Dear Pope Francis, I think you are mistaken

Pope Francis is my most favourite pope of all time. I think he may be the most "pastoral" pope that the Catholic Church has had in a long, long time, even more so than the great Pope John XXIII who convened the Second Vatican Council. So it was with disappointment that I read of the Pope's brief statement to Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper defending the Catholic Church's track record on the handling of sex abuse: “The Catholic Church is maybe the only institution to have moved with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to be attacked.”

Starting with Pope Benedict's visits to England and Ireland and, most recently, Pope Francis' own address to the Bishops of the Netherlands, the papacy has, indeed, taken steps to tackle the issue of the clergy and sex abuse. Both popes have made the right noises in drawing attention to the suffering of the innocent victims at the hands of clerics and other workers associated with the church and calling for assistance for them. However, the Catholic Church as an institution is far more than the papacy. Nobody knows that better than the Pope himself.

From reports that I have read over the last few years, I have no reason to think that Catholic dioceses throughout the world have done any more than what the local civil laws required of them, even spending millions fighting that in courts of law. As a case in point, I think of the then Archbishop of Quebec who in 2010 fought all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to have the case against Fr. Lachance dropped, not because he was innocent, but because Quebec's equivalent of a statute of limitations had expired (Shirley Christensen, Appellant and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Québec and Paul-Henri Lachance, Respondents). When the Supreme Court decided that it should go back to a lower court for more evidence, the Archbishop caved in and came to an out of court settlement.

Don't get me wrong. Where there is a libelous, opportunistic accusation it is appropriate, even imperative, to defend a good name in a court of law, but these are the exception.

Maybe the Pope is correct when he says, "No one else has done more," but the optics at diocesan level are still pretty bad. I am reminded of Jesus' statement, "For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the Scribes, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." Mat 5:20.

Is the Pope going to have to address each and every single Bishops' Conference before they "get it?" 

Jesuits: More than 500 victims over roughly 60 years in U.S. Northwest

I am trying to come to grips with what I read in these articles about Jesuits in the U.S. Pacific Northwest paying $166 million in a sex abuse payout:

US Jesuits agree $166 million abuse payout

NW Jesuits to pay largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history


First, the numbers: 500 victims over a period of roughly 60 years. That means on average 9 new victims came into the system every year for 55 years on this settlement alone. There were previous claims totaling more than $60 million brought by dozens of other abuse victims. Please don't tell me that these were just "a few rotten eggs" bringing discredit on an otherwise saintly group of faithful workers. Even if they were not participating in the abuse there must have been an even wider circle of priests and nuns, including religious superiors, who knew exactly what was going on but kept things hushed up in a conspiracy of silence either out of "loyalty" to their "friends" in the Society or out of fear of "scandal" should the word get out, or both. No Saint Mary MacKillop  here although one was sorely needed.

Then there is the depth of depravity. Forty-nine (49) victims from this group were abused when they were 8 years old or younger.

One of those victims, Patti Webb, was just 6 years old in 1962 when she was taken to St. Mary's. Alone and scared, the daughter of an alcoholic - absent mother, Webb says the sexual molestation started right away.
She said Father Morse "did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted."
"He'd say, 'You're coming into my office. You're getting a whipping.' Well, yeah, you'd get a whippin' but you'd get a lot more than that."
If she refused to "participate," as Father Morse called it, she was locked up in a pitch-black root cellar with a dirt floor that was crawling with spiders.

Fr. John Morse S.J.

Oh, God. Oh, dear Lord. Multiply this story hundreds of times over and that amounts to lots and lots of suffering, traumatised children with no one to go to for solace or understanding and lots of people who will be driven away from Catholicism, Christianity and faith in God.

The only ray of light in this story would appear to be that this particular group of victims seems to be satisfied with the settlement of $166 milion - at least the ones who are still alive. I'm not convinced that they will get it all considering that the Jesuits have gone into bankruptcy.

The double jeopardy of abuse victims

How is this for an example of double jeopardy reported in today's Edmonton Journal?


First jeopardy. A Quebec priest, Paul-Henri Lachance, betrayed the trust of a young girl and her family and abused the girl, Shirley Christensen now 36, over a period of two years between the ages of six and eight. He pled guilty in 2009 and was sentenced to 18 months jail.

Second jeopardy. Christensen's parents informed the archbishop after their daughter confided in them. The Archbishop told them Lachance would be dealt with and not to disclose the information to others. Being good and obedient Catholics they did what the archbishop told them. As an adult Christenson tried to sue the Archdiocese of Quebec City as being responsible for Lachance and turning a blind eye after the allegations were brought to the attention of the archbishop. The same archdioces that traded on the parents' trust and instructed them not to disclose the information dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that more than three years had passed since the alleged abuse.

