The CathNews
June 13, 2011
http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=26804
 |
This time last year, the clerical sex abuse crisis was raging across central Europe. It has subsided now, but aftershocks are still being felt, writes Austen Ivereigh in America magazine.
In Germany and Austria, where church members pay a tax unless they formally declare they have left, it is possible to track with some accuracy the numbers of those disaffected by the crisis.
Tens of thousands of Germans formally leave the church every year; according to AP, in 2010 that number increased (depending on the diocese) anywhere from 20 to 60 per cent, with the highest numbers of departures in the Pope’s homeland diocese of Passau and Wuerzburg.
Figures released by the Austrian Bishop's Conference, meanwhile, showed 87,000 Austrian Catholics left in 2010, a 64 per cent increase over the 53,000 who formally had their names struck from church registries in 2009.
Of course, another way of looking at those statistics is to say that out of approximately 2.6 m practising Catholics (in Germany), the faithful have lived up to their name.
Belgium continues to be, in many ways, the sorriest of the European cases. Last year an investigation revealed 500 cases of abuse by priests and church workers since the 1950s,and a bishop resigned after admitting abusing his nephew (which he later tried to justify).
Although the Belgian bishops have recently offered a compensation package, last week lawyers and victims announced a class-action suit naming the Vatican and Belgian bishops. A lawyer representing 80 plaintiffs said that the Pope Benedict "neglected to intervene himself and to give instructions, which meant that abuse was liable to continue and the damage was able to increase".
Meanwhile the apostolic visitation of the Irish Church ordered last year in the Pope’s Lent letter to the Catholics to Ireland has concluded its first phase, with the reports now lodged with the relevant Vatican dicasteries, according to a statement last week.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.