{"id":279924,"date":"2023-05-10T06:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T10:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/?p=279924"},"modified":"2023-05-09T21:04:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T01:04:41","slug":"episcopal-accountability-and-the-spirituality-of-reparation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/2023\/05\/episcopal-accountability-and-the-spirituality-of-reparation\/","title":{"rendered":"Episcopal accountability and the ‘spirituality of reparation’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Pope Francis last week addressed the plenary gathering of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, declaring that \u201cnow is the time to repair the damage done to previous generations.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/press.vatican.va\/content\/salastampa\/en\/bollettino\/pubblico\/2023\/05\/05\/230505a.html\">Speaking to the commission\u2019s members in the Vatican on May 5<\/a>, Pope Francis said that clerical sexual abuse \u201cand its poor handling by Church leaders\u201d has been one of the \u201cgreatest challenges for the Church in our time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, while the pope called for a \u201cspirituality of reparation\u201d as the Church continues to reckon with past \u201csins of omission,\u201d efforts to move on from the crisis of abuse have to reckon with the fact that decades of scandals are not all the fault of \u201cprevious generations.\u201d Rhetorically, many Church leaders remain some distance away from the pope\u2019s vision of personal sacrifice for atonement, preferring the language of institutional responsibility and apology by proxy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMending the torn fabric of past experience is a redemptive act, the act of the suffering Servant, who did not avoid pain, but took upon himself the iniquity of us all,\u201d the pope said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But are there signs that Church leaders are adopting Francis\u2019 \u201cspirituality of reparation,\u201d or that bishops are prepared to \u201ctake upon themselves\u201d the iniquities of previous decades?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The day after Francis\u2019 address to the PCPM in Rome, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/news\/investigations\/bs-md-church-officials-sexual-abuse-redacted-20230504-pngpc2eym5ehjjocmgttwg3o4q-story.html\">the Baltimore Sun published a lengthy feature on the record of local archdiocesan officials in dealing with clergy facing multiple accusations of abuse.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Sun identified five officials of the Archdiocese of Baltimore whose names had been redacted from a recent report from the Maryland Attorney General\u2019s Office on clerical sexual abuse in the archdiocese. The officials \u2014 all clerics \u2014 included former chancellors of the archdiocese, as well as Bishop William Francis Malooly, a former auxiliary bishop of Baltimore who served as head of the Diocese of Wilmington, DE, from 2008 until 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In one case, Malooly negotiated with prosecutors to secure immunity for an abuser in exchange for providing a full list of his victims. In another, he drafted a statement to parishioners telling them a priest removed from ministry after abuse allegations was on \u201ctemporary sick leave because of stress,\u201d the Sun found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In another case, in the 1980s, after being informed by an assistant state AG that an allegation of abuse against a priest could warrant charges of assault, battery, and attempted rape, officials including Malooly sent the cleric for four days of \u201cpsycho-theological evaluation\u201d before reassigning him back into ministry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, Malooly later wrote to congratulate that priest on completing 25 years of ministerial service in the archdiocese, and the priest\u2019s alleged crimes were not disclosed to authorities until 2002, a year before he died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But despite Pope Francis\u2019 call for a \u201cspirituality of reparation\u201d over sins of omission and the taking of personal responsibility by Church leaders, the Archdiocese of Baltimore instead funded legal bids by the officials to have their names redacted from the AG\u2019s report by court order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, according to the Sun, while declining to comment on the substance of the officials\u2019 actions as detailed in the AG\u2019s report, the archdiocese instead sparred with the newspaper over its role in securing a judicial order to black out the names of archdiocesan personnel from the published version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, Baltimore\u2019s Archbishop William Lori, who also serves as vice president of the USCCB, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archbalt.org\/a-message-from-archbishop-william-e-lori-on-the-maryland-attorney-generals-report\/\">offered a fulsome apology to victims when the AG\u2019s report was first released last month. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cTo all survivors, I offer my most earnest apology on behalf of the archdiocese,\u201d Lori said in April, calling the report \u201cshocking and soul searing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe report details a reprehensible time in the history of this Archdiocese, a time that will not be covered up, ignored or forgotten,\u201d Lori said. \u201cAcknowledgment, I know, is of utmost importance.