Kenny Tackles Abuse with Compassion
By Frank Campbell
Sister Nuala Kenny is the heal deal. Involved in the healing business for more than 40 years, Kenny’s biggest therapeutic challenge has come in her quest over the past two decades to help diagnose and treat the clergy sexual abuse crisis in her beloved Catholic Church. “I’ve dealt with dying children my whole life,” says the pediatrician and ethicist. “I’ve dealt with cancer-care children my whole life. Nothing takes the stuffing out of me like doing this stuff, because it’s the church.” Kenny has had to replenish much of that stuffing during an extensive quarter-century of clerical abuse work that has taken her from an archdiocesan inquiry in St. John’s, N.L., in the late 1980s to numerous public lectures, including a conference at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax last month, and a recently published book, Healing the Church. Born in New York, Kenny joined the Sisters of Charity in Halifax in 1962 before graduating from Dalhousie medical school in 1972 and going on to become a pediatrician in 1976. Having worked in Ontario in the early 1980s, Kenny returned to Halifax in 1988 as a professor and head of the pediatrics department at Dalhousie University and chief of pediatrics at the Izaak Walton Killam Children’s Hospital (now the IWK Health Centre) and later as deputy health minister for Nova Scotia. Little wonder then that Kenny approaches the sexual abuse crisis from a joint religious and medical perspective. “There are two crises here. One is that men of God would offend against children and youth. That shows that they are human. They are susceptible.” Kenny says in her book that a 2004 report identified four per cent of active priests as abusers, an incidence rate that is on par with child sexual abuse among the general public. “The likeliest person to offend against a child this way is a dad, grandpa, uncle, mom’s boyfriend of the month, the scout leader.” But sexual abuse is exacerbated in the church by additional spiritual abuse, Kenny says — a breach of trust between the offending priest and the child that often went so far as compelling the child to maintain secrecy under the threat of going to hell. “It’s just horrific. They are men of God, so the spiritual abuse is really very profound and the most devastating to me.” Yet, the second crisis, the crisis of mismanagement in the church, is paramount for Kenny. “That’s what the book is about, that’s why we just had this conference in our own diocese. We have a bishop who understands this second crisis. Still, the vast majority of our church leaders don’t get it. “In the book I use the metaphor of diagnoses. I’m a doc. That’s what I do. The church has done a lot on policies and protocols. They are making the diagnosis that this is the sins and offences of individual men, either individual offenders or individual mismanagers. “I make a different diagnosis. I make the diagnosis that the church responded as she did — denial, minimalization of harm, secrecy, protection of the offender, protection of image, non-accountability — the church responded that way because that’s the way the church is. Action follows being. In this response, we see something of who and what we have become that is a direct contradiction to the teaching and witness of Christ.” Church structure is key in understanding the crisis. Kenny says all sexual abuse is about power, and the power of the priest over children and young people contributed to a perfect storm of abuse. Priests were held in unmerited high esteem, and parents and kids alike considered it a special privilege for children to spend time with the parish priest. There was a “suppression of vigilance” among the children’s caretakers, a suppression that is in direct contradiction to the Christmas gospel story of Jesus and Mary doing anything and everything to ensure the safety of their child in light of Herod’s murderous decree, Kenny says. She says priests and laity alike are responsible for “clericalism” in the church, placing priests on an artificial pedestal that confers power, authority, special status and “superficial deference.” “The healing of the church is the relationship that Jesus had with his disciples. We haven’t shown that. We’re not a flat organization. There is specialization. But the proper relationship is not in clerical power, clerical authority, status by reason of position.” While many Canadian and world bishops would like to think we’ve dealt with the crisis and it’s time to move on, Kenny credits Halifax-Yarmouth Archbishop Anthony Mancini and Antigonish Bishop Brian Dunn with recognizing that fundamental change is necessary in the church. Dunn, she says, was the only bishop at the recent synod in Rome to link the church’s new evangelization with the sexual abuse crisis. “First, we have to acknowledge it (the crisis),” she says. “This is not about minor fixing. It’s not about individual sins of individual men. It’s a profound call to renewal. But the renewal is not about the restoration of the fancy-schmancy. The renewal is a return to Jesus himself. “We have been in contradiction to the teaching and ways of Jesus. The only way to get back is to get back to trying to be a prayerful, gospel-oriented community and to find new ways to be with each other — bishop, priests and people.” Kenny is hardly an ardent proponent of priestly celibacy and the exclusion of women from church leadership, but she says there is no easy fix for the crisis. “Do we need structural change? You bet your boots we do. But just because you’re celibate does not mean you’ll offend against a child.” Kenny says the church has made some positive changes in “policies, protocols, screenings for the seminary and better education. … Those things are important but my philosophy colleagues would say they are necessary but not sufficient.” Educated, well-read and highly trained, Kenny readily confers the role of healing to Jesus. “For me and others plumbing this crisis, you’ve got to get down on your knees with the gospel.” Kenny sees church redemption at the end of the crisis tunnel, but there are times, like the day former Antigonish bishop Raymond Lahey was arrested on child pornography charges, that she feels shaken to her very soul. Then, there’s only one refuge — her worn and tattered Bible. “Through my whole life and ministry as a physician, I love the fact that we refer to Jesus as the great physician. All of his ministry is healing and reconciliation.” Frank Campbell is an editor at The Chronicle Herald and freelanced this piece. Contact: fcampbell@herald.ca
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