The Vatican's Continued Refusal to Address Sex Abuse

I was beginning my "coming out" saga in 2002 when the Catholic Church sex abuse exploded in Boston.  The expose on the moral bankruptcy of the Church leadership - which traced all the way to the Vatican - made it much easier to (i) walk away from Catholicism, and (ii) rejecting all of the Church's anti-gay brainwashing that I had experienced growing up Catholic.  Sixteen years later, I have come to terms with my sexual orientation and now count as friends many members of the LGBT community who are more moral and decent than the bitter old men at the Vatican.  Meanwhile, the Catholic Church remains embroiled in one new sex abuse scandal after another.  More importantly, no thorough house cleaning of bishops and cardinals who aided, abetted, or participated in sexual abuse has occurred.  Worse yet, there are no signs that this will occur any time soon. Continued cover-ups and obfuscation remain the norm as entrenched Vatican bureaucracies resist any meaningful change and the Church clings to its 12th century dogma on human sexuality and priestly celibacy that, in my view, play a causative role in the rampant clerical sex abuse. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the Church's continued failure to :clean house" and end the cycle of abuse.  Here are highlights:

With revelation after revelation, a new wave of sexual abuse scandals is rocking the Roman Catholic Church and presenting Pope Francis with the greatest crisis of his papacy.

In Chile, prosecutors have raided church offices, seized documents and accused leaders of a coverup. In Australia, top church figures are facing detention and trials. And in the United States, after the resignation of a cardinal, questions are swirling about a hierarchy that looked the other way and protected him for years.

The church has had more than three decades — since notable abuse cases first became public — to safeguard victims, and itself, against such system failures. And, in the past five years, many Catholics have looked to Francis as a figure who could modernize the church and help it regain its credibility.

But Francis’s track record in handling abuse is mixed, . . . . Analysts who have studied the church’s response to sexual abuse, and several people who have advised the pope, say the Vatican has been unable to take the dramatic steps that can help an organization get out from under scandals — and avoid their repetition.

 

Francis is credited with some meaningful moves. Last month, he accepted the highest-level resignation to date when Theodore McCarrick stepped down from the College of Cardinals. . . . But the pope has also had notable missteps. During a January trip to South America, he drew widespread criticism by saying he was convinced of the innocence of Bishop Juan Barros , accused of covering up the acts of a notorious abuser.

 

Francis sought to recover from that episode by sending two investigators to Chile, apologizing for his “serious errors” in handling the crisis . . . . He also called Chile’s 34 bishops to Rome, where, according to a letter that was leaked to the Chilean media, he accused them of failing to investigate possible crimes and destroying evidence. The bishops offered to step down en masse. So far, Francis has accepted five of those resignations.

 

Yet the church has struggled with a more comprehensive effort to close the chapter on sexual abuse.  Whereas transparency is typically advised, the church remains quiet about its investigations and disciplinary procedures. It does not release any data on the inquiries it has carried out. A proposed tribunal for judging bishops accused of negligence or coverup was quashed by the Vatican department that was supposed to help implement it. And, rather than being fired and publicly admonished, offending church leaders are typically allowed to resign without explanation.

Even when the Vatican does take action, resolution comes “at a very glacial pace,” said Juan Carlos Cruz, who was among the Chilean abuse victims who met for several days with Francis this past spring.

Cruz said he tried to tell the pope bluntly that a deeper shake-up was still needed. He specifically mentioned Francisco Javier ­Errázuriz, a member of the pope’s powerful nine-member advisory Council of Cardinals, who victims have long said ignored their abuse accusations and tried to discredit them. Errázuriz has denied wrongdoing.

Meanwhile, in the wider world, the cultural ground is shifting, and other forces are taking the lead on accountability.

 

At the same time, law enforcement agencies have been pursuing abuse cases in countries that once treated the church with deference. In Australia, some state and territory governments are even going after one of the church’s most sacred tenets and are on the verge of enforcing new laws requiring priests to report child abuse that they learn of during confessions. In the United States, the Catholic Church is bracing for the release of a 900-page grand jury report into sex crimes across six dioceses in Pennsylvania.

 

“I think we have reached a point where bishops alone investigating bishops is not the answer,” said Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany. “We bishops want to rise to this challenge, which may well be our last opportunity considering all that has happened.”

 

A similar conversation, about how to strengthen the response to abuse, has played out for several years in the Vatican — particularly within the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which Francis created a year after he became pope. But little has come of the commission’s ideas.

In 2015, Francis approved its proposal of a tribunal, placed within the Vatican’s powerful doctrine office, that would assess cases of bishops accused of concealing or neglecting abuse. The tribunal, though, was never created. Four former members of the commission, as well as outside analysts, say the idea was thwarted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. . . .  congregation members and others in the Vatican hierarchy were also concerned about opening a “Pandora’s box.”

 

“This would mean hundreds of cases that would then bounce back to Rome with a huge media impact,” said Politi, author “Pope Francis Among the Wolves,” a papal biography. “It would signify the beginning of hunting season on culprits.”

 

The stalled effort to launch the tribunal prompted the resignation from the commission of Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor. Current and former members of the commission said that they are not given data and information on abuse-related cases being handled by the Vatican. Krysten Winter-Green, a former commission member who was a longtime counselor for abuse victims, said they were up against a “domain of secrecy.”

“The crime in the Catholic Church remains causing scandal, not covering up,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the site BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse cases. “Bishops all over the world are not being forthcoming.”

Sadly, a worldwide conspiracy continues aimed at covering up crimes and protecting those who aided and abetted the predators who raped children and youths. It's little wonder that Church membership is falling in educated areas of the world.