Matters Catholic, Including the Sex Abuse Scandal: Recent Commentary

On matters Catholic, and on the ongoing sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church in particular, several good articles in the last day or so:

At National Catholic Reporter, Maureen Fiedler comments on an interview NCR editor Tom Roberts has done for the "Interfaith Voices" initiative of Interfaith Radio.  Roberts is dealing with the recent John Jay study that seeks to blame the 1960s (and not the bishops) for the abuse crisis.  As Fiedler notes (citing Roberts), the study is questionable prima facie, since its data were all supplied by the very people ostensibly being studied--the bishops, who remain the driving force behind the abuse crisis, and the only solution to it in a church that places all institutional power in their hands, and provides no institutional power at all to the laity.

Fiedler writes:  

As Tom points out, the entire study is severely hampered by the fact that it had only the data supplied by the Catholic bishops and their chancery offices. And then, it had data only from cases that were certifiable as sex abuse, not questionable cases.

And in the Kansas City Star, Mike Hunter and David Clohessy comment on the story of Bishop Robert Finn and Father Shawn Ratigan in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, and how Finn's response to recent revelations of his shocking pastoral malfeasance in this case is likely to produce no productive changes at all in his or any other diocese, when it comes to addressing the abuse crisis.  Hunter and Clohessy predict that Finn will issue yet another insincere, misleading apology, will call in a carefully selected (and almost certainly Catholic) outside reviewer who will produce a report with a few hand-slaps and a few image-management recommendations that won't be implemented, will scapegoat an underling if media attention continues to focus on him (Julie Hess, the whistle-blowing principal who wrote the diocese about Ratigan a year ago is a possible scapegoat because she's a woman, or the diocesan vicar Father Murphy, since he's a subordinate), etc.

And nothing will change.  Because the system is set up to thwart change.  All power is in the hands of the bishops, and there are no penalties at all when they protect abusers, endanger children, and lie to the public after they've been found out.  

Hunter and Clohessy comment on this point: 

What then is the real problem? It’s an inherently unaccountable power structure in the church, an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy headed by a bishop who basically answers to no one. Theoretically, of course, bishops answer to the Vatican. But there are some 4,400 bishops across the globe. When was the last time you heard about one of them being disciplined by the Pope? It almost never happens.

There are no “checks and balances” on a bishop’s power. So Finn can make all the pledges he wants regarding child safety. But he could then violate those pledges whenever he particularly likes or needs a troubled priest, or dislikes an accuser or whistle-blower. And he might not suffer any real consequences for such wrongdoing.

Finn’s “changes” likely won’t work because they aren’t “changes” in the real sense of the word. They are public relations maneuvers. They are “tweaks” of a vague, weak, unenforced and unenforcible policy which was also largely created, years ago, by PR folks and defense lawyers for the same reasons and under the same pressure for the same scandal, in an earlier iteration.

And so where can Catholics find any hope for substantial, constructive change?  Hunter and Clohessy think it lies with the criminal justice system:

That’s why we’re desperately hoping police and prosecutors will step up. While our justice system isn’t perfect, it can often unearth the truth in such situations and punish the guilty, thus deterring recklessness, callousness and deceit in the future.

And they're right.  When appeals to pastoral responsibility or moral integrity fail to move ruthless autocrats whose power is unchecked, and who count on doing their dirty work in secret without public scrutiny and with no accountability to the public, all that is left is criminal prosecution.  Endangering innocent children is a crime, and it should be treated as a crime, no matter who is engaged in this behavior.

Finally, a thought-provoking look in NCR at the deeply divided Australian Catholic church by Chris McGillion, who teaches at Charles Stuart University.  McGillion sees "contradictory approaches to being faithful" at the heart of the divisions in the Australian church.  For the top leaders of the church, including Cardinal Pell of Sydney, it's all about "institutional integrity" (obedience, orthodoxy, and conformity).  For large numbers of lay Catholics (and many priests), it's about moral integrity (what the church should be doing for whom and how).

