From the editor's desk > The child is more important than the church
The Tablet 

19 September 2018

The child is more important than the church

Clerical abuse

The British home secretary, Sajid Javid, has warned that at least 80,000 individuals are known to the authorities to constitute a risk to children. The alarming truth appears to be that sexual abuse is sweeping the country, though it is uncertain whether this is anything new, or unique to Britain. Such figures put into context the Catholic Church’s present crisis over clerical child abuse, reinforced by almost daily disclosures of failures to prevent it in another province of the global Church.

The focus of anger with the Church is often not on the abuse itself but on those in authority who could and should have stopped it happening. Instead, many of them protected the perpetrators from prosecution. The evidence appears to be growing that the incidence of child abuse in the Church peaked some 20 or 30 years ago and has since declined. If this is the case, it is not a cause for complacency. The effects of abuse can be devastating, and last a lifetime.

Many of those who engaged in the cover-ups, whether from ill will, ignorance or negligence, are still around – and have still not been brought to account. And as more and more of the facts come to light, the fury and resentment towards them is growing. Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster, in his remarkable Poznan homily, reported in The Tablet today, faced up to this in a way few other bishops have so far been able to. But the anger is breaking through whether they like it or not. Are we seeing the cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit at work in this?

While recognising that other organisations have also put the protection of their reputations above child safety, this dogged institutional obstruction of justice by and in the Catholic Church is what most distinguishes it from child abuse in society in general. The desire to protect the Church from scandal at all costs – even at the price of deliberately ignoring evidence that would have protected children from abuse – has led it into this catastrophe.

Pope Francis has diagnosed the root of the problem as “clericalism”, but has so far not offered remedies apart from a general call for cultural change. Institutional reforms such as independent, lay-led safeguarding commissions – which were pioneered in England and Wales – are an essential part of the solution. But when they collide with endemic clericalism, the outcome is messy and the job not done properly. This is as true in the Vatican as elsewhere.

This issue may dominate the special meeting the Pope has called for next spring, for presidents of national bishops’ conferences. Clericalism remains a somewhat blurry concept. It needs sharper definition and more radical action to counter it. The broader question, why did something like 5 per cent of Catholic priests become child abusers, may be more closely related to sexual abuse in the wider secular world. It suggests that various factors have contributed to a collapse of sexual boundaries.

This connects the issue to the current “MeToo” outcry about the abuse of women in politics, entertainment and elsewhere. Does it stem from a distorted masculine sense of sexual entitlement? If so, how did that arise? Why were so many celibate priests corrupted by it? And what made so many bishops – who were ordained to exercise episcope, a ministry of oversight – blind to the evil in front of them?