Extend the Hand of Healing and Justice, by Michael Higgins, Globe and Mail, April 19, 2010

Extend the Hand of Healing and Justice

By Michael Higgins
Globe and Mail
April 19, 2010

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/extend-the-hand-of-healing-and-justice/article1537436/

It is a brief moment before the storm. Pope Benedict XVI is sitting with his brother Monsignor Georg Ratzinger in the Sala Clementina listening to a concert by the esteemed Henschel Quartet. It is music that he loves; it is music that he plays. And the concert speaks to one of the least controversial and most welcome gifts he has brought to the music-starved Vatican. In contrast to his predecessor, John Paul II, whose preference for musical kitsch is identified by Vatican Radio employee Stefan von Kempis in unflattering terms – "John Paul's idea of music was to have the Red Army dancing team in the Vatican audience hall" – Benedict has brought the glories of the German-Austrian repertoire to the Apostolic Palace and environs.

Benedict’s papacy is in real danger of being defined by the clerical sex abuse crisis

He has also written three exquisitely crafted and impressively substantive encyclicals – with content that has disappointed not a few reactionary ecclesiastical and political parties to declare their disappointment that Benedict is not living up to his conservative reputation. Relations with Eastern Orthodoxy (Christianity's other lung, as John Paul II once observed) – particularly the Russian iteration – enjoys a measure of trust and openness unknown for centuries.

One could conclude then that on this 5th anniversary of his election as Supreme Pontiff, Joseph Ratzinger has made his stamp as Pope in a way that distinguishes him from John Paul II and yet allows him to respect what he calls a "hermeneutic of continuity," and that his pontificate, although not without its challenges, is coasting in the serene waters provided by the promise of a robust restorationism.

One could think that, but then one would have to be an inhabitant of another solar system.

Benedict's papacy is in real danger of being defined by the clerical sex abuse crisis that has erupted with a new ferocity. In spite of efforts he has made both as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the Vatican body that upon his request in 2001 became the key Vatican dicastery or department to deal with clerical sex matters – and in spite of the initiatives he has taken personally as Pope to apologize to victims, publicly address their grievances and tighten canonical procedures to deal with miscreant clerics, he has become in the eyes of many the principal villain in this universal ecclesial tragedy.

This is, of course, unfair – a summary and in some ways vindictive judgment – but it is understandable. People – and Catholics, in particular – are outraged by the incapacity of their church leadership to deal consistently, transparently and forthrightly with the sordid cases they encounter as part of their daily media consumption. Even if one discounts the hysterical screeds of anti-religious scribes like Christopher Hitchens, the anti-Ratzinger faction in the church that would rejoice in his humiliation, and the cavalier indifference to fact and accuracy that defines too much reportage, Rome has much to answer for. And at the very moment when clarity of voice, a focused pastoral strategy, and an institutional commitment to justice and governance accountability are most needed, the Vatican gives every impression of being in a state of acute disarray. What's worse, it has elected for a defensive response that lashes out at its accusers indiscriminately, closing ranks around the Pope by establishing a phalanx of pious solidarity, and by seeking to redefine the crisis as a matter of faith and fidelity when it is really about the abuse of power and the corruption of authority.

The recent spate of cases – Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Italy and the United States – demonstrate that the old Vatican argument that clerical sex abuse is particular to the lax and secular church in Canada and the U.S. is bogus. And dangerous.

In the end, this is not a matter of statistics; it is a matter of morality. In other words, spiritual credibility, accountability and justice that cannot be jettisoned in the interests of institutional self-preservation. Since the outset of his papacy, Benedict has been embroiled in various controversies, such as his address at the University of Regensburg that provoked much of the Muslim world and his lifting of the suspension of an anti-Semitic Lefebvrist bishop that offended the international Jewish community. In both cases, he worked to repair the damage and did so successfully.

This current crisis, however, is an ad intra as opposed to an ad extra matter. But the effectiveness of Benedict's ministry of unity is imperilled by those forces that are motivated either by a papaphilia or papaphobia that define the crisis in terms of loyalty to the Pope or disparagement of his leadership. If such a momentum continues unchecked, we could find ourselves back in the 1870s when, following the dissolution of the Papal City States and the occupation of Rome by the Italian Nationalists, the pope withdrew to the Vatican and became its prisoner, and Catholics throughout the world were called on to rally in his defence.

It didn't work then and it won't work now.

The Pope as victim is a bad strategy. He is Peter and he is called upon to lead his church. If the remaining years of his pontificate are not to be overshadowed by the current turmoil, he must boldly and prophetically extend the hand of healing and justice to all impaired by either calculated or inadvertent injustice. And to examine with courageous scrutiny the structures and culture that have allowed such to flourish.