A Week Full of It

National Survivors Advocates Coalition
February 10, 2012

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/editorials/

Absence can speak with a megaphone.

It did this week in Rome at the symposium on sexual abuse.

It ran for fours days and ended with the opening of an “e-learning center” in Germany.

Pope Benedict XVI was nowhere to be seen. At the symposium, that is.

This symposium was not held in Shanghai, Sydney, Singapore, Seattle, Soweto or the south base camp of the South Pole.

It was held within the confines of the city of Rome.

A city where the Supreme Pontiff lives, works, has a car at his disposal for which he does not personally pay for the gas or the diesel fuel to run it.

A pontiff who has found enough time in his papacy to write books.

The symposium was held at the Pontifical Gregorian University which is within easy walking distance of Trevi Fountain and if you have a chauffeured car with police protection and traffic halting capabilities it takes about as much time to get to it from the Vatican than the average American’s trip from home to the grocery.

Marie Collins, a survivor spoke. She spoke about the difficulty of her wrenching decision to participate and also of the death of her respect for the church. The struggle with her decision, let alone the years of suffering she’s endured, should have been ample reason for a Pope to honor her and all survivors, their families and the families of those who committed suicide with his attendance at the symposium.

Second best, in a City and a Church where sign and symbol are sublime, she could have been an invited front row guest at the Pope’s regularly scheduled Wednesday audience. An honor given out weekly to the donors, friends, relatives, and collaborators of the well connected. She wasn’t invited.

This is a crisis about crimes committed by agents of the Church upon members of the Church and covered up by those with the highest ranks in the Church.

In a Church really seeking, searching and committed to answers and action for this great crisis what would have been more important going in town this week for the Pope other than this symposium?

Ad limina visits of Bishops? Take them with you to the symposium.

The Pope’s absence, this gaping void, tells us the priority of the Church for this problem. The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna the Promoter of Justice in the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith who was the principle driver of this event. He tried, and at times, passionately tried, to put muscle into what the Church’s response should be no matter the dangers or the opportunities for the agents of the Church. The Pope’s absence gave the world the real picture.

You may recall former Governor Frank Keating’s comparison at the time he left the first National Review Board of the bishops in America as akin to the Mafia.

Drawing the same comparison, the role Scicluna played this week was that of an indulged son of a don who see evil in the world but has no comprehension of the family’s real business.

Scicluna was given the indulgence of space, time, funding and entre to bishops’ conferences and religious orders for the invitation list.

What Monsignor Scicluna will have to come to terms with is that his event showed no evidence that the family is getting out of the business.

A trio of Cardinal dons provided evidence for that.

On this side of the ocean, Cardinal Edward Egan, the former head of the New York Archdiocese, reneged on an apology made to abuse victims in the dioceses he headed.

He received not a fraternal correction, not even a no comment but a pat on the back from the current head of the New York Archdiocese, Cardinal- in-Waiting, and Timothy Dolan.

On the other side of the Atlantic, at the symposium Cardinal William Levada, the current head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Curia congregation where cases regarding clerical abuse are filed, spoke not about the victims and what they have endured and the horrors of the actions of priests that cross his congregational desk. No, he spoke about how difficult all of this has been for Pope Benedict.

Even if the Pope didn’t feel he should be in attendance to honor the courage and forthrightness of Marie Collins, the admitted to numbers – which from all we have learned in this massive and still growing scandal cannot be the total numbers — these numbers alone should have gotten any good steward’s attention – and attendance:

100,000 victims — 100,000 admitted to innocent Catholic children raped and sodomized by priests with at least 100,000 crimes covered up by Bishops

$2.2 billion in Catholic money spent

As if any additional evidence of disconnect was needed, here is the official text – I kid you not – of what the Pope chose to say at his general audience across town from the symposium on sexual abuse which he did not attend:

Today I want to reflect with you on the cry of Jesus from the Cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This cry comes after a three-hour period when there was darkness over the whole land. Darkness is an ambivalent symbol in the Bible – while it is frequently a sign of the power of evil, it can also serve to express a mysterious divine presence. Just as Moses was covered in the dark cloud when God appeared to him on the mountain, so Jesus on Calvary is wrapped in darkness. Even though the Father appears to be absent, in a mysterious way his loving gaze is focused upon the Son’s loving sacrifice on the Cross. It is important to realize that Jesus’ cry of anguish is not an expression of despair: on the contrary, this opening verse of Psalm twenty-two conveys the entire content of the psalm, it expresses the confidence of the people of Israel that despite all the adversity they are experiencing, God remains present among them, he hears and answers his people’s cry. This prayer of the dying Jesus teaches us to pray with confidence for all our brothers and sisters who are suffering, that they too may know the love of God who never abandons them.