This article has been imported from our web archive. As a result, it may contain formatting errors, broken links or images, or other inconsistencies from the original publication.
Abuse issue used to attack Catholic Church
By Michael Coren
May 25, 2011
Michael Coren
When we discuss the abuse crisis it is extraordinarily difficult to sound fair and sympathetic. Because if we are the former, we seem to lack in the latter; if the latter, we often neglect the former.
To describe what happened is sometimes assumed to be a defence or even some sort of vile justification. The problem is that there are still cases coming to light, and even when the grime has finally been left behind, there will still be people who wish to beat the Church with the stick of sexual abuse.
So we have to be bold and hope that stating truth will offend only those who have no sense of balance when it comes to Catholicism. Denial is immoral, obfuscation as bad. Perhaps as many as two per cent of clergy were directly or indirectly involved, the typical victim was a teenage boy and for the most part the reaction of bishops and bureaucracy was to order the abuser to change parish, seek counselling and never repeat the crime.
To describe what happened is sometimes assumed to be a defence or even some sort of vile justification. The problem is that there are still cases coming to light, and even when the grime has finally been left behind, there will still be people who wish to beat the Church with the stick of sexual abuse.
So we have to be bold and hope that stating truth will offend only those who have no sense of balance when it comes to Catholicism. Denial is immoral, obfuscation as bad. Perhaps as many as two per cent of clergy were directly or indirectly involved, the typical victim was a teenage boy and for the most part the reaction of bishops and bureaucracy was to order the abuser to change parish, seek counselling and never repeat the crime.
Today we cringe when we hear of such a pathetic response. But this was standard secular, psychiatric advice at the time, and that given to school boards, sports organizations and other religious bodies. We now know better, but it’s significant that while those other groups are not taken to task for not doing enough, the Church is attacked for its callousness. Good Lord, the double standard and the tendentious history are almost overwhelming!
Of course there were men in authority who chose to do nothing out of their own sexual deviance, but they were a tiny number. It was panic rather than perversion that characterized the worst of the response, and that is something for which we should all be deeply ashamed. But there is surely no other group of men and women on Earth that have done so much since all of this to put matters right, to show contrition and to make the Church arguably the safest place for a young person to be.
Tragically, this is not the case for all institutions. In the United States in particular, the influence of teachers’ unions has meant that some abusers have not been dismissed and are still teaching. I expect that many people reading this column right now are saying, “It happens in Canada too.” It does, because I have seen it.
Abuse is a reflection of the broken status of the human person. We are fallen, damaged, in need of repair. It says nothing about the Roman Catholic Church, other than this is why we need the Church, to guide us back to the ways of God, Christ and holiness. If it were a result of celibacy, there would be no abuse in non-Catholic churches or hockey teams; if it was due to an all-male clergy, there would be no abuse in families — where, obscenely, it is actually at its highest.
These are just excuses used by unscrupulous critics with an agenda to attack Catholicism. They often seem more concerned with using the abuse issue to attack the Church than with caring for the victims of the actual abuse. I remember meeting a man in his late-20s who had been sexually molested by a priest. The priest later took his own life. I expected to meet an angry, Catholic-hating person, but instead had the privilege of spending time with a devout, peaceful Roman Catholic.
“I was abused by a man, not by the Church. He used the Church to further his lust, and I see the Catholic Church as being as much a victim in all this as I am,” he says, making me feel extremely inadequate. “Yes I was in despair at first, and yes I refused to go to Mass. Then I returned, because what I found there was not some cruel abuser, but the Saviour who had been abused, tortured, killed for me and for all of us. He knew me, wept for me, made me feel that I wasn’t alone. If I let that awful, abusive man take me away from the Church I’ve let him win again and again. He’s not going to do that.”
As well as sinners amongst us, there are saints. So, so many saints.
(Coren’s new book is Why Catholics Are Right. He can be reached at www.michaelcoren.com.)
Of course there were men in authority who chose to do nothing out of their own sexual deviance, but they were a tiny number. It was panic rather than perversion that characterized the worst of the response, and that is something for which we should all be deeply ashamed. But there is surely no other group of men and women on Earth that have done so much since all of this to put matters right, to show contrition and to make the Church arguably the safest place for a young person to be.
Tragically, this is not the case for all institutions. In the United States in particular, the influence of teachers’ unions has meant that some abusers have not been dismissed and are still teaching. I expect that many people reading this column right now are saying, “It happens in Canada too.” It does, because I have seen it.
Abuse is a reflection of the broken status of the human person. We are fallen, damaged, in need of repair. It says nothing about the Roman Catholic Church, other than this is why we need the Church, to guide us back to the ways of God, Christ and holiness. If it were a result of celibacy, there would be no abuse in non-Catholic churches or hockey teams; if it was due to an all-male clergy, there would be no abuse in families — where, obscenely, it is actually at its highest.
These are just excuses used by unscrupulous critics with an agenda to attack Catholicism. They often seem more concerned with using the abuse issue to attack the Church than with caring for the victims of the actual abuse. I remember meeting a man in his late-20s who had been sexually molested by a priest. The priest later took his own life. I expected to meet an angry, Catholic-hating person, but instead had the privilege of spending time with a devout, peaceful Roman Catholic.
“I was abused by a man, not by the Church. He used the Church to further his lust, and I see the Catholic Church as being as much a victim in all this as I am,” he says, making me feel extremely inadequate. “Yes I was in despair at first, and yes I refused to go to Mass. Then I returned, because what I found there was not some cruel abuser, but the Saviour who had been abused, tortured, killed for me and for all of us. He knew me, wept for me, made me feel that I wasn’t alone. If I let that awful, abusive man take me away from the Church I’ve let him win again and again. He’s not going to do that.”
As well as sinners amongst us, there are saints. So, so many saints.
(Coren’s new book is Why Catholics Are Right. He can be reached at www.michaelcoren.com.)
Michael Coren