Hello? Is anyone listening out there in the presbyteries and bishop's residences? Please can we have some actions to give credibility to the Pope's words to the Irish victims of abuse and their families?

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry. I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated. Many of you found that, when you were courageous enough to speak of what happened to you, no one would listen. Those of you who were abused in residential institutions must have felt that there was no escape from your sufferings. It is understandable that you find it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church. In her name, I openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel." (Letter to the Church in Ireland)


The first betrayal of trust can be put down to the depraved human weakness of an individual priest. The detached, calculating meanness of the second betrayal is, in my eyes, the greater scandal because, apart from making a mockery of the Pope's apology, it denies or invalidates the pain/anger/shame/guilt/humiliation that abuse victims have carried with them ever since their abuse first began. In effect, this woman has been victimised yet again. As the Pope said, it is understandable if she finds it hard to forgive or be reconciled with the Church.

Clearly, the Pope does not have a handle on the feelings of all his bishops when he speaks about "the shame and remorse that we all feel." There are at least some who do not feel enough shame and remorse as to act on it.

Perceptions of the Roman Catholic Church

Curious about how atheists underpin morals and ethics I read an interview in the Globe and Mail with Sam Harris who has just written a book on the subject. I did not expect him to be sympathetic to religion and he lived down to my expectations. However, one of the things that he said about the Catholic Church made me sit up and take notice.

"Here is an institution that is more concerned about preventing contraception than preventing child rape."

This resonated with me because I have heard exactly this from practising Catholics loyal to the Church. I have often wondered about what perception the world must have of the relative importance in the eyes of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of something like contraception compared with the paedophile behaviour of priests who were reassigned many times over into situations which, in spiritual terminology, were "occasions of sin" for the priests and, more importantly, occasions of danger for children. What is the message that the Church has given to the on-looking world when it comes to the relative amounts of money that have been spent to buy silence, on out of court settlements, court-imposed settlements, lawyers' fees and the like compared to unfettered, no-strings-attached, gratuitous offers to pay for treatment and counselling for traumatised victims?

Please understand that what I am talking about here is perception. There is no shortage of apologists who will tell me that the reality is different and, of course, the hierarchy is very concerned. Didn't the Pope meet with victims, more than once? Haven't there been documents and statements from episcopal conferences? Maybe, but for perception to change there needs to be more than isolated events such as these. The perception remains that the Church is more concerned about preventing contraception than preventing child rape. Indeed, the perception is that the Church is straining out the gnat but swallowing a camel (Mat 23:24).

There is no perception that the Church hierarchy is genuinely interested, in an on-going way, to seek out and help victims of paedophile priests. The perception is that the cover-up continues to this day.

I was very pleased, even excited, when one parish of my acquaintence added to the Prayer of the Faithful during Sunday mass a prayer "for those who have been sexually abused as children by ministers of the Church." To my disappointment it was a once-off event and has not been repeated.

It seems to me that the leaders of the Catholic Church are not trying very hard to change these perceptions. Just how important is attending to victims and their healing relative to other priorities in the Roman Catholic Church today?

Sex abuse by priests. Where is the disgust and outrage?

I am not a saint. I have been to confession enough times over my life to prevent my forgetting that. I still try to go every month or so which is probably not often enough. Somebody told me that the late Pope John Paul II went every day!

I have had the experience of confessing a particular sin to one priest who accepted it in stride along with my other sins and gave me some helpful advice. Another priest flipped on the same sin. He told me I was going straight to hell.

I tell you this not for the sake of making any public confessions although it does no harm to establish that it is not my intention to take a holier-than-thou attitude on this blog. I doubt that any of my readers consider themselves without fault or sin. Even the meticulous pharisees had the integrity to walk away when Jesus suggested that the one without sin should cast the first stone.

My purpose is rather to give an example of someone having a sense of outrage at sin. Not meaning to say one priest's response was better or worse than the other, or less or more appropriate. My comparison is rather with that of the response of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium, Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, to the release of a 200-page report on September 10, compiled by an internal commission set up by the church to document charges of sex abuse. Two hundred pages!

According to a New York Times article headed, Belgian Church's Response to Abuse Lacks Specifics, ( http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=659343&f=110 ), the report included harrowing testimony from victims and said that one had been abused from the age of 2. Thirteen people are thought to have committed suicide as a result of abuse, the report said.

