2. Father Pickering fled Australia in 1993 before he could be charged. See Nick McKenzie, Richard Baker, and Josh Gordon, “Suicides Linked to Clergy’s Sex Abuse,” Sydney Morning Herald, 14 April 2012, www.smh.com.au/national/suicides-linked-to-clergys-sex-abuse-20120413-1wzcy.html.
3. All testimonies quoted from my research (‘Tablet Testimonies’) are from correspondence I received in response to my article in The Tablet on 18 August 2012 entitled ‘Where Are the Penitents?’ at www.thetablet.co.uk/article/163100, in my personal files, and interviews I conducted.
4. Christa Pongratz-Lippitt, The Tablet, 26 January 2013. The hotline closed in January 2013.
5. The archdiocesan junior seminary, St. Wilfrid’s, Cotton College, North Staffordshire, was closed in 1987. The incident is reported in my book Seminary Boy (London, 2006).
6. See Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia, 1948), 499 ff. The report never claimed that 99.9 per cent of males practised masturbation. Under the heading of ‘Incidences and Frequencies’, the report claims: ‘By even the stricter definition, masturbation may be identified in the histories of a very high proportion of human males. Ultimately about 92 per cent of the total population is involved in masturbation which leads to orgasm. More individuals (96%) of the college level and 95 per cent of the high school group, are ultimately included.’
7. Christ & Welt (supplement to Die Zeit), 16 January 2013.
8. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, ‘The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950–2002’ (John Jay Report), 2004, commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/The-Nature-and-Scope-of-Sexual-Abuse-of-Minors-by-Catholic-Priests-and-Deacons-in-the-United-States-1950-2002.pdf, 78ff.
9. Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation, ‘Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne’ (Cloyne Report), December 2010, http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/216118/cloyne-report.pdf; Barry Roche, “Only One Priest in Report Has Been Convicted in Court,” Irish Times, 15 July 2011, www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0715/1224300763481.html, reprinted at BishopAccountability.org, www.bishop-accountability.org/news2011/07_08/2011_07_15_Roche_OnlyOne.htm.
10. Elliott Report, June 2008, on the ‘Management of Two Child Protection Cases in the Diocese of Cloyne’, cited in Diocese of Cloyne, ‘Safeguarding Children’, Annual Report for the Year Ending 31 December 2010’, www.cloynediocese.ie/safeguarding-children/.
11. According to Department of Justice and Equality, Northern Ireland, Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (Murphy Report), Chapter 11, ‘Introduction to Investigation of the 46 Priests’, in Part 2, 354ff, available at www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504, the behaviour of a parish priest, Father Gallagher, was regarded as odd but nevertheless acceptable in the light of new ‘attitudes’: ‘In December 1984, there was “general fuss and skittishness” when one of the classes in St Mary’s were going to confession. The principal investigated the cause of this fuss and was told by the girls that Fr Gallagher kissed each of them after confession. What the girls did not tell her at that time was that during confession he used to run his hands all over their bodies inside their clothing and then kissed them all on the lips at the end of confession. The principal again spoke about the matter to Fr Gallagher who said that, if the behaviour offended the girls, he would stop. The principal, incredibly, felt that perhaps Fr Gallagher’s approach reflected the newer approach to the sacrament of reconciliation (confession) and took the matter no further.’ The quotations from Ansgar Hocke are in Der Spiegel, Issue 6, 2010.
12. See ‘Cloyne Report—Fr. Calder’, RTE News, 13 July 2011, www.rte.ie/news/2011/0713/cloyne_calder.html, reprinted at BishopAccountability.org, www.bishop-accountability.org/news2011/07_08/2011_07_13_RTENews_CloyneReport1.htm.
