Vatican guilty of unholy compassion for paedophiles
20 December 2009 By Vincent Browne
In 1922, the Vatican promulgated an instruction to do with what it called crimen
solicitationis (the crime of solicitation within the confessional) and what it
called the ‘‘worst crime’’ - the sexual abuse of children. The document was
issued in Latin. No authoritative version was produced in English.
The document was circulated only to bishops and under terms of strict secrecy.
A new version of the guidelines was produced in 1962, but this, according to the
Murphy Commission, was unknown within the Dublin diocese until some time in the
1990s.
Desmond Connell, the former archbishop, told the commission he had never seen
the 1962 document, nor had he met anyone who had seen it.
John Dolan, the chancellor of the diocese and a monsignor, whose job is to
ensure that the administrative records of the diocese are kept safe, said he
didn’t know that ‘‘lurking in the very end, at the very back [of the decree
crimen solicitationis], was a little paragraph on the ‘‘worst crime’’.
He was unaware of the 1962 document until an Australian bishop discovered
towards the end of the 1990s that it was still valid. Until then, he did not
know of any guidelines by the Vatican on the issue of clerical child sexual
abuse.
The Murphy Commission commented on how ‘‘unusual’’ it was, ‘‘whereby a document
setting out the procedure for dealing with clerical child sexual abuse was in
existence but virtually no one knew about it or used it’’.
In 1996, victims of clerical abuse hounded the bishops into devising a
‘framework document’, setting out guidelines for dealing with allegations of
abuse. John Dolan said: ‘‘They [the authors of the framework document] did not
feel Rome was supporting them in dealing with this issue ... they were meeting
an onslaught of complaints, and Rome was pulling any particular solid ground
that they had from under them’’.
The 1922 and 1962 Vatican instructions on dealing with allegations of clerical
child sex abuse demanded absolute secrecy in the conduct of investigations. The
secrecy was so pervasive that, to some, it seemed to demand that the complaint
also be kept secret from the state authorities.
Canon 1341 states that the bishop is to ‘‘start a judicial administrative
procedure, for the imposition or the declaration of penalties, only when he
perceives that neither by fraternal correction nor reproof, nor by any methods
of pastoral care, can the scandal be sufficiently repaired, justice restored,
and the offender reformed’’.
The Murphy Commission notes: ‘‘This canon was interpreted to mean that bishops
are required to attempt to reform the abusers in the first place." In Dublin,
efforts were made to reform abusing priests by sending them to therapeutic
centres. But, according to the commission, ‘‘the archdiocese seems to have been
reluctant to go beyond the reform process, even when it was abundantly clear
that the reform process had failed’’.
But, more tellingly, the commission stated they ‘‘could find very little
evidence, particularly in the early decades of the commission’s remit, of any
attempt by church authorities to restore justice to the victims’’.
It says the question of harm to the victims never seemed to have been considered
by the archdiocese.
In considering whether a person is guilty of the ‘‘worst crime’’, canon law
states a person must have ‘‘deliberately’’ violated the canon law. In
considering the issue of guilt under canon law, the Canon Law Society of Britain
and Ireland has commented: ‘‘Among the factors which may seriously diminish
their imputability (guilt) in such cases (cases of clerical child sexual abuse)
is paedophilia ...
‘‘Those who have studied this matter in detail have concluded that proven
paedophiles are often subjected to urges and impulses which are in effect beyond
their control .. .because of the influence of paedophilia (the abuser) may not
be liable, by reason of at least diminished immutability (guilt) to any
canonical penalty or perhaps to only a mild penalty, to a formal warning or
reproof or to a penal remedy."
The commission says it ‘‘finds it a matter of grave concern that, under canon
law, a serial child abuser might receive more favourable treatment from the
archdiocese or from Rome, by reason of the fact that he was diagnosed as a
paedophile’’.
What all this says is that the issue is not just a matter of negligence or
complicity in clerical child sexual abuse on the part of individual bishops - it
is the culture of the Catholic Church, a culture shaped by the church
authorities in Rome and transmitted and refined in dioceses.
A culture that hides the Church’s own guidelines concerning what it itself
rhetorically said was the ‘‘worst crime’’; that caused the Vatican authorities
to pull the ground from priests who were trying to draft guidelines on abuse;
that prioritises the abusers over the abused; that has been essentially
indifferent to the harm caused to abuse victims; that regards paedophiles as
objects of sympathy and compassion.
A few more episcopal resignations, with a presumption that these settle the
matter, is just a continuance of the culture of denial of the Catholic Church’s
institutional and cultural complicity in the criminality of clerical child
sexual abuse.
The Holy Roman and Apostolic Church is the problem.
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