It's One Thousand Years Later And Still The Message Goes Unheard

The following editorial from the Toronto Globe and Mail refers to this story. This one clearly demonstrates that Catholics can not trust the hierarchy to implement their own strategies when it comes to the sexual abuse of minors. It doesn't matter what bishops say they are going to do because they have the freedom not to do it. In this case at least six Ontario bishops were aware of this priest and none of them insisted their own protocol be followed.

The church and the priority of child protection
Editorial from Toronto Globe and Mail - Published on Friday, Apr. 09, 2010 9:43PM EDT

Senior members of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in Ontario showed contempt for the law and for the most loyal and unquestioning among their adherents, in seeking to protect a sexually abusive priest, Bernard Prince, from police charges.

In so doing they ran the risk that an apparent abuser would go on to abuse other children, and that his victims would be denied justice. As revealed in a letter written by the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., the church preferred to hush up the priest’s serial abuses and spare itself a scandal rather than to face up to its moral responsibility to make child protection and care for victims the priority. The 1993 letter, obtained by The Globe’s Tu Thanh Ha, makes clear that at least four archbishops and two bishops knew there were serious allegations from four or five victims, dating back several years. It was not until 2005 that police received a complaint; Mr. Prince was convicted in 2008 of molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984.

The church’s actions may not have broken any laws. But they were inimical to the spirit of the law – that the protection of children comes first. Most of Canada has child-welfare legislation that requires everyone, not just professionals, to report suspected child abuse. While all these rules and laws generally pertain to children who are currently at risk, rather than to incidents from many years earlier, they convey the importance our society puts on protecting all children from serious harm. This is the point that the church still seems unable to grasp, to judge from recent comments at the Vatican in which the subject was dismissed as “idle gossip” and the treatment of the church compared to that faced by the Jews during the Holocaust.

The letter from Bishop Windle to the Pope’s envoy to Canada pleaded that Mr. Prince not be given any Papal honour, lest any of his victims be so angered they complain to the police about the abuse. (He was eventually given the title Monsignor anyway.) Cynically, Bishop Windle pointed to the church’s good fortune; the victims were of Polish descent and had such respect for the priesthood and the church that they had not gone to the police. All this came just a year after the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, after wrenching experiences, especially at the Mount Cashel boys home in St. John’s, Nfld., produced guidelines called From Pain to Hope, on how to deal with child abuse. “Together with all other responsible citizens, the Bishops respect the civil laws and fully collaborate with civil authorities in sexual abuse inquiries,” the church’s website says in introducing the report. But the letter from Bishop Windle suggests the church saw itself, at least in this instance, apart from the law.

When the church puts the protection of its reputation ahead of the protection of children, it is bound to suffer a much larger and more devastating injury, once the truth emerges.

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There are a couple of things about this case which should raise red flags for a lot of people. The first is he was transferred to the Vatican City States where the age of consent for sexual activity is 12. He was seen in Thailand which is a hub of the pedophile sex trade, especially for Western men. He was promoted to monsignor against the advice of Canadian Bishops. He was a friend of JPII and was known to facilitate Canadian laity meeting with the Pope. The Vatican knew about his proclivities and accepted him into their ranks.

Yesterday was not a good day for the Vatican. It was not a good day for Pope Benedict. The AP released a story which included a signed letter from Cardinal Ratzinger in which Cardinal Ratzinger shows great pastoral sympathy for the abusive priest, blocks his laicization, alludes to the good of the Church, and fails to mention one single word about any victims--other than the church.

Some of the Pope's defenders are decrying the amount of publicity all this is engendering. They maintain that Benedict's record in unassailable and that everything is being taken out of context. The implication seems to be that this is the pope we are talking about and we shouldn't be talking about His Holiness in this way because it harms the dignity of his office.

Some of these defensive bishops and cardinals seem to be willfully oblivious to the Catholic tradition. The tradition is replete with reformers who took on the abusive use of power in the hierarchy, especially if the hierarchy were hiding behind exalted theological notions of their august positions. For instance St. Peter Damien, as explained in this article by Anderson C Colt, had very strong opinions about what would happen to bishops and popes who refused to deal with offending clerics. Lest I forget, St Peter Damien was writing about this topic in 1049.

In other words, such men (pedophiles) were supposed to be confined to monasteries where they could be supervised for the rest of their lives. Since these sins require such a degrading, public penance, Peter Damian argued that they were grounds for deposing men from holy orders because canon law forbade men who had to perform public penance from assuming ecclesiastical offices. (43)

Leo IX was not moved by Peter Damian's arguments. He informed him that he did not believe clerics who had seduced boys and young men to commit acts of mutual masturbation and other sexual acts should be automatically deposed. In the name of acting humanely, Leo argued that these men could retain their offices as long as they had not engaged in such behavior for long periods of time or with many people. The pope did concede, however, that any cleric who had engaged in anal intercourse should be deposed. (44) (Does this argument sound somewhat familiar?)

As far as Peter Damian was concerned, any sexual act by a member of the clergy with others, including contractual sex with prostitutes, was a form of sexual abuse that demonstrated the offender was unfit for holding a priestly office. This was true because of the imbalance of power and social standing between the participants. He was more concerned about the spiritual impact that it had on their victims, who were being seduced into mortal sin. He knew that he could not hope to raise these other issues with the pope and bishops if they were unwilling to act against clerics who were essentially raping boys. So Peter Damian continued to work for reform in other areas and waited until Rome was more receptive to his reasoning before again raising the issue of sexual abuse.

After Peter Damian had become a cardinal bishop, he returned in 1039 to the issue again and vented his frustration at a man whom he had helped to be elected pope. Writing to Pope Nicholas II, he made the following warning about bishops who had either participated in the sexual abuse of someone or who had tolerated it in their jurisdiction:

The day will come, and that certainly, or rather the night, when this impurity of yours will be turned into pitch on which the everlasting fire will feed, never to be extinguished in your very being; and with never-ending flames this fire will devour you, flesh and bones. (45) (Words for our time as well.)

Here's another relevant thought from St. Damien. In fact I will let this be today's final word.

" Listen, you do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests. Listen, and even though you feel sure of yourselves, tremble at the thought that you are partners in the guilt of others; those, I mean, who wink at the sins of their subjects that need correction and who by ill-considered silence allow them license to sin. Listen, I say, and be shrewd enough to understand that all of you alike "are deserving of death, that is, not only those who do such things, but also they who approve those who practice them""