From the Editor’s Desk –
Just last week, a Pennsylvania grand jury in US made public its roughly 900-page report on sexual abuse by clergy, which detailed the experiences of at least a 1000 survivors, victims of sexual abuse – the abuse of power and of conscience at the hands of priests over a period of approximately 70 years.
Pained by the incidents, His Holiness Pope Francis, on Monday, wrote in his letter to the people, “With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”
Elaborating further, the Holy Father said, “I make my own the words of the then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).’”
Even though it can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time goes on the church has come to know the pain of many of the victims. It has realized that these wounds never disappear and that they require the church forcefully to condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death; these wounds never go away. “The heart-wrenching pain of the victims, which cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity,” the Pope added.
These developments also have a direct impact on the church in India due to the unsavoury incidents that rocked it in recent times — such as the alleged rapes, abuse, land and financial deals gone sour, impropriety, etc.
The Holy Father acknowledged once again the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers alike.
“Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the protection of minors and of vulnerable adults,” the Pope stressed.
The extent and the gravity of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself this is not enough. Today the church is challenged as the People of God to take on the pain of its brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit.
If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today the church needs solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become a way of forging present and future history. Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of corruption, especially spiritual corruption.
Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen 4:9).
The church is also conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable.
“It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion. Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils,” the Pope added.
The fact that the Pope and here in India, ICM has carried this sad story is the beginning of a meaningful response to evil. Child abuse is not Catholic evil, like hitting women is not an Islamic evil. Evil is evil. And now is the time that Catholics should decide how they treat the confessions in Kerala scandal. May be, and this is something American nuns like Sr . Joan Chittitser have been fighting for; Catholic women and men go back to Patristics and reorient the role of the woman within their Church. I being a Hindu cannot speak for Catholicism. But certainly one should not stop the confessional Sacrament but think of ways in which one can separate sacerdotal functions in ways which do not compromise on Catholic dogma. Celibacy and priesthood became one in ( sic) St Jerome. But just as an academic exercise, one can revisit both Patristics and the Second Vatican Council and study Catholic theology to keep the message of Jesus radical. This is the challenge: to preserve the radical nature of Christianity.
Pax. I am commenting here as a Hindu in the same spirit as Dr. Clooney SJ writes on all matters Hindu. Though I do not have his scholarship. Peace.