Has the Catholic Church learned anything?
by Joe Nangle, OFM
As a Catholic priest, I write these lines with a mixture of
shame and anger. I have a profound sense of the need once again
to apologize for the incalculable harm done by my brother priests
who violated their sacred trust with children, adolescents, and
adults and the harm done by several bishops of my church in
failing to deal effectively with those violations.
Two highly publicized and scathing reports on the scandal were
released February 27, 2004, by the bishops’ National Review
Board for the Protection of Children and Young People. In the
aftermath of these reports, two points deserve to be underscored
as our communion continues to deal with the worst crisis
Catholicism has encountered in its history on these shores.
First, it is shortsighted and superficial in the extreme to
pretend that the scandal is behind us. Some in the Catholic
hierarchy have taken to speaking in the past tense about this
whole sordid matter. But we shall confront the awful results of
these wrongdoings for decades to come—especially in the
broken lives that these sins have caused and in our church’s
consequent loss of moral authority.
Our leaders should know this. In a direct and graphic
presentation to the entire Catholic bishops’ conference
gathered in Dallas in 2002 to address the growing storm of
reported clerical abuses, Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea, a
clinical psychologist, laid out the enormous harm done to victims
of those abuses. She walked the bishops through the spiritual,
psychological, emotional, physical, and social traumas inflicted
on children, young people, and adults who, having put their
confidence in a spiritual father, experienced a devastating
betrayal at the hands of that trusted figure. Such traumas will
accompany these betrayed people for years and years to come. No
religious group can quickly or easily "put all that
behind" and pretend once again to occupy some sort of high
moral ground. That would be cheap grace, indeed. We shall have to
earn absolution with a complete metanoia (conversion) over a long
period of time.
THAT LEADS seamlessly to a second crucial point, the quality
of the men admitted to priesthood and of those priests promoted
to the rank of bishop. The former should have to demonstrate much
more clearly than in the past a healthy psycho-sexual development
and a proven capacity to serve faith communities with love and
integrity before they receive approval for priestly ordination.
How such tests of candidates for the Catholic priesthood are to
be devised and implemented stands as one overriding and immediate
task for our seminaries.
Of equal or even more importance is the process for choosing
bishops. Our sad recent history has revealed a type of prelate
whose bottom line seemed to be the welfare of the institution
rather than that of people. In selecting those who would exercise
the office of bishop among us, the deciding criteria seem to have
been safe "company men" with a "circle the
wagons" mentality, rather than independent-thinking pastors
who knew clearly where gospel priorities lie. Those misdirected
and ultimately tragic criteria also require correction at once.
If there is any hopeful side at all to this grim picture, I
find it in the resiliency of our faith communities. It amazes me
to observe in our parishes, schools, and other Catholic
groupings, such as Voice of the Faithful (a lay organization
pressing for much of the reform outlined here), significant
levels of trust and affirmation for "good priests." We
who serve those communities as their clergy owe them an enormous
debt of gratitude.
Joe Nangle, a Franciscan priest, is executive director of
the Franciscan Mission Service in Washington, D.C.
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