What to say to people who feel betrayed by the Church's cover up of child abuse?

[Zeno11]

Maybe I didn’t make myself clear, or you really didn’t understand my post. My question is asking how do I defend the Church in terms of it’s authority when it so manifestly failed to protect its children?

I don’t need to question my humanity, thanks.

 

[Zeno11]

There is NO excuse for clergy abuse of children, there is even less of an excuse for the appalling cover ups. Instead of agonising about what you should say, use your own heart and mind and say that these crimes are an abberation and should be dealt with in the same way as any others.Stand and be counted with the survivors rather than the perpetrators.
If you ned to ask what to say, you may need to question your humanity!

Perhaps you should read my post again. I am not asking how to defend the cover up of abuse, but how to defend the authority of the church on other matters in the light of such a betrayal.

And I feel no need to question my humanity. Perhaps you should read posts more carefully before making such accusations.

 

[Zeno11]

How did the church ‘cover it up’?

If the church didn’t report the molesters to the authorities, then I’d have a problem with it, otherwise its not the churches fault, its the priest or whoever it was that molested the children’s fault.

I’m also sorry to report that the whole of Ireland is properly scandalised by the fact that abuse after abuse was covered up for decades, children were not believed, priests were just moved around to continue abusing other children and no, the legal authorities were not informed and the appropriate actions were not taken.

Because of this, thousands and thousands of previously faithful Catholics are now questioning everything about the authority of the Church and no longer feel able, in conscience, to accept anything on faith or trust; they also feel that they have a God-given obligation to challenge many of the Church’s teachings, particularly with regard to female priest, contraception, homosexuality, and divorce. This is what I am finding hard to address - since the Church in which they trusted so much has let them down so badly, they are ripe for listening to many outspoken priests and laity who are leading thousands into heresy. This** is what I am trying to argue against; I believe that the evil perpetrated by paedophiles and the subsequent cover up of their activities are not in themselves reasons to attack the dogma and traditions of the church. But I’m afraid my reasoning is falling on deaf ears and I was hoping for some inspiration from this forum.

 

[mini_me640]

I consider myself a faithful Catholic, and I have serious trouble with this issue. If our Church is to be a moral authority, its members need to behave better than society. And the hierarchy needs to behave better than other members. The thing that sticks in my craw about this whole thing is how the hierarchy appears to have done nothing about this, has not appeared to show remorse about this until they were backed into a legal corner, and losing a lot of money and over this. I have seen too many times where things were treated more as a public relations matter than a matter of the sins of priests. I’ve read too many statements produced by Church institutions that read as though they written by lawyers, not by compassionate ministers representing Jesus Christ.

When someone confronts me about this issue, my response is something along the lines of, “it’s pretty horrible what happened.” There is no defending this, and whenever I hear someone attempt to mitigate this scandal, my stomach churns. Within the last week, I heard someone say in essence, “well, most of these cases were with teenage boys, so it’s not as bad as people are making out to be.” UGH! However, I am still Catholic, I am still dedicated to practicing my faith and trying to live it more and more each day. I love my Church and strive to live in obedience.

I believe we will not move past this until we as a Church are able to just say plainly, It was wrong. A lot of people sinned. And lot of other people allowed them to sin. And a lot of people were seriously hurt by those sins. And it’s very likely that a lot of souls have lost their salvation because of things that happened. We’ve learned many lessons, and will never repeat these mistakes again. If we as a Church are to simply be sincere, this is how I believe we would speak.

 

[tgrath]

How did the church ‘cover it up’?

If the church didn’t report the molesters to the authorities, then I’d have a problem with it, otherwise its not the churches fault, its the priest or whoever it was that molested the children’s fault.

I believe it has been documented that bishops were directed to report such issues to the Vatican, and not to report such crimes to law enforcement. The Church refused to cooperate with Irish authorities, even recently, resulting in the closure of the Irish Embassy to the Vatican.

Priests were reassigned to avoid scandal, yet sometimes given posts which allowed continued interaction with children. Higher church officials clearly appear to have lied to the media. Abuse victims were actively opposed in court by the Church’s legal counsel, which is which means that representatives of the church denied that such events occurred, otherwise they would have no grounds of opposition.

 

[jschutzm]

I’m also sorry to report that the whole of Ireland is properly scandalised by the fact that abuse after abuse was covered up for decades, children were not believed, priests were just moved around to continue abusing other children and no, the legal authorities were not informed and the appropriate actions were not taken.

