“God weeps for the sexual abuse of children,” Francis said when he was in Philadelphia, after meeting with hundreds of bishops and seminarians as well as privately with victims of clergy sexual abuse. “I am overwhelmed by the shame that people who were in charge of caring for those young ones raped them and caused them great damages.”
“Humbly, we owe each of them our gratitude for their value as they have had to suffer terrible abuse,” Francis said. He had previously met with victims 15 months into his papacy at the Vatican, but has largely avoided the issue, to the consternation and unhappiness of survivors. In remarks to bishops and clergy in the U.S. that fueled the indignation, he told them they had “suffered greatly in the not distant past by having to bear the shame of some of your brothers who harmed and scandalized the Church in the most vulnerable of her members.”
The Catholic Church has come under severe scrutiny and criticism as the scandal of sexual abuse by members of the clergy continues to roil the institution. In 2015, Pope Francis has already had to accept the resignations of three American bishops while a Pennsylvania priest was found guilty in Sept of sexually abusing three boys at a Honduran orphanage.
The numbers behind the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal are only climbing as more victims come forward.
3,400 sexual abuse cases
That’s how many credible cases of abuse had been referred to the Vatican from 2004 to 2014, according to the Vatican’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi. There were an estimated 410,000 Catholic priests around the world in 2014, the Catholic News Service reported.
2,572 priests sentenced to a lifetime of penance
Another 848 over the last decade had been defrocked, according to Tomasi. The others were sentenced to penance and other mild religious sentences.
Pope Benedict XVI defrocked 384 priests in 2 years
Majority of priests’ victims were male
American Catholic priests were shown to have a distinct pattern of sexual abuse, with 64 percent of all allegations of abuse made against a priest by a male only, according to a detailed report by the John Jay Institute investigating child abuse in the Catholic Church from 1950 to 2002. Those males were young: more than 85 percent of them were 8 to 10 years old.
$150,747,387
That’s how much the Catholic Church in the U.S. spent between July 2013 and June 2014 on costs “related to child protection efforts and to allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors…” according to an annual survey by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA).
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Marie Collins said the Curia has shown 'great resistance' to proposals made by the the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors
The Curia is blocking improvements in the handling of abuse cases, according to a member of the Vatican’s Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Marie Collins, who was abused when she was 13 by the chaplain at Dublin’s Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin in 1960, has been a member of the abuse commission for two years.
In an interview with the Irish Times, she has expressed her frustration that little is being done by the Curia to push through proposals made by the commission, despite Pope Francis’s support for action.
A Vatican tribunal was set up last year to hold bishops to account on the handling of abuse cases, but Collins says it’s implementation has been slow to materialise.
“We as a commission put forward the proposal. It went to the Council of Cardinals, they approved it. It went forward to the Pope. He approved it. It was announced in the press, then it went to be implemented and that’s where the brick wall is. The implementation is the problem,” Collins said.
At the commission’s very first meeting in 2014 she proposed “that we should develop a training module on child protection and on abuse” so “every new bishop coming through would have some training in the issue and how to handle it and some understanding. That way every new bishop in the world who is appointed from now on would have a good understanding, and that we would work on this training and develop it.”
Later in the year this was “approved by the Holy Father and he actually suggested it be expanded to [include] the Curia as well as the new bishops.” But within the Curia “there was great resistance to it”, she said, adding that it has “become apparent that there are those in the Curia who feel that the commission becoming involved is almost an interference with the work as it has always been done”.
Collins said she was “horrified, absolutely horrified” to hear last week that current Vatican training guidelines for new bishops said it was not necessarily the duty of a bishop to immediately report child clerical abuse suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors.
“It couldn’t be further from best practice if you tried to. It’s the moral duty of any Church leader to report,” she added.
She also told the Irish Times: “I’m personally frustrated with the lack of co-operation from the Curia and the fact it can be so detrimental to the work of the commission and the protection of children in the future. That’s where the focus should be.”
She said she had “made my concerns known to the Pope, very recently. I am waiting to see what comes of it”
The only way it will ever change is to starve them out by not giving money and also repeated litigation.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
DeleteThese men refuse to learn, so they must be taught.
The laity have enormous power (their wealth) to bring these men to heel; we should withhold financial contributions to the Church until they accept that their arrogance will no longer be tolerated.
Anon: your post goes to the heart of potential change. It's an excellant suggestion, and one I've long believed as the only way to catalyse change.
DeleteAnd at a local level, beneficial change will only take place when the subservient faithful simply stop all and every RC church contributions from an understanding and realisation of how the clerical arrogance of the RC church has simply taken their financial support for granted and abused control of priestly functions, church burial, marriage baptism etc in furtherance of financial support.
