Like many others across the country I watched the Panorama programme about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church with fascination and a degree of repulsion. How could this sort of thing still be happening today after all the scandals of the last 20 years? And, worst of all, how could the Vatican be involved in such a blatant cover-up? I felt angry and indignant at such behaviour right at the heart of an organisation that claims to represent Jesus Christ and a great number of his followers throughout the world. The Panorama programme, movingly presented by Colm O’Gorman himself a victim of sexual abuse by a Catholic priest, told a gripping and dramatic story in a compellingly engaging manner.

Now however, in the cold light of day, towards the end of the week, I am sitting at my computer reading some responses to the programme on the BBC discussion forum. As you might expect from such a controversial subject, opinions expressed by the viewing public are diverse and often contradictory. The Catholic Church in England and Wales has strongly condemned the BBC’s claims in a letter from Archbishop Vincent Nichols who states:

‘(The programme) misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope’.

The crux of this criticism is that the programme makers deliberately wove two separate strands of argument together in a way that would show the Catholic Church and its new Pope in the worst possible light. The first strand was about sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the terrible legacy that this leaves in the life of victims, their families and the whole church community. There can be few people who could doubt that this is a significant and enduring problem not just within the Catholic Church but also much more widely within all faith communities and indeed in any institutions where adults are held in a position of trust by children and their families.

The second strand of argument made by the programme concerned allegations of cover up by church authorities. This is where some of the ‘revelations’ made on the programme, start to look rather more shaky. Much was made of a supposedly top secret Vatican document with the obscure Latin name of “Crimen Sollicitationis”. Viewers were offered tantalising glimpses of this document and were led to believe that it imposes an unbreakable oath of secrecy on victims, witnesses and priests investigating allegations of abuse. Interviews with victims who had been abused by priests known to have abused children in previous parishes and then moved - only to repeat the abuse elsewhere - were used to support the idea that the Catholic Church is more concerned about its own reputation than it is about the suffering of victims of abuse.

What the programme didn’t say was that “Crimen Sollicitationis” is not primarily concerned with child sexual abuse at all - it is about the misuse of the confessional. Neither is it a secret document, as it has been in the public domain since 2001. A comment made on the BBC’s Panorama forum read:

‘This is quite clearly a document relating to ecclesiastical court proceedings regarding priests soliciting penitents in confession. Most of the document clearly assumes most of these penitents to be adult. The soliciting is interpreted so widely as to include incidents that might not even be criminal in secular legal terms…’

This is what is so misleading about the sensationalised manipulation of this document. The church has every right to regulate the sacraments - which is what the document aims to do - but this is a matter for church authorities rather than secular authorities. Child abuse on the other hand is a crime that most certainly does involve the secular authorities.

But the Catholic Church’s condemnation of the Panorama programme doesn’t stop there. There is a second Vatican document, alluded to in the programme, but in a way that doesn’t make a clear distinction between this second document and the infamous “Crimen sollicitationis”. This second document, issued in 2001, clarified the law of the church, ensuring that the Vatican is informed of every case of child abuse and that each case is dealt with properly. Rather than being a method of covering up abuse this more recent document, according to the Church, reflects the seriousness with which the Vatican views these offences.

Even leaving aside these arcane arguments about ecclesiastical Courts and supposedly top secret documents (echoes of the Da Vinci Code here!) the programme, by any measure, was extremely one-sided.

The BBC prides itself on balance and objectivity but there was little evidence of that here.

The only people appearing on the programme that had any connection with the Catholic hierarchy were people who were clearly disaffected. Nothing was said about the strenuous efforts that have been and are being made within the church to deal with what is acknowledged as a serious and pressing problem.

Considering that the programme was made in this country, the fact that no mention was made of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (COPCA) and current arrangements for protecting children in Catholic Church settings was inexcusable. Viewers, including Catholic Church members would not know from the programme that the Catholic Church in England and Wales now has a rigorous child protection policy. This was adopted in 2001 as a result of a report by Lord Nolan, commissioned by the Catholic Bishops in England, to address these very issues. The report unequivocally states that allegations of abuse are to be referred to the statutory child protection authorities to be investigated. Furthermore, in July of this year the Church commissioned Baroness Cumberlege to chair a wide-ranging inquiry into the implementation of Lord Nolan’s recommendations. These are not the actions one would expect of an organisation characterised, according to the Panorama programme, by a culture of secrecy and cover up.