FROM THE AGE OF TWO!!! THIRTEEN SUICIDES!? What the ....?

According to the New York Times, Archbishop Léonard said at a news conference that suffering had caused a "shiver" to run through the church, but that it was too soon for a detailed response to the crisis. A shiver through the church? A SHIVER? Which church is the archbishop talking about? He and I must be in different churches. His church might be experiencing a shiver but my church is vomiting in disgust. If my confessor blew an indignation valve over what I had confessed then the poor man must be suffering one serious meltdown if he is aware of this report out of the church in Belgium.

Why do I get the impression that lay people are more outraged and disgusted by this stuff than are bishops and priests?

Training future Catholic paedophiles

I came across a posting by a Belgian lay woman, Dr. Alexandra Colen, who describes her quest to have a Belgian catechism textbook, Roeach, removed from Catholic schools in Belgium.

I do not consider myself a prudish Mother Grundy. I was sadly disappointed when a few years ago some Catholic parents wanted Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale removed from being prescribed reading for English in local Catholic high schools. They had never read the book but had read the page where the main character talks about f*ck*ng. (I had not read the book either. The controversy led me to read it and I would say that it should be on everyone's "must read" list along with Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

Roeach (pronounced Ruach where the ch is like the Scottish och) is very different. It had the Imprimatur of the Archbishop's office. The editors of Roeach were Prof. Jef Bulckens of the Catholic University of Leuven and Prof. Frans Lefevre of the Seminary of Bruges. It has some drawings of babies and toddlers with bubble texts that led Colen to conclude, “When I see this drawing and its message, I get the distinct impression that this catechism textbook is designed intentionally to make 13 and 14 year olds believe that toddlers enjoy genital stimulation. In this way one breeds pedophiles that sincerely believe that children actually think that what they are doing to them is ‘groovy’, while the opposite is the case.”

For some insight into the context of the scandal around resigned bishop Roger Vangheluwe read Colen's blog entry, The Fall of the Belgian Church (http://www.alexandracolen.nu/node/45). Warning, it has a cartoon from the catechism that some might consider pornographic.

I thought I was going to have some support.

“Why do you feel sorry for him and not me? You always try to defend him. I thought I was going to have some support.”

With these telling words it is clear that yet another victim of Roman Catholic, clerical sex abuse was again made to feel victimised. To the victim, at least, it seemed that the perpetrator of the abuse was being defended and he, the victim, was given one course of action - forgiveness.

The case, which has caused huge turmoil in the Catholic church in Belgium, seems to be summarised pretty comprehensively in the New York Times of Sept 1, 2010 under the headline, "Cardinal, Who Mediated in Belgian Abuse Case, Says He Was Misled."

Timeline summary of events.

As a priest Roger Vangheluwe sexually abused his nephew, his own brother's son, for 13 years from the time the boy was 5 years of age.

Even after Vangheluwe was made Bishop of Bruges in 1984 the sexual assults continued until the victim was 18 years old.

Vangheluwe sent his nephew gifts of money, unsolicited, on his birthday, Easter, New Year and (wait for it...) Valentine's Day.

For the next 24 years the nephew kept his childhood abuse a secret.

The nephew told some members of the family who together asked for a meeting with Vangheluwe.

Vangheluwe arranged a meeting with himself and half a dozen members of the family, including the nephew and his father, Vangheluwe's brother. There would be a "mediator". The family thought the mediator would be the new Bishop of Bruges, Archbishop Léonard. Instead Vangheluwe brought in his old friend, Cardinal Danneels, recently retired head of the Church in Belgium.

The nephew secretly recorded the meeting which took place April 8, 2010.

At the meeting Danneels urged the nephew to stay quiet, at least until Vangheluwe could retire. "It might be better to wait for a date in the next year, when he is due to resign. I don't know if there will be much to gain from making a lot of noise about this, neither for you nor for him."

In another meeting later the same month Vangheluwe offered his nephew an apology which was rejected. “This is unsolvable,” the victim said. “You’ve torn our family completely apart.”

Vangheluwe resigned on April 23, 2010, after admitting to sexually abusing "a young man years ago" and has gone to a Trappist monastery.

In August the nephew released the tapes.

Observations and Comments

This is really shocking by any standards. The victim was 5 years old when the abuse started! Five! ...and the perpetrator accepted a nomination to the epicopate while this was going on and continued thus for some years into his time as bishop!

