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Sunday, June 6, 2021

SYSTEMIC ISSUES IN THE PRE-VATICAN II CHURCH AND ON STEROIDS IN THE POST-VATICAN II CHURCH

 


Cardinal Marx of Germany submitted his resignation to Pope Francis in a symbolic act to acknowledge that the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church can be laid at the feet of the institutional Church headed by the Pope and bishops in union with him.

It took an organic process that has finally led to the acknowledgement of the fact that the sex abuse crisis is the fault of bishops and the pope. By this I mean there was more concern for abusive clergy, most breaking both canon and civil law that cried for punishment, than the victims who were abused which compromised their lives because of the abuse, not to mention the scandal for most Catholics when they learned about the abuse and the scandalous ways that bishops handled it. 

How did this happen in a systemic way? The following is my opinion:

The best way to sum it up is what our deceased bishop said to me about five years into my ordination. Somehow I got on the personnel board and at a meeting we were discussing a priest who was not an abuser, but was incompetent and a problem in many ways. I blurted out during the meeting and said, why don’t you just fire him! The reaction of the bishop was telling. Not in public but in a private teachable moment, the bishop said, “Allan, being ordained a priest is like entering a marriage. It is indissoluble and I as a bishop have to do everything possible to save that marriage.”

There you have it.

Some other mitigating factors:

1. It has only been recently, meaning about 30 years or so that topics related to sex and sexual abuse have been talked about openly—it had been a taboo subject. Being taboo allowed for sexual abuse in families and institutions to be swept under the carpet and basically not properly dealt with. And what family, or what family institution back then would call the police and have mom or dad, a brother, sister or uncle and aunt arrested? And who wanted their abused child to go through a legal process that could end up in a trial? You don’t air your dirty laundry publicly. 

2. Bishops, perhaps, thought that sexual misconduct with minors was no big deal and that it could be dealt with in a sacramental way. Incredibly some may have thought the victim may have enticed  the priest. This is particularly true of the abuse of adolescents. 

3. Perhaps the bishops himself had been abused at a younger age and thought it no big deal because he survived it. 

4. Who knows, maybe it was callous indifference, or a friendly relationship with the abuser or fear of scandal which has caused the greatest scandal. 

5. When I was vocation director, I learned that bishops had turned to psychology and therapy to "cure" priests who had abuse children/adolescents and vulnerable adults.  At national conferences I heard famous priest-psychologists who treated mentally diseased priest proclaim their success rate in returning priests to ministry. They did advocate for transparency, but their goal was to make sexual abuse a part of addictive behavior and acceptance of programs to mitigate against returning to these addictive behaviors, such as AA or SA groups. They felt that  if alcoholics and drug addicts could be hailed as courageous by participating in these support groups, so too could sex abusers in recovery. Yes--you read all of this correctly. Most bishops bought this line, hook, line and sinker. It is a theology of mercy gone pathological.

Do we need to change the entire “system” of the Church to conquer the above mentality? I think not, but that’s my own personal opinion. There are other ways to effectively change a culture that leads to abuse. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. 

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

“Allan, being ordained a priest is like entering a marriage. It is indissoluble and I as a bishop have to do everything possible to save that marriage.”

What do you find problematic in that statement?

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Hmm! Reread my post, do your homework and then report back to us.

Anonymous said...

I read the post. Your post does not speak to the theology, dogmatic and pastoral, that underlies Bishop Lessard's statement.

What, in the statement, “Allan, being ordained a priest is like entering a marriage. It is indissoluble and I as a bishop have to do everything possible to save that marriage.” do you find problematic?


Layperson X said...

I am good friends with a woman whose son was repeatedly molested by a Catholic priest. This priest also had a secular role in a youth organization in which her son was a member. The son later went on to attempt suicide and has had massive psychological problems ever since. The woman approached the diocese and they arranged for her to meet with their attorneys to seek a "pastoral" solution to the problem. She told them up front that she had no interest in bringing a lawsuit against the diocese, but simply wanted them to pay her son's psychiatry bills, which were well into five figures at that point (the priest had also died). They came back to her and said, "We will pay you $5,000 total, but you must sign a confidentiality agreement about this and an agreement not to sue the diocese."

She told them to "Go f___ yourselves!" and walked out.

This is not a woman given to profanity and she remains a loyal Catholic to this day.

The Church cannot handle these problems the way that the secular world does, but the way they continue to handle it isn't the answer either. I think it's a reflection of something systemically distorted in this marital-like relationship that the demonic powers have exploited over the years. I kind of agree with what your late bishop (was it Lessard?) said, but even an abused wife has a right to distance herself from her husband to protect herself and her children. The Church is going to have to purify Herself from within before this is every going to get better. That means doing more than the empty PR stuff the USCCB has been pulling since 2002's first info-dump of molesters.

Fr. Allan J. McDonald said...

Do you counsel a wife repeatedly raped by her husband and beaten into submission to do everything possible to salvage her indissoluble marriage and stick with him. I hope not as that would be the systemic issue leading to such repeated abuse.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous K. Always off point

UK-Priest said...

So that means Bishops & their Priests in a insoluble gay marriage?
CDF didn’t include that in their now infamous circular about “living in sin”?

Fr Martin Fox said...

Here are some thoughts about all this. NONE of what follows is a justification or minimization of abuse; I'm just trying to describe ways people were thinking and acting at a certain point.

