Column
Church needs a deeper accountability
By ROSEMARY RUETHER
There is something about the
dominant response of liberal Catholics to the clergy sexual abuse crisis that
has bothered me for some time. At the risk of appearing “politically
incorrect” I would like to explore this discomfort.
We need to start with what it means to be church. Being church, to
me, means being a community of repentance, a place where healing transformation
takes place and we are restored to something of what our good humanity and
world are meant to be. Church is where we continually rediscover what
transforming repentance means in the context of our concrete recognition of how
we have distorted our relationships to both ourselves and to one another. It is
not a place where we are perfect, where we are saints, but a place where we can
acknowledge our distortions in a way that allows us to relax our grip on these
distortions and to glimpse and taste that alternative of right relation that is
our true nature and goal.
Church then should be a place where truth is spoken. Every church
should have a sign over its door saying, “Truth can be spoken here.”
But unfortunately this is rarely the case. Too often church is where we cover
up our defects, pretend to be better than we are, deceive ourselves and others.
It is not a place where we are truthful about ourselves and seek help from
others with our problems. This need to put on a deceptive front is particularly
acute for priests who are the ones especially called to appear to be
“perfect.”
This is why the revelations of sexual abuse and, even more, its
cover-up by bishops was so shocking. It was as if the cover on this whole
culture of deceit was blown and we were confronted with the sick side of
celibate culture. This surely needed to be exposed. But unfortunately, since
bishops refused to deal with the problem when victims and their advocates
complained to them, the only way to force a response was by recourse to the
secular courts. But secular courts do not deal with the category of sin. They
can only deal with two matters, crime and civil damage suits. Thus the way to
deal with priest abusers came to be to charge them with crime and to sue the
church for civil damages to compensate for emotional and physical injury.
I am not saying that these responses do not have their place. But
they fall well short of what we should be doing as church. The church as
redemptive community means being a place where both the healing of victims and
also the healing of victimizers is promoted. Removing a habitual abuser from
priestly office, putting him in therapy, finding a job for him where he has no
access to youth are all appropriate. Jail and fines may also have their
place.
But expelling him from the community where he will never be seen
again by those who know his sins is another question.
Our treatment of priest abusers re-mains sub-Christian so long as
it stays on the level of punishment for crime and extraction of monetary
payment for compensation for injuries. Indeed the emphasis on civil suits has
quickly led to new abuses. Lawyers become involved in such cases for their own
profit and people are tempted to make up or fantasize about abuses that did not
take place. Witness the accusations against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.
I do not say this as someone who does not have full sympathy for
victims. I have had some experience with sexually abusive priests myself.
Rather I am suggesting that we need to go to a deeper level in our response to
abusers. They should personally repent to those they have abused. They should
also stand before the church and confess their sins, indicating their strong
desire to heal themselves and asking for forgiveness. The people should deal
with them as they would deal with any other pathological member of their
family, like a chronic alcoholic, for example. They should force them to
confront their problems. They should keep them from “occasions of
sin,” a good old Catholic phrase appropriate in this case. They should
support their rehabilitation by keeping them connected with the community.
This is what Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee did when the
revelations of his own sexual and financial misdeeds were exposed in a way that
suggested something less than innocence on the part of the man claimed to have
been victimized. But Weakland did not dwell on how he had been taken advantage
of. Rather he stood before the community and confessed. He then retired from
his job as bishop. He did not leave but rather re-entered his Benedictine
community, there to spend the rest of his life dealing with his own soul among
those whom he could count on to help him.
This has generally been the response of monastic communities when
problems of sexual abuse have been revealed in their midst. They have said:
“Yes, we take this person out of jobs where they have access to vulnerable
youth. Yes, we put them in counseling. No, we do not throw them out of the
community. They are sinners and they are our brothers. It is by remaining with
those who know them, who love them, who can help them to amend their lives,
that they have some hope of healing their souls.” I think this response
comes closer to what it means to be church than the discourse we have had so
far about clergy sexual abuse and cover-up by bishops, which has dwelt solely
on crime, punishment and monetary compensation.
Is it possible to imagine that sexually abusive priests are also
hurting humans, that they are still people we love, that we hold out to them
the possibility of transforming their lives? Can a deceiving bishop face his
hypocrisy? Can he rectify his life, not to try to protect his power and his
budget, but to save his soul? These are the questions we need to ask if we are
to try to hold each other accountable, not only as citizens, but as fellow
Christians. These are not “softer” but deeper standards of
accountability.
There are many things we need to think about to become more
faithful to Christ as church today. We need to deal with a sick, sexually
repressive culture that fosters abuse. We need to deal with a hypocritical,
deceitful culture that is rooted in unequal power relations. We need a more
democratic church, a more inclusive church, a more just church. But we need to
start anew with the basics. We need to start with the affirmation that all of
us sinners are also capable of repenting. We are all capable of becoming a
little more whole.
Rosemary Ruether is the Carpenter Professor of Feminist
Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.
National Catholic Reporter, March 21,
2003
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