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Accusations of Abuse in Institutions

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The Press
June 29, 2002

It's not a case of Catholic bashing
by Cate Brett

Picture this: an eight-year-old pyjama-clad boy paddling down a hushed corridor in pursuit of a promised treat. Instead, he is forced to gratify the frustrated sexual needs of a 28-year-old religious brother in whose care he has been placed.

For any parent the image, drawn from a Christchurch man's raw account of abuse suffered at St John of God's Halswell home for boys, is profoundly disturbing. For those of us raised on the milk of Mother Church (as each of The Press
journalists embroiled in this investigation has been) it is doubly so.

Today, as coverage of this unfolding tragedy continues in The Weekend Press, sections of the church hierarchy and concerned lay people are questioning our motives in pursuing this story with such vigour.

Are we unfairly targeting -- and tarnishing -- the order of St John of God in particular, and the Catholic Church in general, when paedophilia and child abuse are apparently rife in numerous institutions and professions?

Are we not in danger of undermining the good work of thousands of compassionate priests and religious brothers who have selflessly served their communities, and in the case of St John of God, ministered faithfully to society's untouchables -- the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the destitute, the mentally disturbed, and the terminally ill?

In short, isn't the secular media guilty of sensationalising what is, in fact, a relatively small problem?

Not according to the Vatican. In May this year, as cardinals gathered in Rome to discuss the growing crisis enveloping the Catholic Church in the United States, Boston's Cardinal Law acknowledged the scandal was not the creation of some media frenzy. The crisis was real and it was grave.

Since then the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has adopted a new charter binding all American dioceses to a "zero tolerance" of clerical sexual abusers. If approved by the Vatican this would lead to the removal of any priest known to have abused a child -- no matter how long ago.

Extraordinarily, as it now emerges, zero tolerance of sexual abuse by clergy has not been the norm for the Catholic Church.

As the contagion spreads to a range of Australasian Catholic Orders (St John being just the latest) it is clear that priests and brothers on whom the veil of suspicion was cast were dealt with behind closed doors -- if at all -- and all too often returned to ministry in another parish or institution.

And despite all the chest beating and promises of better processes and a new openness -- echoed this week by New Zealand bishops -- there is as yet no real indication of a willingness to even begin to discuss the systemic and cultural issues which may underlie abuse by Catholic clergy.

Except, that is, for a suspiciously new- found enthusiasm for outing the homosexuals whom the Vatican now concedes have been flocking in disproportionate numbers to its seminaries.

The "gayasisation" of some sectors of the priesthood is not a new phenomenon, but the Vatican's explicit rejection of even celibate homosexuals as candidates for the priesthood is. Archbishop Bertone, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has stated in Rome that "men with a homosexual orientation should not be admitted to seminary life" because the very state of gayness implies a "strong temptation towards acts that are always in themselves evil".

If the issues weren't so grave and the stakes so high there would be a delicious irony in all this: a church which has maintained it's priestly power base by a policy of exclusion -- no women, no married men, no sexually active human beings of any description -- now risks defining itself out of existence by blocking from entry all those with even an inclination towards homosexuality regardless of their commitment to celibacy and the priestly vocation.

Writing in the London Tablet, a British Catholic weekly, former Dominican friar Mark Dowd offers an explanation as to how the church may have arrived at this impasse. "Those who are concerned about the disproportionate numbers of gay men in the priestly life need look no further than the heady cocktail of the Vatican's hostile language on the matter and the celibacy law for an explanation.

"If a young homosexual man takes these words to heart does not the priesthood appear to offer him, perhaps unconsciously, the promise of a life which will guarantee abstinence and a way of dealing with the marriage question?"

But understanding the rise of homosexuals within the Catholic hierarchy does not offer a sufficient explanation for the explosion of sexual abuse cases -- no matter how neatly the Vatican might like to square the two off. While it is true that the preponderance of abuse cases that have come to light recently have involved the abuse of pre and post-pubescent boys, critics argue that at heart the issue is about the abuse of power and the Catholic Church's deep-seated ambivalence about human sexuality of any variety.

In her detailed exploration of how Christchurch's Brother Bernard McGrath -- and perhaps as many as 20 brothers like him -- were able to continue to offend against multiple victims in multiple settings, Yvonne Martin examines the abuse of personal and institutional power within just one Catholic religious order.

Also in this weekend's Mainlander, Geoff Collett interviews Australian academic Dr Muriel Porter on her study of clerical marriage and celibacy.

Porter argues that while the incidence of sexual abuse of children across all denominations, and in all walks of life, shows that abolishing celibacy will not extinguish abuse by clergy, hard questions must be asked of an institution so fixated on celibacy.

"The very existence of the celibacy law signals that there is a deep and dangerous pathology undergirding the sexual power games indulged in by the clergy ...

"Whatever modern church leaders might say about celibacy, marriage, and women, their predecessors for most of the past 2000 years have been openly contemptuous of human sexuality, and in particular women's sexuality ..."

Some clergy and lay people are hopeful that this current crisis will offer an unprecedented opportunity to unpack these issues.

Holding the church to public account for its trespasses against the likes of the eight-year-old boy at St John of God may be a small first step in what will inevitably be a painful process for all.

Whether those who cling grimly to the power within the Catholic Church will recognise this potential in time to salvage Christianity from the ashes of the institution remains to be seen.

Cate Brett describes herself as a fallen Catholic.