Abuse: Church is serious

The Vatican’s new instructions to the world’s bishops’ conferences must be welcomed as another concrete signal that the Church is serious about addressing the incidence of clerical sexual abuse, in terms of prevention and of action when allegations are made.

In particular, the Vatican’s guideline that people making accusations against a priest should be treated with respect and be offered “spiritual and psychological assistance” underlines a growing empathy with the survivors of abuse—a quality that was not always evident in the past.

It is remarkable that there should be a need for the Vatican to issue an instruction to bishops’ conferences to set up a protocol to deal with allegation of abuse and to set out preventative measures. Surely the distressing experiences of the Church in the United States, Ireland, England, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and elsewhere should have motivated bishops’ conferences that do not have a protocol in place to address that deficiency.

The Vatican instruction has been criticised for not making these protocols binding on individual dioceses. However, caution needs to be exercised not to compromise the authority of diocesan bishops.

There seems to be a confidence in the Vatican that diocesan bishops will feel ethically obliged to follow the guidelines set out in their regional conference. That may be so, but it is not clear what provisions are made in cases where a bishop might use his discretion to obstruct or manipulate the protocol of dealing with an allegation of abuse.

There is much commendable in the Vatican’s determination to act on clerical abuse. In that light, the inclusion of the Catholic Church in Amnesty International’s annual report on human rights’ concerns (on which we report this week) would appear gratuitous, even if the status of the Vatican’s position on mandatory reporting remains too ambiguous.

Only a policy that is uniform, transparent and accountable will put to rest questions about the Church’s unequivocal commitment to rid itself of clerical sexual abuse.

In just a few years, the Church has made great progress in addressing issues related to clerical abuse and in the way it regards the survivors of abuse. Pope Benedict deserves much credit for this. Far from being the subject of a slander—that he presided over a most grievous scandal—Pope Benedict must be praised for seeking to correct, with much humility, the terrible failures of the past.

But that correction is a process. There is much still to be done, tested and learned.

In that respect, the independent research by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which has been commissioned by the US bishops, is particularly useful, in as far as the results can be extrapolated to other regions.

The latest report, issued on May 18 and titled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010”, overturns several misconceptions.

The report reveals that the Church’s discipline of mandatory clerical celibacy has had no effect on the incidence of abuse in the United States—and Catholic priests may even be less disposed towards abuse than men in corresponding professions.

The report also makes it clear that homosexuality was not a statistical factor in abuse. In fact, the report notes that the increase in the number of gay priests from the late 1970s corresponded with “a decreased incidence of abuse”.

In a particularly significant passage, the report suggests that the stress, isolation and lack of supervision in priests’ lives were factors that contributed to “deviant behaviour”. The researchers proposed greater involvement by the laity to relieve the scope of responsibilities borne by priests.

Having learnt from experience and with new insights being acquired, we may be confident that over time the Church will heal from a painful chapter in its history.

However, the Church must guard against complacency. We must take to heart the advice given last week by Bishop Blase Cupich, chairman of the US bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People: “There is no room for fatigue or feeling that people have heard enough when it comes to efforts to protect children.”