This weekend the Pope took a hard stand on behalf of the
power of faith to provide "the courage" to not allow "oneself to be
intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion." This revealed more about the Pontiff's
misunderstanding of the current crisis in the Church than intended. Because, of course, the problem is not the
petty gossip. The problem is the hard
and awful fact of decades of abuse of thousands upon thousands of innocent
children at the hands of priests in whom they and their families had placed the
ultimate trust.
The problem is not petty gossip. The problem is what would be considered in
any other organization to be a apparent conspiracy to cover up grievous crimes
and to recklessly endanger innocents. The problem is a culture not of compassion but of one that placed the
interests of a rich and powerful organization above those of the individuals
it was supposed to be serving. The
Church doesn't need to be protected. The
children need to be protected.
No, the problem is not petty gossip. The problem is the Pope
and the church hierarchy of which he is not only the head, but also a revealing
symptom. He may well be a moral and
deeply spiritual man. But over decades, while some in the church have succumbed to temptations of the flesh, the Pope and other leaders may have fallen just as damagingly to those associated with power. They have been corrupted by it
and in turn they have corrupted an organization that exists only through the
moral authority they systematically compromised. As a result, the Church faces one of its
greatest crises of the modern era.
Yes, as his clueless and increasingly desperate sounding
defenders have argued, the Pope may not have been aware of the final
disposition of the case of Reverend Lawrence Murphy, abuser of 200 deaf boys in
the United States, but surely in an organization that now appears to have been so rife
with such cases, he could not possibly have been unaware of scores of cases
like it. But he like other Popes, like
Ireland's Cardinal Brady, like the two Irish bishops who have resigned, like
countless others among their colleagues have at best shown
indifference to what was happening to their parishioners or to the organization
whose core values they were undercutting indirectly or otherwise.
New York's Archbishop Timothy Dolan even went so far as to
compare the Pope to Jesus Christ in that both faced unjust accusations. It was a deeply flawed comparison on
countless levels. But perhaps there is a
useful if inadvertent message in it. Jesus
is revered especially during this week of the year for his sacrifice on behalf
of humanity. If the Pope emulates him
and his message, perhaps he might consider the benefits that might come of some
personal sacrifice of his own.
In any other organization facing such a pervasive and
long-standing cultural crisis, it would be almost reflexive to consider a
management change. That said, in the
case of an organization which is in the moral authority business, if a leader
were actually seen as a symbol of a culture that threatened the very foundation
on which the enterprise depended, there would be no choice but to replace him
and demonstrate that core values and the interests of the community served was
much larger than the interests of any individual or small group of leaders.
It is time for a house cleaning in the Vatican. Every dithering, defensive, inadequate apology, every fumble for an explanation, every attempt at minimization of the
problem, every failure to act sweepingly and in the interests of victims rather
than perpetrators, every such step makes that all the clearer. Pope Benedict may be a good man, but
ironically the measure of his greatness may be whether he has the courage to
set his own interests aside in favor of the much greater needs of the Church he
has been chosen to lead.
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