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	Saying Sorry Is Not Enough. The Church Has Got to Change Benedict XVI's Inadequate Letter Adds to the Woes of Those His Church Has Wronged The Observer March 21, 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/21/pope-apology-abuse UNITED KINGDOM -- Usually, when old and powerful institutions are found guilty of some systemic failure, the stock response is to promise reform. That is not the way of the Catholic church, whose head is anointed in a line of descent from St Peter, and whose rigid and secretive hierarchy takes its autocratic cues from the top. Change comes slowly and rarely. That the church is guilty of a systemic failure over child abuse within its ranks is beyond doubt. It is also certain that the letter published yesterday from the pope to his flock in Ireland, apologising for the scandal, is pitifully inadequate. Benedict XVI acknowledged that victims had "suffered grievously". He also accepted that the church had made "serious mistakes". He did not mention that the same grievous suffering has been inflicted in Catholic communities in many other countries, nor did he spell out what he considered the "serious mistakes" to have been. Was it the failure to punish the perpetrators of abuse? Or was it the decision to quickly rehabilitate paedophile priests and despatch them to new parishes? Was it the failure to involve police? Perhaps it was the conspiracy of silence, or the cynical exploitation of victims' faith to make them complicit in the cover-up, turning their ordeal into shame and guilt, as if being attacked by a priest was itself a sin. Or could it have been the plain fact that the church conferred the moral authority on men to know and guide their parishioners' most intimate thoughts – a power they then used to prey on children for sexual gratification? Perhaps Pope Benedict meant none of those things, only that he wished the whole business had not happened. His letter is late and meagre, but that was to be expected. Taking more responsibility would have entailed hinting at some moral culpability. The apology was an opportunity for the church to reach out in humility to those it has wronged, with a cost of accepting a tiny dilution of the pope's claim to absolute, unerring authority in all things. That price was clearly too high.
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