhaps the most important lesson learned through it all has been the absolute necessity of personal healing of the deep scars of sexual and emotional abuse inflicted on victims and survivors, and of the equally profound spiritual abuse inflicted on these same victims and on the countless others whose trust and belief has been shaken to the core. The scars and wounds are deep and the healing painful and at times discouraging but it must be done or else the outmoded system so essential to the formation of the abusers and the bishops who protected them will continue to control and spiritually devastate not only the victims but the abusers and bishops as well.

I daresay that none of us who were around and involved twenty-six years ago ever dreamed we would see and experience what has happened over these years. The perseverance of the survivors and their supporters through the tumultuous experiences of the past quarter century has shown those who maintain a belief in the Church as People of God that the spirit of the Lord is alive and active.

For those who have evolved to other expressions of belief, the endurance through this period proclaims the power of the human spirit. Regardless of how one feels about institutionalized Catholicism, the common bond has been a deep longing for justice and the courage to take the risk of standing together to challenge a Goliath that is conquered not by force but by truth.