Because of this, thousands and thousands of previously faithful Catholics are now questioning everything about the authority of the Church and no longer feel able, in conscience, to accept anything on faith or trust; they also feel that they have a God-given obligation to challenge many of the Church’s teachings, particularly with regard to female priest, contraception, homosexuality, and divorce. This is what I am finding hard to address - since the Church in which they trusted so much has let them down so badly, they are ripe for listening to many outspoken priests and laity who are leading thousands into heresy. This** is what I am trying to argue against; I believe that the evil perpetrated by paedophiles and the subsequent cover up of their activities are not in themselves reasons to attack the dogma and traditions of the church. But I’m afraid my reasoning is falling on deaf ears and I was hoping for some inspiration from this forum.

It is hard to answer this… mostly because any discussion of the topic almost always comes out like either:
A) blind faith and you are brain washed and not admitting the reality of the situation
OR
B) You are defending pedophilia.

MOST people have not done very much research on the topic. That is the #1 problem. They have gobbled up whatever the media has put forth. NO I am not saying that it is all fabricated and a hoax, but simply that people haven’t truly looked into the complexity of the issue. And THAT is a huge problem in and of itself. Like relying on Campaign ads to solely decide on which candidate to vote on.

Secondly, the other problem is that too many Catholics, and even non-Catholics rely on and believe in the holiness of the PERSON instead of the institution. They confuse the MAN with his teachings.
A loss of faith in the Vatican, translates into total loss in faith in the Doctrines of the Catholic church… as if the Doctrines of the faith were purely the invention of the Priests and Bishops since the 1950s.
People outside of the faith accuse Catholicism of being a ‘man based religion’ and that we all merely ‘follow the Pope’ instead of God. When Catholics leave the faith over a scandal like this… they reinforce that stereotype.

I find it funny that people keep referring to the moving around of Priests as evidence #1 of a coverup.
Most people aren’t aware of what Clinical Psychologists actually recommended for the treatment of Pedophilia back in the 50s, 60s, etc. – They recommend that 1) the perpetrator seek some counciling (not ongoing, just several months or a year) and that they perpetrator be moved AWAY from his victim, both so that the victim can heal but also so the temptation was removed. So in some cases… the Church was following the advice of supposed ‘experts’
It is just that NOW the experts have come to realize that this doesn’t really help or get at the root of the problem.

This is what I mean by NOT doing the research and simply going with our modern interpretation and what the media feeds us.

Again, don’t get me wrong and assume I’m white washing things. Simply that the individual facts are much more complex then most people realize and so many people go off half-cocked. This is even more serious when it leads to a crisis of faith and the person leaves the Catholic faith altogether of these issues.

I’d say that the reason I am Catholic is not because of my faith in men, but because I find more spiritual truths within the Church then outside of it. I would be giving up TOO much and compromising on the truth to leave the Catholic faith.
So I stay, because there is no better place to go.

 

[Uriah_Betrayed]

So I stay, because there is no better place to go.

This essentially is a point I keep falling upon. Why trust, why put faith in the Catholic Church if in the end the most sanctity and grace you can get out of it is “because there is no better place to go.” What kind of love from God is it that the “God established Church” is no better than any other secular institution that lets adults near kids, and has been shown to cover things up until the media decides to have a Priesthunt.

I’m getting tired of it and staying because there isn’t a better place to go is starting to look less appealing by the day!

 

[Ubenedictus]

I’m also sorry to report that the whole of Ireland is properly scandalised by the fact that abuse after abuse was covered up for decades, children were not believed, priests were just moved around to continue abusing other children and no, the legal authorities were not informed and the appropriate actions were not taken.

Because of this, thousands and thousands of previously faithful Catholics are now questioning everything about the authority of the Church and no longer feel able, in conscience, to accept anything on faith or trust; they also feel that they have a God-given obligation to challenge many of the Church’s teachings, particularly with regard to female priest, contraception, homosexuality, and divorce. This is what I am finding hard to address - since the Church in which they trusted so much has let them down so badly, they are ripe for listening to many outspoken priests and laity who are leading thousands into heresy. This** is what I am trying to argue against; I believe that the evil perpetrated by paedophiles and the subsequent cover up of their activities are not in themselves reasons to attack the dogma and traditions of the church. But I’m afraid my reasoning is falling on deaf ears and I was hoping for some inspiration from this forum.

well i almost disagree. The betrayal is a good reason to fight the church, i know an african proverb that says that if a goat (vegeterian) is pursued to a dead end it will turn back and bite, they feel drowned by the church and they will dismantle whatever they can to fight back. It wouldnt help the healing process anyway, but human are not known for alway taking the right path.
Ubenedictus

 

[Zeno11]

