When it comes to the sexual abuse of children and the vulnerable, is there a more lenient governance than the Catholic Church? The Vatican published new provisions to the Code of Canon Law on June 1st. The phrase “one step forward, two steps back” is too generous.
In a decades-delayed step forward, a priest found guilty of abuse can be removed from clerical duty and laicized “where the case calls for it.” This begs the question – what case of abuse doesn’t call for it? While offering some improvement, there are gray areas landscaped with loop holes where clergy child abuse can continue to thrive.
Coverage of the new provisions coincided with threats of excommunication aimed at pro-choice politicians in the U.S.
Pro-Life?
Those raised in Catholic schools, Kathy and myself included, are instructed that all life is precious and should be protected – from the womb to grave. The Vatican does not even pretend to apply pro-life doctrine consistently. That would be inconvenient.
Canon Law makes it excruciatingly clear who and what the Church holds as precious and to be protected. All life is not equal in the Church. There is a hierarchy to it. An unborn child is worth more than one who is alive. An abusive priest is worth more than both.
Thou Shall Not Be Protected
True to form, the legal wording is archaic and offensive. A priest who abuses a minor or vulnerable adult is breaking the sixth commandment (adultery) with that person. The Church has essentially told victims that it takes two to tangle. But that can be explained.
Over the centuries, the Catholic Church broadened the sixth commandment to include sex between unmarried people, prostitution, pornography, homosexual activity, masturbation, group sex, rape, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and necrophilia.
The secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta said the language makes the issue “clear” to Catholics living across various cultures on different continents, according to an article in National Catholic Reporter (NCR).
Let’s unpack that. First, it’s the Church leadership who lack clarity on this issue, not Catholics living across various cultures. Second, the broader context is still offensive! Would God place the sexual assault of children and rape in the same category as sexual relations between two or more consenting adults? Let’s ask Jesus. I believe his answer involves a millstone and drowning.
Soul Murder
If the Vatican really wanted to make the issue clear they would refer to the fifth commandment – thou shall not kill. The term “soul murder” has been used by victims of clergy child sex abuse and advocates. Adultery means to alter or corrupt. Murder accurately describes the devastation and loss.
In an interview with NCR, Irish survivor Marie Collins, a former member of Pope Francis’ commission on clergy sex abuse, shared her disappointment with the provisions along with her thoughts on Cardinal Reinhard Marx. He requested permission to resign as a symbol of leadership’s responsibility for “systemic failure.” Pope Francis denied his request on June 10th.
If good men are giving up … it doesn’t say anything for the future. Because you need good men to stay there and fight.”
Marie Collins in an interview with The National Catholic Reporter, June 17th
“Canon Law makes it excruciatingly clear who and what the Church holds as precious and to be protected. All life is not equal in the Church. There is a hierarchy to it. An unborn child is worth more than one who is alive. An abusive priest is worth more than both.”
These are shocking and abhorrent words, but, unfortunately, true. I’m sure you thought carefully before using these words, before writing this article. It was brave of you to do so, but it is a piece that needed to be written. These truths need to be said out loud. They need to be published and available for all thinking people to contemplate. We need to understand what is happening, what their words mean, and the repercussions of those words. The focus on fetal life and death, and the concurrent blithe neglect of the life and death of a child, and other vulnerable individuals, their bodies and souls, is as abhorrent as it is short sighted. In their quest to protect their own, they are destroying the life of the Church.
Thank you, again, Susan for offering a ray of light and sanity where there seems to be so little.
The abuse of a child is hideous. And I understand that the issue goes beyond the immediate offender to any bishop who simply provided transportation to another area where sadly victims could be found. And as the issue ascends up the hierarchy, the hierarchy can distort the issue worried about peers: fellow bishops and cardinals and the institution of the Church itself—at that point the trauma of the child vanishes, the accountability gets lost, the reforms are inadequate. BUT here is something I want to push forward…what about all of the “good” priests who never harmed a child BUT NEVER SPOKE UP TO PROTECT THEM?
stephen.deweger@outlook.com
The rcc will never make any rule against its self,remaining in the dark ages best suites their agenda.
Of course there exists wonderful exceptions (priests and bishops) who are sensitive to this issue and advocates for the abused and for the children of the future…but the institutional Church, I believe, needs the married priest and the female priest to have the emotional basis to reflect on the issue. Loyalty should primarily go to one’s immediate family while membership to Roman Catholic Church is not that primary loyalty but an organization that matters in one’s life.
Benedict’s response to the pedophilia crisis, in addition to adding “Those who habitually lack the use of reason” to the list of those who could be raped with impunity, was to invoke the greatest evil he could think of – women. It’s response to the pedophile crisis was to compare women who want to be priests with pedophiles. The mantra in the Catholic Church is that the priest “represents Christ.” So, it’s vision of Christ is a deranged predator of children holy SOLELY because ze chose a male form when entering the corporeal realm. This isn’t the Catholic Church, it is the cult of Priapus, especially when all down the line from the pope to the bishops to the local priests they decided that the bestestest response to pedophilia is Benne Dick’s standard lecture on the sanctity of the penis. You should just see their little faces light up with JOY on the subject. Per Jean Vianney, they are now ontologically endowed to be “right next to God!” They can conceive of NOTHING holier.
Francis just agreed with him.
https://www.ncronline.org/news/quick-reads/francis-no-concession-those-who-deny-vatican-ii-teachings
They are just so PROUD of their pedophiles!
Catholicism is BILLIONS of believers held hostage by 3,000 proud, pagan, pedophiles in the hierarchy.
I was a 3-4 X/week,50 year plus, cradle Roman Catholic watching the pedophile crisis in horror, especially when the previous entity in possession of the vatican compared women who want to be priests to pedophiles. Then the PA bishops ordered all the priests to blatantly lie about PA Bill 1947 which extended the statute of limitations on pedophiles. I complained to my local priest; who handed out the “Catholic’ League’s Essay “Women’s Moral Descent” with its theme that men have the right and moral obligation to decide which women deserve to be raped. I called my daughter at college, crying, saying that the priests were depraved morons totally dedicated to worshipping their d*cks. Her response, “Duh, Mom! I’m sorry you had to figure it out in such a painful way.
The message of the recent Vatican – show them no mercy prayer was – Be grateful we let you live when proper procedure is for the man to murder the woman with impunity.