The Catholic church must think upon its sins

By Kevin Mckenna
Guardian
September 6, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/catholic-church-scotland-sexual-abuse-mclellan-report

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia holds up a copy of the McLellan report, as he responds to findings of the commission set up to look into abuse within the Catholic church in Scotland. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

If Satan were ever to consider deploying a PR strategy to gloss over all his crimes and misdemeanours he could do worse than contact one of his oldest adversaries, the Catholic church in Scotland.

For more than two decades now, the church has been revealed to have been exhibiting behaviours and conduct that would have led to a full public inquiry and suspension of its activities pending the outcome. Yet, following decades of child sex abuse by several of its priests, and subsequent cover-up by its hierarchy, it has managed to escape proper scrutiny and any degree of accountability. I suppose we should all be grateful for the McLellan report into safeguarding practices in the Catholic church that was published last month; it reminded us what a whitewash looks like.

So soft and fluffy was the report that it should have been delivered with a big pink ribbon tied around it and pictures of Walt Disney characters on its cover. Barely concealing his relief at its contents, Philip Tartaglia, archbishop of Glasgow, offered a full public apology to the thousands of victims of sex abuse at the hands of many of his fellow priests. This alone was deemed to be sufficient for a pattern of behaviour that has been fundamentally evil and widespread. Inexplicably, Scottish society has chosen to look the other way and allow the Catholic hierarchy, a strange and dysfunctional grouping, simply to get on with implementing the recommendations of McLellan.

Andrew McLellan, a man of unimpeachable integrity and Christian charity, has been used as a patsy by the Catholic church in Scotland. He has insisted repeatedly since he was commissioned to write the report in 2013 that the terms of its remit did not include naming any guilty individuals or highlighting the church’s wilful denial over the preceding two decades or more. So, what was the point of the exercise?

Everything significant within McLellan simply repeated what the rest of us already knew: that there has been historical sex abuse within the Catholic church; that there has been a culture of denial in the church in dealing with it and that survivors of abuse have been badly treated when seeking support.

McLellan’s recommendations on future safeguarding procedures are fine, but this ought to have formed only one part of a bigger and more relevant inquiry. A valid and worthwhile report would have asked three fundamental questions about the decades of child sex abuse in the Scottish Catholic church: how many priests and bishops were responsible?; why were they allowed to get away with it for so long?; and who, in the Scottish Catholic hierarchy knew about it, failed to act upon it and then gave orders for survivors to be disparaged and treated like scum?

We are now facing a bizarre and disturbing scenario where some priests, who have been guilty of sex abuse or inappropriate conduct, will be entrusted with the task of rolling out new safeguarding procedures in their parishes. The church will then continue to deploy a group of behaviours in which it has become expert in recent years: self-delusion; denial, deflection and outright corruption.

God only knows that the Catholic church is now barely relevant as a cultural, spiritual or social force in Scotland. For someone like me who is still a practising Catholic (albeit one who may require snookers to get into heaven), this is painful to admit. It will always be tough in a secular society to explain why mere Christianity ought still to matter. But we, and many members of other Christian faiths, have been betrayed and undermined for decades by a Catholic leadership in Scotland that has been characterised by weakness, self-delusion, arrogance and breathtaking hypocrisy.

This matters because, even in a society that seems to have rejected God, Christianity still has a significant contribution to make in improving our country. It is impossible to quantify, in mere billions of pounds, the value of the work of the Catholic church and the Church of Scotland in social outreach.

In a society where instant gratification, greed and material success have become the measure of a person’s worth, it is healthy to have a voice crying in the wilderness to remind us that there is an alternative. Sadly, though, the church leadership has forfeited all moral authority to speak about the important issues of the day and offer quiet wisdom.

Operating secretly just below the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland is an insidious little assortment of Catholic civil servants whose reactionary instincts and spiritual zeal owe more to the Spanish Inquisition than to a caring and compassionate Christian institution. They are career Catholics who are sworn to protect their paymasters and who are ruthless in dealing with those who might seek to criticise the hierarchy or cause trouble for it. I have had dealings with some of these characters. The most recent came after I had offered some criticism of the church on a national radio station. I learned afterwards that someone from this self-appointed Sanhedrin had suggested to producers that I wasn’t fit to comment on issues pertaining to the Catholic church and had offered a list of “approved” commentators instead.

It is time for the Scottish government to step in and force the church to face up to its responsibilities properly and to think well upon its sins. We know for certain that hundreds, if not thousands, of Scottish citizens have suffered unspeakable abuse (and some of the details are unspeakable) at the hands of the Catholic church in Scotland. Many of them are still being treated like lepers for daring to get angry about their treatment and for seeking compensation.

The Scottish government must order a full public inquiry into the extent of the abuse and force the Catholic church to begin to pay proper compensation. The church has failed a test of common decency and humanity in its treatment of these poor men and women. It has thus also been found wanting in its sacred task of announcing the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus to all mankind. As such, at this moment, it is not fit for purpose. This all cannot be allowed to rest with a mumbled apology in a gilded cathedral.