The result of the clash between these two mentalities: the growing disaffection of a huge sector of Australian Catholics, including younger Catholics, in particular.  By 2006, regular Mass attendance was at 14% and falling, with the numbers bolstered primarily by first-generation immigrant Catholics.  Though, as with Benedict's visit to Britain last year, apologists for the John Paul-Benedict model of church have engaged in overblown rhetoric about how the large numbers turning out for expensive papal shows indicate vibrant faith in Australia, the real numbers--the numbers of those continuing to go to church regularly, for instance--indicate precisely the opposite.

And so what's going to happen in yet another national church of the developed sector of the world in which Catholic religious adherence is tanking under the leadership of a pope and bishops in whose hands all authority resides, and who insist, along with their apologists--despite abundant empirical evidence to the contrary--that their "reform of the reform" is working and reviving the church?  McGullion doesn't see much hope.  As he notes, what we're witnessing is the failure of an antiquated model of church that is deliberately stifling the growth of the new, reformed model of Vatican II--as with the recent sacking of Australian bishop William Morris, after he called for dialogue about women's ordination.

And institutions that want to remain alive don't kill what's new and what promises hope.

The graphic shows the highest ranking Australian Catholic cleric at present, Cardinal Pell, modeling the new, vibrant, reform-of-the-reform church.

Kansas City Diocesan Officials Informed a Year Ago about Father Shawn Ratigan: Unfulfilled Promises to Put Children's Safety First

Head over to the website of the Catholic diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, and you'll find a nifty little section linked right to the main page, called "Protecting Children."  Click a link on that sub-section site called "Report from the Bishop," and up pops a smiling photo of Bishop Robert Finn, pom-pom topped biretta in hand, followed by this statement:  

What seems very clear to me in everything we do and every new effort we put in place, is that our heartfelt goal and motive is the care, physical safety and spiritual well-being of our children and young people. This is a commitment we all share. Securing this with God's help makes every effort worthwhile.

But here's the thing: it now turns out that officials of this diocese knew a year ago that Father Shawn Ratigan, who was arrested May 19 for having child pornography on his computer, posed a serious threat to children.  In May 2010, Julie Hess, principal of a Catholic school in the diocese, wrote the diocesan vicar general Msgr. Robert Murphy, to say re: Ratigan,

Parents, staff members, and parishioners are discussing his actions and whether or not he may be a child molester.

Hess hand-delivered her letter.  And it took six months before the diocese began to do anything to address the situation.  Bishop Finn is claiming, in fact, that he was unaware that Ratigan's computer had pornographic images of children on it until this past December.

And so here's what we have--and this is why the people of God remain boiling mad in diocese after diocese throughout the U.S. and other places: we have nice, glitzy, media-driven messages topped by smiling bishops with birettas in their hands, saying, "In everything we do and every new effort we put in place . . . our heartfelt goal and motive is the care, physical safety and spiritual well-being of our children and young people."

And then we have the grim reality: vulnerable children left in the company of priests who pose serious threats to those children for half a year before church officials even begin to address the danger in which those children find themselves.   We have nice promises to put children first.  But in case after case in which children are in danger, we find that it's priests and bishops who count first and foremost.

Not the lay review boards charged to oversee these situations and assure the safety of Catholic children.  In this case, the Kansas City-St. Joseph board was never notified of the Ratigan case.

The laity don't count--not first.  Their vulnerable children don't count.  Not first and foremost.  What counts for the leaders of the Catholic church is themselves.  What counts first and above all for the church's leaders are the members of the clerical elite in whose hands all institutional power resides.

And until that changes, until the unequal distribution of power within the Catholic system of governance is effectively challenged and altered, we'll just continue to read more mind-boggling stories like the Ratigan story.  Or this one now making the news, about a situation in the diocese of Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, one of Pope Benedict's chief advisers re: the abuse crisis.

