Mother Church and the Rape of Her Children – Part Two

Main Feature

Mother Church and the Rape of Her Children – Part Two

A.W. Richard Sipe, key consultant to the Oscar-winning movie "Spotlight"

Volume 30  Issue 7, 8 & 9 | Posted: October 10, 2016

Second of two parts, first part Summer 2016 edition. See related article 'I believe in a merciful God': Star Ottawa Pastor Admits to Sexual Predation of Young Parishioners at Holy Cross.  
(NOTE CONTENT WARNING).
 
     Clerical Culture: Roman Catholic clergy live, breath and have their being in a culture that is distinct from secular social groups. Priests and bishops seem like ordinary men, but they operate in a unique reality. 
     Roman Catholic clerical culture is male-dependent and male-dominated. It is a homosocial society in doctrine and operation. There is no other culture that equals it in this regard. Its theological structure is exclusively male: God the father, son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit are male realities.13

Second of two parts, first part Summer 2016 edition. See related article 'I believe in a merciful God': Star Ottawa Pastor Admits to Sexual Predation of Young Parishioners at Holy Cross.  
(NOTE CONTENT WARNING).
 
     Clerical Culture: Roman Catholic clergy live, breath and have their being in a culture that is distinct from secular social groups. Priests and bishops seem like ordinary men, but they operate in a unique reality. 
     Roman Catholic clerical culture is male-dependent and male-dominated. It is a homosocial society in doctrine and operation. There is no other culture that equals it in this regard. Its theological structure is exclusively male: God the father, son Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit are male realities.13
     All ecclesial power and authority is grounded and mediated exclusively by men—pope, cardinals, bishops and priests. They are automatically granted status and respect, even if not assent, in secular society. Despite the fact that nuns (and women) have formed the shock troops and standard bearers of the church their role as “authorities” is strictly limited. Priesthood is denied women. 
     Clerical culture is a visible and powerful social and spiritual force that justly merits credit and respect. It also provides great theater. Some external trappings set clergy apart. They render a sense of spiritual security and unyielding tradition especially when dressed in the rainbow range of colorful flowing Mass vestments. 
     Bishops are impressive performing ancient rituals accompanied by plainchant or operatic polyphony. Billowing incense and ballet-like choreographed movement executed in magnificent sacred spaces convey an otherworldly reality. Baptisms, weddings, and funerals are memorialized in towns and villages and made memorable via these men and ritual services.
     Roman Catholic clerical culture seems open, apparent, and accessible. It is not.14
     Prompted by the crisis informed religion writers are beginning to explore the geography of clerical culture (Fox 2009).15 Its inner terrain is neither obvious nor easily traversed (Papesh 2004).16 The finer workings of the clerical culture are not fully accessible from the outside. Clerical culture has been intricately constructed and finely honed over a period of centuries. 
     Indoctrination and inculcation into clerical culture are processes that take time to absorb and understand. They include: the adjustment to the interaction of a an all-male society, in an obedience dominated, authoritarian “total institution,”(Goffman, 1961)17 established by God, where life-long employment and support are guaranteed, and a single orthodoxy is acceptable, where secrecy is equated with loyalty and is woven into the fiber of operational interactions, and where external appearances—bella figura—take precedence over truth and honesty. All the time members profess perfect chastity. 
