Roman Catholic Reports on Child Abuse
Two significant reports about child sexual abuse by priests were released in February by the Roman Catholic Church, one by the Vatican and the other in the USA.
USA Report:
This survey was compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and overseen by the National Review Board – a lay panel formed by the bishops at the height of the abuse crisis. The board rebuked the bishops for failing to stop widespread sexual abuse by priests over the last half-century, calling their performance “shameful to the church”.
The main finding is that about 4% of priests – a much greater proportion than previous estimates suggested – have been accused of molesting children across the USA since 1950. There were 10 667 abuse claims over those 52 years. More than 80% of the alleged victims were male and over half said they were between 11 and 14 when they were assaulted. Victims’ representatives are sceptical about even these figures because they are based on self-reporting by bishops. “To allow them to count the numbers just doesn’t make any sense”, said one advocate. The report also revealed that, up to 2002, abuse claims have cost the Roman Catholic Church in the USA $533.4 million – and many multi-million-dollar settlements have been made since then.
Blame for the abuse is laid on, among other things, the bishops’ emphasis on avoiding scandal. Their failure to stop predators, says the report, let the “smoke of Satan” into the church. The molesting of children by priests is in fact exceedingly satanic and confirms that Rome is indeed “the masterpiece of Satan”.
Vatican Report:
This document is actually the proceedings of a conference at which eight psychiatric experts spoke on the topic of sexual abuse. Vatican officials insisted that it should not be considered a set of official rules for how to think about, and respond to, sexual abuse by priests. The report found fault with the American bishops’ zero-tolerance policy of June 2002 – the removal from public duties of any Roman Catholic priest who had abused a child. It is strange that the report portrays this policy as an overreaction to a public outcry, but it is in character with Rome’s past practice of being more protective of her priests than of their victims.
Many Roman Catholic critics of the Church’s handling of sexually-abusive priests have promoted the zero-tolerance policy as the only way to make sure that bishops do not continue to cover up the crimes of priests. It is little wonder then that David Clohessy, one of these critics, called the report “a terribly depressing development”. Can one really expect anything better?
The Vatican report is just a damage-limitation exercise – and a not very effective one at that. In any case, the superstructure of Romanism is unsound because it is built on a crumbling mixture of papal heresies and traditions, mixed with some Scripture – and not on the secure foundation, pure Scripture. Although Rome may recover to some extent from this scandal, it can only continue to worsen morally. NMR
Papal Primacy and the Church of England
A joint Roman Catholic and Anglican report, The Gift of Authority, argues that the Pope should be recognised as the “universal primate” in the Church of England. The report was discussed at its General Synod in February, and the Church was asked to take its biggest step, since Henry VIII broke from Rome over 450 years ago, towards accepting the primacy of the Pope and the concept of infallibility.
Before the Synod meeting, Rev David Phillips, the general secretary of the Church Society and a Synod member, said, “We would reject universal primacy. There is no way we would want to be linked to the Roman Catholic Church. On some issues, its teaching is even worse now than it was at the Reformation.” True indeed!
In the event, the Synod resisted the Report’s proposals, arguing that it “lacked clarity and detail”. At the same time, attempts by Evangelicals to emphasise their opposition to Roman Catholic teaching about the Virgin Mary were thwarted. Their opponents in Synod criticised their “dark talk” of papal plots and their “old war cries” about papery. And the Archbishop of Canterbury stated that, although papal infallibility raised grave misgivings, these could dissolve if it were seen as a trustworthy way of discerning and settling disputes, rather than one man’s power to assert doctrine.
The Synod debate was largely academic because unity talks had already been disrupted as a result of the Anglican decision to ordain women and their divisions over homosexuality. However, the Evangelicals will be gratified that there has been a little veering away from Rome at present. NMR