December Issue
Rebecca Canton
For centuries, people around the globe have regarded the Catholic Church as an institution offering sanctuary, a place of rest and protection, evident in passages like Proverbs 18:10, ‘the name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.’ Christian children are taught religion is dependable as a source of guidance and truth, myself included. Yet, such promises do not tend to reflect current realities. The revelations of widespread abuse in the Church create a shadow over these ideals. The Church and its confessional, once considered a place for repentance and reflection, have become symbolic of secrecy and cover-up.
I am a Christian, I believe in God, I believe in the Bible. Do I believe in the systemic abuse of children and vulnerable adults by priests and clergy members? Rather obviously not. I’m a Christian, not devilish. So then, why has this happened? Why have, since 1950, around 216,000 children in France been sexually abused by clergy members? 216,000 childhoods were destroyed in France alone, by people they were taught to trust. I’ve read the Bible and nowhere does it state ‘Thou shalt not refrain from assault,’ not one passage, phrase, nor implication suggests this is the Christian doctrine, that this is acceptable. Yet, until recently, they have gotten away with it. Protected by religion, protected by hierarchy, protected by institutions, such cycles of physical, sexual and mental abuse have been perpetuated throughout the Church for decades.
The first time I heard of anything remotely related to abuse within the Church was in 2013. In my home country, the United Kingdom, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, who was the Archbishop of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, resigned after revelations that he had engaged in predatory sexual relations with priests and seminarians in an abuse of power. I was eight and had just started religious studies. I remember my mother, who is a Protestant and my father, who is a Catholic, discussing this ‘scandal,’ but I did not think much of it. At the same time, I learned a phrase that rang particularly true, ‘a tree with a rotten core cannot stand.’ This metaphor resonates with the Church, with allegations of decades of abuse threatening the foundation of its institutions.
It was in the 1980s that revelations of Catholic Church abuse first came to light, with allegations of decades of abuse. And that is just the modern Church. As early as the 11th century, abuse has been reported within the Church, notably when Peter Damian, an Italian Benedictine monk wrote ‘Liber Gomorrhianus,’ which condemns priests having sexual relations with young boys. Now, since the 1980s, the Church has been hit with ‘scandal’ after ‘scandal.’ It only takes a quick search for ‘Catholic Church abuse’, for thousands of articles to emerge, from a multitude of countries. August 2005, Bell River, Ontario, Canada. Father Charles Henry Sylvestre pleads guilty to 47 counts of sexual abuse between 1952 and 1989. His victims? Girls aged nine to fourteen. August 2020, Germany. 1,412 people accuse at least 654 monks, nuns and other clergy members of abuse. 2017, Australia. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse finds that out of the 201 Catholic Churchs, 46% had allegations of sexual abuse towards minors. What becomes evident is that this is not one event. Not one ‘scandal’ like my parents told me. This abuse transcends borders, age and gender. It is systematic, ingrained within the very structures of the Church.
Perhaps it is unfair to claim this is institutional. After all, not all Catholic priests are sex offenders. Institutions have taken steps, however small, to hold abusers accountable. There have been inquiries into sexual abuse in the Church with a court recently approving a $323 million settlement for abuse victims. Many priests have been forced to resign and in 2005, the ‘Ferns Report,’ an inquiry into allegations of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, led to an apology from the Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowan and a promise to reform the Irish social service system. Such news fills me with hope. Whilst the historical abuse of children and vulnerable adults must not be ignored or neglected, the Bible teaches us to forgive. That hope is crushed when I see another article of another priest abusing another child in another country. That hope is destroyed even further when I read of how the Church has covered up another scandal. The Bible teaches us to forgive, but certain actions are unforgivable. The Church has apologized, but apologies mean nothing without incremental change. Further, are they really sorry, or are they just sorry they got caught?