Cardinal Danneels had been chairman of the Belgian Episcopal Conference from 1979 to January 2010. He must have known that this needed a formal investigation by the current bishop. He should not have touched this with a barge pole. Instead we find him trying to influence the course of events and prevent or delay due process laid down by Canon Law. According to an earlier New York Times article on August 29, “The bishop will resign next year, so actually it would be better for you to wait,” the cardinal told the victim. “I don’t think you’d do yourself or him a favor by shouting this from the rooftops.” (Belgian Church Leader Urged Victim to Be Silent.) The cardinal warned the victim against trying to blackmail the church and suggested that he accept a private apology from the bishop and not drag “his name through the mud.” I gather from this that an apology would mean the end of the matter.

One has to wonder if Daneels himself had something to hide. According to the same New York Times article, a retired priest, the Rev. Rik Devillé, said he tried to warn Cardinal Danneels about the bishop’s abuse of his nephew 14 years ago, but was berated by the cardinal for doing so.

They just don't get it, do they? When will they get it that it's not about "The Church" and its reputation or the protectionism of the Old Boys' Club? It has to be about the victims. An apology that is a cloak for a request to be let off the hook is no apology at all. Preaching forgiveness and pushing victims to forgive without demanding that perpetrators attempt to make restitution and take the consequences of their actions doesn't merely ring hollow - it rubs salt in the wound, invalidates the pain and trauma of the victim and exacerbates the sense of victimhood. It's the stuff of hypocrisy. Jesus had his harshest words for hypocrites.

Restitution or buying silence? Giving with the left and taking with the right?

This morning I was reading my home-delivered copy of the Toronto Star's front page article "The Price of Silence," changed to "Basilians say money was to help alleged victim heal" for the online version.

The pith of the article is as follows.

High school teacher Ted Holland laid a complaint with police that Basilian priest Rev. William Hodgson “Hod” Marshall, Holland's teacher and basketball coach in grade 9, sexually abused him three times between November and December of 1969, when he was 14. On one of these occasions another student was present who was also abused.

The abuse stopped after Ted Holland's father, a miner, visited the school and told the principal what had transpired. According to Holland, “My father told him what happened to me, and Father Lococo said, ‘Well, other teachers I’ve talked to said your son has a vivid imagination’ . . . so he turns it around to make me look like the bad guy. I don’t know if he believed me, but my father said (when they left Lococo’s office), ‘Just go to school, learn and don’t be a miner.’ ”

The Congregation of St. Basil offered Holland a cheque for $21,000 in 1998. Holland said he didn’t want the cheque and wouldn’t sue the religious order. He only wanted an apology. They offered him $30,000 a year later which latter Holland accepted and signed an agreement not to pursue the Basilians in court.

Father Marshall was sent to a professional treatment centre in the United States in 1996. Now 88, he is cooperative with the Basilians and the legal authorities.

A few things struck me while reading the article:

1. The Basilians offered a cheque for $30,000 which was accepted. The congregation's vicar general said this was "to offer financial assistance to cover any cost of psychological counseling or therapy required.”

2. Holland signed an agreement not to pursue the Basilians in court.

3. The response of the principal, Father Lococo, was worse than specious and definitely not Christian. He was basically saying,"So just try and take this further and we'll make you and your boy look bad."

4. Holland, it appears, is still waiting for an apology.

5. Holland says he doesn’t hate his abuser. “I’m not angry. He had good qualities. He was a great math teacher. Yes, I have forgiven him, yes. I have to.”

What disappoints me here is the continuous stress on the legal on the part of Catholic priests and religious when it comes to their own failings. We get these great sermons on the correct spiritual approach to confession, penance, repentance and seeking forgiveness. What we really need is some good example and modelling behaviour that moves from words to "Watch me. This is how you do it." My wife and wise mother to our five children, who does not pretend to be a theologian, speaks about "the 3 R's of repentance": remorse, resolve and restitution.

Remorse. Regretting what you have done and saying sorry to the person you have injured as well as to God. Remorse also means accepting the consequences of your actions, including the acceptance with a good heart of any punishment that is due. If the judge, formal or figurative, decides to mitigate punishment, that should be taken as undeserved largesse, not a right to be wheedled by bargaining or bribery.

Resolve. Making up your mind to stop and taking the necessary steps to ensure this does not happen again. As children we were taught "to avoid the occasion of sin." Adults who have care for children, officers in the army, superiors in religious congregations and others in authority such as bishops have a corresponding obligation to consider "the occasion of sin" when making assignments.

