UNITED STATES
National Catholic Register
NEWS ANALYSIS: Exposure of clerical abuse has been beneficial, but the Church has received far more attention than other institutions afflicted with the same problem.
by FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA 03/10/2016
After Spotlight won “Best Picture” last month at the annual Academy Awards, Catholic voices rained down hosannas upon the film, which celebrated The Boston Globe’s coverage of the sexual-abuse scandal in Boston in 2001 and 2002.
L’Osservatore Romano rushed into print to clarify that the film was not anti-Catholic, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston saluted the work of the Globe, and the estimable Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review was grateful: “Thank God for The Boston Globe!”
That view is so widely shared today that it could be considered the party line. And I agree with it — the Catholic Church is better for having the scandalous behavior exposed. Children are safer, victims have experienced a greater measure of healing, the Church is less corrupt, and it has led to what St. John Paul II hoped for back in the spring of 2002 — a “holier priesthood, a holier episcopate and a holier Church.”
But the Oscar for Spotlight, the decision by the Royal Commission on sexual abuse in Australia to make Cardinal George Pell — one of the earliest reformers on sexual abuse — into a scapegoat and the grand-jury report in Altoona-Johnstown, Pa., do pose again the question: Why does the Catholic Church seem to get disproportionate attention — even if that attention can be salutary?
The first response might be a theological one. The Church as the body of Christ does what Christ did for the world, namely to offer an expiatory suffering. The scourge of sexual abuse touches every part of society, but mostly remains hidden. The very public exposure of the Church might well serve the broader need for justice and repentance, for the Church herself and for society as a whole.
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