Background to the Story of Bishop Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph: Previous Bilgrimage Postings

As a follow-up to what I posted yesterday about Bishop Robert Finn's absymal performance as a pastor in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, I thought I'd list previous Bilgrimage postings in which I've blogged about Finn.  These are for the benefit of any readers who might want to have more background re: Finn.  Most of these postings point to additional articles or statements on other blogs about Finn:

"Archbishop Chaput on the Devil's Growing Influence," 29. Jan. 2010

"Tweet for a Rainy Sunday Morning: 'We're Number 37!,'" 13 Sept. 2009

"Nicholas Cafardi on the Republican Captivity of Anti-Obama Bishops," 3 Sept. 2009

"Two Pictures, Two Thousand Words: Bishops Playing Partisan Politics with Human Needs," 2 Sept. 2009

"Notre Dame, Anti-Abortion Extremists, and the Pastoral Failure of the U.S. Catholic Bishops," 16 May 2009

"On Being Catholic Today: Living Amidst Tumbling Walls," 1 May 2009

"Vatican Undercuts Catholics of the Far and Center Right on Obama," 30 April 2009

"Bishop Finn Declares War: The Devil we Know," 29 April 2009

"Weeping in Gethsemane: American Catholic Leaders and Obama's Election," 18 Nov. 2008

"The Bitter End: Bishops' Politicking Continued to Election Day," 4 Nov. 2008

Another Rotten Bishop Story Breaks in Kansas City: All about Power, All about Control

This is a pitiful story.  A hair-tearing one.  And yet, an entirely predictable one--it's one whose contours American Catholics have now come to know with wearying familiarity:

Bishop (in this case, Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph) learns that priest's computer has "many images of female children" on it, including a nude girl.  Bishop does not inform the public or his diocesan review board.  Bishop yanks priest from his current assignment and sends him to a home for nuns (who are, it appears, never informed of the reason for moving the priest about).  In his new assignment, priest continues to have a Facebook account and posts on it using his cell phone.

Bishop does not report the priest's criminal activities to legal or criminal authorities.

Priest gets arrested and story becomes public.  Story of bishop's pastoral malfeasance becomes public.

Bishop issues mendacious apology: "I should have done differently in this regard and I'm sorry."  And: "Don't trust me. Trust our Lord Jesus Christ, trust his church."

And no, none of this happened in 1965 or 1995 or 2002.  It happened this year, years down the road from the initial round of revelations about the abuse crisis, when we American Catholics were promised by our bishops that they intended to get everything under control, intended to clean house, would finally grow a spine and become the pastoral leaders they claim they're called to be.

Far from being a story from the distant past, one we American Catholics can gladly put behind us as we breathe a sigh of relief that the abuse crisis is over and done with, the Kansas City story breaks in the news one day after Karen Terry, the hired gun of the bishops' new John Jay study, informs the public,

"The peak of this abuse crisis is historical. That peak is over."

And so, why?  Why do these events keep happening and happening again?  In my view, any member of the general public or any Catholic concerned to obtain an accurate fix on what's wrong with the Catholic church--on what has led and will continue to lead the pastoral officials of the Catholic church to collude in criminal activity as bishops hide priests sexually abusing minors--need only take a close look at the recent Vatican guidelines for dealing with abuse cases.

Those guidelines shift the burden of resolving the crisis to individual bishops--bishops who, we're asked to believe, function as independent agents in a totally hierarchical, completely top-down system of control that that affords bishops no independence of judgment at all regarding any matters of significance at all.  Bishops whose criminal malfeasance doesn't implicate the Vatican in any shape, form, or fashion, since the bishops act independently of the pope.  So we're asked to believe.

But, as numerous commentators have already noted, buried right in the center of those new Vatican guidelines is the ominous statement,

[C]onsultative bodies of review and discernment concerning individual cases, foreseen in some places, cannot substitute for the discernment and potestas regiminis of individual bishops . . . .