Restitution. If you steal something you have to give it back. If you damage something you must bear the cost of repair. If you injure somebody emotionally you must bear the cost of psychological counseling or therapy required. This is not to be confused with noble generosity. It is simply an obligation. Using restitution as a bargaining chip for avoiding consequential punishment vitiates such restitution and neutralizes the spirit of remorse.

I know that bishops, priests and vicar generals do understand this because they have preached this stuff to us ever since I can remember.

Pope Benedict said in his letter to the Church in Ireland, (para. 7), "You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals... God’s justice summons us to give an account of our actions and to conceal nothing. Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy."

My plea is that bishops, vicar generals and others in ecclesiastical authority just get on and DO what the pope has said, or do they think he was only speaking to the clergy in Ireland?

To those who are obsessed with trying to defend the reputation of the Church

I am going to repeat myself on what is the most important point of my ealier blog - and try to keep it simple. This is addressed to those who are obsessed with trying to defend the reputation of the Church, the Pope and the bishops. Please understand that this is counter-productive. Instead of converting, it drives those you are hoping to convince even further away and alienates the victims of Church based paedophile abuse even further, causing them even more pain and anger.

If you cannot speak to the pain of those who were sexually abused as young children by priests and workers in the Church, if you cannot speak of the need for repentance and redress, and of the need to seek forgiveness not only by those who perpetrated these evils but also, and even more so, by those shepherds in the Church who conspired to cover up the scandals by eliciting or buying promises of silence and thereby protect and harbour the wolves in sheep's clothing who ravaged the flock, if you cannot see past "reputation" in the eyes of the world to the plight of all the victims, not only those who have come forward loudly but the many more who have chosen to remain muted, who even now endure depression, confusion, disturbed sleep, dysfunctional relationships with family, friends and with God to name just some of the chronic pains they endure, then please be quiet and say nothing or you will simply make a bad situation worse. Try praying for wisdom and understanding, and a heart of compassion.

This article was originally published on Kwa-McCann ( http://terryin-sites.blogspot.com/ ) on 25 April 2010.

Another Victim's Response

I received the following response to my last blog in an email from a lady who has given me permission to publish but wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi, VERY TOUCHING!!! I read it with many mixed emotions surfacing. I too have been personally affected by abuse. Not by clergy, but by relatives and a doctor. For a long time I was angry at the people who I confided in who failed me...people I loved and trusted...(my mother and my husband) so I understand why abuse victims, who have already been violated beyond words feel betrayed by those who could have stopped it!! But, in their defense I have to add culture was different then. You just did not talk about such things! It seems (if we did not acknowlege that it was true, we did not have to deal with it and maybe it would just go away...plus the victim was often viewed as the guilty party.This was not uncommon in rape cases where lawyers attacked the character and good name of the victim in order to let the abused get off) I think some of those who could have made a difference felt that they were doing all that they could, because they confronted the abuser, and more or less disciplined him/her, by transfering them or by taking away certain freedoms....I believe ignorance is the WORST enemy of TRUTH!

Like you, in the context of prayer groups and sharing sessions I have met a very large number of women (and some men) who, like me, were abused by older brothers or other relatives. Does that mean that all boys can't be trusted??? I hope not!

All that having been said, when I hear the media reports they enrage me!!! I want them to tell the truth and they are NOT!! There is a blatent 'Anti-Catholic' sentiment among journalists...to the point that some in the Jewish community have jumped to the Holy Father's defence...which only fuelled the anti-Catholic agenda of the media.

Here are some noteworthy facts to help keep things in perspective:

-- physical and sexual abuse, especially of children, is a mortal sin and a dispicable act, it always was and always will be and justice should be done, if it is not done in this world we can be sure it will be in the next.

-- to that end, no one has done more than Pope Benedict to eradicate this foul stench from the Church and the clergy...yet the media continue to attack his credibility reporting situations falsely and twisting the facts to sell news

-- of all those guilty of sexual abuse of children, 2% are Catholic Clergy.

-- almost all cases of sexual abuse by Catholic Clergy happened more than 30 years ago...yet, many innocent and holy Catholic Clergy are viewed as suspect to this day.

-- Jesus promised, when he founded The Catholic Church naming St. Peter the first Pope, that the gates of Hell will not prevail against Her (the Church). In the eye of the storm I cling to this Truth!

Human nature wants to lash out, to punish those who hurt us...to get even. But, that is not what Jesus wants...only by His grace can we forgive those who have sinned against us which is what He wants to help us do, and then leave justice up to Him.

This article was originally published on Kwa-McCann ( http://terryin-sites.blogspot.com/ ) on 14 April 2010.