Latest report affirms systematic abuse by church officials

The Reading Eagle - Pennsylvania June 5, 2009

"The current scandal is not a sex scandal," he writes. "It is a dishonesty scandal. Until the hierarchy can 'come clean' - to themselves, to the faithful, to the world - an instinct toward shifted blame and righteous denunciation will stand between it and the truths it claims to preach."

by John Fidler

Revelations of further abuse of children by those affiliated with the Catholic Church really aren't revelations at all. They are affirmations.

For some, they may amount to no more than a yawn as the daily drumbeat of the mistreatment of children by adults numbs a society inured to children's misery. Puppy mills generate more sympathy.

But the tens of thousands of poor and neglected children in the most recent reporting were wards of church-run residential schools in Ireland, where priests, nuns and others carried out a systematic routine of physical, sexual and psychological abuse from the 1930s to the 1990s, a government commission said.

Its 2,600-page report took nine years to write. With all the excruciating detail, the names of the alleged abusers are not included.

The report comes out close to the fifth anniversary of the release of a report of abuse by Catholic priests in this country by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

In that report, based on a comprehensive survey of 195 dioceses, 4,392 priests are alleged to have abused children, and 10,667 minor children allege abuse between 1950 and 2002.

The most chilling passages in the Irish report are the children's accounts of the tortures inflicted upon them: scalding or ice cold showers, beatings, humiliation and being set upon by dogs. The accounts bring to mind the treatment of detainees by American military personnel at prisons like Abu Ghraib.

Many boys reported that they were even beaten for wetting their beds.

"You were just so scared; you didn't know who was doing the beatings," one boy told the commission. "You were better off not looking at the strap, it would frighten you more. It would depend who was on and the form of the Brother how many slaps you'd get. You'd be told to drop your pants and tip your toes. ... The lads, my friends, would try and get me out of bed at nighttime to go to the toilet."

The Brother refers to the Christian Brothers religious order that ran many of the schools for boys.

Who can explain the inexplicable?

Perhaps no one, but Garry Wills comes close.

Wills, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America," from 1992, has also written eloquently about his Catholic faith and the teachings of the church - and about its failings, most notably in his 2000 book, "Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit."

But it was in two review essays in The New York Review of Books published in 2002 that Wills comes closest to divining the motives of those who would lure trusting children with priestly garments.

Wills contends that a priest is different from lay pedophiles because he is surrounded by the institution of the church: "The priest is not just a mentor, like a scoutmaster, not just a buddy, like a coach. He has the power to forgive sins. ... He is not like other men, and everything is done to keep him aware of that fact."

Wills also writes convincingly of an arena where believers are above the rules that bind others: "This is where religion and sex slide easily into each other, and there is much in Catholic iconography that can encourage a sexual religiosity. ...

"The victim is disarmed by sophistication and the predator has a special arsenal of stun devices. He uses religion to sanction what he is up to, even calling sex part of his priestly ministry."

Wills concludes his second essay by burrowing under the mountain of sordid details of abuse heaped upon children.

"The current scandal is not a sex scandal," he writes. "It is a dishonesty scandal. Until the hierarchy can 'come clean' - to themselves, to the faithful, to the world - an instinct toward shifted blame and righteous denunciation will stand between it and the truths it claims to preach."

In my next column, I'll examine whether the crisis of abuse and secrecy that has riven the Catholic Church is over.

John Fidler is a copy editor and writer at the Reading Eagle. He holds a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. Contact him at 610... or jfidler@readingeagle.com.

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