Jeff Peel's Diary

Keith Porteous Wood is Executive Director of the National Secular Society

I am pleased that commentators [see Shane in Jeff's post last week] have come forward to illustrate the somewhat counterproductive strategy of apologists for the Catholic Church’s non-actions in tackling child abuse. They make a bad situation a hundred times worse: shooting the messenger; attacking the attacker and playing victim are specialties of the Church. He has learned well from them. But it will not cut much ice; the time is long gone when the Church had so much moral authority those asked to jump asked, “how high?” The Pope discovered that yesterday when his supposed olive branch to the Irish people was rejected by the vast majority of commentators.

On Shane’s secrecy point, I suggest he (or anyone else) puts “secrecy vatican child abuse” into Google. It will provide hours of reading. The culture of secrecy is well covered in an article[1] entitled Arrogant, corrupt, secretive – the Catholic church failed to tackle evil from the Observer on 21 March 2010, which deserves to be read in its entirety. Another article in the same paper refers to the Pope’s/Cardinal Ratzinger’s notorious 2001 letter “instructing bishops to report all abuse cases to his office at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for confidential handling. Vatican officials have said the measure was designed to prevent cases being covered up at local level, but Irish bishops reportedly understood the letter to mean they should not report cases to the police.”

Most will be appalled about the apologists’ obsession with tiny details and the unwillingness to face up to the big picture. The Pope did similarly in his letter to the Irish people yesterday. It was notable for any acknowledgement of wrong-doing in the Vatican, far less apology for it. No suggestion that the culture of secrecy will end. No indication that all those in the Church will be required to follow local law, even when this conflicts with “canon law”, and report suspected abusers to the civil authorities to make their own enquiries.

Does it not speak volumes about the Church’s real attitude at the very top that no bishop or higher has been laicised/sacked for involvement in child abuse, whether for active in involvement or complicity? Cardinal Archbishop Groer of Vienna is believed to have personally violated two thousand victims[2], but died a cardinal even though his guilt was known.

Yet even this ill-advised -but so telling – defiance of the public will by the former Pontiff himself was not enough to save Cardinal Law from the parishioners and public in his See outraged by his secrecy, moving priests around to reoffend and “difficulties” in the courts. Cardinal Law, former archbishop of Boston moved smartly to the Vatican after some severe brushes with American justice[3], whether as guest or fugitive I will leave readers to decide. Even since his disgrace he has enjoyed the personal patronage of both the previous and current pope. Law’s proffered resignation was rejected by the previous pope[4]. That funeral was organised by the then Cardinal Ratzinger[5]  and what higher honour could be bestowed by him than to lead a funeral mass for the former Pope which is what happened to Cardinal Law[6]. Now he has a cushy billet as archpriest of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, prestigious in the Catholic hierarchy, and indeed he is clearly more powerful than before his transgressions were laid bare, with a number of high offices insensitively including the remaining a member of the pontifical council of the family.[7]

So may inaccuracies, eh? How about the fundamental points I make that:

1.  the Church is in multiple breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child[8]. The Holy See responded but did not deny this.
2. it promised in open session to produce a report six months ago[9] that is already thirteen years overdue and still has not done so. It is hardly as if the Holy See can claim a ‘nil report’ given billions of dollars and a billion euros have been paid out in compensation in the USA and Ireland alone.
3. Such is the Catholic Church’s arrogance and insensitivity it deemed that one paragraph to be adequate to dispose of “the problem of child abuse by catholic clergy”[10].
4. I predicted that more countries would come out and in the few days since I did so more has emerged about Switzerland and Brazil.

Shane has taken exception to comments on the cost of child abuse came from the Observer[11]. Let me repeat the first three sentences in their entirety:
“Irish taxpayers are to fund most of what is likely to be the largest payout from public funds to child abuse victims anywhere in the world. Organisations representing clerical abuse victims and members of the Dail claim the final compensation bill will be around €1.3 billion (£780 million). Under an indemnity scheme agreed between Bertie Ahern’s government and the Conference of Religious in Ireland in June 2002, the Catholic Church will only pay €128m towards the bill.” That the Irish Government had something to hide would not surprise me in the least. But to suggest that the “[t]he Orders co-operated reluctantly” is stretching credibility: they must have gone laughing hysterically all the way to the bank.

Nor do I hold any view on my “own government’s record of non-cooperation with the inquiry into the Dublin & Monaghan bombings”. I don’t doubt there will be much to criticise, but not being the moral authority Shane appears to be I didn’t think two wrongs (if that is what they were) made a right. It is hardly if either side of the troubles bathed themselves in glory, or the relevant churches either.

If calling “on the Holy See to “open up its files and records to CRC and state investigators” is arrogant, I plead guilty as charged, and proud of it. Someone has to call on the UN and international community to call this “curious” absolute monarchy to heel. That the Holy See is an independent sovereign state is a problem. But the difficulty lies in that, unlike other states, through its canon law it is instructing those in other jurisdictions to do its bidding. There would of course be no problem if there was no conflict with its “laws” and those of other states for activities in other states and it did not hold material about serious allegations of what are almost certainly criminal offences carried out in other almost certainly not otherwise discoverable. Another small matter is its arrogant disdain for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of which it is a voluntary signatory.

That is why I am calling international attention to the Holy See’s many shortcomings, and if that is judged “arrogant”, fine. Readers will know what is the most arrogant, and possibly richest, organisation in the world. I think the tens of thousands of children further abused by the church’s administrative actions and inactions deserve much more justice from the Vatican, the UN and the international community than they have received so far. And I will continue to fight for greater justice, despite attempts to deflect me.

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/cardinal-hans-hermann-groer-592499.html

[3] http://www.slate.com/id/2188971/

[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1416029/Cardinal-Law-resigns.html

[5] http://www.expatica.com/de/news/local_news/german-cardinal-ratzinger-tobrpreside-over-popes-funeral-18698.html

[6] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/07/world/main686346.shtml

[7]  http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/sm_maggiore/en/capitolo/capitolo.htm   “He is at present a member of the following Congregations: for Bishops, for the Oriental Churches, for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, for Catholic Education, for the Evangelization of Peoples, for the Clergy; and also a  member of the Pontifical Council for the Family. He was appointed Archpriest of the Patriarchal Liberian Basilica on May 27, 2004 and took possession of it on June 10, 2004.”

[8] http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/unhrc-holy-see-pack.pdf (Written statement)

[9] http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/unhrc-holy-see-pack.pdf (Holy See Right of Reply)

[10] Ibid

[11] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/01/childprotection.children