The most harrowing aspect to these cycles of abuse is that the Church was not unaware—they knew it was happening. So many of the Churches that housed these abusers knew. They knew and they did not care. In many prominent cases from all over the world, it has come to light that information surrounding abuse was intentionally suppressed. Take the 2010 Karadima case in Chile, for example, wherein Fernando Karadima, a Chilean Catholic priest, was accused of sexually abusing boys as early as 1984. Yet when it was found that these accusations were true, the Archbishop of Santiago, Karadima’s superior, took no action. In 2011, the Vatican found Karadima guilty of sexual and psychological abuse and he was forced into retirement and denied practice as a priest under the punishment of a ‘life of prayer and penance.’ Realistically, this was a slap on the wrist, as Karadima had no legal action against him due to the statute of limitations. Another example is from the United States, where on 29 December 2019, it was exposed that multiple bishops had withheld hundreds of names from the accused clergy list. Further, on 6 March 2020, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and ProPublica revealed that the Catholic Church moved more than 50 accused clergy to other countries to avoid consequences for sex abuse. The story varies from country to country, but the patterns that emerge are the same: abuse has effectively been condoned, creating a system where clergy members think they can act without consequences and where victims are discouraged from coming forward.
The hierarchical nature of the Church—characterized by a chain of command, has often led to an environment that leans towards mishandling and concealment of cases regarding sexual abuse. As in such a structure, the clergy and senior officials, the abusers, are protected by layers of secrecy. This system has long protected the reputation of the Church and loyalty over transparency and accountability, as many clergy members have been shunned from Church social circles, not for abuse, but for standing up for the abused. Likewise, it has meant that instead of being imprisoned perpetrators are simply reassigned. With a history of payouts, victims are compelled not to tell their stories.
Further, in most religious communities, going against God is seen as blasphemous. Priests and Clergy members are meant to be his representatives, thus there is shame associated with questioning Church executives. Dissent or accusations towards Church members, especially high-ranking ones, can feel like a betrayal, promoting fear of condemnation or even eternal punishment. It is similar to why people tend not to testify against family members— there is a sense of loyalty. Loyalty not only to the Church, but to God and unless the victim wholly rejects religion, it can be hard for them to escape cycles of abuse. Likewise, it is not uncommon for priests and clergy members to have genuine relationships with their victims, acting as father figures to vulnerable children. For some, the Church becomes their family.
“Seeing him in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, people asked me, ‘Why don’t you hate him? Why don’t you want to hurt him?’ Well, I do. But at the same time, I have some really strong conflicting feelings. It’s not hard to love the man that he was before he did what he did.” ~ Jim VanSickle
The Vatican wishes for a “path of redemption,” which is how the narrative shifts. The very ones inflicting shame on the children they hurt, the ones seen as ‘holy’, now asking, begging, for forgiveness with statements of ‘pain’, of ‘regret’, of ‘institutional failings.’ But it is too late. You can not take back the suffering and erase the harm caused by the hands that touched perniciously.
“Then, the next thing you know, he's reaching over there, touching you. You're asleep, wake up and somebody is touching you. I just remember freezing, frozen, kind of out of body.” ~ Mark Belenchia
The Catholic Church has committed a heinous crime, the crime of failing generations, from Australia to Ireland, Rome to New York. In a way, the Church has failed not just the abused but its followers as a whole. When I think of God and Christianity, I feel loved, but when I think of the Catholic Church and the abuse of children, that emotion is replaced by disgust. These scandals, especially the failure to do anything about it, taints my religion and no amount of holy water can wash away the sins now ingrained in its very foundations.
“I always listened as they said ‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil' but they were bestowing evil upon us at the same time” ~ Alicia Sample
How can believers trust an institution that continuously lies? How can they trust an institution that fails to live by the teachings of the word it claims to follow? How can one believe in the good, in the charity of an institution that causes so much pain? I am not suggesting the Church is inherently flawed, after all I still am a Christian and I still believe in the Church, but there is no denying the wrongdoings of its executive. The question is whether the Church will confront the sin lying in its foundation—for an institution like the Church cannot stand if it hides the rot within.