As reported cases of child sexual abuse committed by priests explode across the globe, Catholics in the Boston area are condemning what they see as a lack of adequacy and lack of accountability in dealing with the crisis by the Vatican.
On March 20, Pope Benedict XVI publicly released an 18-page pastoral letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland in which he formally apologized for the wave of sexual abuses committed by priests in the traditionally deeply Catholic country.
Many Catholics, including a large number in Boston, have voiced their concern that the pope has failed to take responsibility for the issue or action to address it.
“What he did was quell the crisis and the outrage but keep the focus away from the Vatican and its role in creating this culture in the Catholic Church. He did not address his own role, and he did not administer any real punishment,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, a co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Massachusetts nonprofit organization dedicated to gathering documents, reports and news items related to clergy abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.
She said the pope’s past failure to adequately place the blame for the sexual abuses on the bishops who simply transferred suspected priests from one parish to another endangered the well-being of children in an even greater number of congregations.
“When [the pope] came [to the U.S.] in 2008, he expressed sympathy for victims and condemned the actions of the priests,” Barrett Doyle said. “What he didnít do was condemn the bishops who enabled those priests. He referred to them in a glancing way. I believe the goal of his visit in 2008 was to give a cheap closure to the crisis.”
She said that while this time around the pope recognized the bishops’ culpability, he kept the focus away from the Vatican and, accordingly, himself.
“He didn’t really do anything to correct the problem which would have been to force the resignation of every single bishop who let the abuse happen, which would have been the morally correct thing to do,” she said.
Cases of child sexual abuse involving Catholic priests have been reported in other countries besides Ireland, including Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria and the United States
In light of these recent events, Cardinal Sean Brady, the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, has been criticized for his handling of abuse cases in the 1970’s in which he admitted victims were coerced into signing confidentiality agreements. He has not given any indication of renouncing his position.
Although the letter did not call for the resignation of any bishops, reports say that a few have volunteered to leave their posts.
Doyle said she finds college students generally do not take action on the matter.
“I haven’t seen a lot of college kids respond to this issue,” she said. “Maybe when you’re young, the evil of it doesn’t resonate as much. I encourage Catholics in college to become active and challenge the Church. Speak out for victims.”
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Allison Daley, who is active within BU’s Catholic community, said that people should focus on supporting the victims rather than chastising Church leaders.
“Amidst scandal, I think it’s important to remember that we are all fallible people,” Daley said. “In no way do I excuse what happened in Ireland or what has happened in the past in other parishes . . . we can all be critical of the responses of our Church leaders or we can come together and support the victims.”
CAS junior Brian Hanrahan, who converted to Buddhism from Catholicism six years ago, said that media hype on the issue of child sexual abuse was disproportionately pointed at the Catholic Church.
“I find that the Catholic Church gets a lot of unfair, negative press,” he said.”You find these sorts of crimes in any kind of organization, whether religious or non-religious. The fact that the Catholic Church is such a centralized religion makes it easier to pinpoint its faults, more so than other less centralized institutions.”
On the other hand, CAS sophomore Ljubica Gavrilovska said she was not surprised by the pope’s reported lack of accountability.
“It’s typical,” she said. “Unless it suits the interest of the Vatican, the Catholic Church won’t go out of its way to fix something like this. I don’t expect much from the pope.”
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