The Roman Catholic Church continues to be under the scanner and the entire community stands humiliated in the eyes of other communities across the globe, due to alleged sexual brutalities perpetrated against children and vulnerable women by members of the clergy. In almost all the clerical sex abuse cases, the bishops concerned have been accused of hiding the incidents from the public and civil authorities and protecting the culprits without taking punitive action against them. In many such cases, the bishops themselves were part of these incidents plaguing the Catholic Church since the 1940s. So, how can we trust such persons to lead us to Heaven, is a million dollar question.
On August 14, a ‘grand Jury’ in the US state of Pennslyvania released its findings of the largest-ever investigation of sex abuse in the US Catholic Church history, revealing that 301 priests in that one state alone had sexually abused thousands of children over the past 70 years. In the 900-page report on the statewide investigation, the jury detailed how ‘predator priests’ used the children’s own religious faith and trust in them as religious leaders to victimise and then silence them. The priests also found in the Sacrament of Confession the opportunity to perpetrate sexual abuse against the children and silence them through threats of eternal damnation – children were told they would ‘go to hell’ if they spoke out to anyone what happened and ‘nobody would believe a lying child over a man of God’s Word’. The ‘predator priests’ in every Diocese weaponised the Catholic faith and used it as a tool of their abuse. And even while the priests were raping little boys and girls, the ‘Consecrated men of God’ (Bishops) who were responsible for them not only did nothing to eradicate the ‘scourge’, but they hid it all, the report said.
It’s not the first time the Catholic Church is facing a crisis due to sexual abuse involving clergymen. Earlier investigations data in the last several decades revealed that such incidents have taken place in Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, Austria, Belgium and the USA, where hundreds of thousands of innocent children were allegedly sexually brutalised for years together. Recently, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide, Australia, has been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment after he was found guilty of covering up child sex abuse by clergymen. Besides, 34 priests were defrocked by Vatican on May 22 this year, over allegation of a child sex abuse ring formed a decade ago in Chile. Such cases of child sex abuse by clerics have also been reported in various other countries, particularly in the developing world, where investigations are ongoing.
In India too, a large number of scandals of priestly sexual exploitation and torture behind the Church walls as well as the malpractices within it – including misappropriation of church wealth and sale of property through underhand dealings, have been reported in various states. But, despite complaints, individual priests have largely escaped public accountability due to the failure of the Bishops concerned in taking action against the culprits, perhaps because the Bishops themselves have such skeletons in their own cupboards.
On June 30 this year, a nun from Kerala accused the Jalandhar Bishop Franco Mulakkal of raping and having unnatural sex with her for 13 times between 2014 and 2016 – police are investigating the case. Earlier, Cardinal George Alencherry has been charged for causing loss of Rs 90 crore to the Catholic Archdiocese of Ernakulam in a controversial land deal.
Yes, for long, there has been a spate of scandals woven around misappropriation of the Church wealth and sexual abuse of children and women all across the globe, which investigations attribute to the widespread infiltration of persons with immoral character and low family background, into the clergy. This is also the most important factor behind the steady plummeting of the Church’s following, especially in the Western world. So, it wouldn’t be out of context to suggest that the downward slide of Catholicism today is due to insatiable greed for material wealth and uncontrollable lust of the flesh on the part of our clergy.
A Jesuit Priest Fr Hans Zollner, Professor of Psychology and President of the Centre for Child Protection at the Pontificial Gregorian University in Rome, who has been on the frontline of advocating for survivors of clerical sexual abuse, said the crisis unfolding in the USA is a summons to a new way of envisioning the Church and taking responsibility for it. “We see that people were first speaking out about the misbehaviour of priests and now it’s Bishops, so there is a development there. I do not think it will stop soon”, he lamented.
To his credit, Pope Francis on August 20 has issued a letter to all Catholics around the world condemning priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up and begged forgiveness for the pain suffered by victims and strongly advocated that lay Catholics must be involved in any efforts to root out sexual abuse and cover-up. He blasted the present clerical ‘culture of death’, while acknowledging the suffering endured by many minors due to sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. The Pope appealed to all Catholics to face the crisis together and not let it tear the Church apart.
Indeed, it’s important for all Catholics, and particularly for the clergymen, to do a thorough soul-searching through examination of our own conscience in tune with Jesus Christ’s ‘Sermon on the Mount’, unadulterated and taken as a whole. Yes, truly through Jesus’ teachings we need to realise that we cannot serve both God and Satan together, and that it’s time to let our lives be open books for all to learn from.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
