Self Serving & Legalistic

By AM Tuesday, September 13, 2011

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It is hard to avoid the sense that the Vatican is still more concerned with avoiding any admission of legal responsibility than with the anger, confusion and sadness of the faithful. To a moral and spiritual crisis, it has given only a bureaucratic, self-serving and legalistic response ... The most notable aspect of the Vatican statement is what it does not contain: any substantial reflection on the Cloyne report itself. While declaring itself ‘sorry and ashamed’ for the suffering of victims, it expresses neither sorrow nor shame for the systematic covering up of abuse by church authorities - Irish Times editorial

The Vatican’s response to Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s scathing criticism of the Rome based corporation for its involvement in cover up of child abuse has come at last. Part of a poorly coordinated two step with Bishop John Magee’s managed but weak interview with RTE, the Vatican chose Federico Lombardi to deliver it without much reference to the fact that he has been a sandbag to Ratzinger for years, not merely in relation to Ireland. Earlier Lombardi had fallen foul of Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore who accused him of using noise to mask the issue.

This time the Vatican was unable to delay its response and drag matters out for aeons. Gilmore had already warned ‘this is not something that is going to be put on the long finger.’ Although it might be felt in some circles that the Vatican response was one of the finger, long or short.

Patsy McGarry tersely summed up that response. It took ‘25 pages and 11,000 words to say – “nothing to do with us”.' Surprise, surprise. It after all is the institutional embodiment of Christ, and Christ cannot ever be wrong.  Not that Christ would recognise anybody other than Pharisees in the Vatican were he to appear today.  And OJ Pope, like Simpson before him, is hell bent on denying the obvious.  Anybody still fooled by it deserves to be.

The Vatican unabashedly has with ‘the gimlet eye of a canon lawyer’ served up the same old, same old.  What lies at the heart of Enda Kenny’s critique is a 1997 letter from the then papal nuncio, Archbishop Luciano Storero, to the Irish Bishops Conference in January 1997. That letter described the Irish Church’s Framework document on child protection as “merely a study document” which had the potential to be both “highly embarrassing and detrimental”.  Any criticisms made on the basis of the letter, the Vatican assured all, were because of our subjective reading. Mere mortals are not equipped with the infallibility that would make such a reading objective. Only the men of god come divinely equipped with that spiritual faculty.

Nothing from the Vatican goes anywhere near refuting the case as laid out by Gilmore in July when Lombardi had been parroting on about objectivity:

And the objective facts are children were abused in the care of the church. The objective fact is it was covered up and not reported ... and the objective fact is the Vatican interfered in the affairs of this country and the way in which that was being dealt with by church people who were under the influence of the Vatican and under their regime. That’s an objective fact, and I want responses to those objective facts.

An Irish Times editorial argued that ‘Irish Catholics, and citizens in general, had a right to expect much more from an institution that sets itself up as the ultimate arbiter of spiritual and moral truth than some effective debating points.’ In his retort to the Vatican response Gilmore showed little patience for debating points or nitpicking and accused the Church leadership of missing the real point which is:

there was the most horrific sexual abuse of children perpetrated by clerics. The Catholic Church did not deal with that as it should have dealt with it. Let’s not be distracted. Let’s not miss the point – no less charges were made. The Taoiseach and the Government stand over what was said.

Indeed they should. It would be a gross abandonment of of those raped and tortured by the Church was the government to fold on the matter and leave vulnerable children to the tender mercy of the men of god.

Ultimately, the Vatican response permeates throughout with the ethos of the Church dealing with allegations of child abuse ‘in harmony with canonical procedures.’ The point needs to be made forcefully that canon law is a set of in house club rules with no relevance to the outside world. Harmony with canon law is not what the victims of clerical abuse need. The complete disavowal of canon law as a means to address clerical abuse of children is more in line with what is required.