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<h1 class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-title">Upholding mercy without justice paved the way for the abuse crisis</h1>
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<div class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-author">by <b><a href="http://catholicherald.co.uk/author/edward-condon/" title="Posts by Ed Condon" rel="author" target="_blank">Ed Condon</a></b></div>
<div class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-date">posted <time datetime="2016-01-28 03:50:28">Thursday, 28 Jan 2016</time></div><div class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-date"><time datetime="2016-01-28 03:50:28"><a href="http://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2016/01/28/upholding-mercy-without-justice-paved-the-way-for-the-abuse-crisis/" target="_blank">http://catholicherald.co.uk/<wbr>commentandblogs/2016/01/28/<wbr>upholding-mercy-without-<wbr>justice-paved-the-way-for-the-<wbr>abuse-crisis/</a><br></time></div>
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<div class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-featured"><img src="http://catholicherald.co.uk/content/uploads/2016/01/spotlight_this-800x500.jpg" class="m_544185025892457528gmail-featured-image m_544185025892457528gmail-wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-right:0px" width="188" height="117"> <div class="m_544185025892457528gmail-featured-caption">
The cast of Spotlight, which has received rave reviews </div>
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<p class="m_544185025892457528gmail-article-standfirst"><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">In the post-Vatican II Church</span> <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)">notions of <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">crime </span>and<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"> justice</span> </span>had no place and abusers were labelled as <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">victims</span></b></span></p>
<p>The film Spotlight, which opens in the UK this week, tells the
story of the Boston Globe’s work in uncovering the child sex abuse
scandal in that city. It has received, both here and in the United
States, rave reviews and will, rightly, bring with it a revisiting of
the terrible crimes which were committed, and covered up, in Boston, but
also in many other dioceses. </p>
<p>For Catholics, this can be an occasion for mixed emotions: on the one
hand, everyone shares the rage and revulsion which is the only possible
response to the horrific pattern of abuse and denial which played out
in so many places. On the other, there is a certain tribal resistance
which many of us feel at the wider media broad-brush painting of the
Church we love, and of which we have a totally different experience, as a
monolithic embodiment of hypocrisy and evil. Neither feeling is
unreasonable, nor are they mutually contradictory. </p>
<p>My own attempts to reconcile the two, in part, steered me towards <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)"><b>my
study of <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">canon law, and penal law</span> in particular.</b></span> What I expected to
learn was that canon law was part of the problem, that it was the
mechanism which allowed for the crimes of child abusers to be ignored,
excused, and covered up.<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b> It was a great relief discovering that </b></span>the
opposite was true;<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> the pattern of abuse and cover up, so especially seen
in Boston and Los Angeles,</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>was not </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>a product of </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>canon law</b>,</span> nor even its
abuse, but of its flagrant violation. Changes and updates were needed,
but, broadly speaking, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>the law itself was sound and, had it been
followed</b></span>,<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"> </span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">we would not have</span> seen the pattern of tragedy which we did in
many places.</b><b> But when <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">a law</span> can be ignored with impunity,</b></span> however
internally sound it may be, it cries out for reform.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>Pope Benedict XVI made a number of canonical reforms in the light of </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>
the child sex abuse scandals</b></span>, and these were badly needed. In addition
to updating the Church’s criminal code to account for modern realities,
like internet pornography, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>the general thrust of the Benedictine reforms
was to further centralise the mechanism by which the Church dealt with</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>
the most serious crimes, including sexual abuse</b></span>. Cases which might have
previously been for the local diocese to initially investigate were now
to be transmitted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
immediately, and they would determine what kind of process would be
initiated, and who would carry it out. This was a necessary and direct
response to the simple failure of some dioceses to act when allegations
were made. </p>
<p>In the United States, the Dallas Charter was adopted by the bishops,
as well as a set of complementary canonical norms, which, along with
other provisions, established diocesan review boards to provide a
measure of oversight and independence in the process. More recently, <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>the
Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors was founded to
continue the process of reform and self-examination at the universal
level.</b></span> Yet, for all the real efforts to learn and reform and prevent any
chance of a recurrence, it is clear that <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>the work<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"> is far from</span> over. </b></span></p>
<p>In a recent interview, Marie Collins, a member of the Pontifical
Commission for the Protection of Minors, and herself a past victim,
called the ongoing efforts to put in place better safeguards and
procedures across the Church “frustratingly slow”, and conceded that
achieving measurable progress through Vatican bureaucracy was a
difficult business. This is easy to believe, but the barriers to
progress are likely to be more cultural and personal than they are to be
structural. I remember attending a canonical conference in 2014; at one
point during proceedings I heard a curial cardinal refer to the issue
of clerical sex abuse as “an Anglo-Saxon obsession”, and I expect this
cultural deafness, if not outright hostility, to the abiding urgency and
seriousness of the subject is of the same sort that Cardinal Pell is
encountering in other areas of curial reform. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, at the local level, the diocesan review boards, which were
intended to ensure that bishops dealt with cases according to the law,
have, in some places (regrettably but perhaps predictably in those
dioceses worst affected by abuse scandals), morphed into ecclesiastical
star-chambers where innocent priests are summarily removed from
ministry, and their names publicly ruined, at even the slightest
allegation of wrong-doing, however fanciful or malicious. </p>
<p>The bitter irony is that at both the universal and local level, <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>there
remains a common failure </b></span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>to understand the need for justice,</b></span> or
appreciate the risks of removing it as a guiding principle in the life
of the Church.</p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b>Justice in an important part of Catholic theology and ecclesiology.
It</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>is often, wrongly, defined in the popular consciousness as the
opposite of <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">mercy.</span> </b></span>In fact,<span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"><b> in the mind of the Church they are
inseparable; Thomas Aquinas defined the relationship by saying that
justice <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">without</span> mercy is <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">cruelty</span>, but mercy <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">without </span>justice is <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">the
mother of dissolution</span>. </b></span></p>
<p><span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>The clerical sex abuse scandal was made possible because of a
prevailing mentality, especially in the 1970s and 80s, that<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)"> notions of
<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)">crime</span> and <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">justice</span> </span>had no place in <span style="background-color:rgb(217,234,211)">the post-Vatican II Church.</span> </b><b>The crimes
of clerical abuse were labelled as “<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)">struggles with chastity</span>” and
“<span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)">mental issues</span>” and there was an entire cottage industry of therapy
centres and clinics which would helpfully label the abusers as <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">victims</span>
of their own traumas,</b><b> often blaming it on the <span style="background-color:rgb(208,224,227)">wicked</span><span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)"> institution of
clerical celibacy</span>,</b></span> <span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>and then “<span style="background-color:rgb(207,226,243)">rehabilitate</span>” abusive priests and send them
back, certified as ready for <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">ministry.</span></b></span> This approach, which was
consciously identified as a “merciful” way of handling matters, caused a
chilling illustration o<u>f<span style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b> what a mockery of itself <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">mercy</span> can become when
it is uncoupled from <span style="background-color:rgb(255,242,204)">justice</span>.</b></span></u></p>
<p>We are unlikely to see Pope Francis ever proclaim a Year of Justice,
but, as we consider the Year of Mercy, we should do so mindful of the
reverse of the coin. The film Spotlight is a powerful reminder to us
that when justice is removed from the mind of the Church, what remains
is abuse: of the weak, of the faith, and of mercy.</p></div></div></div>
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