Early this summer the Ryan report in Ireland exploded with stunning revelations of child abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and brothers. The study reveals that thirty thousand children from the lower rungs of society suffered physical, mental and sexual abuse from the 1930s to the 1990s in schools run by the government and religious orders. The commission, a state body led by Justice Sean Ryan, conducted the study over nine years. Controversy over releasing names of perpetrators slowed its progress.
The latest exposé of child abuse in Ireland landed like a huge aftershock following the American quake felt in Boston a few years ago. In the US, court settlements for victims cost billions and have forced bankruptcy on dioceses and religious orders. Similar seismic activity threatens in the Los Angeles area where Cardinal Mahony and his lawyers are fighting lawsuits.
Thomas P. Doyle, a Dominican priest and leading expert on clerical child abuse, has pointed out that the problem is not accidental but systemic. It is deeply engrained in Irish child care culture. Doyle claims that church authorities from the pope to local bishops and religious superiors knew about the abuses and condoned or ignored them. Church leadership, satisfied with denials, apologies and blame shifting, has skirted real accountability.
Promises of future change are dubious without thoroughgoing investigation of the clerical culture that spawned the problem. Some point to the influence of Jansenism, a theology that stresses the evil in human nature, on the Irish clergy.
It is unlikely that recent Vatican-sponsored investigations of US seminaries and women religious will resolve the underlying maladies. Lack of transparency in closed clerical society impedes the openness required to seriously probe issues.
A tendency to blame gay clergy for these abuses becomes ever more preposterous in light of the longstanding Irish debacle.
Tags: child abuse, ireland
I do not want to bash Catholics on this—at least not anymore. I suspect that sexual abuse touches many Christian denominations and institutions.
On a related but not specifically Christian note, I recall a study by a University of Pennsylvania professor who reported a high incidence of child prostitution in New Orleans. The police had not noticed this. Social service agencies had not reported it. I lived in New Orleans for 12 years and my former wife taught school in the Vieux Carre. I had not noticed child prostitution even though I spent a great deal of time in the French Quarter and worked in law enforcement for seven years in the city. Is there a high level of child prostitution in New Orleans?
I do not know. I probably ought to know. However, if evidence of such abuse becomes known, we all will have our excuses. We wil say we were too close to notice.
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