Same Sad Story

The Telegram
January 3, 2012

http://www.thetelegram.com/Opinion/Editorial/2012-01-03/article-2853042/Same-sad-story/1

Just before Christmas, there came yet another condemnation of the actions of the Catholic Church in dealing with child abuse. This time, the condemnation came from an investigation into the sexual abuse of children in?Dutch Catholic institutions.

And the breadth of the abuse, to put it bluntly, was staggering.

The Dutch commission, led by Wim Deetman, found that over 40 years, 800 Catholic clergy and church employees were involved in the abuse of tens of thousands of children: in all, children in institutional care had a one-in-five chance of being molested.

“The policy was no washing of dirty linen in public,” Deetman said in the report of the church’s response. “To prevent scandals, nothing was done, abuse not acknowledged, there was no help, compensation or support for the victims.”

Some 475 victims have come forward to report abuse in a similar investigation in Belgium, and a report last year about abuse by church members and Irish Christian Brothers in Ireland reached similar conclusions about the broad range of abuses against children in that country. The Church is also facing a growing grassroots revolt in other countries where abuse took place, including in Austria and Germany.

In all, 2011 was a bruising year for the church: stories similar to the kinds of abuse that came to light in this province in the late 1980s seem to be arising virtually everywhere that the church has an active presence.

With charges against scores of religious figures in a variety of faiths — both old charges and new — let alone with charges against sports figures, coaches and others, it’s pressingly obvious that individuals have their critical failings. There are new charges against the clergy in this province, and other charges that are winding up against clergy who used to practise in this province.

But with the sheer numbers involved with the Dutch, the Belgians, the Americans, the Irish and the cases in this country, as well, it’s plain that a whole institution has critical and long-lasting flaws that are still only starting to be addressed.

Where does the church go from here?

Well, perhaps it must stop all efforts to fight abuse claims as a rear-guard action. The endless claim that all this abuse took place without anyone being aware in the upper levels of the church hierarchy simply beggars credulity — and yet the same hapless defence keeps surfacing.

As recently as a year ago, Dutch Cardinal Ads Simonis was quoted as saying, “We did not know anything” about abuse in The Netherlands.

It’s too much, too often, for too long; it is time to change the tune, to move forward and admit mistakes were made right through the hierarchy, and find ways to make sure they never happen again.