The French Catholic Church: A Staggering Pattern of Sexual Abuse

The huge scale of the sexual abuse on minors within the Roman Catholic Church by clergy over the decades continues to shock the conscience of both those raised within the Church and outside observers.  The hypocrisy of the Church hierarchy which has often tried to pretend the problem was due to "a few bad apples" and typically resisted compensation for the victims of what is truly a global conspiracy of silence is likewise stagger - especially given the Church's dogma that seeks to restrict sex to procreatino and demonizes same sex relationships. Looking back, I am amazed that I allowed this morally bankrupt institution shame me and to istill self-hate within me for my sexual orientation.  A new report out of France shows that hundreds of thousands of youth - mostly boys under age 13 - were sexually abused since 1950.  And like everywhere else on the globe, the Church tried to cover it up.  Crocodile tears from Pope Francis and some within the Church hierarchy will never atone for the horrors done to children and youths by thousands of members of the clergy.  A piece in The Economist looks at the shocking report which sadly should be a surprise to no one.  Here are highlights:

THE SHEER NUMBER was overwhelming: between 1950 and 2020 at least 216,000 children were sexually abused in France by Catholic clergy. Thus, on October 5th, concluded a two-year, independent inquiry commissioned by the church. Jean-Marc Sauvé, the president of the commission that conducted the investigation, said it uncovered “the lead weight of silence smothering the crimes” committed by 2,900-3,200 clergy. If lay members were also included, the number of abused could reach 330,000.

In a report that runs to thousands of pages, Mr Sauvé’s introduction is chilling and unflinching: “for a very long time the Catholic church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse.” About 90% of the victims were boys, many between ten and 13 years old.

As was revealed after reports of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in other countries, including America, Chile, Germany and Ireland, the crimes in France involved a sinister web of misplaced trust, manipulated authority, concealment, silence and shame. The abuse was not confined to a particular region, or diocese, but was spread across the country:  . . . François Devaux, who suffered sexual abuse at the age of ten and eventually founded a victims group, called what they had gone through simply “hell”.

It was the efforts of survivors such as Mr Devaux to break the silence that forced the church to confront its denials and cover-ups. He was among those who came forward in 2015 to accuse Bernard Preynat, a priest in Lyon and scout leader, of sexual abuse. Mr Preynat was convicted last year. Those accusations also gave rise in 2019 to the resignation of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who was convicted of covering up the Preynat affair (although the conviction was overturned on appeal).

France has an unusual relationship with Catholicism, due chiefly to strict secular rules, known as laïcité, entrenched by law in 1905 and designed to keep the state neutral in religious affairs. Catholic schools, which are all private, cater only to a small minority of pupils. The country lacks the wide network of church-linked boarding schools and powerful state institutions that helped to conceal paedophilia in some other countries. Yet this proved no protection for the victims.

Today, the Catholic church in France is a hollowed-out version of its former self. It struggles to recruit priests. Numbering 12,000 today, the priesthood is half what it was 20 years ago—and half of those serving are older than 75. Moreover the French today wear their religion lightly, if at all. Only 49% say they believe in God. Two years ago, as the scandal began to emerge, 56% said in one survey that they held a bad image of the Catholic church. This week’s report will entrench these trends.

The Catholic church is not the only arena of French society in which deceit and denial of sexual abuse have been uncovered in recent years. Another is politics, where, until #MeToo, abuse and sexual violence, mostly towards women, tended to be covered up. And, as recounted in two recent books*, members of left-bank Parisian circles deployed the principle of sexual liberty to mask abuse, including incest. By exposing the manipulation and cruelty of the predators, those brave enough to speak out, as in the report on the Catholic church, may also prevent such abuse in the future from going undetected for so long.

 I suspect that similar commissions around the world would find similar results in country after country.