Cover-ups at the top?

Catholics will have been dismayed to read news reports which suggest that the cover-up of sexual abuse by priests goes as high up as to the Holy Father himself.

Earlier this month, The Independent newspaper of London reported that according to a letter uncovered in Boston, the epicentre of the sex abuse scandal in the United States, Pope John Paul himself instructed the archdiocese in 1999 that a priest convicted of paedophilia should move to a new parish where “his previous condition” was not known unless his presence in the parish where the abuse took place caused “no scandal”.

The document was made public by court order. By the time of going to press, the Vatican had not reacted to the report.

It is likely that the letter was not written or signed by Pope John Paul himself the pontiff is usually not concerned with the day-to-day administration of the Catholic Church. Moreover, the details of the circumstances relating to the letter are sketchy.

However, if it should be the case that a letter sent by the pope, or on his behalf, proposed that parishioners be put deliberately at risk from a sexual predator, then the scandal will have reached the upper-most echelons of the hierarchy.

Indeed, such a letter would suggest that the culture of cover-ups of clergy abuses may indeed have been Vatican policy.

A day after The Independent article appeared, ABCNews reported that a “close ally” of the pope, veteran youth leader Fr Marcial Maciel, had been accused of sexually abusing minors, and that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s doctrinal chief, had blocked a Church hearing on the allegations.

Shortly after the Vatican was presented with the abuse allegations, Fr Maciel was appointed to represent the pope in a meeting of Latin American bishops’ an assignment that amounts to a vote of confidence for the priest, and an obvious dismissal of the allegations which the Vatican failed to investigate.

The priest has denied the accusation, and Cardinal Ratzinger has declined to comment.

It must be stressed that at this point neither report confirms the Vatican’s liability in the cover-ups of clergy abuse.

However, should it emerge that the scandal of cover-ups does reach right to the top, even to the pope, then the Catholic Church will face a crisis comparable to that of the Reformation (if it does not do so already).

It is inevitable that the scandal seen by many as a betrayal of confidence on part of the hierarchy and some priests will result in some form of reconfiguration of the way laity, clergy and hierarchy interact. Conceivably, the patterns of authority within the Church will never be quite the same again, with the laity expecting a greater influence in the way the Church is run.

Church structures have a habit of changing. Today’s Church is barely recognisable in its organisation from the early Church, when the people elected their bishops.

What does not change is the salvific nature of the Church, the eternal indwelling of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the real presence of our Lord in the Eucharist and everything else that defines us as Catholics.