ROME (ITALY)
Crux
February 21, 2019
By Christopher White
Church leaders were warned not to blame the outside world for the Church’s abuse crisis and that “the enemy is within.”
In delivering his afternoon remarks at the pope’s closely watched abuse summit taking place at the Vatican this week, Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez of Bogotà, Colombia, and President of the Latin American Episcopal Council (CELAM), said “the damage is not done by outsiders but that the first enemies are within us, among us bishops and priests and consecrated persons who have not lived up to our vocation.”
Echoing a common theme from Pope Francis on this issue, Salazar pinpointed clericalism as the root cause, leading to a “distortion of the meaning of ministry,” which he said had heightened the severity of the crisis.
Clericalism is “a clerical mentality that leads us to misunderstand the institution of the Church and place it above the suffering of the victims and the demands of justice,” he said. “This mentality accepts the justifications of the perpetrators over the testimony of those affected.”
During his remarks, the South American cardinal urged for “conversion” to replace a clerical culture in the Church, which has led to abusive priests being transferred around to other assignments instead of properly being punished and using monetary settlements to “buy silence” from victims.
Salazar’s remarks were titled “The Church in a moment of crisis: Facing conflicts and tensions and acting decisively,” and he used them, to among other things, call for a new “code of conduct” for bishops as a “concrete” means of reform and heightened attention to screening candidates for the priesthood and renewed attention to priestly formation.
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