Holding onto a shadow
Der Spiegel takes a hard look at the Vatican’s secretive ways with abusive employees.
According to the instructions from Rome, the bishops were to deal very firmly with each individual case — so firmly, in fact, that everything would remain within the confines of the Holy Church…On the surface, the Vatican’s objective is to protect the sacrament of the confession. In reality, however, it is trying to uphold the Catholic Church’s claim to being a superior moral authority. Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests worldwide…
And there you have it – the Catholic church’s total moral failure, in a nutshell. The failure is total because if the Church actually had any superior moral authority it would instantly realize – it would be aware without even having to pause to realize – that this attempt was an effort to square the circle – was an exercise in meaninglessness. An organization cannot perpetrate gross harms on vulnerable people and then try to uphold its claim to being a superior moral authority by failing to prevent further such gross harms. It’s like trying to have your cake after you’ve eaten it by clinging like grim death to the empty plate. It can’t be done – it’s too late.
But the Church failed to realize that, thus revealing itself to be morally bankrupt, and actively assisting its employees to go on harming people. Secrecy about crimes against people have exactly that effect, and the Church cannot be such a moral imbecile that it is not aware of that fact. The result is that all it upheld is a façade of superior moral authority, behind which lurks suppurating moral rot of the most sinister kind. All it upheld is a glittering shell decorating a gang of child-abusers and their aiders and abettors.
Parts of this multiple parts article are very hard going. It’s simply astonishing how inventively destructive the abuse was. To think of it then being hidden, and the perpetrators protected, and nothing whatever being done to deal with the root causes of the abuse is simply mind-boggling.
And this is the organisation that opposes equality legislation! You can readily see why. When I first read your last sentence – “All it upheld is a glittering shell decorating a gang of child-abusers and their aiders and abettors, – I read the word ‘abbatoirs’, and there is a certain justice in that. Children were just animals to these ‘holy’ men to be used in unspeakable ways. It’s enough to put you off your nosebag.
However, to continue to fail to place some of the blame on the institution itself, and its traditions and structure, an institution that proposes the priesthood as a sacred vocation, and then makes it certain that sexual repression will inevitably take its toll, and then hides the abuse when it happens … while exacting respect by false claims – it’s too much to take in. Surely the turkeys in the Vatican must have noticed how widespread this is, how deeply embedded it is in church practice. How dare they stand up as a beacon of holiness and moral rectitude to the world? How dare they?
To the surprise of no one (at least anybody amenable to evidence based reasoning), the spatial extent of rcc abuse of children widens. I’m waiting for similar evidence to be uncovered showing that this has been a problem for as long as the church has wielded power.
This did not start in the 1950s. It has been going on at least as long as the rcc has imposed celibacy on it’s clergy, and probably has it’s roots in the rccs attempt to sidestep primogeniture and retain church assets, dating back to the council of Elvira (306AD), reaffirmed by Pope Benedict VIII in 1018AD and became doctrine at the Council of Trent in 1563AD, pretty much unchanged to this day.
First America, then Ireland, now Germany. The question at this point should probably be, are there any countries where there isn’t a major Catholic sex-abuse scandal? Probability alone would dictate that prosecutors in France, in Italy, in Spain, etc., all ought to start looking into this – it seems all but certain that they’ll find something.
And Mexico, Honduras, Colmbia, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, etc etc……
And DR Congo, the Philippines, Angola, Mozmabique, etc etc…….
Are we likely to hear about clerical child abuse in countries where there’s no great tradition of press freedom, and the clergy wield great political influence?
Silly question…
It’s amazing that places like England Scotland and Northern Ireland have remained relatively quiet on this serious child abuse debacle.
Elements from the latter, I know, have been crying out to the south of Ireland for a long time now. Their voices, thus far, have unfortunately gone on deaf ears, naturally because it comes under the jurisdiction of GB.
The GB government has of late, so much nastiness to deal in with respect of its own fees scandal — that it surely to goodness does not even want to contemplate on the Ryan/Laffoy report.
Perhaps, also, it could be, that it is utterly afraid of the repercussions that may also result, in its neck of the woods, if the Pandora’s box were to be suddenly opened.
With respect of Germany and child abuse. There has been a person on the website for a terribly long time, crying out about abuse of children in a Kinderheim he had the misfortune to have been reared. I sincerely hope that all those who suffered abuse there will now be recognised by the German government.
Stephen Fry denounced the Church beautifully very recently. Available streaming here:
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/02/08/stephen-fry-v-the-catholic-church
Very beautifully, very eloquently, so truly. Thank you, Jenavir.