<div dir="ltr"><div id="printbody"><div id="articleheads">From: <i>The New Yorker</i><br></div><div id="articleheads"><h1 id="articlehed" class="">Higher Authorities</h1>
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<span>by </span><a rel="author" href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/margaret_talbot/search?contributorName=margaret%20talbot">Margaret Talbot</a>
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March 11, 2013
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<p class="">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. </p><p>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!!”</p><p>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 <i>Times</i> 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?”</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. </p><p>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 <i>Times</i> 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. </p><p>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. </p><p>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 <i>La Repubblica</i>
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.</p><p>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. <span class="">♦</span></p>
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<div id="photocredits">
<h6 id="credit">ILLUSTRATION: Tom Bachtell</h6>
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