13. Cloyne Report, Chapter 15.
14. Tablet Testimonies.
15. Paul Hendrickson, Seminary: A Search (New York, 1983), 166–167.
16. Tablet Testimonies.
17. In 1988, ten girls complained that they had been sexually molested by a Father James Grennan when he heard their confessions in the sanctuary of the parish church of Monageer in Ireland. The girls were around twelve years old at the time and they made the complaint to the principal of Monageer National School, Mr. Pat Higgins. A social worker was sent to interview the girls, followed by a doctor, who provided a ‘composite’ report. Father Grennan took confessions sitting on a chair on the altar, with each child, one by one, kneeling on a cushion at his feet. ‘The rest of the class remained in their seats and were told to keep their eyes closed because they were in a house of God and to show respect.’ During each confession, the priest would grasp the child’s hands in his hands and pull them towards his private parts. His zipper was described as ‘half down’. ‘He would pull the child close and rub his face and mouth around their jaw while asking them questions about their families.’ He was also described as ‘putting his hands under their skirts and fondling their legs to mid-thigh level.’ There were other occasions involving fondling children in their upper bodies under their clothing, or placing them on his lap. See ‘The Ferns Report’, a report commissioned by the Irish government in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ferns in County Wexford, Ireland, October 2005, www.documentcloud.org/documents/243711-2-complete-ferns-report-so-ireland.html, 82. For the account from the Montreal Institute for the Deaf, see ‘Quebec Catholic Priests Accused of Sexually Abusing Deaf, Mute Boys’, 31 August 2010, Examiner.com, www.examiner.com/article/quebec-catholic-priests-accused-of-sexually-abusing-deaf-mute-boys.
18. ‘Abuse Victim “Hurt” by Confession Stance’, 31 August 2011, UTV, www.u.tv/News/Abuse-victim-%E2%80%98hurt-by-confession-stance/516683ca-2d00-48dd-b527-cacbd7f63571, reprinted at BishopAccountability.org, www.bishop-accountability.org/news2011/07_08/2011_08_31_Utv_AbuseVictim.htm.
19. Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), ‘Investigation Committee Report’ (Ryan Report), 20 May 2009, www.childabusecommission.com/rpt/. The Ryan Report is one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government to investigate the extent and effects of abuse on children from 1936 onwards. The CICA is commonly known in Ireland as the Ryan Commission (previously ‘the Laffoy Commission’), after its chair, Justice Seán Ryan. Judge Mary Laffoy resigned on 2 September 2003, following a departmental review on costs and resources. She felt that ‘the cumulative effect of those factors effectively negated the guarantee of independence conferred on the Commission and militated against it being able to perform its statutory functions.’ The commission’s work started in 1999.
20. For the ‘Database of Publicly Accused Roman Catholic Priests, Nuns, Brothers, Deacons, and Seminarians in the US’, see www.bishop-accountability.org/; for ‘Special Reports: Catholic Bishops and Sex Abuse’, see www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/databases/DallasMorningNewsBishops.htm.
21. Cardinal Groër, who at an earlier stage was a Benedictine abbot, was accused of abusing boys in the confessional in Austria. Four of his fellow bishops, including his successor, Cardinal Archbishop Christoph Schönborn, confirmed the credibility of the many accusations against him. At least twelve men have testified that, when they were boys at a church school, Groër would invite them to his room to hear their confessions, after which he asked them to take off their clothes and abused them sexually. A widely reported consequence of Groër’s depravity is that thousands of Austrian Catholics have lapsed from Catholicism. Many more joined radical groups seeking to combat Vatican centralisation and conservatism. See Katrin Bennhold, “Future Pope’s Role in Abuse Case Was Complex,” New York Times, 26 April 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/europe/27vienna.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Monsignor Fernando Karadima was the subject of ‘credible’ accusations in 2011 of sexual abuse in confession two decades earlier. Karadi
ma, who was well connected in government and business circles, was well known as a prelate who had trained many priests, including four bishops. The accusations involved allegations by five former minors. The Vatican ordered the priest into retirement and a life of penance. The Chilean court, while accepting the truth of the allegations, declared that the offences were outside of the statute of limitations. The case was reported in ‘Chilean Priest Allegedly Abused 5 Young Men’, Huffington Post, 22 April 2010, www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/chilean-priest-allegedly-_n_549769.html; ‘Chile Judge Rules Out Trial for Priest over Abuses’, Huffington Post, 14 November 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20111114/lt-chile-priest-abuse/.
22. Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, Vows of Silence (New York, 2004), 143.
23. The document’s role, interpreted by some as proof of a Vatican conspiracy of secrecy, is a matter of dispute. See, for example, Andrew Brown’s Guardian Blog of 22 July 2010 at www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/jul/22/religion-catholicism-vatican-paedophilia-secrecy, which Brown wrote in response to Nicholas P. Cafardi’s article in Commonweal on 21 July 2010, entitled ‘The Scandal of Secrecy: Canon Law & the Sexual-Abuse Crisis’, archived at https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/scandal-secrecy. In response to both articles, see also Tom Doyle’s blog (Voice from the Desert). The nub of the debate is that the Holy See’s policy on paedophile priests was so secret that the bishops did not know about it. The document dealt with how bishops should treat information such as allegations against a priest for abuse of pre-adolescent children in confession, acts described as crimen pessimum (the foulest crime). Doyle, a former canon lawyer who campaigns for victims of clerical sexual abuse, maintains that there was no centrally organised cover-up as a result of the document, but instead an entire ‘culture’ of secrecy.
24. Richard John Neuhaus, ‘Orthodoxy and “Parallel Monologues”’, First Things, March 2002, www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/orthodoxy-and-8220parallel-monologues8221-22; see also John Cornwell, Pontiff in Winter (New York, 2004), 259.
25. Letter of the Holy Father Pope John Paul II to Priests for Holy Thursday 2002, 17 March 2002, www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/letters/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_20020321_priests-holy-thursday_en.html.
26. ‘Confessional Secrets’, Irish Times, 31 August 2011, reprinted at BishopAccountability.org, www.bishop-accountability.org/news2011/07_08/2011_08_31_IrishTimes_ConfessionalSecrets.htm.
27. Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organizational Culture (Oxford, 2012), 163.
28. Ibid., 164.
29. Ibid., 165.
30. Ibid., 166–167.
Eleven: Confession Imagined
1. Robert Stone, ‘The Way the World Is’, in Peter Ochiogrosso, ed., Once a Catholic: Prominent Catholics and Ex-Catholics Discuss the Influence of the Church and Their Lives and Work (Boston, 1987), 49.
2. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London, 1992 [1916]), 155.
3. Ibid., 159ff.
4. Ibid., 171.
5. Ibid., 172.
6. Ibid., 185–186, 164, 161.
7. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, trans. John Clarke (Washington, DC, 1975), 190, 213.
8. Henri Daniel-Rops, History of the Church of Christ, vol. 9, A Fight for God, trans. John Warrington (London, 1963), 425; John Udris, Holy Daring: The Fearless Trust of St. Thérèse of Lisieux (Leominster, UK, 1997), 68.
9. Richard Crashaw, ‘The Flaming Heart’, l. 74, available at www.bartleby.com/236/29.html.
10. Casti Connubii, Encyclical of Pope Pius XI on Christian Marriage to the Venerable Brethern, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, and Other Local Ordinaries Enjoying Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See, 31 December 1930, www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121930_casti-connubii_en.html.
11. Bernard Häring, Free and Faithful in Christ, vol. 2 (Middle Green, UK, 1979), 256. For Andrew Greeley’s statistics on Catholics and birth control, see ‘Vatican Watershed—A Special Report: Papal Birth-Control Letter Retains Its Grip’, by Peter Steinfels, New York Times, 1 August 1993.
12. Humanae Vitae, Encyclical Letter of the Supreme Pontiff Paul VI to His Venerable Brothers the Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops and Other Local Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See, to the Clergy and Faithful of the Whole Catholic World, and to All Men of Good Will, on the Regulation of Birth, 25 July 1968, www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html; Catholic Church, Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Persona Humana, Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics, 7 November 1975, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19751229_persona-humana_en.html.
13. Anthony Kenny, A Path from Rome (Oxford, 1985), 150.
14. Ordo Paenitentiae, Circular Letter Concerning the Integrity of the Sacrament of Penance, 20 March 1973, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20000630_circolare-sulla-penitenza%20_en.html.
