BishopAccountability.org
	A Moment in Time: Don't Just Blame the Priest, Blame Priestly Conditions Too By Charles Flores Malta Independent October 29, 2006 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=41086 I doubt whether there would have been such neighbourly solidarity, even within the minuscule community of Gozo, with the Rev. Anthony Mercieca had he not been a priest. As a normal individual admitting to abusing a minor as far back as the 1960s would have meant instant condemnation, swift legal proceedings and the inevitable stigma on the rest of his family and loved ones. In fact, the Mercieca case came to the fore very much at the same time that our Law Courts were trying a no less delicate case involving two brothers and minors entrusted to their care. Not only have the brothers received lengthy prison sentences, but there was a general feeling of repugnance, and rightly so. An individual's sexuality is strictly his private business, but when involves children and/or adolescents, there hardly remains any place for compassion. Over the past 10 years, a large number of paedophile cases involving priests, monks, nuns and members of strict religious organisations have surfaced all over the world, from Ireland to Australia, Central Europe to the United States, putting the Vatican in such a quandary as to provoke it into committing several glaring mistakes of both omission and shocking nonchalance. It is an accepted fact that even the present Pope is on record as having swept certain notorious cases under the convenient carpet in the not so distant past. Happily, the Catholic Church has since been taking a more determined and open-minded approach to this highly sensitive issue and members of the clergy who today confess, as the Rev. Anthony Mercieca has done – or are found guilty – of having molested minors are finding less and less moral backing from the official Church. The priest is, after all, a normal human being, very much like you and me, and as vulnerable to all kinds of temptations. That most of the cases have involved Catholic priests and Catholic lay teachers and leaders from strict Catholic organisations is all too comprehensible. The issue of celibacy has been left for far too long on the back burner, with the end-result being the gradual creation of a dwindling community of sexually frustrated priests (and nuns) who find refuge where they certainly shouldn't. The same goes for lay teachers and leaders who restrict themselves to a life of self-denial that results in sporadic eruptions of the sexual volcanoes inside them. Of course it is not fair to generalise. There are thousands of priests (and nuns), lay teachers and leaders who lead perfect lives of dedication and hard work. But for the organisation they are members of to keep them reined in by such absurd rules on celibacy and sexual intimacy is tantamount to pushing the feebler and the more susceptible among them to such inglorious chapters as we have been witnessing for so many years now. Ironically, it is the very organisation, the Catholic Church, which suffers the most by proxy, as people tend to assimilate the individual with all that he represents. My last attendance at a MUSEUM class, many years ago, was when I went back home and described to my mum, all too innocently, how my religious instructor at the time had come with me to the toilet "to help me", as he had coyly told me, "with that minute physical chore". With hindsight, I honestly think she did the right thing, while I confess I had been overjoyed as I could then move swiftly to the Catholic Action centre of the village where we could wear ties, talk to the girls and, most important, play billiards and darts! However, it would have been a mistake to associate all MUSEUM instructors with that special interest in a boy's natural needs, for it is known how hard-working and how serious most of them were and continue to be so to this very day. But again, the terribly strict rules of their organisation at that time may have led some of them to go astray. Today, Dun Gorg Preca's MUSEUM is a lot more lenient and forward-looking organisation than it ever was. Back to the Rev. Anthony Mercieca's case, it is good to see both the Gozitan and Miami dioceses taking immediate internal action, though as a citizen, he is still expected to face the normal proceedings that any other citizen would have to. We happily live in a society where each and every member is responsible for his or her own actions. Long gone are the privileged days when bishops and priests were exempted from any legal jurisdiction and even the payment of income tax. That is how it is at this moment in time and that is how it should always be.
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