The sexual abuse of children and its cover-up by the hierarchy has been an open wound on the Church for 25 years, hemorrhaging since the Boston Globe reports a decade ago. This is a subject which has tormented me on many levels, but I have never known what to say. I feel like the character in the eponymous Harlan Ellison story: I have no mouth, yet I must scream.
The story out of Philadelphia only deepens the wound. From a recent article in Philadelphia Magazine:
[In February] The district attorney’s office …released a grand jury report about local Catholic priests sexually abusing minors. It was not, of course, the first such grand jury report—that one, released in 2005, laid out in great detail not only how priests in the city’s archdiocese had abused children, but also how that abuse had been covered up under the direction of tough-minded Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua. Instead of being reported to the DA’s office, pedophile priests were moved—sometimes repeatedly, from parish to parish to parish. Abusive priests kept right on abusing children.
And now this second grand jury report, six years later, was much shorter than the first, yet in some ways it was more devastating, because the central charge was the same: The Archdiocese of Philadelphia still allowed alleged pedophile priests—37 of them, the report said—to continue ministering to children. What’s more, the DA’s office was charging a monsignor, William Lynn, along with three priests and a parish teacher, with crimes related to sexual abuse. (All five have pleaded not guilty.) The monsignor’s indictment was especially telling. For much of the ’90s, Lynn reported directly to Cardinal Bevilacqua, and he was the first member of Church hierarchy in this country to be indicted as part of the sexual-abuse scandal. The point was inescapable: Something was very wrong with the way the archdiocese had been run. And with how it is still being run.
Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, initially denied the veracity of the report, but within weeks performed a volte face and suspended 21 priests from active ministry pending further investigation. The head of the Philadelphia review board, Ana Maria Cantanzaro, wrote an article detailing the ways in which her board was marginalized by the archdiocese.
The review board did not see two-thirds of those cases because, according to the archdiocese, allegations against most of those priests involved only inappropriate behaviors that were not related to the sexual abuse of minors. And, citing privacy laws, the archdiocese had not provided the priests’ psychological evaluations and other health records in cases the board reviewed. Board members don’t know for sure whether the archdiocese gave us all relevant information, or whether the archdiocese presented the grand jury with information that was not made available to us. If so, that might explain the grand jury’s criticism of the board.
The archdiocese, predictably, disputes the tenor and contents of the Philly magazine article. A postscript published by the magazine gave a statement from the archidocese:
This is Donna Farrell, writing on behalf of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Unfortunately for Philadelphia magazine readers looking for honest, in-depth reporting, this piece is an agenda-driven travesty of salacious innuendo masquerading as journalism. It is built almost entirely on unsubstantiated comments recklessly offered by unattributed sources that Mr. Huber is all-too-ready to accept as fact.
Unfortunately, this statement forcefully demonstrates that the Cardinal and his advisers do not understand the hole they have dug for themselves. Yes, the article is sensationalistic in parts, and some of the experts consulted—such as Richard Sipe—have obvious agendas. But nothing the archdiocese said speaks to the heart of the matter: the archdiocese for decades turned away from victims of sexual abuse and protected abusing priests; and even after the Boston scandal broke and the national charter was put into place, continued to operate as before. I do not say this lightly, but I believe that Cardinal Rigali, and Cardinal Bevilacqua have broken faith with their people: what good is a shepherd who does not defend his flock?
I am very torn in my response to this crisis. Vatican II said that:
In exercising their office of father and pastor, bishops should stand in the midst of their people as those who serve. Let them be good shepherds who know their sheep and whose sheep know them. Let them be true fathers who excel in the spirit of love and solicitude for all and to whose divinely conferred authority all gratefully submit themselves. Let them so gather and mold the whole family of their flock that everyone, conscious of his own duties, may live and work in the communion of love. (Christus Dominus 16, emphasis added)
This is reinforced by a tradition in the Franciscan community, dating back to our Seraphic Father, of deferring to clergy and bishops, even ones who had fallen down on the job—and the history of the period shows that Francis and his companions had to deal with some who had fallen very, very low. For years I have looked hopefully to the bishops themselves to stand up and take responsibility; but sadly, most of them have not. My own bishop tends to ignore the past and talk about all the efforts the diocese is now making to protect children: all good and worthy, but not a full or adequate response. (I try to imagine the response from my confessor if I went in, mentioned some sin, and immediately began talking about how things are different now. The pointed, probing questions would follow immediately.) Further, as the courts sort out a truly horrific abuse scandal in the local Catholic hospital (triggered by the discovery of 50,000 pictures walled up in the home of a former doctor) the diocese staked out a position that was more jesuitical than pastoral.
The sexual abuse crisis has evolved into a crisis of confidence that is unmatched, perhaps, since the Reformation. The bishops rule as successors of the Apostles, but as Vatican II made clear, they have authority because we, the faithful, submit ourselves to it. As a result of their actions, bishops have lost the trust of the laity and perhaps even of their clergy, in their ability to deal effectively with it. More worrisome is the real possibility that this will expand to become a lack of trust in the bishops in general. They might be respected as figureheads, but they will not be listened to as pastors. As evidence of this, consider the website When Will the Bishop Retire?
The problem cannot be fixed by more social activism (on the left) or doctrinal purity (on the right). As happy as it would make me for my bishop to speak out more on the death penalty, that would not address the real issue of restoring faith and credibility. One solution which may work is that bishops who have failed egregiously in their duties should be removed. As Jesus said,
But if the salt loses its flavor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. (Mt 5:13)
A drastic and perhaps heartless solution, but these are extreme situations. However, from what I have read, Pope Benedict will not summarily remove bishops, no matter how reprehensible their behavior—the example of Cardinal Sepe of Naples (and his predecessor Cardinal Giordano) make this painfully clear. The philosophy, backed by many precedents—a bishop is wedded to his see—is that a bishop is responsible for cleaning up the problems in his diocese, even when they are of his own making. Even when a bishop resigns under pressure, such as Cardinal Law, the Vatican seems oblivious to the impact of providing retirement sinecures to them: the Church is see as again protecting its own.
In the end, I really don’t know what can be done. For Philapelphia, I would suggest that the clergy, consulting with their laity, seek among their own number a pastor who they would trust to address the crisis, and present him to the Vatican as a candidate for Cardinal Rigali’s replacement. (Rigali turns 76 this summer, so he is already past the canonical age of retirement.) This is a practice of great antiquity, though it has fallen into disuse—the last example I can think of was the choice of Bishop Carroll as the first bishop in the United States. At the very least they should make it clear that they do not want a bishop committed to the old way of doing things.
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