Reflecting on the programme some days later after the emotional impact of the film has subsided, I am struck by the realisation that much of the damage that sexual abuse inflicts on its victims is to do with secrecy and cover up. It is the “not telling and not being able to tell” that so hurts and disempowers the victim. Many theorists and therapists see sexual abuse as being, at root, concerned with the abuse of power. In the case of abuse by a priest, the victim is overpowered by a representative figure, someone who wears the symbolic and spiritual trappings of authority. Within the Catholic Church worldwide the parish priest represents, in all sorts of symbolic as well as theological ways, the power and authority of the church on earth. What this experience does to an abused young person’s concept of God the Father doesn’t bear thinking about.

The absolute authority of the Pope over the Catholic church and the wealth, prestige and power of the Vatican was another subtext in the programme. Cleverly edited film footage made a telling point of the contrast between the impressive elegance and wealthy serenity of the Vatican city state and the poverty and ignorance which so frequently characterises the heartlands of Catholic devotion in the slums and favellas of the third world. The Catholic hierarchy, the film implied, keeps a tight hold on the knowledge and wealth which is the source of its worldwide influence.

I wonder whether this is not another reason why the Catholic church is so often (sometimes unfairly) criticised by liberal Westerners. The pomp and power of the Vatican remind us of the time, not so very long ago, when the Catholic Church was almost indistinguishable from other secular empires, when the Pope was a political figure whose power dwarfed that of many national leaders and when there were constant, almighty tussles between the rule of the Pope and the rule of the Emperor. The church then resented any intrusion into its affairs by the secular authorities - after all, church officers are accountable ultimately to God. There were echoes of this dismissive attitude towards the secular authorities in the way that the church was portrayed as insisting on dealing with any allegations of misconduct itself and seeking to limit the damage caused to the church’s reputation.

I don’t mean to suggest that the Catholic church’s official teaching is that it is a power unto itself and accountable only to God; however, the wealth, power and authority of the church, visibly concentrated as it is in the Vatican and in the person of the Pope, makes it easy for the church to be so represented. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul exhorts the Corinthian believers to remember where they came from:

‘Think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things- and the things that are not- to nullify the things that are, so that no-one may boast before him’. (1 Corinthians 1:26-29, New International Version).

If the public face of the Catholic Church were as humble and unassuming as were these early Christians then maybe not only would the church be less liable to be criticised from the outside but also it might be in a better position to welcome into its communal life all those who have been abused, neglected and exploited.

Comment from Eileen Sheerer, Director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (COPCA).

Whilst it is true that there remains much to be done to address issues of child protection throughout the institutions, the Catholic Bishops in England and Wales take the protection of children seriously and follow a single set of national policies and procedures which require that all allegations are reported to the Police and Social Services Departments. The Holy See is aware of all these policies and supports them. It was unfortunate that this point was not made clear in a programme screened in the UK.

Further comment...
Over the past couple of decades, the Catholic church has justifiably had a bad press in relation to its systemic failure to respond appropriately to allegations of sexual abuse and to protect children. This failure served to compound the damage done to those who have been abused and, not surprisingly, many still struggle to come to terms with what has happened to them. Immediately following the airing of the Panorama programme and for several days after, a number of people called the CCPAS Helpline wanting to talk about their experiences, both within and outside the church. One caller said she was distressed to learn that such things were still happening within the Catholic church in England. It is interesting that the programme did not once mention the Catholic church in the UK. Through selective content and editing she had been fed an inaccurate picture, and Bill Stone’s response raises important questions about the integrity of the programme makers.

Nearly ten years ago, in the wake of the much publicised ‘Michael Hill’ case, several Catholic dioceses sought help from CCPAS and in response we provided training to large numbers of ordained and lay clergy as well as youth and children’s workers. The unequivocal message of those churches at that time, even before the Nolan Inquiry, was that allegations of abuse should immediately be notified to the statutory authorities. We were impressed by this uncompromising stance which displayed a commitment to child protection, unseen in some other denominations and branches of the church at the time. The advent of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults (COPCA) following the Nolan Report further demonstrated this. In addition, the recent review of the report by Baroness Cumberlege clearly shows that the Catholic church in England and Wales has worked and still is working with commitment and integrity to ensure children within its congregations and other establishments are safeguarded and protected. Of course there are still issues to be addressed, (as everywhere else) as we know from our helpline, but we do need to acknowledge the sea-change that has taken place.

David Pearson, Executive Director

 

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