I would also very much like to see such local cessation of financial support here in the Mourne area where the "parish" (ie the local RC church), when an RC junior school site became redundant (a site originally donated free 'for the benefit of the people') by the building of a larger school elsewhere, made a verbal agreement to sell the site to local council for a much needed leisure/swimming pool centre. Before that could be formalised legally the "parish" reneaged and despite continuing concerns, meetings, newspaper letters etc seeking clarifications over past two years the "parish" continues to say absolutely nothing despite all local rumours that the "church" is just holding out to sell to highest bidder, thought to be Lidl supermarket. I've discussed with many church going RC parishoners and find them disgusted and ashamed of their clergy but powerless.
MMM
Well, thank you. It's a method that works with absolutely everyone. Of course there will always be a hard core of the pious who would be frightened of the divine graces forfeited by not paying mass stipends, etc, but heigh ho.
DeleteFor the record: I've always found Lidl very well run, the staff courteous and eager to sort things if there is a problem. You are better off with a local Lidl than a parish church!
That local matter you mentioned, MMM, is a microcosm of what is happening in the wider church in terms of clerical arrogance.
Delete2000 years ago, Jesus told his disciples that they were to be servants, not masters. I guess he's still waiting for them to catch on and catch up.
A very worrying development; the Vatican Curia is still hiding from the truth about the scale and causes of the Clerical Child abuse crisis ! The Curia it appears do not want to be accountable to anyone.
ReplyDeletePope Francis needs to use some of that "full universal power" at his disposal, to bring the Curia into line.
D&C Cleric.
If the loyalist leaning section of the Northern Ireland population want to see the true manifestation of some of their aincient maxims they need look no further than the attitude and stance of the RC hierarchy when it comes to the cooperation and investigation of the whole child abuse issue. Not an inch,whah we have we hold and no surrender.
ReplyDeleteMMM's post is very interesting. When I was young my late father who had by that stage ( based on a series of events he had witnessed) stopped going to mass and held the clergy in complete contempt would often warn us to be very careful when entering the chapel doors in case we tripped over the parishioners brains.
ReplyDeleteHe used to rile my mother by imitating the priest saying "Now youse lot leave your brains at the door, give us boys your pounds and you'll do as we tell ye all. We'll tell you what to eat and when ( Lenten fast,fish on Friday) when to work and not( servile work on a Sunday) and even though us ones aren't married or parents we'll tell you what to do and what not to do in the bedroom and how many weans to have. And you brainless twats will sit there and listen,won't ye?" And my dad would answer himself back mockingly saying " Of course we will Father. We'll be thick enough and stupid enough to let you boys live the life of Reilly on our hard earned pounds and abuse our weans and your bosses cover it all up"
My mother gave off blue hell to him. Many years after my dad had died my mum said to me one evening " You know the more I look back now the more I realise your dad was right"
I wonder how many houses in the the Kilkeel area are having those conversations now?
Thank you Anon at 18:26 and 19:06 for your supportive comments. Anon's father at 19:06 was very prescient at a time before all the current levels of revelation and knowledge of the complete lack of integrity within much of the RC establshment.
DeleteSome courageous RC clerics, like +Pat, have recognised the discordance between typical RC church practices and the fundamental tenants and message of Christianity, and have exited the hypocritical self serving constrictions of orthodox R Catholicism.
But I suspect many others feel trapped: as laity "dependent" on continuing subservience to mainstream orthodoxy, ...."shut up and pay up", or else, .... Or as clerics: "toe the line or walk it, .......", ....to what future, ... without job, role, or financial support?
MMM
A second investigation into Cardinal George Pell, for alleged abuse allegations of boys has begun in Australia. The Cardinal is now based in Rome, but the allegations concern his ministry in Australia, both as a Priest and an Archbishop.
ReplyDeleteHe visited Belfast some years ago and stayed with Bishop Walsh in Lisbreen.
He is a member of 'C8' a special group of 8 Cardinals who advise Pope Francis.
LUX.
I read this blog often. Quite often I feel angry at some of the posts and other times I laugh. Underlying all this I believe the church in Ireland today has a serious problem.
ReplyDeleteFirstly,I should say that both my wife a I are Catholics and go to Mass on Sunday. We have four children, two boys and two girls all now in their 20's. Despite the example of their parents none of our children attend Mass. Two of them married in civil ceremonies in hotels. The other two live with their partners and children.
Both their mother and I have asked many times why they have turned away from the church. Their answers vary from the church not being relevant to their lives, freedom to think for themselves in moral matters right through to their perceived hypocrisy of clergy and of course the abuse business.
