The sexual abuse crisis that rocked the American Catholic Church earlier in the decade has resurfaced with renewed intensity in European countries.
A few months ago, a media frenzy erupted over cases of sexual abuse, (most decades old,) in the Irish Church. I remember waking up each day to find out that another case came to light with another Bishop under pressure to resign for mishandling it. In the midst of the failure of the Irish Catholic hierarchy, Pope Benedict XVI issued a rather blunt pastoral letter to the hierarchy that called for repentance and reparation for their moral failures.
Even more recently, the German Catholic Church came under the same scrutiny for allegedly covering up cases of sexual abuse that date back even a few decades. As the abuse crisis seemed to swell, the media appeared to become even hungrier for a trail of blood leading back to the implication of the Pope. Is it a surprise that they (allegedly) “found” it?
Suddenly, the Pope appeared to be the symbolic center of global sexual abuse, responsible for silently failing to address it during his time as a Cardinal in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.
The New York Times latched onto a case where a priest in Milwaukee allegedly abused some 200 deaf children entrusted to his care. For their sources, the Times largely relied on discredited Archbishop Rembert Weakland and Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who has profited immensely from sexual abuse settlements. In any serious journalism, these sources would be simply unqualified.
Furthermore, the media failed to note that these cases need only be handled by the local diocese, pointing rather to Weakland’s abysmal failure. The priest-judge of the case in Milwaukee also noted that when the Pope was a Cardinal, his department was not responsible to oversee cases of sexual abuse. This case, blown up by the Times, only represents a factually deficient attempt by the media to discredit the moral authority of the papacy.
In addition, the Pope was also accused of mishandling a case of sexual abuse when he was the Archbishop of Munich. Media outlets speculated that the Pope knew about a priest who was reassigned to pastoral ministry after therapy in his diocese in the 1980s.
However, the Vicar General admitted to making this decision, with the Pope simply allowing those under him to do the jobs they were assigned to do. Here as well, the accusation relies only on speculation. The media seems to have forgotten how the Pope (then Cardinal Ratzinger) has worked harder than perhaps any other Vatican official to root out sexual abuse. The Pope has revised canon law to make it easier to dismiss offenders from the clerical state and personally took action to reprimand high-profile clerics accused of sexual abuse.
The outrageous, tantalizing headlines of “Pope Knew Priest was Pedophile but Allowed Him to Continue in Ministry” mislead the American public who remain unfortunately tied to sound bites of information and tabloid scandal instead of balanced reporting of the truth. One might even be tempted to think that sexual abuse is strictly a “Catholic” problem.
Instead, sexual abuse is a societal problem that equally affects the public school system and other denominations. Up to 60 percent of all sexual abuse in the United States comes directly from family members, pointing more to the sexual revolution and breakdown of the family than any vow of clerical celibacy. While I do not seek to sugarcoat any cases of sexual abuse, the injustice of media focus on the Catholic Church suggests a more malicious motive.
Is it any coincidence that all of this comes to surface as the Church approaches its Holy Week? Perhaps. Is it a coincidence that all of this comes to surface as the Church attempts to remain a moral voice in the health care debate? Maybe. Either way, I firmly believe that our society seems to want to quickly discredit the Catholic Church because of the heightened level of morality to which it calls its followers.
Doesn’t it give the lapsed Catholic an excuse not to attend Easter Sunday at a Church that “harbors abusive priests?” If all these cases had even an inkling of truth, the Church is composed of sinful men and not angels. However, the existence of bad Catholics does not mean that Catholicism itself is bad.
Rather than focusing on the scandal of the sinner, we should look to the crowning glory of the saints who lived the Catholic faith to its fullest. Any Catholic response to allegations of sexual abuse should be a prayer for the purification of the Church, a deeper act of hope and a belief that the truth will set us free; anything less suggests a lack of faith to begin with.
Kevin D. Magas, Staff Writer
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