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www-baltimoresun-com.translate.goog\/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true\">But many abuse survivors and their advocates have questioned the archbishop\u2019s pledge not to cover up, ignore, or forget, when set against the archdiocese\u2019s financial support for the bid to prevent former officials like Malooly being named.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some have and will continue to argue that it is hard for the Church to embrace the kind of \u201credemptive acts\u201d called for by the pope, or instill confidence among the faithful, so long as apologies for crimes of omission are couched in institutional or vicarious terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does it mean for an archdiocese to apologize, some ask. And how sincere is an \u201cearnest apology\u201d when it comes from Lori on behalf of former officials like Malooly, who has himself declined to speak publicly on the report or the Sun\u2019s coverage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those questions take on an added sharpness when you consider that in 2002, Malooly addressed the release of a list of names of accused clergy in the Baltimore archdiocese while still an auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At that time, the bishop offered his own apologies to Catholics who had had their faith shaken by the reality of clerical abuse, and defended the release of names of accused clergy, saying that it would be \u201ca major move forward\u201d if it encouraged other victims to come forward and helped to spur Church reform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The bishop also expressed his mystification at how priests known to be credibly accused of abuse had remained in ministry, even though it has now emerged he helped make it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One common theme in both Pope Francis\u2019 address on Friday and Archbishop Lori\u2019s apology following the AG\u2019s report last month is that both emphasized the real progress the Church has made in combatting clerical sexual abuse in recent decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the global level, through the promulgation of laws like Francis\u2019 2019 <em>Vos estis lux mundi<\/em>, the national level through the Dallas Charter and USCCB Essential Norms, and the work of review boards in individual dioceses, reports of new instances of clerical abuse have fallen year on year and decade on decade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those policies and reforms may have been caused by new understanding and outrage over past scandals, like the 2001 Spotlight reports in Boston, or the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury report and the McCarrick scandal, but all the available data does suggest that clerical abuse is \u2014 broadly if not yet universally \u2014 primarily a sin of past decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But much of the outrage in the early 2000s, and again following the McCarrick revelations, has been about the institutional failures to act, and the sins of omission addressed by Pope Francis last week. And while many new policies have focused on institutional and official transparency and accountability, the progress on those is less obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although papal laws like <em>Come una madre amorevole<\/em> and <em>Vos estis <\/em>have created new canonical crimes and mechanisms for investigating and punishing Church officials who mishandle abuse cases or are negligent in their duties, the application of these laws has been widely criticized as inconsistent and asymmetrical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And, despite other papal reforms aimed at bringing new transparency to how the Church deals with officials alleged to have been negligent in handling accusations of abuse, it remains rare for Church authorities to acknowledge investigations, or make public their findings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This, advocates have repeatedly said, makes it hard to assess their effectiveness, and continues to prevent public, personal accountability being taken by those found to have acted badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even supposedly landmark attempts to engage with past failures have appeared to shy away from personal accountability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps most famously, the 2020 Vatican report on institutional knowledge and decision making regarding allegations against Theodore McCarrick managed to detail nearly 500 pages of what was known and reported when about the disgraced former cardinal, without assigning personal responsibility to any bishops, cardinals, or Church officials for facilitating McCarrick\u2019s career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cNow is the time to repair the damage done to previous generations and to those who continue to suffer,\u201d Pope Francis exhorted the members of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, to many watching the Church\u2019s reforming efforts, the pope\u2019s exhortation raises questions about who, exactly, did the damage in the first place, and who, personally, is to take responsibility for repairing it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The