     The investigation of sexual abuse and the resignation of unparalleled numbers of ordained men from the priesthood has led to greater reflection and investigation of the uniqueness of the clerical culture (Murphy-McGill, 2010).18 Irish Jesuit, Derek Smyth, (2010) spoke from his heart of knowledge about the clerical system when he said, “For clerical culture, new structures are not sufficient, as there appears to be an innate abuse system within this culture. Even though it may now be forced to address the issue of sexual abuse, abuse may rear its ugly face in other forms.”19
     Clerical culture is psycopathogenic. That means that the elements that constitute the operation of the celibate culture favor, select, produce, and promote men who tend to be what were formerly termed sociopaths. Nothing has exposed this core of the culture more clearly than the abuse of minors and the involvement of the most exalted members of the hierarchy who cover up for crimes.  
     The stated goals of the church are holy, dedicated to truth and service. Claims that clerical culture rewards untruth appears counter-intuitive. Operationally the culture’s shared values and practices function to preserve itself regardless of the means used to retain control and image. The clergy sexual abuse crisis has underscored the American bishops’ maneuvers, fair or foul, to avoid scandal, maintain secrecy, and preserve financial assets. Those are the conclusions of Grand Jury Reports (Suffolk Co, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Philadelphia, Kansas City, etc.) and A Report on the Crisis of the Catholic Church in the United States issued by the bishops’ independent review board and chaired by Keating/Burke. (February 27, 2004) 
     The dichotomy between the Church’s stated goals and values and its operational methods and practices produces and encourages clerical hypocrisy. Sociopaths (psychopaths) are not men who fail to know right from wrong; they are men who know what is right, but don’t care (Cima, Tonnaer & Hauser, 2010).20
     The advertised altruistic agenda of clerical life makes it an exquisite cover for sociopaths and men vulnerable to narcissism. Work with clerical abusers reveals a profusion of  “altruism in the service of narcissism.” Every clinician who has treated large numbers of priest abusers gives witness to the conclusion that narcissism is a significant personality component of priest predators. 
     More broadly, clerical culture produces in many men an acquired situational narcissism, characterized by a sense of entitlement, superiority, lack of empathy, impaired moral judgment and self-centeredness. Identification with and incorporation into a powerful and godly institution can confer a sense of grandiosity and moral justification for one's personal behavior. These qualities favor a man’s promotion within the clerical system.  
     The dynamic between the two sets of opposing values encompass clergy from the ordinary parish priest to cardinals. A study commissioned by the American bishops, (1972 Kennedy-Heckler)21 indicated that two-thirds of catholic clergy are psychosexually underdeveloped. They claim eight percent of priests are mal-developed; certainly this includes a number who abuse minors. 
     The shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that have been exposed in the sex abuse crisis—so named by the bishops in 2002—characterizes the institution of the Church just as much as its stated values and goals do. Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini (2008) describes the operation of clerical culture: “Unfortunately there are priests that aim at becoming bishops, and they succeed. There are bishops who don’t speak out because they know they will not be promoted to a higher see, or that it will block their candidacy to the cardinalate. This type of careerism is one of the greatest ills in the church today. It stops priests and bishops from speaking the truth and induces them into doing and saying only what pleases their superiors—something that is a great disservice to the Pope.”22
     It is important to understand clerical culture because culture trumps reason every time.
 
