February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The critic’s disappointment is understandable. The report’s conclusions cry out for justice. Those who perpetrated these abuses, and those who covered up for them, should not be allowed to skulk into obscurity.
But it would be a mistake to conclude that the perpetrators will go unpunished, at least in a cosmic sense. Likewise, it would be inaccurate to say that nobody is being held accountable.
The Catholic Church, like any other religious institution, depends on the moral clarity of its teaching and the credibility of its leadership. If lay people have reason to believe that their clerics and spiritual leaders are hypocrites or worse, they will deliver accountability in the most-dramatic way possible: They’ll stop going to church, and they’ll ignore the latest pronouncement from their bishops.
And that is precisely what’s happening in Ireland today. Accountability? How about vacant pews on Sunday? How about a pastoral letter consigned to the dustbin without being read?
The laity are imposing their own sort of accountability on their church, and it is a harsh regime indeed. It is hard to imagine a day any time soon when any Irish bishop will be able to speak with any sort of moral authority in light of the government’s report and other scandals over the last two decades.
Perhaps none of this will fulfill a victim’s wish for legally sanctioned justice, the sort of justice rendered in a court of law. The living victims of abuse in Catholic-run reformatories and industrial schools have every reason to demand that their tormentors be brought before a judge and jury.
But they should not feel as though the church in Ireland is getting off scot-free. The institution’s credibility is in tatters. Lay people have been forced to confront reality after years – decades – of downplaying stories about physical and sexual abuse. It would be hard to underestimate how this will change the relationship between church and laity in Ireland.
It might be instructive to consider what has happened in the American church over the last decade or so, after the pedophile scandal and massive cover-up came to light. While it is fair and proper to point out that the number of accused clerics is very small, standards of behavior are higher for those whose business it is to remind us of our better angels, who are in a position to lecture us about our behavior and values, and the state of our souls.
It really is quite simple: If you were a bishop and you knowingly covered-up for a known pedophile priest – not once, but many times – you no longer have the ability to instruct the laity in matters of faith and doctrine. Yes, we are all imperfect beings – sinners, the lot of us.
But we also know, or so we have been taught, that not all sins are equal. It is one thing to tell a white lie. It is quite another to take a life. Many lay Catholics have decided — some publicly, some privately – that covering up for pedophiles is a serious sin. Denying it makes it worse.
That’s allegedly what happened in many American dioceses. That’s why Cardinal Bernard Law is preaching in Rome these days and not in his former seat in the Archdiocese of Boston.
When the Boston Globe was investigating the pedophile scandal and cover-up under Law’s tenure, the cardinal added to the disgrace by playing the anti-Catholic card, accusing the newspaper of bigotry.
Cardinal Law may not have been held accountable in a secular sense. But his exile to Rome and his enduring infamy have deprived him of just about everything he once had: moral authority, a license to preach, a deference that only a prince of the church could command.
Accountability has been rendered in other ways as well. Among Catholics I know, more than a few have withheld contributions to their local bishops annual pledge drive. Five years ago, several bishops, including my own, suggested that Catholics who supported presidential candidate John Kerry were unworthy of receiving the Eucharist. (Kerry, a Catholic, supported abortion rights.) These bishops – few in number, it should be noted — did not offer to return the financial contributions of such unworthy souls.
It was hard not to note the fervor with which they condemned John Kerry and those who supported them, and it was hard not to wonder why they did not render such powerful judgments against those in their ranks who abused children.
Once the laity have reason to doubt the judgment and morality of their spiritual leaders, the dynamic between the institution and the people in the pews begins to change. That has happened in Ireland already, and the government’s process will only hasten the process.
Accountability, then, will be delivered. It may not be rendered in court documents. The perpetrators may never see the inside of a secular prison. But 10 years from now, if not sooner, it will be hard to persuade an Irish bishop that his church was not held accountable for its sins.
Fewer people will listen when he speaks. It is hard to imagine a sterner punishment.