Resistance, hope and healing

Resistance, hope and healing

We’ve learnt that the abuse of children happens across institutions and religious organisations, not only in the Church. But for Catholics there is not just horror and shame that our parishes were places where children were not safe from predatory priests, and anger at the shoddy way our bishops often put the reputation of the Church ahead of caring for the victims and survivors, but a nagging concern that there might be habits and ways of thinking woven into Catholic life and culture which acted as seedbeds for a catastrophe. 

Over the past three years a small team of researchers from Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies has been investigating if systemic factors have been complicit in how abuse happened and how the response to it was often so inadequate. Unsurprisingly, they have found that cultures of clericalism, habits and attitudes that isolate priests and assume they can do no wrong are implicated. Endemic problems such as secrecy, poor communication and the absence of visible practical structures of accountability to counter clericalist habits come into fresh perspective when viewed through the lens of the abuse crisis. The harm done, as Pope Francis says, calls for “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts”. 

The report explores what might be reparative most of all for victims and survivors but also for the whole ecclesial body. The work of restoration does not dissolve the harm, but acknowledges its impact and, where appropriate, accepts accountability. “The abuse crisis reveals us to ourselves as a sinful and wounded body,” one of the authors of the report, Pat Jones, writes in this week’s issue. “There is no other Church but all of us, together, seeking the grace of forgiveness and the courage to own responsibility. This does not undermine the necessary legal and financial redress to which victims are entitled. Rather it offers a further and different possibility. We can become a repairing Church if we face into this experience and accept what it asks of us.”

The Durham report points out where the footholds are that will get us out of this hole, but not everyone is convinced there is a widespread appetite among the bishops to use them: the words “clericalism” and “synodality” still often meet reflex denial and resistance, in this generation of leaders at least and, many fear, in the next one. But Tablet readers have long been used to living in the hope of a modest change of direction in the generation after that. 

The concerns Pat Jones and her fellow researchers identify are at the fore of the short talks the Czech philosopher and fellow-priest Tomáš Halík gave each day this week to the 300 parish priests from around the world who were meeting in Rome to share their experiences of synodality. We publish extracts from them in this week’s Tablet. “Priesthood is experiencing a time of trial,” he writes. “Crises challenge us to change. They show us that we can no longer continue on our current path in our thinking, living, and working style. Pope Francis dared to see and publicly admit that the abuse scandals were not just a failure of individuals but a symptom of the illness of the whole Church system. Jesus called it ‘the leaven of the Pharisees’; Pope Francis calls it ‘clericalism’. Clericalism is a worldly, power-centered understanding and exercise of spiritual authority. We priests are not called to be the ‘ruling class’ in the Church but the servants of all.”

“The report does not tell us much about being survivors that we don’t already know,” Patricia Debney writes alongside Jones’ story. “But it succeeds in creating a non-judgmental, safe place in which to express ourselves, and have careful conversations around survivorship and safeguarding.” Richard Scorer, a lawyer who has acted for several victims of child abuse in high profile cases, observes astutely that while “clericalism is undoubtedly a central issue the Catholic Church has often seemed to combine an unhealthy exaltation of clergy with a serious neglect of their emotional well-being”. He concludes gloomily, “As an outsider I applaud the efforts of those who seek to change the Church from within, but I confess to a degree of pessimism about their chances.”

In our leader, we look behind clericalism, to what the report calls “hierarchicalism”, defined as “the exclusive power culture of the episcopacy”. No doubt, hierarchy seems to be inevitable in institutions, whether it’s the army, a hospital, a school, or, for that matter, a newspaper. But civil society tries to protect itself from the hazards of hierarchicalism with checks and balances – appeal courts, ombudsmen, codes of practice, democratic elections, complaints departments, a lively page of Letters to the Editor and so on. The Catholic Church has almost none of these safeguards. Instead it unconsciously promotes a culture of unquestioning deference and obedience. Is it surprising that it can go badly wrong?

Throughout the unprecedented devastation wrought by a war that has lasted nearly seven months, Fr Gabriel Romanelli, parish priest of Gaza’s only Catholic church, has found himself marooned in Jerusalem, desperately trying to return to a home which many of its residents would much rather be leaving. Donald Macintyre met him during his visit to London last week. 

King Charles was crowned on 6 May last year. One year on, Catherine Pepinster is able to tell for the first time the remarkable story of how and why the new monarch and Supreme Governor of the Church of England decided he would process through Westminster Abbey behind a cross containing a relic of the True Cross gifted by the Pope. 

On the news pages, Damian Hinds tells Ruth Gledhill, “We absolutely intend to lift the cap. It is happening.” Ruth reported yesterday that the government has pledged to lift the 50 per cent faith cap on new free schools, the measure introduced by the coalition government in 2010 which means that if a new faith free school is oversubscribed, it can only prioritise pupils based on faith for half of the places. The remaining places must be allocated without reference to faith-based admissions criteria. Although this means that no child can be denied a place because they are a Catholic, they might be denied a place because they live further away from the school than a Muslim child who had also applied for a place. On this basis, the bishops have argued that canon law prevented them from allowing any new state-funded Catholic schools to be built for the past 14 years. The Church of England, which says it is committed to serving the whole community, including people of all faiths and none, has opened more than 30 new free schools since the cap was introduced. 

Also in the news pages this week, Ruth Gledhill reports that the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have issued a reflection on gender and identity that declares that reconstructive or drug-based medical intervention for children struggling with gender dysphoria “should not be supported”. Tom Heneghan reports that the Churches in Germany have held their last joint “Week for Life” after 30 years of the ecumenical event due to differences over the government’s plans to reform the laws on bioethical issues: the Protestant Church supports plans to loosen restrictions on legal abortion; the Catholic Church is emphatically opposed. 

