Vatican's response to crisis criticized
By Glenn Rutherford, Record Assistant Editor from THE RECORD, Louisville, KY 2/27/03
The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church has revealed a problem within the church's power structure, according to a New Orleans writer who has published books on the subject.
Speaking at the 11th annual conference of The Linkup, anorganization representing victims of clergy sexual abuse, Jason Berry - author of Lead Us Not Into Temptation, which dealt with priest sexual abuse in Louisiana - said the response of Rome and Pope John Paul II to the crisis has been inadequate.
"Church apologists say things like 'the number of priests committing sexual abuse is no higher than the baseline of society'" he said during a keynote address to the conference Feb. 22. "But nobody can say that for sure. Nobody knows the numbers," he said, because the silence of the Curia the governing body of the church "keeps the crisis sheltered."
Berry spoke to about 160 people at the Holiday Inn on Broadway, and he told them that the Vatican's refusal to deal directly with the sex abuse crisis had caused dramatic harm to the church.
"If you live in New York, can you trust Cardinal Egan," he asked. 'If you live in L.A., can vou trust Cardinal Mahoney? In fact, how many Catholics can trust their local bishops when they systematically protect child molesters and attack their accusers?"
The crisis, Berry said, has left a lasting mark on the Vatican, the pope, and the church in America.
"This was a visionary, restorative papacy," he said. "But officials of the Curia see the causes of the crisis everywhere but in the church itself. Last spring, the Vatican blamed the media, the legal system and homosexual priests. Rome's concern was for the rights of priests under canon law.
"One of the real problems is that this pope, for all his other accomplishments, has never met with victims," Berry said. "His failure to confront the sex abuse crisis in the church leaves a huge problem for the next pope."
Berry said he believes that most people within church leadership don't understand that the problem of sexual abuse "is a systemic crisis."
He noted that a poll in USA Today last June reported that 87 percent of Catholics questioned believed that a bishop who reassigned a child molester should be removed.
None of the apologists for the church can answer the meaning of that one polling figure," said Berry. "When you look at that figure, and the response of the church, you can see why I don't believe in the power structure of the church as a just order. I apologize to all of you for the actions of the church - everyone in this room is a witness to the sins and corruption of the church."
Berry, who said he was raised in the church and considers himself a "troubled believer," feels that the crisis in the United States is "slowly moving toward the Vatican."
"The church needs a separation of powers," he said. "The church needs a democratic mechanism for dealing with this other than canon law. All of the secrecy cuts against the meaning of the Gospel, which is to proclaim the Good News."