[Vision2020] Higher Authorities

[Art Deco]

From:  *The New Yorker*
Higher Authorities  by Margaret
Talbot<http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/margaret_talbot/search?contributorName=margaret%20talbot>
March 11, 2013

For a moment, it looked as if Cardinal Roger Mahony, of Los Angeles, might
be excluded from the conclave that gathers this week to select a new Pope.
Under a settlement with some five hundred plaintiffs, the Archdiocese of
Los Angeles had been forced to release the records of its dealings with
priests accused of sexually abusing children. The settlement was reached in
2007; the Church finally released the records in January. There were twelve
thousand pages, and they revealed a by now dispiritingly familiar picture:
years of shielding accused priests from criminal charges, and a concern for
the reputation of the Church that too often trumped empathy for the
victims. Mahony was then the archbishop, and he and other Church officials
exchanged letter after letter about one priest, recommending that he stay
away from L.A., where he might attract unwanted attention, presumably from
the law; he eventually admitted to molesting the children of undocumented
immigrants, and allegedly threatened at least one of them with deportation
if he told. Meanwhile, the Church provided the priest with residential
treatment and a position in another state.

José Gomez, who in 2011 succeeded Mahony as archbishop, took the unusual
step of stripping him of his public duties. The L.A.P.D. announced that it
was examining the records to see if new prosecutions were warranted. A
group called Catholics United collected thousands of signatures for a
petition asking that Mahony recuse himself from the conclave. But last
week, as Pope Benedict XVI was preparing to step down, Mahony was sending
sprightly tweets from the Vatican: “Good weather forecast for this week in
Rome; no rain. Mid 50s during the day, upper 30s at night. Great Holy
Spirit weather!!”

Mahony’s defenders say that he is being singled out, and they have a point.
Anne Burke, an Illinois judge who served on the Catholic Bishops’ advisory
board, told the *Times* that too many Church leaders had “participated in
one way or another in having actual information about criminal conduct, and
not doing anything. What are you going to do? They’re all not going to
participate in the conclave?”

Those who say that the Catholic Church has been unfairly pilloried are also
right. Estimates are hard to come by, and underreporting of the sexual
abuse of children is a chronic problem, but, according to a study
commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and conducted by
researchers at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about four per cent of
Catholic priests have been accused of molesting children. That is probably
comparable to percentages in other denominations and in the general
population.

What is distinctive about child abuse in the Catholic Church is not its
existence, or even its coverup; in recent months alone, we’ve seen evidence
of similar cowardice at Penn State and the BBC. What is distinctive is that
Catholic officials can find a higher purpose—protecting the sanctity of the
priesthood—in shielding abusers, and a spiritually rewarding humility in
enduring criticism of their conduct. Mahony has been blogging about the
public disparagement he has received, and he compares it to what Christ
withstood, urging the faithful to join him in exploring what it is to “take
up our cross daily and to follow Jesus—in rejection, in humiliation, and in
personal attack.” But, unlike the criminal prosecution of perpetrators—or
real Church reform—that doesn’t do much to help victims or to prevent abuse.

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger assumed the papacy, in 2005, it seemed that
he might take on the abuse scandal in a way that his predecessor had not.
He met with victims in the United States and the United Kingdom,
apologizing and expressing “shame and humiliation.” In 2011, he instructed
bishops to make a priority of rooting out sexual abuse by clerics. But he
did not dismiss bishops who had looked the other way, and he did not
inaugurate an accountability at the highest levels, as the abused and their
advocates had hoped.

Benedict’s term, in fact, has been characterized by an intensifying
disapproval of would-be reformers. In a homily last spring, the Pope
denounced the efforts of a reforming priest in Austria, where a hundred and
fifty thousand Catholics have left the Church in response to revelations of
sex abuse in that country, and called upon Catholics to embrace instead
“the radicalism of obedience.” Last fall, the Vatican dismissed an American
priest who had participated in an ordination ceremony for a woman. The
Church is doctrinally immune from majority rule, so perhaps it doesn’t
matter that, according to a 2010 *Times* poll, sixty-seven per cent of
American Catholics think priests should be allowed to marry and fifty-nine
per cent think women should be allowed to be priests. Yet surely a Church
that expels a priest for advocating women’s ordination faster than it does
men who have been credibly accused of raping children is in some kind of
trouble.

All the more so since a case can be made that the banning of women from the
priesthood is a matter of tradition rather than of Scripture. (In 1976, the
Pontifical Biblical Commission voted in favor of the idea that the Church
could ordain women without countermanding Christ’s intentions.) One can
sympathize with the idea that not everything done in the Church these days
should be framed as a fix for the scandal, and that the Church and its good
works should not be reduced to this one terrible theme. There is also some
evidence that the incidence of abuse has declined since the
nineteen-eighties. Yet it might not have continued unchecked in the first
place if the Church had put women in leadership positions and eliminated
the requirement of celibacy. Women are statistically less likely to
sexually abuse children, and they would have helped open up an insular and
self-protecting brotherhood. And, without the requirement of celibacy, some
men drawn to it because they thought it would cure them of unwanted urges
might not have sought refuge in the priesthood.

In addition, celibacy is perhaps too harsh and too unsustainable a demand
for many who would otherwise be fit for the priesthood. Last month,
Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland,
made headlines when he said that “many priests have found it very difficult
to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood and felt the need
of a companion.” That was just before he made headlines by resigning, amid
allegations that he had had “inappropriate contact” with other priests.
(Unlike Mahony, O’Brien is staying away from Rome.) And it was right around
the time that the Italian newspaper *La Repubblica* reported that the real
reason Benedict resigned was that gay prelates at the Vatican were being
blackmailed. (The Vatican denied any connection.) But celibacy
conferred—and, despite everything, probably still confers—an aura of
purity, of exalted separateness, that protected priests from suspicion, and
earned them the sometimes undeserved trust of parents and children.

Nobody really seems to believe that this conclave will pick a Pope who
would consider removing leaders like Mahony or ordaining women or allowing
priests to marry. But so many people worldwide—especially those who have
been ignored, mistreated, or excluded by a Church they love—would rejoice
if it did. ♦
  ILLUSTRATION: Tom Bachtell


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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