commission itself has a brief to develop and promote best practice on safeguarding for the global Church. But in the decade since Francis created the body, several of its most prominent members have resigned in public frustration with what they see as a lack of coherence to its work, authority to do its job, impact by its efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the commission\u2019s more prominent members and leadership have repeatedly stressed the watchwords of accountability and transparency, it is hard to cite examples of bishops embracing the call to publicly account for their own missteps, or to assume personal responsibility for ensuring institutional reforms bear fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pillarcatholic.com\/p\/pope-francis-accepts-resignation\">Ironically, the bishop who has most notably attempted to do both is the German Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, formerly head of the Diocese of Osnabr\u00fcck.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following an independent report last year, which found the bishop responsible for the mishandling of abuse cases, Bode initially insisted that while he might have been personally responsible for decades of negligence, he would not resign because he believed only he could repair the scandal he had caused in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perception of Bode\u2019s true motives for seeking to remain in office were clouded by his prominent role in the German synodal process, and his position as deputy chairman of the local bishops conference. But the whole affair was given the aspect of farce when the diocese initially implied that he had the backing of Fr. Hans Zollner, then the most visible member of the PCPM \u2014 which they were later obliged to clarify he did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bode\u2019s resignation was eventually \u201caccepted\u201d by Pope Francis in March, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pillarcatholic.com\/p\/world-war-z-zollners-resignation\">just days before Zollner himself announced he was \u201cpublicly disassociating\u201d himself from the commission and its work, and offered a stinging criticism of the PCPM\u2019s work \u201cparticularly in the areas of responsibility, compliance, accountability, and transparency.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since then, the commission has pressed ahead with its work. Archbishops like Lori have continued to offer apologies on behalf of the institutions they lead, and former officials like Bishop Malooly have remained silent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pope Francis hailed Friday \u201ca new springtime\u201d of reform, \u201cmade fruitful by the work and tears we share with those who have suffered.\u201d But, for many watching the Church\u2019s reforming efforts, efforts to move forward remain hampered by a distinctly impersonal engagement with the past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Pope Francis last week addressed the plenary gathering of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, declaring that \u201cnow is the time to repair the damage done to previous generations.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/press.vatican.va\/content\/salastampa\/en\/bollettino\/pubblico\/2023\/05\/05\/230505a.html\">Speaking to the commission\u2019s members in the Vatican on May 5<\/a>, Pope Francis said that clerical sexual abuse \u201cand its poor handling by Church leaders\u201d has been one of the \u201cgreatest challenges for the Church in our time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, while the pope called for a \u201cspirituality of reparation\u201d as the Church continues to reckon with past \u201csins of omission,\u201d efforts to move on from the crisis of abuse have to reckon with the fact that decades of scandals are not all the fault of \u201cprevious generations.\u201d Rhetorically, many Church leaders remain some distance away from the pope\u2019s vision of personal sacrifice for atonement, preferring the language of institutional responsibility and apology by proxy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMending the torn fabric of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"acf":{"source_link":"https:\/\/www.pillarcatholic.com\/p\/episcopal-accountability-and-the?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email","publisher":[{"ID":219515,"post_author":"5","post_date":"2021-03-05 10:34:25","post_date_gmt":"2021-03-05 15:34:25","post_content":"","post_title":"The Pillar [Washington DC]","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"the-pillar","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-06-03 13:22:10","post_modified_gmt":"2021-06-03 17:22:10","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/?post_type=publisher&p=219515","menu_order":0,"post_type":"publisher","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"source_location":{"address":"Vatican City","lat":41.902916,"lng":12.453389,"zoom":14,"place_id":"ChIJPS3UVwqJJRMRsH46sppPCQA","name":"Vatican City","city":"Vatican City","post_code":"00120","country":"Vatican City","country_short":"VA"},"source_date":"20230508","author":"Ed. Condon","related_accused":"","publish_sources":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279926,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279924\/revisions\/279926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bishop-accountability.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}