From Greta Christina’s Blog:
Here we have the story of one Andrew Brown of the Guardian, who has written a defense of the Catholic Church child rape scandal and an excoriation of those who are condemning it… on the grounds that everyone else does it, too.
No, really.
From this it emerges that the frequency of child abuse among Catholic priests is not remarkable…
and:
This is vile, but whether it is more vile than the record of any other profession is not obvious.
and:
There are, however, some fragments of figures from the outside world suggesting that not many professions do better.
Etc.
Shudder.
Where to begin?
What makes the Catholic child rape scandal so morally repugnant, and what is giving it the effect of turning people away from the Catholic Church in horror, is the way the Church handled it.
The Church knew about widespread reports of priests repeatedly molesting children… and instead of acting to protect the children, they acted to protect the priests, and themselves. Thus deliberately and knowingly putting more children in the way of known child rapists, solely for their pure self-interest.
Repeatedly. Time and time again. In every part of the world. As a cold-blooded matter of Church policy.
That is the scandal.
The fact that some adults in positions of trust and authority over children violated that trust by raping them? That is a tragedy. The fact that the Catholic Church knew about it — and instead of reporting the child rapists to the police, they deliberately shielded them from detection and criminal investigation? The fact that the Church moved child rapists from parish to parish, thus exposing even more children to them? The fact that they lied to law enforcement, concealed evidence, even paid off witnesses… purely to protect their organization from looking bad?
That, Mr. Brown, is the scandal.
You fucking moral imbecile.
We don’t know what makes people into child rapists. It is a serious mental illness as well as a profound moral failing. But the Church hierarchy who shuffled around known child rapists from diocese to diocese — not out of uncontrollable impulse, but consciously, thoughtfully, with a cool evaluation of the pros and cons, in a calculated attempt to prevent a PR disaster and protect their own self-interest? We know what makes people do that. What makes people do that is utterly craven moral bankruptcy. They don’t even have the excuse of mental illness.
And for Andrew Brown to defend this moral bankruptcy? For him to use the “Everyone else does it, too” defense — a defense that doesn’t even stand up at third grade recess, and that absolutely has no validity in a serious adult discussion of morality? For him to insist that the Church is being picked on, unfairly singled out among all the teachers and coaches and babysitters and so on who have raped children?
That suggests a moral tone-deafness that makes me physically ill. Brown is essentially doing exactly what the Church has consistently done in the face of this scandal. He is placing a higher value on the well-being of the Catholic Church than he is on the people, the children, who trust in it.
Shame on him.
tildeb
Questionable Motives 
It has emerged this week that when Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich in the 1980s, one of his paedophile priests was “reassigned” in this way. He claims he didn’t know. Yet a few years later he was put in charge of the Vatican’s response to this kind of abuse and demanded every case had to be referred directly to him for 20 years. What happened on his watch, with every case going to his desk? Precisely this pattern, again and again. The BBC’s Panorama studied one of many such cases. Father Tarcisio Spricigo was first accused of child abuse in 1991, in Brazil. He was moved by the Vatican four times, wrecking the lives of children at every stop. He was only caught in 2005 by the police, before he could be moved on once more. He had written in his diary about the kind of victims he sought: “Age: 7, 8, 9, 10. Social condition: Poor. Family condition: preferably a son without a father. How to attract them: guitar lessons, choir, altar boy.” It happened all over the world, wherever the Catholic Church had outposts.
Far from changing this paedophile-protecting model, Ratzinger reinforced it. In 2001 he issued a strict secret order demanding that charges of child-rape should be investigated by the Church “in the most secretive way… restrained by a perpetual silence… and everyone… is to observe the strictest secret.” Since it was leaked, Ratzinger claims – bizarrely – that these requirements didn’t prevent bishops from approaching the police. Even many people employed by the Vatican at the time say this is wrong. Father Tom Doyle, who was a Vatican lawyer working on these cases, says it “is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes… Nowhere in any of these documents does it say anything about helping the victims. The only thing it does say is they can impose fear on the victims, and punish [them], for disclosing what happened.” Doyle was soon fired.
Imagine if this happened at The Independent. Imagine I discovered there was a paedophile ring running our crèche, and the Editor issued a stern order that it should be investigated internally with “the strictest secrecy”. Imagine he merely shuffled the paedophiles to work in another crèche at another newspaper, and I agreed, and made the kids sign a pledge of secrecy. We would both – rightly – go to prison. Yet because the word “religion” is whispered, the rules change. Suddenly, otherwise good people who wouldn’t dream of covering up a paedophile ring in their workplace think it would be an insult to them to follow one wherever it leads in their Church. They would find this behaviour unthinkable without the irrational barrier of faith standing between them and reality. (Source)
Comment by tildeb — March 19, 2010 @ 3:59 pm |