Consultative bodies of review--i.e., the review boards set up by the U.S. bishops in 2002 in dioceses across the U.S.--cannot substitute for the potestas regiminis of bishops.  Lay bodies cannot, will not--not ever--substitute for, trump, interfere with the ruling power of bishops.

Cannot interfere with power.  Cannot interfere with royal prerogative and royal privilege.  The word regiminis is rooted in the word rex, "king."  The bishop enjoys royal, kingly power within the Catholic system of governance.

And lay Catholics had best not forget this.  Because this is, the new Vatican guidelines remind us, ultimately what is all about: it's about power.  It's about our power over you and vs. you.  It's about our power to rule and your obligation to obey.  

It's about our regal status and your non-regal status.  Your non-regal status beneath us.

This kind of thinking has been going on in the Catholic church ever since Constantine made the fateful decision to combine church and state, and ever since (following on the heels of that fateful decision) popes of the post-Constantinean era began jealously to accrue to themselves all the power, glory, and titles of the Roman Emperor, as the empire began to crumble in the early Middle Ages.

Read the work of the fifth-century pope Leo the Great, and you'll encounter the term potestas over and over again.  It's the centerpiece of Leo's thinking about the papacy.  It was the centerpiece of his papal politics, which did everything possible to subjugate the powerful prelatures of Alexandria and Constantinople to Roman authority--to the authority of the new emperor sitting on the papal throne, who had begun to claim the very same power and authority previously claimed by the Roman emperor.  Using the very same terminology--potestas, potestas regiminis--once used by the emperor to describe his unchecked power and his right to subjugate and rule by divine authority.

And so here's the thing about the abuse crisis: all the while, as lay Catholics and the general public have imagined it's about children, about innocent minors susceptible to heinous abuse by adults--as we've assumed it's all about protecting those innocent minors from abuse--Rome and the bishops it delegates to rule the church with royal authority have been thinking along entirely other lines.

Tracks not meeting, tracks that never will meet: as lay Catholics wonder why the pastoral leaders of the church display such shocking insensitivity to the question of how to keep children safe and heal the wounds of abused members of the flock, Rome and the bishops have been thinking only about power.  Solely and exclusively about power.

About their power.  About their potestas regiminis.  About their royal privilege to rule the church.

Which is threatened, they imagine, by the demand of lay Catholics that children be kept safe, and that lay review boards be set into place to assure oversight of priests in order to keep children safe.  It's all a power game in the mind of the rulers of the church, a game that's about someone somewhere trying to snatch some power away from the royal rulers of the church.

Bishop Finn knew perfectly well he was doing wrong all along, in hiding the crimes of Fr. Shawn Ratigan.  And he intended to keep defying the review system he and the other bishops set up in 2002.  As long as he could get away with it.

His insincere apology, now that he's been caught red-handed, is worth less than the price of the paper it's being printed on.  It means nothing.

What means everything to Bishop Finn, to the Vatican, and to every other bishop in the world who buys into the current system of thinking by which the Catholic church is governed, is power.  Raw power.  Power pure and simple.

Unchecked power.  Royal power and privilege akin to--and derived from--the imperial elite of the Roman empire that transmuted itself into the papal and episcopal structures of Catholicism as the empire fell apart.

Until lay Catholics and secular power figures begin to contest and call the power system of the leaders of the Catholic church into question--until those concerned about the ongoing maleficent effects of this power system on innocent, vulnerable children demand transparency and accountability on the part of a system of power that is utterly opaque and answerable to no one--nothing is going to change, with the current abuse situation.  Nothing effective.

Because this is power that does not intend to relinquish its prerogative to absolute control.  And those with absolute, unchecked power over others never have intended and never will intend to relinquish that absolute power and absolute control, without a fight. 

Because that's how absolute power and control work.  And always have worked, over the course of history.  As Colleen Baker wisely asks at the end of her analysis of the story of Bishop Finn, "How much longer will we need to really get this lesson?"