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	This Child-Abuse Scandal Offers Benedict XVI a Place in History As a Great Reforming Pope By George Pitcher Telegraph March 21, 2010 http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/georgepitcher/100030775/this-child-abuse-scandal-offers-benedict-xvi-a-place-in-history-as-a-great-reforming-pope/ UNITED KINGDOM -- It was all the marble and granite behind Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, in Armagh's St Patrick's Cathedral on Saturday that kept distracting me from what he was saying. It was so highly polished it was translucent; you felt you could see through it, but at the same time you knew it was hard, immovable and cold to the touch. Much like Cardinal Brady's homily really. There are those of us who wonder why he is still there to deliver his softly-spoken paraphrase of Pope Benedict XVI's apology for the Irish Church's systemic abuse of children in its care down the years. As Fr Brady, sometime secretary to the Bishop of Kilmore, he was instrumental in having two children sign an oath of secrecy in 1975 over their sexual assault by Fr Brendan Smyth, whose rapacious campaign of paedophilia continued for a further 20 years before he was finally jailed in 1994. Having originally indicated that he would step down if he was implicated in the child-abuse scandal, today's Cardinal Brady resembles a disgraced cabinet minister, clinging on to office until he is sacked, rather than honouring his conscience. Like the marble and granite that surrounds him, he is a metaphor for what is cold and hard in the state of the Roman Catholic Church. Implacable, secretive, obsequious to authority, priests and prelates like him have sought to obfuscate rather than obtrude upon the scandal. He simply knocked the Smyth case upstairs to his superiors, described in the Irish press as "the Nuremburg defence". Through gritted teeth, Brady thanked the media towards the end of his Saturday homily, saying "communication is at the heart of this process". Amen to that. But communication hasn't come from the Church. It's the light of truth that the media have brought to bear that has exposed the litany of child-abuse across Europe. Some of the journalism has gone too far, as it does when it's on a roll. Inevitably, it's taken on the mantle of "Abusegate, "with speculation, as in the original model of Watergate, over whether this scandal goes all the way to the top. In this case, all the President's men are played by Benedict and his curia. This is absurd. My colleague Damian Thompson has written that Benedict is being stitched up by his detractors, in the Vatican and elsewhere, particularly with reference to German abuse, allegedly on Benedict's watch. I'm sure that's right, that this Pope has enough enemies for full capital to be made out of this scandal at his expense. You don't have to be a fan of Dan Brown to believe that the Vatican can be a snake-pit of competing earthly ambitions. I'm also sure that there are those who would want to ensure that Benedict's eventual successor is not in his traditionalist frame of mind. But there is an alternative narrative to be aired and it is this: An effect of this scandal is to focus attention on a culture of centralised authoritarianism that is being re-inforced under Benedict, rather than dissipated, with an exaggerated rather than diminished emphasis on the very special role and character of priesthood (Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, is a great proponent and exemplar of the latter, incidentally). None of this, of course, encourages what Benedict calls the "filth" of child-abuse, but it doesn't make for the kind of communicative transparency that would lead to its instantaneous exposure either, because of the deference to absolute authority that it fosters. Benedict believes in an orthodoxy that is centralised in its authority. He has resisted attempts to re-collegialise the bishops. He has had a protracted debate, for example, with Cardinal Walter Kasper, who argued for a more collegiate structure in the tradition of Vatican II, allowing for a more pluralist contribution, against the then Cardinal Ratzinger's preference for centralised authority. Benedict's is a Roman model: The Vatican holds it all together from the centre, with firm emphasis on priestly and episcopal obedience to the See of Peter and doctrinal purity. As I've said before, his dropping of the papal title Patriarch of the West was significant; Benedict was saying that his authority was not confined to any section of the globe. So I'm far from convinced that this is entirely the fault of Benedict's liberal enemies. In short, an unreformed papacy and curia will continue to encourage the secrecy, deference and clericalism that was at the root of concealment of this terrible issue. Benedict has an opportunity to change this culture. And he might. He is far from the one-dimensional traditionalist and conservative that his detractors would present in caricature. Cardinal Brady is right in one respect. Communication is at the heart of the process. For a start, Benedict should sweep aside the truly awful communications functions that allow him to be so woefully misrepresented on issues such as the Aids crisis in Africa or the lifting of Holocaust-denier Bishop Richard Williamson's excommunication. But it goes wider than that. It was the lack of diocesan responsibility and autonomy that very significantly allowed the concealment of institutional child-abuse over decades. If Benedict sweeps that culture aside too, as he can, then he will, ironically enough for his conservative reputation, win a place in history as a great reforming Pope.
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