Thanks to all the people who left helpful responses, especially Mini-Me and gigi4747, I hope you don’t mind that I lifted some quotes directly from your responses in my reply. . This is what I wrote in the end:

There are so many things to address in your response that I wonder where to start! Thank you for sharing your journey of faith and disillusionment with the Church; believe it or not, many times in my life I have asked similar questions. The difference is that I am now utterly at home with the traditional teachings of the Church and understand why it teaches what it does, for example on sexual relationships, contraception, homosexuality, female priests and so on. I am happy to address any of these individual issues with you but I don’t feel that is the real issue at stake here, and that kind of information is easy to find and consider in your heart yourself.
The issue here seems to be that, because the Church failed so abysmally to protect, as you rightfully say, our most innocent and vulnerable members and betrayed the trust of each and every one of us by doing so, that the Church can no longer be trusted as an institution. Why should we listen to those who were complicit in evil? I don’t think there is a Catholic on earth who has not asked themselves that question in recent years. But here lies exactly the problem.
As Catholics now, we have to defend the faith in the setting of people like you who want to exploit the hierarchy’s compromised credibility in order to change Church doctrine. But Church doctrine has not been given to us by the perpetrators of abuse or by those who covered it up; it has been given to us by Jesus Christ and handed down by the apostles and Popes for 2000 years. When did the Church last state an infallible doctrine? Even Vatican 11 in 1962 was a pastoral doctrine and not issued under infallibility. Therefore the dogmas and the teachings of the Church have not changed, and using the actions of an evil minority to demand such change is just adding to the sin and confusion. How can it be logical to claim that because of the actions of these evil men, everyone, including Christ and all the saints of the Church, have always been in error? Because if the teachings of the Church, are wrong now, then it follows that they must have always been wrong, and all the saints like St Patrick or St Augustine were also just blind and ignorant and wrong too! It is not a sensible argument, is it?
You feel there are no absolute certainties anymore, but maybe your faith in certainties was misplaced; my faith has always been rooted in Christ and He is the same now, yesterday and forever. You talk about difficulties in interpreting scripture, but before the printing press was invented, how was the Catholic faith passed on? This is what I was referring to in my earlier post when I mentioned the role of Tradition, one of the Pillars of our faith. This is why the Church fathers have always interpreted scripture for us to help us understand its true meaning, and why there are now thousands of Protestant sects, because when they broke away from the Catholic church, none of them could agree on the true meaning of any scripture, so they began setting up diverse branches. ‘The wisdom of man is truly folly to the Lord!
Jo, I do truly sympathise with your struggle, but the types of reform you seem to be interested in are heresy to a true Catholic, and as a fellow Catholic, in all conscience I have to point that out to you. I do not want the Church in Ireland to split, I do not want a single soul to be lost. It would be heartbreaking if another of the fruits of those evil men within the Catholic Church was an attack on doctrine and the loss of so many once faithful believers. I wish for quite different reforms within the Irish church; I wish that the Church would admit that because of its failure to protect our children, it has currently lost moral authority for many people (but that does not mean the teachings of the church are wrong!) and set about addressing that issue.
I would like to see a true penitence expressed by the bishops and clergy, expressed in some meaningful penance, perhaps by giving away the riches and the bishops’ palaces that so many of us find disturbing to say the least. Personally I think any clergy involved in the cover up of paedophile priests should be donning sackcloth and ashes and living for a time as a hermit in a cave; that would go some way towards demonstrating true sorrow and true repentance. I would like to see Mass offered continuously for the victims of abuse and their families in a perpetual offering. I would like to see, hear and read an admission of guilt and sorrow that did not look as though it was written by a lawyer, and I would like all the perpetrators of abuse to be charged and prosecuted, all over the world. Priest apart though, the sexual abuse of children is not confined to priests, and I would like those in the Church who are innocent of any blame to use their expertise gathered from this unspeakable tragedy to influence the protection of children in the wider world and to ascertain that our secular society also knows how to identify, treat and punish this crime against children.
So like you I wish for many reforms in the Church, but there we differ. I would like to see the widespread availability of the pre 1962 Latin Mass, the mass of all our ancestors which has sustained us throughout the centuries. I would like to see the Irish priests call on the Vatican to ask why the Consecration of Russia, asked for by Our Lady in 1917 at Fatima, has still not taken place. These are the things that are needed to reform the Church!
My children are in their teens and early twenties, so I am not yet a grandmother. For my grandchildren, my most fervent wish is that they have as their inheritance the one, holy Catholic and Apostolic faith entrusted to our church by Jesus Christ.