I think:

1. People (note: not just clerics) thought that sexual abuse was something that people, especially kids, would forget about and overcome. If what I just wrote shocks you, I will tell you that I've heard enough stories about abuse to realize that lots of ordinary people (not just clerics) have ignored, dismissed or counseled silence about such abuse.

2. At a certain point, clerics wanted very much to be "scientific" and modern; and at a certain point, secular social sciences were advocating counseling and restoration.

3. All that said, I think that the worst failure of clerics was not being fathers. God helping me, I *try* to be a father, especially to the children in my parish: and I absolutely cannot imagine any FATHER reacting in the bloodless way so, so many powerful people (not just clerics) reacted when told of abuse.

4. Father McDonald's bishop has a point: once a man is ordained a priest, he remains a priest forever; and the bishop who ordained him -- and the whole Church -- accepts a certain relation to him as a priest. That doesn't mean he can be let loose to do whatever; but it also means that you don't just "fire" him. There is a covenantal relationship at work, a family relationship there. Bishops are supposed to be fathers to their priests -- I know, you're laughing, I'm laughing, but that's the truth. If your own, biological, son fails, in small or great ways, what do you do? No matter what else you do, does he stop being your son? (Again, I am not speaking abstractly, but as a pastor who lives in the real world.)

rcg said...

The comparison to a marriage is a good one and fits with my personal theory about how this has gone so far off the rails. The loyalty and pastoral approach to the priests was a good idea, but there was no tough love, no admission that the fellow was not fit. This also leaves a huge gap in responses toward victims like the anecdote of the woman seeking financial help. That is likely another poorly composed response in an attempt to avoid financial destruction of the Church. The Church was not prepared for this concerted attack from within. It is not too late to find a strategy.

Anonymous said...

Fr. Fox need only refer to the parable of the Prodigal Son. Yes, a bishop SHOULD do all that he can for his priestly son, and the same for the victim of abuse. I am sure Bishop Lessard was not intending to do what he knew was illegal, unethical, or immoral in his desire to support the priest in his vocation.

In the past - and we are talking about the past here - wives WERE told to go home and stick it out, God will give you the strength, or the priest said, I'll give your husband a good talking to and he won't misbehave any more."

In the past, bishops did believe that confession and counselling could correct the aberrant behaviors of the offending priest. Were they wrong for believing what they were told, that the grace of the sacraments and professional treatment could render an abuser harmless? I don't think they were. We now know that these will be insufficient.

Where they and any other priest who was aware of abuse were wrong was in covering things up or shutting down investigations.

Mark Thomas said...

The priest/sexual abuse "crisis" involves a microscopic amount of priests. That does not minimize the horror that the victims in question suffered.

I would like to explore that issue within the broader context of the overall perceived immoral state of the Church...and who is to blame for that, according to certain folks.

I will quote a "traditionalist" who was featured yesterday in a post from Father McDonald.

Said "traditionalist" is Peter Kwasniewski.

On December 11, 2019 A.D., published by 1Peter5, Peter Kwasniewski blamed the Church's supposed overall wretched moral condition upon Popes Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.

Peter Kwasniewski declared:

"We can see, moreover, the full magnitude of the evils that remained in the Church in spite of, and at times because of, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who, with all their indubitably great qualities, spent too much time globetrotting, professorializing, and praying for peace with non-Catholics and too little time mucking out the stables, replenishing the hired hands, and rebuilding the fallen structures of the Church.

"Were it not for their misplaced priorities, we would not be suffering under the twin burdens of an entrenched clerico-homosexual culture and a rigid adherence to soft modernism at all levels and in all areas."

Popes Saint John Paul II, as well as Benedict XVI, take the blame.

That is, according to Peter Kwasniewski.

Pax.

The priest/sexual abuse "crisis" involves a microscopic amount of priests. That does not minimize the horror that the victims in question suffered.

I would like to explore that issue within the broader context of the overall perceived immoral state of the Church...and who is to blame for that, according to certain folks.

I will quote a "traditionalist" who was featured yesterday in a post from Father McDonald.

Said "traditionalist" is Peter Kwasniewski.

On December 11, 2019 A.D., published by 1Peter5, Peter Kwasniewski blamed the Church's supposed overall wretched moral condition upon Popes Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.

Peter Kwasniewski declared:

"We can see, moreover, the full magnitude of the evils that remained in the Church in spite of, and at times because of, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who, with all their indubitably great qualities, spent too much time globetrotting, professorializing, and praying for peace with non-Catholics and too little time mucking out the stables, replenishing the hired hands, and rebuilding the fallen structures of the Church.

"Were it not for their misplaced priorities, we would not be suffering under the twin burdens of an entrenched clerico-homosexual culture and a rigid adherence to soft modernism at all levels and in all areas."

Popes Saint John Paul II, as well as Benedict XVI, take the blame.

That is, according to Peter Kwasniewski.

Pax.

Mark Thomas

Anonymous said...

Mark Thomas,

What is false about Dr. Kwasniewski's statement? Ever hear of "Cardinal" McCarrick?

And your golden calf has done nothing to discipline the gay clerics engaged in a cocaine fueled sex orgy at the Vatican.

Your cut and paste machine is devoid of logic

Anonymous said...

AH! There's the 12th appearance, fist one for June 2021, of the "cocaine fueled sex orgy" at the Vatican. Note, this one isn't a "gay" event.

Woo Hoo!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous K at 10:29 AM,

It fits in nicely as a logical response to Markbot's rant. To make it go away, all he has to do is provide a response.


Woo Hoo!