By Frank Flinn
Washington University in St. Louis
April 21, 2010
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20626.aspx
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| Frank K. Flinn |
The following was written by Frank K. Flinn, Ph.D., adjunct professor of religious studies in Arts & Sciences. Flinn is author of The Encyclopedia of Catholicism (2007) and has frequently appeared as an expert in court cases involving church and state issues.
A number of years my entry for the topic “pedophilia” in the 2007 Encyclopedia of Catholicism (2007) with the following: “Nothing has damaged the Catholic Church at the turn of the millennium more than the pedophile scandal. Many observers remain perplexed by the Vatican’s continuing obtuseness toward the seriousness of the scandal.”
Unanabated, the damage continues and the perplexity remains. And the Vatican’s own laws are responsible. In fact, the church is practicing the accusations of heresy that it has fought for centuries. Instead of addressing the problem, its leaders in the Vatican’s inner sanctum offer lame explanations and excuses.
Is there nothing the Vatican can do? Yes there is.
The pope and his spokesmen can stop offering excuses that lead to backtracking that exacerbates the situation. Then the pope—and not some spokesperson-- can admit that the Vatican itself has made grave mistakes.
The major problem is that the canonical procedures to adjudicate pedophile priests and religious were geared to shield the official church’s reputation from scrutiny. As if that wasn’t bad enough, these same procedures worked to the advantage of the perpetrators, not the victims of these heinous crimes.
Canon law, fortified by the instructions, De Crimine Sollicitationis (1962) and De Gravioribus Delictis (2001), subjected all proceedings of this type to the utmost secrecy under pain of excommunication and controlled the legal representation of the victims. (The pope himself is author of the later instruction when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith.)
These mechanisms thwarted any attempts by local bishops and religious authorities to notify civil authorities of criminal offenses in their jurisdictions.
Even when local bishops wanted perpetrators defrocked expeditiously, the Vatican dragged its feet, sometimes for decades, claiming it was trying to insure justice. But justice for victims was elusive.
Now the victims are rightly speaking out and the volume of their chorus has rightfully increased. It is critical that the pope speak clearly and unequivocally to that chorus - and now.
While there is a clamor for the pope to apologize for individual cases, his personal role in most of them is still too complicated to unravel at present. Benedict XVI did not create these arcane canonical maneuvers, some of which date back to the Middle Ages, such as the church's right to try a cleric before turning him over to the civil authorities.
Nonetheless, the pope can take some immediate and forceful steps to get back on track.
First he state that the canonical procedures in the past, intentionally or not, shielded the perpetrators and gave short shrift to justice for victims.
Second, he can issue new canonical procedures to guarantee that victims get their day in ecclesiastical court with fair representation, perhaps even by lay canon lawyers.
Third, he can make clear, as have the U.S. Catholic bishops since 2002, that criminal offenses will be taken to civil authorities in a timely manner, even if confidential ecclesiastical proceedings are held simultaneously. Saying that this rule applies only in countries that have laws requiring the bishops to do this is insufficient. The church must come out unequivocally against sheltering pedophiles in any circumstance.
The solution to the deeper problem will take more daring.
At root of the pedophile issue is that in the last five decades vocations to the Catholic priesthood have fallen dramatically. Because of its celibacy and maleness requirements, the church has been forced to accept and hold on to less qualified and, in the case of men with pedophilic tendencies, wholly unqualified candidates.
The church also needs an ecumenical council, with male, female, lay and clerical members of the church, to address the very nature of the priesthood, specifically who can serve as a priest.
The late Wisconsin priest, Rev. Lawrence Murray, who sexually violated as many as 200 boys in a home for the deaf, wrote in 1998 to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, appealing to him to halt the proceedings that would defrock him.
In it, he claimed the statute of limitations had run out on the “allegations” against him and he wanted to live out the rest of his days “in the dignity of my priesthood.” To its credit, the congregation let the proceedings go forward, but this malevolent priest died preserving the “dignity” of his priesthood. Nowhere in the ecclesiastical proceedings was the “dignity” of the victims mentioned.
Beneath Rev. Murphy’s disturbing appeal lurks what I call a practical heresy.
Ever since the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church has elevated the status of the priesthood so high that it puts ordained priests far above lay people in the pecking order, deeming them more “Catholic” and thus automatically “more holy” and “more dignified” than ordinary, baptized individuals.
As doctrine, this assertion is a heresy. But, in practice, viewing the Catholic priest not as the servant of the servants of God but as someone superior to the ordinary believer leads to the kind of exceptionality that has allowed spiritually deformed priests to commit the acts that have imperiled the credibility of the very institution they say they serve.
In his theological self-delusion, Rev. Murphy even told a psychiatric interviewer that he was providing “sexual education” to his victims. He stated, “I thought I was taking their sins on myself.”It is imperative that the pope act soon and forcefully. The new revelations and documentation directly involving the pope when he was archbishop and, later, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith continue to pile up. The pope has to realize that if he knew about these cases and dragged his feet, it is a near disaster. If he did not know about them, it is a catastrophe, as it was his specific task as archbishop and prefect to handle them. Excuses, defenses and delays will only dig a deeper pit.
The credibility of the priesthood, the papacy and the Catholic Church itself is on the line. By credibility I mean the faith and trust of Catholics in the church as the authoritative continuation of the work of Christ on earth.
Calling on the church at large to repent will not do. The ones who owe repentance and amends are, first, the perpetrator pedophiles and, second, the bishops and religious superiors who shifted the pedophiles from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, and country to country in order to preserve the "dignity" of the priesthood. They owe equal amends for squandering billions of dollars in secret cover-ups and public reparations with the donations originally given by the faithful to promote the work of Christ.
The pope's meeting with a small number of victims in Malta this past weekend is a step in the right direction. The victims more than anybody deserve the ear of the Vatican. These gestures will mean little, however, if the old canonical procedures remain in place. The pope now seems aware that they have to be radically changed. Maybe Vatican obtuseness is beginning to dissipate.
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