 

[Ubenedictus]

I believe it has been documented that bishops were directed to report such issues to the Vatican, and not to report such crimes to law enforcement. The Church refused to cooperate with Irish authorities, even recently, resulting in the closure of the Irish Embassy to the Vatican.

Priests were reassigned to avoid scandal, yet sometimes given posts which allowed continued interaction with children. Higher church officials clearly appear to have lied to the media. Abuse victims were actively opposed in court by the Church’s legal counsel, which is which means that representatives of the church denied that such events occurred, otherwise they would have no grounds of opposition.

please throw more light on the document where the irish are directed not to report such issues.
Ubenedictus

 

[jschutzm]

This essentially is a point I keep falling upon. Why trust, why put faith in the Catholic Church if in the end the most sanctity and grace you can get out of it is “because there is no better place to go.” Why kind of love from God is it that the “God established Church” is no better than any other secular institution that lets adults near kids, and has been shown to cover things up until the media decides to have a Priesthunt.

I’m getting tired of it and staying because there isn’t a better place to go is starting to look less appealing by the day!

I threw that in as a catch phrase to distill everything down to 1 quick phrase. I’m sorry that’s the only thing that caught your eye or spark your response.

Where you see a depressed, desperate statement… I see it as a very hopeful and POWERFUL statement.

The KEY to that phrase comes a few sentences before… where by leaving the faith means compromising on FAR too many central truths.

There is no better place… not by small margins but on HUGELY important issues. It is not a difference between choosing the Ford Escape or the Toyota Rav4 - where both are VERY similar and you’d be compromising only on small luxury features.

NO, instead we are talking much larger differences and of a philosophical and spiritual nature which deal with Universal Truths and Reality.

If I go to another Church - then I am leaving behind ‘truths’ and ‘realities’ which the Church teaches.

Find me a Church which teaches ALL of the same Doctrines and Dogmas as the Catholic church. You can’t… not even the Orthodox or Anglican faiths. Even those have different world views and proclaim a different reality – Spiritually and Philosophically speaking.

So I don’t say “there is no better place to go” lightly… as a statement of desperation, NO - quite literally the opposite.
That is a statement of profound truth.

And I mean this despite all opposition to the contrary. My wife and most of my friends are all Protestants (mostly Baptist) it would be MUCH easier to simply switch for me.
What’s ironic is that nearly all of my in-laws understand this. That the sex abuse crisis is NO reason to switch or doubt the faith. That they understand the reasons must be theological, not cultural.

 

[tgrath]

please throw more light on the document where the irish are directed not to report such issues.
Ubenedictus

This was reported by Irish authorities. So, when Irish law enforcement requested cooperation in investigating child molestation charges, the Church invoke “diplomatic immunity” as its justification for refusal to cooperate. The Irish government protested the action by closing its embassy at the Vatican.

 

[latingirl]

I can’t help but wonder why it seems people really don’t care about the abuse and cover-ups perpetrated by other churches…

 

[Uriah_Betrayed]

I can’t help but wonder why it seems people really don’t care about the abuse and cover-ups perpetrated by other churches…

Media: Biggest target

Atheists: Biggest target, plus apparently Catholics are responsible for all the world’s evils

Other Christian sects: Don’t want the light to be shined on their churches. Plus I think most Protestants and other Christian sects find it easier to just claim Pedophilia and Cover ups are a “Catholic Problem”

 

[jschutzm]

I can’t help but wonder why it seems people really don’t care about the abuse and cover-ups perpetrated by other churches…

Yeah… try asking that and NOT have people claim that you are scapegoating or dodging the question.

OR the classic answer: " Cause they covered it up!" - and if you try to point out other organizations who first thought of the welfare of their position or the organization over that of the victim and covered up sexual abuse BESIDES the Catholic church - then you are just ignoring the problem and trying to make other groups look just as bad as you.

So it is a no-win situation for people who are truly angry at the church.

I DO think it is funny that so many people can ignore cover ups and what not at almost any organization but some how the Catholic church is held to a higher standard by those outside of the church.

Almost makes me think that part of them DO realize that there is something special about the Catholic faith and in some weird way, people DO look up to it and expect it to lead by example.

I can understand why Catholics expect more… but it’s more curious of a phenomenon when it comes from non-Catholics or self-professed anti-Catholics.

 

[johnnyjones]

The hiearchy was was wrong, and this is something that still greatly effects the church. HOW could they be so wrong? Why would they cover up evil? It reminds me of the early evils of the church. Bad popes, crusades etc. If I did not believe the spirit was there I would not have come back to mother church, but I still have a hard time with this.

As well, Jesus selected Judas with Gods plan in mind. Judas was the Son of Perdition. This is poor reason to “explain” the abuse in the church.