Robinson - For Christs sake : end sexual abuse in the Catholic Church ... for good

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson

FOR CHRISTS SAKE

End Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church for Good.

Published in Australia by

Garratt Publishing

32 Glenvale Crescent

Mulgrave, Vic. 3170

www.garrattpublishing.com.au

Copyright Geoffrey Robinson 2013

All rights reserved.

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Scripture quotations are drawn from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA.

Used by permission.

All rights reserved.

Book ISBN: 9781922152602

eBook ISBN: 9781922152886

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.

(MARK 9:42)

And yet, despite these words, thousands of priests and religious brothers worldwide have sexually abused minors, causing massive and lifelong harm.

When they first entered the seminary or novitiate, most of them were idealists, filled with enthusiasm for the message of Jesus and a desire to make the world a better place. Instead they have ended up violating every precept of Jesus, every teaching of the Church they profess to love, and every criterion of the most basic human decency.

There is an ancient saying: corruptio optimi pessima or, the corruption of the best is the worst. If those who start out with the highest ideals fall, there is no limit to the depths they can fall to.

When so many people act this badly, we can no longer limit our blame to the individuals, but must also look for factors within the very culture of the Church that have contributed. And when so many authorities in the Church have attempted to conceal the abuse, or treated victims of abuse as though they were an enemy of the Church, we must again look for systemic factors behind such behaviour, factors that are part of the very culture of the Church.

Recently, a group of experts in advertising and public relations was asked what steps it might suggest to present the religion of Islam in the best light. Among the ideas suggested were: encouraging the bulk of moderate Muslims to speak up and dissociate themselves from the terrorists and fundamentalists, using women wherever possible as spokespersons, and identifying the one or two central ethical values at the heart of Islam and showing how ordinary Muslims live these values in their lives.

They were then asked to do the same for the Catholic Church. They discussed this for some time, but eventually said that, as long as the massive weight of the sexual abuse scandal was tied around the neck of that Church, there was really nothing they could suggest. Any talk of a new evangelisation would be a waste of time. Indeed, any attempt to get back to business as usual while the abuse scandal remained would be positively counterproductive.

Millions of good Catholics have been deeply disillusioned, both by the revelations of widespread abuse, and even more by what they have perceived as the defensive, uncaring and unchristian response on the part of those who have authority in the Church and claim to speak in Gods name. The effects on the Church have already been massive and the poison will continue to eat away at the very foundations of the Church for as long as the issue remains.

On the other hand, if the Church really did confront the entire issue of sexual abuse with total honestly, ruthlessly uprooting anything and everything that may have contributed to either abuse or the poor response to abuse, this would in fact be the best possible evangelisation it could carry out, and would have far more effect than any more conventional form of evangelisation.

All the evidence available says that the number of offences in this field has fallen greatly, and some might be tempted to think that the problem has, therefore, gone away and no longer needs to be thought about. The sad fact, however, is that the major reason for the fall in the number of offences has been naked fearfear of being arrested and sent to prison, fear of the walk of shame in handcuffs before the television cameras, fear of the total and permanent destruction of ones good name before all the people one has ever known.

It is obviously good that the number of offences has fallen, irrespective of the motive. And yet an improvement based largely on fear is surely not good enough as a total answer to the matter. Surely we need to look more deeply at any contributing factors within the Church, and eliminate them.

There are three major tasks to be performed in eradicating sexual abuse from the Church:

identifying and removing all offenders

reaching out to and assisting all victims/survivors

identifying and overcoming the causes of both abuse and the poor response to abuse.

I have been involved in the first two fields for the last eighteen years and, in my position as a retired bishop not looked upon with favour by those in authority, I dont know that there is much more I can do. So I am here turning to the third element of identifying and overcoming the causes of both abuse and the poor response to abuse. We must have priorities in the work to be done, and for me the first priority will always be that of preventing abuse. Once abuse has occurred, anything we do will always be inadequate, so the only real solution is to prevent abuse happening in the first place.

I believe that it is in this field of preventing abuse that the greatest failure of the Church is to be found. The work of identifying and eradicating all the factors that may have contributed to abuseand to the poor responsehas not been done and, indeed, there has not even been a public call from the Pope for it to be done. There is a crying need that it should be done now and with a sense of great urgency. All levels of the Church must cease to simply manage the problem and instead seek to confront it head-on, identifying and changing anything and everything that needs to be changed. Only then will the Church regain some measure of credibility.

Since the subject is vast, there are a number of further comments that I need to make to specify and limit the purpose and scope of this book.

I speak of factors that may have contributed to either abuse or the poor response to abuse. I freely admit that I do not have scientific proof that each of the factors I shall mention has contributed and I cannot have an exact knowledge of the extent to which each has contributed. If we were to demand such proofs, however, I believe we would merely be looking for an excuse to do nothing, and that cannot be good enough. If an element in the Church can be shown to be unhealthy, we should remove it anyway, especially if we can see a clear connection between that factor and the whole phenomenon of abuse.