Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

The Vatican has castigated Irish bishops for covering up abuse, in the wake of the Irish report on the investigation into the problem.  Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, a right-hand man of the Pope, described the abuse scandal as “humiliating” and “abominable”.  I think that’s the strongest terms the Vatican has used yet!

There’s just one small point: the Irish report made it clear that the Vatican was complicit in the cover-up.  Presumably they hope no-one will realise that, and they’ll be able to place all the blame on the local bishops.

I confess to enjoying cop shows, despite having been an imaginative enough child that even listening to the suspense music in the ones Mum and Dad watched after I went to bed could give me nightmares!  I was a teenager before I could watch such shows with comparative impunity, and back then my favourite was Cop Shop.  Blue Heelers and Police Rescue both helped fill the intervening years, and now it’s The Bill.

Which brings me to my point.  Currently, a major character (Sergeant Smith) in The Bill is facing investigation for beating up a criminal who was, in turn, beating up a fellow officer.  And the only person who knows the truth of what happened (apart from the crim) is Smith’s fellow sergeant Calum Stone, who himself has been shown to be somewhat inclined to administer what we might call rough justice.

Stone is prepared to back Smithy up, regardless of the truth, because “the crim deserved it”.  And this brought me to musing on the “protect one of our own” mentality that prompted Stone to lie for Smithy.  Police are encouraged to think this way, and there’s good reason for it.  Watching and defending your fellow officers’ backs might save their life one day.  Or they might save yours.

And this is where the tension between truth and mateship pulls me in both directions.  Because it’s that “watch your mates’ backs” attitude that sets up this kind of situation, where protecting your mate takes precedence over the truth, and it seems that while the basic attitude can be life-saving, it can also – in non-life-threatening situations -  destroy those to whom justice is denied as a result.

Is Smithy still a good police officer despite stepping over the line on this occasion?  Hell, yes.  Is the truth more important than his career?  I confess I’m not sure.

And perhaps you can see where this is leading, because the situation isn’t all that different in the church.  Clergy step over the line, their mates close ranks, cover up and lie for them, and justify it on the basis of his career (and possibly the reputation of the church).  And I’m quite clear that that is wrong, but not so clear on it in the police force.

But I think there are two fundamental differences.  Firstly, that in the police force, they can and do face life-threatening situations.  In the church, they don’t.  So in the church, there’s no real justification on that basis for a culture of closing ranks.  And secondly, that the church supposedly puts morals first.  In fact, many denominations or church spokespeople argue that morality outside the church is necessarily deficient.  To argue for morality, yet not place primary importance on truth seems to me to be duplicitous.

In some ways, maybe, it comes down to who do you protect first – your mates, the criminals or society/injured victims?  I don’t support vigilantism, but neither do I support excessive societal protection of those whose actions put them outside society.  And I certainly don’t agree that anything less than the truth is appropriate in the church.

Father Peter Kennedy has been sacked from his church in South Brisbane (see here and see here), despite having the support of over 1600 congregation members. He has refused to leave, and the Catholic Church is now forecasting legal action to have him removed. Further, he has argued that mediation is pointless, given the church’s strong-arm tactics so far, and refused to be involved. The archbishop of Brisbane, John Bathersby, has even gone to the extent of saying that some sacraments performed by Kennedy were not legitimate and that he would nominate a future date for “valid baptisms”.

Why has he been sacked? Because of “a dispute over the use of lay people and politically correct language in services”. Oh, and he’s questioned the virginity of Mary! Dear me!

How ironic is it that the church would deny the validity of a priest’s ordination (by saying that the sacraments he performed are not legitimate) for simple doctrinal dissension, while sexually abusive priests are retained in the priesthood, cosseted and reassured?

Children sometimes play at “opposites”, where black is white and white is black – the church makes a living out of it!

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Follow-up: Kennedy takes most of his congregation with him to a new location, and the diocesan chancellor foreshadows the diocesan response here.

Barack Obama, as a left-of-centre president, was always going to get panned by the Vatican, but it’s happened in a far more laughable way than I could have imagined possible!  AAP reports that Obama has been criticised by the Vatican for overturning a ban on state funding for overseas abortion clinics (see here).  But it was the form of the criticism that had me astounded – though I should be used to the breathtaking superciliousness of the church by now.  The Vatican official ascribed to Obama “the arrogance of someone who believes they are right”, and further added that “What is important is to know how to listen… without locking oneself into ideological visions”.

If there’s one group of people who are arrogant enough to believe they’re right (and threaten those who think differently with eternal damnation!), and who are locked into an ideological vision to the extent of being unable to listen, it’s the conservative church!

Ok, this is really simple.  I came to blog on a new topic, re-read the most recent one, and thought: I just have to make this point.  In the previous blog entry to this one, Haines is “defended” with the argument that he didn’t really know what he was doing because he was sexually inexperienced. And, let it be said, this is not an unusual defence for Catholic priests to offer, or, indeed, for the Catholic Church to use in their own defence. But if inexperience is such a danger, then why doesn’t the Catholic Church simply lift the restriction on celibacy?

