Millstone round Church’s neck

By appearing before the United Nations committee responsible for the Convention on the Rights of the Child this week, the Holy See has taken a first step towards restoring its good name in respect of the Catholic Church’s record over clerical child abuse.

But it starts from a low base. The fatal mistake would be to assume that one evidence session, even with tough cross-examination of the Vatican’s witnesses, is anything like sufficient to undo the harm done in recent years. The Holy See, as the Catholic Church’s central government, should expect to be measured against a higher standard than any other signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for the whole point of, and only justification for, the Holy See’s status as an internationally recognised sovereign entity among the community of nations is its moral authority.

It is equally true that the willingness of ordinary Catholics to heed the teachings of the Magisterium has been gravely compromised by various scandals, both inside the Vatican itself and involving diocesan bishops in many parts of the world. The connection between the two is that bishops are answerable in canon law not downwards to their flocks, nor sideways to the civil authorities where they are located, but upwards, to Rome. So the UN committee supervising the Holy See’s compliance with the convention is entitled to ask how well that supervision – which includes the unconditional right to hire and fire any bishop – has been exercised.

The facts are not impressive. Not one single bishop has been defrocked or dismissed for negligence in his handling of clergy responsible for the sexual abuse of children. Yet civil courts, particularly in the United States, have found such negligence proved time and again, and often awarded colossal damages against the Church. Pope Francis is well aware of this and even welcomes it. He referred this week to “so many scandals that I don’t want to mention individually, but we all know what they are”. He said at his morning Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae chapel that some of them – clearly referring to child-abuse cases – have cost the Church a lot of money. “Good! One must do that … The shame of the Church!” he exclaimed.

This was Francis’ most forthright utterance on the issue since he was elected Pope last March, and it was becoming overdue. But shame implies wrongdoing and wrongdoing cries out for justice, which must include not just compensation for those wronged but the disciplining of those responsible for letting it happen. Indeed, that would help to transfer the burden of shame, which at present falls heavily on the whole Church, on to those directly culpable. That too is a matter of justice. Why has he not followed the logic of his own principles? Why has he left justice to the civil courts, where large damages awards against a diocese mainly penalise the innocent laity, not the bishop who was personally at fault?

Why indeed has the Vatican not informed every bishop in the world that anything less than strict compliance with the letter and spirit of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – which gives absolute priority to the child’s interests – will be viewed as a sackable offence? Why not add to that, entirely in line with the guidelines issued to bishops by the Vatican in 2011, a binding requirement to report all such cases to the civil authorities and police, again on pain of dismissal? (Where the civil authorities were ideologically hostile to the Catholic faith, the Vatican could allow exemptions.)  

Bishop Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s former chief prosecutor of sex-abuse cases, told reporters that Pope Benedict had laicised 384 priest-abusers between 2011 and 2012 voluntarily, and forcibly removed another 182. Clearly that is progress, but it makes all the more striking the dilatory way disciplining child-abusing clergy had been dealt with previously, especially under Pope John Paul II. Is the present Pope prepared to set up a commission to examine that recent history, including apportioning blame where blame is due? That would be normal practice in any secular society which called itself civilised, and having signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Holy See must expect to be judged at least by those same standards if not higher.

If that means calling into question some of the adulation that has surrounded the name of Pope John Paul II since his death – painful though that may be – then so be it. The “shame of the Church” is also the shame of the papacy.