15. Mary Collins and David Power, eds., The Fate of Confession, Concilium Series 190 (Edinburgh, 1987); see also Reconciliation and Penance, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of John Paul II to the Bishops, Clergy, and Faithful on Reconciliation and Penance in the Mission of the Church Today, 2 December 1984, www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia_en.html.
16. Reconciliation and Penance, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, 2 December 1984.
17. George Weigel, Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II (New York, 1999), 473–474.
18. See Kirchliches Amstsblatt der Diözese Münster 1977, art. 236, cited in Collins and Power, eds., Fate of Confession, 65.
19. John Cornwell, Breaking Faith (London, 2002), 265ff. My interview with Cardinal Martini originally appeared in full in the London Sunday Times Magazine, 25 April 1993.
Twelve: Varieties of Confessional Experience
1. The testimonies quoted from my research throughout this chapter are from correspondence I received in response to my article in The Tablet on 18 August 2012 entitled “Where Are All the Penitents?” at www.thetablet.co.uk/article/163100, and are in my personal files.
2. Norbert Mette, ‘Children’s Confession’, in Mary Collins and David Power, eds., The Fate of Confession, Concilium Series, vol. 190 (Edinburgh, 1987).
3. See, for example, John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (London, 1998).
Epilogue
1. Julia Kristeva, New Maladies of the Soul, trans. Ross Guberman (New York, 1995), 27ff.
2. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ: Four Books, trans. William Benham (London, 1874), Chapter II: paragraph 2.
3. See Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (London, 1985).
4. See Hans Küng and David Tracy, eds., Paradigm Change in Theology: A Symposium for the Future (Edinburgh, 1989). In his opening remarks for the symposium, Jerald Brauer emphasised, for example, the new factor of ‘pluralism in the modern world and in all forms of Christianity today.’ He added: ‘Some admit that fact grudgingly, and do everything possible to eliminate it. For others, pluralism is truth and practice of a tradition in the face of inevitable finite efforts to understand, appropriate and articulate their tradition’ (p. 206).
5. Genesis 3.5. For further discussion, see Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination: Ideas of Creativity in Western Culture (London, 1988), 39ff.
6. William Golding, Pincher Martin (London, 1956). For discussion of the significance of Pincher Martin and the nature of sin, see Terry Eagleton, On Evil (New Haven, CT, 2010), 52.
7. Golding, Pincher Martin, 179.
8. In On Evil, Eagleton comments on Pincher Martin: ‘There could no more be anyone “in” hell than there could be anyone in a material location called debt or love or despair. . . . The damned
are those who experience God as a Satanic terror, since he threatens to prise their selves apart. His love and mercy loosen their hold on themselves, and in doing so risk depriving them of their most precious possession’ (pp. 24–25).
9. See Nicholas Lash, ‘Teaching or Commanding?’, America, 13 December 2010.
10. Lumen gentium, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Solemnly Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI, 21 November 1964, www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html; Pope Paul VI, Presbyterorum ordinis, Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests Promulgated by His Holiness Pope Paul VI, 7 December 1965, www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_presbyterorum-ordinis_en.html; Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco, 1988), 37.
11. Karl Rahner, SJ, Theological Investigations, vol. 10 (London, 1984), 148.
12. Corneliu C. Simut, The Ontology of the Church in Hans Küng (Bern, 2007), 168ff; James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (London, 1992 [1916]), 172.
13. Herbert McCabe, OP, ‘Self-Confessed Sinners’, The Tablet, 5 March 2011, http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/5th-march-2011/14/self-confessed-sinners; Karl Rahner, SJ, Theological Investigations, vol. 2 (London, 1963), 164.
INDEX
Abelard, Peter, 13
Absolution
baptism, 5
for children, 106
complicit, 186
conditional, 106, 145
confession as prerequisite for, 36
general, 20, 210–212, 222
motives for repentance and, 18
by newly ordained priest, 124
The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession Page 23
