The Vatican does it again; spins its policy and practice and then dumps the blame for abuse on others.

There have been times over this past week when I have momentarily thought that maybe, just maybe the Vatican was finally being forced to confront the truth about the reality of clerical sexual abuse and the cover up it perpetrated of such heinous crimes by clergy.

I admit I remained sceptical as I read about how the tone of comments emanating from the Vatican seemed to suggest a significant shift in thinking and approach, but I demanded of myself that I remained open to the possibility, no matter how remote, that change was possible.

In what seemed a very significant development just a few days ago, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi acknowledged that the Church had lost public trust and said Church law could no longer be placed above civil laws if that trust were to be recovered.

Then today the Vatican published an explanation of its guidelines to Bishops on how cases of clerical sexual abuse should be handled. Notably, the Vatican said that Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed. On closer examination though this latest ‘explanation’ of church guidelines isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

The guidelines do not in fact say that Bishops must report all cases of actual or suspected clerical child sexual abuse to the civil authorities.  Instead they say that “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.”

However in many jurisdictions there is no mandatory reporting requirement. So in a great many cases civil law will not require bishops to report abuse concerns to the civil authorities for proper investigation. Just these past few weeks the most senior Catholic Bishop in Denmark made it clear that there was no requirement under Danish law which obliged him to refer cases to the police. In Ireland there is no mandatory reporting law and the same is true in many other countries. Ireland knows only to well the cost of allowing Bishops to decide when and if they should refer cases to the police.  The reality is that many, many cases of rape and abuse by Irish priests were not referred to the police and social services and on numerous occasions Bishops did not fully cooperate with police investigations into abuse by priests.

In 1996 the Irish church did introduce guidelines which required bishops to refer cases to the civil authorities. But they did not do so in most cases.

Explaining his failure to so so the former Archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell simply asserted that he was not required to follow the guidelines as they were not enforceable under either Canon (Church) or Civil Law.

So much for guidelines.

Also, the procedures and guidelines published by the Vatican today are by no means emphatic in requiring that child protection be at the heart of responses to clerical child abuse. For instance they state “the bishop mayimpose precautionary measures to safeguard the community, including the victims.”

So the Bishop may, presumably if he is so inclined, impose measures designed to safeguard children and respond to the needs of victims. But he is by no means required to do so.

The simple fact remains that Church Law does not require Bishops to even consider child protection and victim welfare in deciding to respond to child sexual abuse by priests, but it does require that they consider as crucial the reputation and good of the church, even if that is contrary to the greater good. That approach is proven in case after case right across the world where Pope’s, Cardinals, Bishops et al ignored the rights and needs of children, abuse victims, catholic communities and the common good and acted instead to protect their power, their authority and their wealth.

So why would we ever trust such men to act now to protect children? Where is the evidence of the epiphany, the moment when they woke up and realised that their first obligation was to truth, justice and the common good?  Where is there proof of the road to Damascus conversion where the men who have so consistently lied about their knowledge of clerical paedophilia and its cover up suddenly realised that they had gotten it all terribly wrong?

I can see no evidence of it, none, not a jot.

The publication of the guidelines themselves suggests the very opposite.

At one point in a section dealing with how the Vatican might deal with abusing clerics the guidelines read, “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) also brings to the Holy Father requests by accused priests who, cognizant of their crimes, ask to be dispensed from the obligation of the priesthood and want to return to the lay state.  The Holy Father grants these requests for the good of the Church (“pro bono Ecclesiae”).”

But if is this is the case then how in God’s name can the current Pope justify his more than six year delay in agreeing to defrock a priest who had asked to be laicized after he was convicted of tying up and sexually assaulting two boys? I dealt with this case in an earlier post.

AP published a letter which seems to show that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger resisted pleas from a US Diocese to defrock a California-based priest who had sexually assaulting children, citing concerns including ‘the good of the universal church’. The Priest himself had asked to be defrocked after he was convicted of tying up and sexually assaulting two boys.

The request to the Vatican to defrock the priest was first made by the in 1981.  In 1982, Oakland bishop John Cummins urged Ratzinger, as head of the Vatican’s congregation for the doctrine of the faith, to grant the request. Nothing much appears to have happened until Cardinal Ratzinger wrote to Bishop Cummins that although the argument for defrocking Kiesle was of “grave significance”, it was necessary “to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time”.

The letter also notes the “detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age”. Another priest, George Mockel, wrote to Cummins: “My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older,” reported AP.

The priest, Father Stephen Kiesle, was 38 at the time.

Once again the primary concern of the Vatican appears to have been its reputation and the prevention of scandal, with scant or no regard for child protection or victims of abuse. The letter signed by the man who would become the current Pope clearly establishes that the Vatican resisted defrocking the convicted paedophile priest for the “good of the universal Church”.

The Priest was finally defrocked in 1987, having spent a number of years after his conviction for sexual assaults on children working with young people within the church.

The Vatican stridently defended the Pope’s handling of this case over the weekend and then published these guidelines today without even appearing to understand the perverse contradiction in suggesting that they provide for a proper response to child protection concerns when they clearly allow grossly negligent handling of cases which should give rise to terribly grave concerns.

And then tonight, just to top it all, the Popes second in command Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, said that homosexuality is the cause of paedophilia.

Speaking at a press conference in Chile he rejected the notion that celibacy has any part to play in the sex abuse scandals. He may well be right that celibacy itself is not directly a causative factor, after all men who are struggling to stay celibate can and do chose to have adult sexual relationships, they are surely more likely to do that than rape a child to satisfy their normal sexual urges?

But to suggest that homosexuality is to blame for paedophilia is deceitful and vile. To blame an already marginalised section of society for the crimes of child rapists is a contemptible act which further reinforces homophobia and hatred and grants permission to bigotry and violence.

It is also a blatant deceit. It is true that the majority of victims of abusing priests are male children and teenagers. But by no means are all.  And even so, we don’t describe sexual offenders who target girl children as heterosexual offenders, we describe them as paedophiles. The gender of the victim does not make the abuse either heterosexual or homosexual and many abusers target children of both sexes.

For instance one of Ireland’s most notorious offenders Fr Brendan Smyth abused mainly girls. Fr Oliver O’Grady whose offending was the basis of the Oscar nominated film Deliver us from Evil abused both girls and boys as did countless other clerical rapists.

What has Cardinal Bertone got to say to their victims and the countless thousands of other female victims of priestly rapists across the world? Is the reality of their experiences to be denied and covered up in yet another attempt to whitewash the truth and spin the facts in to deflect blame from the Vatican onto others?

Not much I would imagine, after all truth, justice and basic human decency doesn’t appear to matter much to Bertone and his fellow church leaders.

And where are those of integrity within the Church to challenge such hateful claptrap? For months now we have heard that Cardinal Sean Brady is a man of integrity and purpose who truly wishes to deal with the abuse issue effectively. We hear the same mantra about other Bishops here in Ireland, in the UK and in other places.

Well let’s see them prove it.

Lets hear them unequivocally reject Cardinal Bertone’s vile attempt to further stigmatize gay people and deny the institutional failings of the Roman Catholic Church.

If they don’t, then we know what they really stand for.

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