Catholic priest John Haines has been convicted of offences of child porn (see here). And it was entirely due to his own stupidity! Now I suspect the average person is not going to believe that ANYone can be as stupid as Haines was in this case, but here’s the story: Haines had a thing for taking pix of his child victims on his mobile phone. Not unusual. But when he subsequently donated the phone to a parishioner, WITHOUT removing all the pix, he dropped himself right in it. (I told you you wouldn’t believe it ) If this had been a life and death situation, Haines would win a top Darwin award! Thankfully, the parishioner had a decent sense of right and wrong (unlike the one who gave a character witness in court) and took the phone to the police. One wonders if the parishioner who gave a character reference would have been so ready to do so if they’d seen/discovered the pics themself! And also thankfully, the judge’s response to the character references was that Haines’ apparent decency only makes the breach of trust even more profound. This is a far cry from the past attitude of judges, which was to see the aberrant behaviour as somehow more excusable because the priests involved were good on the surface. That attitude, and that of the parishioners who defended Haines as being “not like that”, is based on a fairytale perspective on life (see my blog entry here). It’s encouraging to see some shift, however slight. The lawyer defending him (who was obviously pushing shit uphill, but sometimes that’s what lawyers have to try to do), tried the defence that Haines was sexually inexperienced due to a prohibition on sex for Catholic priests. Perhaps he was (although it seems he was getting some experience!), but how much experience does it take for a Catholic priest to know these days that child porn is wrong? Should it, in fact, take any experience at all? Surely we have a right to expect that those who preach morality should have a working understanding of it for themselves!

Haines is now on “administrative leave”, but one has to hope that the Catholic Church will defrock him rather than follow his example of stupidity and immorality by allowing him to remain a priest.

Hollingworth has conceded he thinks the job of GG was wrong for him (see here).  Let’s hope it hasn’t taken him until now to come to that conclusion, because abuse victims could have told him that years, if not decades, ago. They could have told him that when he reassured victims he was “keeping a close eye” on how abuse complaints were being dealt with, but which later inaction he justified as “not being directly involved in”. They could have told him that when he refused to defrock a clergyman (a bishop by the time of the complaint) for underage sex, which he justified as the (14yo) victim’s instigation. They could have told him that when he appointed a clergyman against whom there were two known abuse allegations to a post on the diocesan sexual misconduct complaints committee.

And now Hollingworth tries to justify his failure based on some perceived, or unperceived (it’s not really clear which) separation of church and state. He obviously still doesn’t get it! The public disillusionment with him was nothing to do with any link or otherwise between church and state – it was simply and purely that he stood exposed as miserably inadequate in dealing with sexual immorality in his subordinates, and pitifully shameless in his attempts to wriggle out of responsibility for his poor judgement. Moreover, his supposed moral (religious) and ethical (social welfare degree) education had obviously done nothing to improve him.

Churchman or not, such qualities are not what we want to see in a GG.

Many people think that spiritual abuse only happens in cults, and if they belong to a mainstream denomination they complacently assume that it doesn’t happen at their church.  And I’ve certainly never known of or heard about a sermon being preached on it, even in more liberal churches.  As a result, the average person in the pews has no idea what constitutes spiritual abuse, and thus doesn’t recognise it when they see (or hear) it.   And, out of that ignorance, clergy abuse victims who proceed to a complaint find themselves at a loss as to how to deal with spiritual abuse when it’s used against them, as it all too often is.

One of the books recommended on my website is an excellent treatise on this subject – “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” (Johnson and vanVonderen).  Here is a quick checklist from it:
1. Power-posturing – does the leader assert their own authority?  eg. “I am the pastor of this flock”, with the implication (or overt assertion) that his word is final, or the opinion which everyone should heed most.  Sometimes this power-posturing is not actually expressed verbally, but if those who disagree with the minister are frozen out or otherwise victimised for doing so, that equates to the same thing.

2. Performance preoccupation – or “doing God’s will”.  If emphasis is placed primarily on what people do or don’t do, and particularly if this is equated with salvation or grace, this is performance preoccupation.  Obedience and submission are key words in this characteristic.  Johnson and vanVonderen make the point that obedience itself is not the problem, it’s keeping track of it that is, because that turns obedience to God into a means of earning spiritual brownie points.  Again, this can be unexpressed rather than overt, if shame is inherent in admitting to failing to measure up to a particular standard of obedience (for example, where doing “quiet times” [personal bible study and prayer] is used as a measure of a person’s holiness, and particularly if a set minimum amount of time is insisted upon.  Church attendance is another likely point).

