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Tomorrow the Holy See will name Bishop Bernard Longley as the new Archbishop of Birmingham. One of the favourites for Westminster, and already an auxiliary there, he will bring true class, wit and style to what will be a key appointment with the Newman beatification and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI pending next year. But he will need also to be a canny operator. Because the issues around sex abuse by priests and male and female religious, of adults and teenagers as well as children, have not gone away. If anything, the signs are that they are about to return with more force than before. For more background on this issue, see Catholica.
The Church in England and Wales is now urging whistleblowers to come forward with allegations of abuse, as we reported last week.
But this will go nowhere near satisfying campaigners such as Keith Porteous Wood, of the International Humanist and Ethical Union as well as the better-known National Secular Society. Speaking on behalf of the former, he told a recent meeting of the Human Rights Council that the Vatican had failed to provide the mandatory reports to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Its reports were now fifteen years overdue, he said, accusing the Church of ‘grudgingly’ offering offered just one paragraph on abuse by priests, in spite of compensation being paid all over the world running to billions of dollars.
He said: ‘The Vatican’s record on this is truly shocking. It has shown little remorse for the suffering inflicted on tens of thousands of innocent children over the years. In fact, it has tried very hard to cover up and evade responsibility. We have called on the international community to stop *****-footing around the Vatican and to hold it to account for the misery it has inflicted on countless people. We want the Vatican to be made to face up to its responsibility and accept its culpability.’
Monsignor Hubertus Megen, a member of the Holy See delegation to the United Nations, defended the Church. In a shockingly naive statement which I will assume was borne out of innocence rather than arrogance, he claimed that other religions and churches were just as bad, as if that somehow excused the Catholic Church. He said available research showed that only 1.5 per cent to 5 per cent of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse. Has he done his maths? At the top end, that means one in 20 priests. And as others have pointed out, at the bottom end that is still more than 22,000 priest sex abusers.
You can listen in English to Keith’s original statement at the UN and the Holy See’s response here.
There are few statistics to support or refute his claims with, but the Church of England’s Ben Wilson
pointed me to research by the NSPCC which shows that under one percent of those children abused by people outside of their family were abused by professionals such as clergy or teachers. There are also some interesting figures from insurers in the US about abuse in Protestant churches, but nothing that is directly comparable as other churches and religious organisations tend not to be organised so centrally.
As Catholic Sensibility says, it is a tough pill for the Catholics to swallow, to be hounded on an ethical issue by a non-religious groups. Its role as a world moral guardian is perhaps what has kept the Church safe from attacks like this in the past, or perhaps because of evolving media, the attacks have just not been noticed so much. Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice quoted Clare Short accusing the Church of a ‘morally destructive course’ as long as ten years ago, but the world was not listening in the same way then.
Just to indicate how things have changed, read this quote from one forum discussing these issues:
‘My friends mum teaches prisoners in my local Jail at home. She met a Catholic priest there had up for sexually abusing a minor. He got a defrocking order signed by Cardinal Ratzinger in Latin. When Ratzinger became pope he complained about this and got another one signed in English. He then sold both of them on E-Bay.’ Then there is the Rev Anne Hedges, the Anglican cleric in a bit of hot water for calling for prison visitors to sign up to visit sex offenders.
Continues: timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2009/09/pope-visit-could-be-marred-by-sex-abuse-claims.html#moreAs Damian notes, over at The Other Place, this Pope has been nothing if not ruthless in attempting to root out this vice. It isn’t appropriate to blame him, although as Pope he can certainly expect to be asked to take responsibility.