New Norms From Rome

The Vatican has put forward new norms for handling clerical sexual abuse. The spin in the AP story in the New York Times offers occasion for reflection.

Thought #1: The story says, “The bulk of the new document merely codified the ad hoc norms for dealing canonically with pedophile priest.” This characterization, in concert with a pointed observation that the new norms do not require bishops to report abuse to secular authorities, nor to adopt a “one-strike and you’re out” policy, insinuates that the Vatican hasn’t really done enough.

Hum. In a long article (about which I wrote last week ) the Times quoted many criticisms of the Vatican. These criticism could be summed up as follows: a debilitating confusion and ignorance of canonical rules in Rome.

If this has been the case—and I have every reason to believe it to have been true—then one would think clarifying and codifying is precisely what is needed.

Thought #2: Not only did the Vatican document address the problem of sexual abuse by clerics (as well as their use of child pornography), it also listed the attempt to ordain women as a grave canonical crime.

This clearly miffs the secular press. For a modern person, crimes concern unjust harms to persons, for example sexual abuse of minors. Easy to see the evil there. But the secular mind has a hard time seeing evil in harms done to the Church. (It also has difficulty seeing the evil in harms to to oneself, as well as harms done to the community, or to truth.)

If one believes that the Catholic Church provides the crucial means for the salvation of our souls and the blessings of eternal life, then the world looks different. It doesn’t make the evils of unjust harms to persons any less evil, but it does make one very solicitous of the well-being and intergrity of the church.

I believe in the Catholic Church, and I don’t think the bishops who covered up and failed to discipline abusive clergy put the Church ahead of the children. On the contrary, their actions deeply wounded the Church, which is why I think it quite reasonable to think of the clerical sexual abuse scandals in the same theological framework as various other assaults on the integrity of the church.

The bishops have a fundamental resonsibility to serve the Church’s fundamental mission, which is to bear witness to Christ. This certainly cannot be done by playing three-card monty with abusing priests. And it can’t by playing renegade “reformer.”