UNITED STATES
Questions from a Ewe
My last night in China, I stayed up well past bedtime to watch Pope Francis address the U.S. Congress. I noted both what he said and what he didn’t say. He explicitly called for a global end to the death penalty and arms sales. He explicitly called for welcoming immigrants, tending the environment and caring for the poor. He explicitly spoke of the perils of child abuse. He never uttered the words, “abortion,” “birth control,” “Obamacare,” “Planned Parenthood,” or “gay marriage.”
I had to settle for reading the transcript of his homily to U.S. bishops in D.C. in which he congratulated and thanked the bishops for their actions around the clergy sex abuse scandals without offering any encouragement to abuse survivors. Yet, most abuse survivors and many lay people find the bishops’ individual and collective actions on this topic to span between cowardly and dastardly…not even close to the “courageous” description ascribed by Francis.
It seemed the connection between Francis’ child abuse comments to Congress and the lifelong wounds arising from clergy-inflicted child sexual abuse eluded Francis. In declaring the bishops’ response “courageous” and speaking of the issue as though concluded while so many abuse survivors still constantly battle abuse ramifications, Francis displayed appalling insensitivity. He evaded institutional responsibility to walk in healing restitution with survivors every day, every step of their lives.
While reading that homily I was also struck by Francis’ seeming assumption that the bishops and clergy are penultimate experts on and purveyors of gospel messages – and that they just tirelessly need to be gentle until the (clueless, sad, miserable) sheep finally catch on to their wonderful messages. This, would bring about healing in the church, he seemed to say. That and the clergy abuse comments made me wonder about Francis’ institutional self-awareness.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.