Ours is but one decent normal family. There must be many other families like ourselves. I think the church has difficult days ahead. This is not meant to be critical but an example how one family's attitude to the church can change in one generation.
Catholic father from Glengormley
Dear Catholic Father from Glengormley,
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain and your frustration, that the faith which is dear to you and your wife, has become almost irrelevant to your adult children. This is an issue that is shared by many thousands of families on this island.
There are many strands to consider in this matter, but I will limit myself to a few of the most important points.
Firstly, in my ministry as a Priest I have met very few people, young or old, who have rejected God outright.
In most cases they had rejected a religious system which failed to draw them into a loving relationship with God, and this a very different thing. When we truly love a person we cannot walk away from them. Love draws us day by day, moment by moment, closer to the beloved.
We cannot fall in love with a system, religious or otherwise.
The Catholic Church has got a crucial aspect of faith the wrong way round ; worship is a response to the love of God within us, it does NOT create this love, for faith is a gift of God given to those who in heart, soul and mind long for it. The sacraments cannot place this love of God within us, but rather they help to foster it.
Worship comes from the active love of God within us; it is our loving response. We as Catholics have been taught that merely 'allowing' the sacraments to 'brush up' against our souls will ensure that we enter into a life -giving friendship with God. Obviously this is untrue, because so few people if any become lovers of God in this way. Prayer is the key to faith, and so few people actually pray, with the result that there is little or no spiritual growth in their lives.
Prayer invites God into our lives, and only if we do that on a regular basis can he place his love within us.It is this love, that will draw us to truly worship him (not just physically attend); nothing else can do it.
The second point I want to make is that as Catholics we must be mature enough to recognise that Priests cannot replace God, they are signposts to God, and we cannot hand over the adult responsibility for our spiritual growth to any Priest, no matter how holy they are. As Catholics we all have to grow up.
Thirdly, we as Priests are often functionaries, rather than men deeply in love with God,and so often we turn people off faith.
Gently encourage your grown up adult children to accept a responsibility for their own spiritual growth, and to resist the temptation to blame others for their situation. Blame encourages inaction which is never a good thing.
Prayer to the Holy Spirit, to make alive within each of us, a love for God the Father, is the antidote to despair. God is the active one, our role is to create the space by prayer to allow this to happen; faith and love are imparted to us by God as free gifts to those in heart and mind who desire them.
I will pray for you and your family.
Sincerely, a Priest of Down & Connor.
An excellent response.
DeleteA beautiful response from a true priest.
DeleteDear Father @ 18:04: Your obvious sincerity and generosity has made me hesitate some time before this reply. Please take it as made with sincerity, not to criticise your personal integrity or beliefs, but to provide another perpective.
DeleteYou say you have met very few who have rejected God outright. Given your sincerity,clerical position and likely milieu that's hardly surprising. Few of the individuals you encounter are likely to invite potential disapproval by being open with you about their belief of the irrelevance of god and religion to their lives. Polite deference and avoidance is the more likely scenario.
While you may believe some have simply rejected a disfunctional RC church system, surely a reasonable analysis would question to what extent there is consistent or substantial evidence that they have moved elsewhere to a more coherent or convincing alternative deist religious belief system? Not many, I suspect.
On this matter some research is instructive. in Wikipedia, the Irish Census of 2011 gives that 7.6% of the population had no religion or did not indicate any religious belief. Between the 2006 and the latter census the number of declared atheists increased by 320%, and there was an increase of 44.8% indicating they had no religious beliefs.
Statisticians will dispute figures, but the underlying trend is obvious, and I suspect the figures indicate both more open affirmation of non belief, and its increasing growth.
With respect to your reliance on prayer, would it be reasonable to question the rationale of non believers reverting to childhood rituals of quasi superstitious repetitive mantras? Would this be in the hope of awakening a dormant childhood faith belief, .....or perhaps to kindle a pychological self delusion arising from emotional need? This could equally apply to both the contemplative and articulated forms of prayer.
Father, we may have diametrically opposed perspectives and beliefs, and you may be absolutely convinced of yours, and you have my respect for this. However I can never be absolutely convinced of mine.
That is because I recognise that there is no absolute proof for either of our views. So I am obliged, as a rational humanist to remain always open to having my own beliefs challenged and possibly changed by some rational arguement and evidence.
But so far, I haven't found anything to change my views, but rather the reverse.
MMM
From what we hear about down and Connor clergy on this blog, that response was a heartening message to read. That's one with his feet on the ground. Thank u
ReplyDelete