Pope Francis has finally responded to the Pennsylvania clergy sex abuse scandal.
It’s a decently strong statement. But until there’s action, that’s all it is.
“It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable,” Francis said in a letter published Monday.
The letter added, “Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a journey of renewed conversion.”
[Also read: Pope Francis breaks silence on Pennsylvania Catholic church sex abuse scandal]
These are the parts of the letter that I like. He lays the blame where it belongs: Directly at leadership’s feet. Where the letter starts to lose me is when Francis suggests church leadership simply didn’t understand how bad the problem is.
“With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives,” he writes. “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”
The rest of the letter is a call for all Catholics to remain engaged and pray for the healing of the abused. He’s not wrong, but I’m going to need to more than a letter if Francis wants me to take him seriously. We’ve been down this road before. Church leadership responded in a similar manner in 2002 after the Boston Globe uncovered sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Francis’ letter’ is a good first step, but it’s meaningless without action. Fool me once, shame on you.
Yes, I’m being hard on him, but that’s only because I’m still mad about the Vatican’s original response to the release of the grand jury report.
“Most of the discussion in the report concerns abuses before the early 2000s. By finding almost no cases after 2002, the Grand Jury’s conclusions are consistent with previous studies showing that Catholic Church reforms in the United States drastically reduced the incidence of clergy child abuse,” said the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Greg Burke.
Remember: This was the Vatican’s first official response to the grand jury report, which, by the way, church leadership fought like hell to keep from seeing the light of day.
People like Burke and even Francis keep suggesting the deep-rooted evil of clergy sex abuse is something that keeps barking at them from the past; something that the church has overcome, but must still deal with the fallout.
Former Cardinals George Pell and Theodore McCarrick and 31 Chilean bishops who tendered their resignations in May would beg to differ.
I’ll believe the church is serious about reform when I see it. Call me a Doubting Thomas.