CONCLUSION
 
     The title of this volume—Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis:—is actually a question. What has the Catholic Church learned?  No one in June 2002 could possibly imagine the worldwide scope or dimensions that questions about abuse by Roman Catholic clergy would assume by 2012. The head of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, Wilton Gregory, proclaimed triumphantly in 2004, “the problem is history.”  
     My reflections focused on five fundamental issues that impinge on the Catholic Church and underlie its processes of learning about and preventing clergy sex abuse: secrecy, scandal, crisis, mandated celibacy, and clerical culture.  
     Secrecy was and remains foundational to the operation of the Catholic clerical world. Reviewing several thousand legal procedures over the past ten years demonstrates to me how assiduously—and violently—American cardinals and bishops fight to keep incriminating and embarrassing documents secret.  
     Within a decade, the fulminating scandal fed by revelation upon revelation of Catholic bishops and priests abusing boys and girls and superiors covering up their crime spread like a string of Chinese fire crackers from Boston’s Back Bay to the Vatican and Pope, from Dallas to Dublin and Bishops Conferences around the world. 
     Sex abuse by priests is no longer a secret, but a scandal properly so defined: a widely publicized allegation or set of allegations that damages the reputation of an institution, individual or creed. Clergy abuse of the vulnerable is the biggest scandal the Catholic Church in America has ever faced and most probably equals the Twelfth and Sixteenth Century scandals in Europe. 
     For example: tapes recorded during an April 2010 meeting between a victim, his bishop abuser, and a cardinal (Danneels of Belgium) reveal the prelate urging the victim not to tell anyone that the bishop sexually abused him. The European press claimed the tapes provided some of the most damaging documents to emerge in the scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church. 
     Again in 2010 another cardinal, Dario Castrillon Hoyos of Columbia, used the familial argument to defend keeping priest abuse secret saying, “it [reporting priest abusers to the police] would have been like testifying against a family member at trial.” He also claimed in a radio interview reported by the Associated Press “that Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was involved in a 2001 decision to praise a French bishop for shielding a priest who was convicted of raping minors.” 
     Not long after February 27, 2004 when the Report on the Crisis in the Catholic Church in the United States was published and made public along with the John Jay Report Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne M. Burke who served as interim Chair of the National Review Board said that the bishops did not want change, but only “business as usual.” She spoke in 2010 about the problem of “untruth” she sees in the church and the bishops.
     The scandal of sex abuse by Catholic clergy has been a public relations nightmare—gargantuan and impossible. No spin makes gruesome facts go away. Many priests and bishops have violated in criminal ways their responsibilities as representatives of Mother Church. 
     Scandal, of course, is not the real problem no matter how distressing; the crisis of betrayal of Mother Church’s children is the crux of the scandal. However, the question remains: has the church learned anything about truth and transparency in the past decade?  
     There is wide based agreement that the Catholic Church is in a crisis mode. The crisis has to do with human sexuality—specifically bishops and priests who present themselves as celibate and chaste while they violate minors and the vulnerable under the cloak of their religion. The denial, rationalization, lies, and cover up of clerical crime by Church authority is in evidence and provides an ongoing scandal and crisis. 
     There are repeated calls for the abrogation of the requirement of celibacy for ordination to the priesthood. Whatever the merits of the arguments, they will not solve all the problems of clerical sexual malfeasance. Bishops and priests exist in, maintain, and assiduously preserve a clerical culture within which secret sexual activity by clergy is tolerated
     Celibacy and chastity are taught in an educational mode and structure established for diocesan clergy at the Council of Trent. That tradition is dependent on a monastic-like schedule (horarium) and a system of sacramental confession and spiritual directors. It is no longer effective. 
     Despite rules and screening procedures a significant number of clerical candidates are sexually active with one another or with priests—sometimes faculty. Celibate observance of religious order clerics has not proved better. But sexual activity in the clerical culture is not introduced from the bottom-up—from candidates for ordination—but from men established in the culture—priests, spiritual directors, rectors, superiors, even bishops. Homosexuality is a predominant operational orientation in clerical culture form Rome to Los Angeles.23
      Culture always trumps reason. Is it possible to revise clerical culture? History, theology and human nature all conspire in favor of reforming dysfunctional systems eventually. Theologically, clerical culture is mutable, no matter how firmly grounded in custom and tradition. 
     Jesuit Bernard Lonergan (1967) wrestling with the possibility of  “transition of organization and structural forms in the Church” said among other things: “there is in the historicity, which results from human nature, an exigence for changing form, structures, methods; and it is on this level and through this medium of changing meaning that divine revelation has entered the world and that the Church’s witness is given to it.”24
     Literary critic, Lionel Trilling (1965) talks about the power of forces that change culture. Somewhere in the mind “there is a hard, irreducible, stubborn core of biological urgency, and biological necessity, and biological reason, that culture cannot reach and that reserves the right, which sooner or later it will exercise, to judge culture and resist and revise it.”25 There is hope.
     Prevention of sexual abuse by priests and bishops presents a daunting agenda. A revision of clerical culture is required to deal effectively with clergy sexual violations of every stripe. The burden transcends the capacities and limits of law and psychiatry and rests squarely on the very core of religion and spiritual transformation—in theologian Bernard Haering’s words on “absolute sincerity and transparency.” 
      Prevention will not occur without discussion of the realities of sexuality, celibacy, and the development of explicit and honest norms for sexual responsibility and accountability for human behavior on every level of the church. The darkness of secrecy breeds betrayal, abuse and violent assault. Revelations over the last decade have proved that. 
     A Mother Church, that sustains, nourishes and, protects her children demands light, accountability, openness and truth. That is the task unveiled over the past ten years. It is vital that the Church respond. Any church that cannot tell the truth about itself runs the risk of having nothing significant to be heard. 
 
