A CULTURE of clericalism and “damaging theology” within the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has contributed to its “failure” to reply well to survivors of clerical abuse, researchers from the University of Durham say.
Some of the survivors who contributed to the four-year project from the University’s Centre for Catholic Studies, The Cross of the Moment: A report from the Boundary Breaking Project, published last month, describe the Church’s “mishandling” of their disclosures as tantamount to “secondary abuse”.
The research — which is describes as each theological and “empirical” — relies largely on 82 interviews and 4 focus groups with 22 victims and survivors of clerical abuse, 25 priests and deacons, five diocesan bishops, and 17 lay people from RC parishes in 14 of the 22 dioceses, in addition to 18 members of 16 religious communities in England and Wales.
The findings are set out within the 191-page report across eight chapters, written by Dr Pat Jones, Dr Marcus Pound, and Dr Catherine Sexton.
It states: “There was little doubt amongst research participants concerning the connections between clericalism and abuse. They spoke of how clericalism has helped create a context which has been conducive to abuse and to mishandling of the response.”
The report defines clericalism as being “visible in any behaviour that assumes or makes priests or indeed seminarians exceptional or entitled to special treatment”. It continues: “Many also acknowledged that laypeople collude with clericalism. We inherit a fear of sounding disrespectful, a way that we must always not query or complain or challenge.”
One priest said: “The real sin of clericalism is the concept you couldn’t possibly know as much as I do about something because I’m a priest.”
Another participant said: “We’ve put people on this pedestal and we’ve left them there.”
This, in turn, has result in a breakdown in accountability, the report continues. One priest told researchers: “I feel we’re the least monitored, least controlled, least supervised group of individuals in the entire world.”
The report goes on to explain clericalism as “an issue of and for the entire Church, the whole Catholic community”.
“Damaging theology” surrounding redemption and forgiveness can also be raised. “Forgiveness seems too easily given, with none sense of what was traditionally often known as restitution and with little account taken of the traumatic impact of abuse,” the report says.
One survivor told researchers: “The theology has said to him [the priest], when you express regret, it’s all sorted; so there’s no social accountability, there’s no within the real-world accountabilities.”
Several examples are given within the report of the meeting of disclosures by denial, disbelief, or a scarcity of compassion for the person and their pain. One survivor said: “You want belief greater than anything, or any financial compensation, before anything in anyway; for someone to say that they imagine you, means every little thing.”
The research is guided by the pronouncement by Pope Francis that, for the RC Church to maneuver on from the abuse crisis, it needed “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts attested by concrete and effective actions that involve everyone within the Church”.
The authors explain that they’ve deliberately chosen to not make recommendations, but to “imagine among the possibilities . . . to ask others also to assume, to search out the appropriate local solutions, whether in a parish or diocese or religious community, or within the Bishops’ Conference. If our response to the abuse crisis comes from our hearts, if it is actually conversion, it’s going to have its own motivation, character and shape.”
The report concludes by expressing gratitude to participants, and stating the “conviction that the response of the Catholic Church in England and Wales to the victims and survivors of abuse shouldn’t be yet adequate or complete”. It invites people to learn from the report and proceed conversations concerning the issues raised.