3. Unspoken rules – often these contradict the bible, and because they’re unspoken you don’t find out about them until you break them.  Then you suffer the consequences of breaking them, whether that be open censure, or surreptitious condemnation, or ostracism.  For example, abuse victims who disclose their abuse get criticised for “not leaving it to God to deal with” or for “damaging the pastor’s ministry” or for “telling lies about the minister, who’s such a good man”.  In this case, the unspoken rules are a) don’t tell the truth if it confronts or threatens our security, b) don’t act as an instrument of God’s justice if it means asserting your own right to individual conscience, and c) if everything’s ok on the surface, then don’t tell about anything rotten underneath.
According to Johnson and vanVonderen, the most powerful unspoken rule is the “can’t talk” rule – which can be otherwise expressed as: “if you talk about the problem, you are the problem”.  They say that two typical responses to someone who exposes a problem are “everything was fine until you started stirring things up”, or (to sound super-spiritual) “you didn’t deal with it in a loving [or, mature Christian] way”.  The blame which ensues on exposure of a problem pressures the talker back into silence.  In a spiritually abusive dynamic, noticing and speaking about problems is seen as disloyal, unsubmissive, divisive and a challenge to authority (or the system), and the talker is characterised as ungodly, vengeful, a liar, or being used by Satan.

4. Lack of balance – that is, an unbalanced approach to living a Christian life.  Johnson and vanVonderen say this shows itself in either of two extremes: extreme objectivism, where the authority of the biblical text and/or theological education is elevated to the exclusion of valid subjective experience (they neatly summarise this as the trinity of Father, Son and Holy Bible!); or extreme subjectivism, where truth is given to the members solely or primarily through “revelations” or “God’s word to me for you”.  Both are used by those in authority in a church (and those who would like to be in authority!) to manipulate and control.

Other contenders for spritually abusive characteristics:
1) Loyalty to the group/minister is equated to loyalty to God.
2) Using biblical texts to assert control.
3) Pressure to convert – for example “we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, and it’s important you make a decision NOW”.
4) Guilt giving – that is, intimidation to give, such as “giving less than X is withholding yourself from God [or, stealing from God, according to Malachi 3:8]“.
5) Inherited leadership – such as the minister’s son becoming the youth leader, without any form of selection process.  This, in itself, is not abusive, but it certainly allows for the perpetuation of abuse by keeping the already-established patterns of behaviour in-house.  Unfortunately, in a congregation that is being systematically spiritually abused, such inherited leadership is often celebrated rather than questioned.

Abuse may be defined as “using power to control another’s actions”.  Physical abuse uses physical power, sexual abuse uses sexual power, financial abuse uses financial power, and spiritual abuse uses spiritual power.  Any time that someone is pressured into doing something by the use of religious doctrine or faith community pressure, they are being spiritually abused.

The closure of the Catholic Church’s in-house treatment programme for sexually abusive clergy, Encompass, has brought out some interesting figures. Firstly, Professor Timothy O’Hearn, a former board member, said that a review found that maintaining the programme would cost $750,000 a year, and the cost can’t be justified.

Can someone tell me, then, how the Catholic Church can spend 20 times that on World Youth Day, and not see the equivalent 20 years of treating abusive clergy being worth the money?

Secondly, a Sydney Morning Herald article says this:
“Opened in 1997 by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and the Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes, Encompass treated more than 1100 people, 250 of them in an intensive six-month residential psychosexual program, according to its final newsletter.”

So that’s an average of 100 clergy treated per year for 11 years, of which 23 or so each year were considered serious enough problems to be doing the intensive residential programme. Those weren’t all Catholic, by the way – other denominations referred problem clergy to Encompass too. But given that there are around 12,000 clergy in Australia at any given time, having to treat 1100 of them gives some idea of how big this problem is.

So given a) the scope of the problem clearly set out in their own newsletter, and b) how much the church is prepared to spend on other things, how can they not find justification for maintaining the Encompass programme?

The money’s not really an issue (even if their priorities are).
The number of clergy to treat isn’t an issue (the less to treat, the less it will cost, after all).

About the only answer I can logically conclude is left is that the treatment has been found to be unsuccessful.

So, the Pope’s apologised to Australian victims of clergy sexual abuse. So far, not so good. Because he didn’t tell victims it was going to happen (check out this page of my site for what should be the minimum requirements of such an apology, to see how the Pope fell short), thereby keeping them in quite unnecessary suspense. Secondly, he chose to do it during a mass for clergy! How inappropriate is it to be saying the apology – as part of a prepared speech – to the group of people who contain the perpetrators, rather than the victims?? The victims couldn’t even be there to hear it in person! Thirdly, he seemed to place equal or greater weight on mentioning the shame of (presumably non-perpetrating) clergy and the damage caused to the church’s witness, as to the needs of the victims. And fourthly, he referred specifically to sexual abuse of minors, thereby completely ignoring those many adults also abused by clergy.

So given that this apology falls well short of what he should have said, and where and to whom it should have been said, it will be very interesting to see just how much action happens when the dust from WYD settles. Let’s just revise the checklist the Pope imposed on his clergy for future action:
1) these misdeeds should receive unequivocal condemnation
2) victims should receive compassion and care
3) those responsible must be brought to justice
4) it is an urgent priority to promote a safer and more wholesome environment
5) the Church must work together to combat this evil

Isn’t it interesting that out of 5 action points, three of them (points 1, 3 and 5) are things that the church should be doing already – but obviously isn’t, or the Pope wouldn’t need to exhort them?

But I still think the most inappropriate part was to do it at a mass for clergy, thereby not only effectively offering the apology to the perpetrator group, but specifically excluding the victims who should have been able to be there to hear it.