This week the presidents of bishops conferences and representatives of religious congregations around the world will meet in Rome. Pope Francis called them there to reflect on the sexual abuse of children and to come to one mind in recognising its importance and responding to it. The meeting has aroused much discussion, most of it sceptical, about whether it will achieve anything. To understand and evaluate the meeting, we should keep in mind its background and the different groups that have a particular interest in it.
The first and most important group comprises the people whose lives have been devastated by the crimes of sexual abuse by people who held responsible positions in the Catholic Church. They include above all the direct victims whose subsequent lives have often remained blighted, but also the relatives, friends, fellow parishioners and school mates of people who were abused and Catholics whose faith was eroded.
They will hope, many against hope, that the meeting helps make children safe in the Catholic Church, more aware of the debt it owes people who were abused, and that offenders are brought to justice. To ensure that the meeting focuses on people who have been abused, Francis asked the participants to meet with them beforehand.
The second group comprises the Catholics in such nations as the United States, Ireland and Australia where the extent of abuse has been most publicised and its effects on the Catholic life most damaging. There the crisis of sexual abuse has metastasised, beginning with a focus on the perpetrators and victims. This brought the Catholic Church into disrepute and alienated a generation of Catholics.
The crisis then moved to focus on bishops and others who covered up the crimes, allowing abusers to re-offend. As a result of this bishops lost a priori credibility among Catholics as well as others when speaking about any personal or public moral issue. That was seen in public debate about same sex marriage and in the demand for criminal cases to be brought against bishops. The focus has more recently moved to the place of the Catholic Church in society, to the supervision the state should have over its activities, and to whether its financial and other privileges should be retained.
In the United States the most recent symbol of bishops' bad behaviour and the ineptitude of the Catholic Church in dealing with it is Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Over many years he was promoted to high office despite reports made to United States bishops and to Rome of him behaving to say the least imprudently with seminarians. More recently he has been accused of earlier sexual abuse of children.
Embarrassed by their lack of jurisdiction to investigate charges made against their fellow bishops, the United States bishops in the November 2018 meeting proposed to institute a process. But the Roman Curia, which has yet to deliver on its promise to disclose the details of its dealings with McCarrick's case, requested that they delay until the coming meeting was held in Rome. Most bishops in the United States and other similarly placed nations will surely hope that the meeting opens the way quickly to a transparent and effective system of episcopal accountability.
"This debate has also affected Francis' reputation. Like Catholics generally and bishops in particular, he has been stained by the mud of the sexual abuse crisis."
The third group comprises bishops from churches where there are very few known cases of sexual abuse of children, either because they do not happen or because they are not reported. Many of these churches are preoccupied with other major problems — famine, for example, religious persecution or civil war. Some regard the sexual abuse of children as a malady of the west, and they may come to the meeting wanting some flexibility in the priority they give to it and in the procedures by which they deal with it.
The fourth group is a group of one: Francis. He emphasises the collegial aspect of his position, seeing himself as entrusted with the role of strengthening his fellow bishops in lived faith. In calling representatives of the bishops conferences to Rome to deal with an issue facing the whole Catholic Church he is clearly acting collegially. In his responsibility he also has the right to intervene in the life of local churches when bishops cannot or do not act rightly, as he has done most notably in Chile over the cover up of sexual abuse.
Francis has already spelled out what he wants from the meeting. In the words of his spokesperson, he hopes that 'when the bishops who will come to Rome have returned to their countries and their dioceses that they understand the laws to be applied and that they take the necessary steps to prevent abuse, to care for the victims and to make sure that no case is covered up or buried'.
The final group will not be present at the meeting but will colour the way it is reported and publicly received. They are the interested Catholics who will have a range of hopes and agendas for the Catholic Church. Most influential in shaping the reporting of Church business are the participants in the polarised debate about Francis' vision of the Catholic Church.
In his speeches and symbolic actions he has consistently softened boundaries between Pope and Church, clergy and laity, Catholics and non-Catholics, and between Church issues and public issues. He has also emphasised discernment over commandment, dialogue over confrontation, flexibility over rigidity, and the public living of the Gospel over defining it. His critics, who include some cardinals, argue that these approaches lead to a diluted faith, to a church indistinguishable in its operative beliefs and practices from secular society, and the loss of the symbols and patterns of relationship that constitute a distinctive tradition.
Where this debate has been politicised, the sexual abuse crisis is seen through partisan eyes. Prominent bishops accused of abuse or of covering it up are excoriated, defended or not mentioned, depending on whether they are seen to support or be critical of Francis' approach to the Church.
This debate has also affected Francis' reputation. Like Catholics generally and bishops in particular, he has been stained by the mud of the sexual abuse crisis. His association with people who have later been accused of covering up abuse and his slowness in orchestrating a concerted and energetic response by Roman officials to the sexual abuse crisis have been criticised. His critics, particularly a former apostolic nuncio to the United States Archbishop Carlo Viganò, have highlighted his alleged failures in order to discredit his papacy.
Although this debate is marginal to the meeting, and indeed to the Catholic Church, it will colour many people's perception and so the public response to the meeting. It is to be hoped that the meeting itself will have a tighter focus on the people who have been abused, and a broader focus on the shaping of a Church in which children will be safeguarded and crimes of abuse and cover-up at all levels will be publicised and punished.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street.
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