Listen: Talk Of Renewal, But Few Decisions In Pope’s Irish Clergy Summit

From the article, “Irish Bishops Face the Music in Rome,” (02/16/10) which appeared in The Guardian and may be found at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/feb/16/irish-bishops-rome-abuse?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments

“There are two schools of thought about Pope Benedict and the child sex abuse that has disgraced the Roman Catholic church for decades. One view is that he connived in the ostrich-like policy of his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. The other is that he had no option but to go along with that policy (the Vatican being, after all, an absolute monarchy).”

Has nothing been learned from the history of the last century? Going along with such an heinous policy goes against everything the Church stands for.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger most certainly did have an option other than going along with such a horrific policy.

He could have and probably should have resigned. He could have done it in writing and in detail. Did he not have the same level of moral outrage at what he must have known in his position as head of the Holy Office as he professes to have now?

No, following orders just doesn’t excuse such a lack of moral outrage and indignation at the sexual, physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse of so many innocent children, young people and vulnerable adults around the world. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he could have quoted from The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to which the Holy See was an early signatory.

It would be well worth reading the entire Convention, which can be found at:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm

It would be well to also read The Holy See and the Convention on the Rights of the Child: A Shadow Report, published in 2002 which may be found at:

http://cath4choice.org/topics/other/documents/2002rightsofthechildshadowreport.pdf

While the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has its own variation of child abuse perpetrated by clergy and religious, the underlying causes are much the same in Ireland as they are in the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, along with other countries in Europe and Africa.

The problem was and really continues to be the unbridled abuse of power and authority by an episcopacy that put what was the good name of an institution before the well being of its most vulnerable members.

Until or unless Joesph Ratzinger now as Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges and addresses the governmental structures and policies that led to this terrible abuse of power by the bishops and other church authorities, there will be no amount of words of sympathy or shock that will assuage what those victim/survivors have suffered at the hands of abusers while others have suffered at what they have learned about the criminal and immoral actions of the episcopacy.

The cover-up of the physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse of children did not happen in a vacuum in Ireland any more than than it happened in a vacuum in the United States, Canada or Australia.

The abuse happened. That’s factual and cannot be disputed. In the United States, for example, it wasn’t caused by the permissive attitude of the people in New England, it could not be dismissed as an American problem nor it was not caused by the presence of homosexuals in the priesthood.

Rather the question should be what is wrong with the underlying governmental structures of the institutional Roman Catholic Church that apparently gave bishops license to act with such utter abandon of its most vulnerable members in countries worldwide? What flaws in the fabric of the church contributed to the bishops actually enabling further abuse by transferring priests from place to place over many years while threatening and intimidating victims and their families? What allowed this conspiracy, this collusion to happen in country after country?

There should be some outline for a plan of reform and renewal included in the pope’s expected pastoral letter to the People of God in Ireland. Such a letter from the pope will be read very carefully by peoples around the world who expected something more substantive than just the words of sympathy and concern they received when the pope visited their countries, especially the United States where not one bishop was removed from office or criminally prosecuted because of his part in covering up for abusive clerics and enabling their continued abuse over long periods of time.

The People of God expect much more than they have received thus far.

Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware, USA
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com