GENERAL FOOTNOTES
a)  This article appears as a chapter in Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012. Plante & McChesney, Eds. 2011. 
b)  The first Grand Jury investigation of sexual abuse within any diocese in the United States was that of Rockville Center, New York by the Suffolk County Supreme Court issued January 17, 2003. The conclusions of every other Grand Jury report of a US diocese are similar:
“The response of priests in the diocesan hierarchy to allegations of criminal sexual abuse was not pastoral—In fact, although there was a written policy that set a pastoral tone—It  Was a Sham”… “Victims were deceived; priests who were civil attorneys portrayed themselves as interested in the concerns of victims and pretended to be acting for their benefit while they acted only to protect the diocese”… “These themes framed a system that left thousands of children in the diocese exposed to predatory, serial child molesters working as priests.” P.106
 “The evidence before the Grand Jury clearly demonstrates that diocesan officials agreed to engage in conduct that resulted in the prevention, hindrance and delay in the discovery of criminal conduct by priests. They conceived and agreed to a plan using deception and intimidation to prevent victims from seeking legal solutions to their problems.”- P.173.
c)  Although the bishops of Manchester, New Hampshire and Phoenix, Arizona were considered candidates for indictment on charges of child endangerment, civil authorities made accommodations for them to avoid legal action. Only in March 2011 was a chancery official, Msgr. William Lynn, indicted for criminal child endangerment as a result of a Philadelphia Grand Jury report. On October 14, 2011 Bishop Finn of Kansas City, Missouri became the first US bishop indicted for failing to report a priest child abuser. The records of many Catholic dioceses and religious orders are justly vulnerable for similar criminal actions. Prosecutors in Los Angeles spent years investigating Cardinal Roger Mahony, the former leader of the L.A. archdiocese, and other top officials. The facts are not entirely apparent what led prosecutors the last year to conclude that they lacked sufficient evidence to bring charges against Mahony. That story has yet to be told. 
 
ENDNOTES
 
13 Although Holy Ghost/Spirit is predominantly a masculine reality some minor mystical/historical reflections on the Spirit as a female principle exist.
14 Kluckhohn, Clyde & Kroeber, Alfred (1952). Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. New York: Harvard series. This critical thinker and anthropologist compiled a list of 164 definitions of culture.
15 Fox, Thomas C. (2009). “Cardinal Bernardin, clerical culture, nuns and homosexuals”. National Catholic Reporter. August 10.
16 Papesh, Michael L. (2004). Clerical Culture: Contradiction and Transformation. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
17 Goffman, Irvin. (1961). Asylums: Essays in the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. [prisons and monasteries are included] New York: Doubleday.
18 Murphy-Gill, Meghan. (2010). “Is clerical culture to blame?” U.S. Catholic.March 25.
19 Smyth, S.J., Fr. Derek. (2010). The Irish Times. February 9.
20 Cima, Tonnaer & Hauser. (2010). “Psychopaths Know Right from Wrong but Don’t Care.”Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience: August 11.
21 Kennedy, Eugene & Heckler, Victor. (1972). The Catholic Priest in the United States: Psychological Investigation. Collegeville Minnesota: the Liturgical Press.
22 Martini, Cardinal Maria. (2008). The TABLET. London: June, 14.
23 I Milinari. (2004) Shroud of Silence: An account of sex in the Vatican by five staff members. [Translated from the original Italian that was banned in Italy and published in Canada]. In 2006
     Cardinal William Levada told students at the North American College in Rome that they should keep their sexual orientation secret. In 2009 Cardinal Roger told his priests to handle priest sex abuse as a “family matter”.
24 Lonergan, Bernard J.F. (1967). A Second Collection. “The Transition from a Classicist World-View to Historical-Mindedness.” Ryan & Tyrrell, Eds. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. (1974).
25 Trilling, Lionel. (1965). Beyond Culture. 1978. New York: Harcourt.

   

A.W. Richard Sipe, key consultant to the Oscar-winning movie "Spotlight"