Financial Times Editorial Comment: Vatican’s evasions on child abuse

Financial Times Editorial Comment: Vatican’s evasions on child abuse
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 2 2010 19:29 | Last updated: April 2 2010 19:29
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb61ca12-3e7d-11df-a706-00144feabdc0.html


The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is “hopelessly inadequate”. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times.

Serious sexual crimes against defenceless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.

True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. There is no reason to doubt his contrition or his anguish. But, even though the letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold – and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. This week, clerical documents going back nearly 50 years discussing “problem priests” were produced in the US. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing attempts to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.

This is all of a piece with the authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality – all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped.

They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one – at least on earth.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope was the Church’s chief enforcer as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005. It seems he was better at pursuing dissident theologians than child molesters. By his own lights, he has acted honourably in protecting the Church from scandal. That will not do. The Church must account fully and transparently for these abuses of minors, in co-operation with the courts where there are well-founded charges. That is how to restore the honour of the Church.