A news item from the ABC indicates that some senior personnel in the Church have missed the point. The item states that -
The child sex abuse crimes of individual priests are not the fault of the Roman Catholic Church as a whole, a top Vatican cardinal said overnight, lamenting what he called "unfair attacks".The paedophilia of some clergy is arguably not the fault of the Church or of all Roman Catholics. (Not all Christians, with apologies to Cardinal Sodano, are members of that belief system and thus not all will necessarily share his deep sorrow at "an attempt to embroil them in the serious and painful matters of some priests".)
"Christians feel rightly hurt when there is an attempt to embroil them in the serious and painful matters of some priests, transforming individual faults and responsibilities into collective ones", said Angelo Sodano, the dean of the Vatican's College of Cardinals.
"Now the accusation of paedophilia is being brandished against the Church", Cardinal Sodano said in an interview with Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
He added: "In the face of these unfair attacks we are being told that our strategy is wrong, that we should react differently. The Church has its own style... the only strategy that we have comes from the Gospel".
Also Tuesday, Vatican Radio warned of what it called an "anti-Catholic media campaign of hatred".
However, it is clear from both internal and external studies, such as those concerning abuses in Ireland, that senior personnel have on occasion failed to deal effectively with serial predators. The apparent inability to acknowledge that failure is at best unseemly, an unseemliness exacerbated by claims of persecution and recourse to comparisons with anti-semitic persecution.
The latter is particularly egregious considering the Vatican's failure - again, arguably a failure of imagination or the inhumanity consequential on thinking sub specie aeternitatis - to vigorously (or merely explicitly and recurrently) condemn both the Holocaust and the active involvement of individual Roman Catholics (including clergy in Southern Europe) in the racially-based industrial slaughter of millions of people.
The same lack of imagination is apparent in Easter rhetoric by Anthony Fisher OP, DD, BA (Hons), LLB, BTheol (Hons), DPhil, Bishop of Parramatta, who - presumably informed by possession of an exclusive truth unavailable to the godless - informed the faithful that the effects of atheism are devastating and that people falsely believe they can build a better life without believing in God. The evidence for that claim?
Last century we tried godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating: Nazism, Stalinism, mass murder, abortion and broken relationships - all promoted by state-imposed atheism.Let us not, of course, mention a millennium or two of nastiness imposed by believers on other believers and pass over the fast-tracking of canonisation of Pius XII.
Vatican-bashing is indeed unfair but unsurprising in the face of resolute denial and claims of victimisation. Bishop Fisher and Cardinal Sodano would do well to recall the comment in the Eire report -
The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State. ...All very sad. Time to say sorry in a meaningful way or not complain while critics score a few direct hits.
The authorities in the Archdiocese of Dublin and the religious orders who were dealing with complaints of child sexual abuse were all very well educated people. Many had qualifications in canon law and quite a few also had qualifications in civil law. This makes their claims of ignorance very difficult to accept. Child sexual abuse did not start in the 20th century. Since time immemorial it has been a "delict" under canon law, a sin in ordinary religious terms and a crime in the law of the State. Ignorance of the law is not a defence under the law of the State. It is difficult for the Commission to accept that ignorance of either the canon law or the civil law can be a defence for officials of the Church. ...
In addition to their clerical education, many of those in authority in the Archdiocese had civil law degrees or occupied prestigious appointments in third level education. Monsignor Sheehy, Bishop O'Mahony and Bishop Raymond Field were qualified barristers. Bishop Kavanagh was Professor of Social Science in University College Dublin where both Archbishop Ryan and Archbishop Connell held high ranking academic posts. Despite their participation in civil society, it was not until late 1995 that officials of the Archdiocese first began to notify the civil authorities of complaints of clerical child sexual abuse.