Elsewhere on news pages, foreign editor Patrick Hudson reports on Pope Francis’ visit to Venice last Sunday. “Venice is one with the waters upon which it sits,” he said in his homily at the Mass he celebrated in St Mark’s Square. “Without the care and safeguarding of this natural environment, it might even cease to exist. Similarly, our life is also immersed forever in the springs of God’s love.” Earlier, he met inmates at the city’s women’s prison, who showed him round the exhibits in a building that had been temporarily transformed into the Holy See’s Biennale pavilion. Francis told artists to oppose “the selfishness that makes us function as solitary islands rather than collaborative archipelagos”. In a feature, our arts editor, Joanna Moorhead, who admired the art on show in the women’s prison last week – she likes to be one step ahead of Pope Francis – writes from Paris, where an exhibition of Impressionist artists heralds a season of events including the Olympic Games and the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral that is set to make 2024 a memorable year for the French capital. 

In his View from Rome, Paddy Agnew notices Cardinal Pietro Parolin dropping the subtlest of hints that if the next conclave wanted a reform-minded but more emollient successor to Francis they might need to look no further. In his regular bulletin from his small farm in Herefordshire, Austen Ivereigh plays midwife and paediatric psychologist to a ewe and her lamb, and in her column, Anne McHardy argues that the Jeffrey Donaldson storm will not bring down Northern Ireland’s restored power-sharing executive, thanks to the quietly competent leadership of Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly.  

Prompted by Liz Truss’s memoir of her lost weekend as a prime minister, Oliver Letwin unhappily surveys the shrinking of Conservative thinking into various brands of populist anti-institutional nationalism. Elsewhere on the Books pages, Ariane Bankes delights in the story of how three writers – Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamund Lehmann – were reinvigorated by immersion in rural life. Chris Nancollas rounds up three titles in which psychiatrists crop up as both heroes and villains, including Sarah Wise’s harrowing account of how for decades “undesirables” were incarcerated and sterilised by the British state. Brian Morton recommends Nick Spencer and Hannah Waite’s powerful and provocative call for a ceasefire in the long-running spat between religion and science; and James Moran is enchanted by Sarah Perry’s new novel, which takes us to an Essex beyond the clichés. 

In Arts Suzi Feay talks to Patrick Collins, director of the acclaimed adaptation of John McGahern’s final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun. Lucy Lethbridge hugely enjoys the sumptuous new Disney+ series Shardlake, a murder mystery set in Wolf Hall territory, with Sean Bean playing Thomas Cromwell with fist-thumping corporatist menace. Mark Lawson admires Testmatch, Kate Attwell’s ingenious and sparkling play about cricket and colonialism currently occupying the tiny stage of the Orange Tree theatre in Richmond before moving on to the Octagon in Bolton. And D.J. Taylor listens to the unflappable Horatio Clare scour the BBC radio archives for clips illustrating the charm of the night train.

“Strange as it might sound,” Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder of Mary’s Meals, reflects in a blog today, “my recent visit to Tigray in northern Ethiopia not only provided me with deeply shocking first-hand information about the magnitude of the human catastrophe occurring there, but it also felt like a disturbing, unexpected, spiritual exercise.” He invites us to join him for the Pray In May campaign. John Adam Fox, founder and chairman of Fellowship and Aid to the Christians of the East (FACE), reminds that this Sunday, when Orthodox churches using the Julian calendar will celebrate Easter, is the Day of Prayer for Eastern Christians, “an occasion to focus on Eastern Christians, many of whom are suffering from the effects of war and discrimination”. And in another blog, Paul Swarbrick, the Bishop of Lancaster, warns that the situation in Sudan “transcends humanitarian concerns, it’s a moral imperative. We cannot ignore the suffering of millions.”

“To enable the flowering of the feminine is to make the Church whole.” Join us for a webinar on 15 May with Anne-Marie O’Riordan to explore whether women are discerning their baptismal calling. On 22 May Michael Carter presents a webinar on medieval history and monasticism and its impact on Catholic identity. On 11 June we have a live event at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. The first Hayes-Towey Pastoral Review Memorial Lecture will be given by the Archbishop of Southwark John Wilson, who will speak on “Building relationships of communion – the synodal mission of the people of God”. Full details of timings, speakers and tickets for all our events and webinars are available here. 

Catherine Pepinster looks at the paradoxes and contrasts in the life of Frank Field, who died on 21 April: Labour through and through but close to Margaret Thatcher; a Londoner who became forever associated as an MP with Merseyside; and a high church Anglican in the social justice tradition of William Temple with great but critical fondness for the Catholic Church, expressed through his avid reading of The Tablet and frequent contributions to its pages. Finally, Guy Consolmagno emerges cautiously optimistic from a workshop at Georgetown University that had brought astronomers together with scientists, artists and policymakers to discuss the intersection between space exploration and climate change and a ladybird crawling up Jonathan Tulloch’s arm sparks a reflection on the dissolution of the monasteries. 

I hope you enjoy this week’s Tablet. If you are not a subscriber but would like to give it a whirl, you can try five issues for £5 and get a free copy of a book by Pope Benedict XVI or by Timothy Radcliffe thrown in. Visit checkout.thetablet.co.uk/MTABBL24 or calling 01858 438736 quoting promotional code MTABBL24.

Brendan Walsh
Editor of The Tablet