June 18, 2003 Bishop Thomas J. O’Brien resigns in Phoenix after being arrested on charges of fleeing the scene of an auto accident. O’Brien was taken into custody two days after the car he had been driving was involved in an incident in which a forty-three-year-old pedestrian died. The news came just two weeks after O’Brien made a deal with county prosecutors to avoid criminal charges for his handling of sex abuse charges against Phoenix priests. Though the Vatican did not make any formal comment, one source told NCR that this O’Brien affair “weighed heavily" upon the Holy See.
June 19–21, 2003 The U.S. bishops met in St. Louis amid controversy over the resignation of former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating as head of the National Review Board. Apostolic nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo gave the meeting’s opening address. “We all know that we are going through difficult times and that some real problems within the Church have been magnified to discredit the moral authority of the Church," said Montalvo, a Colombian. Montalvo referenced the Book of Wisdom to advise the bishops: “As gold in the furnace he proved them!" Fire, said Montalvo, “can quickly reduce to ashes what was built in years," though it also has “the power to purify and to draw out from the earth that which is precious and rich." Montalvo urged the bishops to look to examples of those in the Church who had dealt with crisis. He pointed to Pope John XXIII’s determination to continue to support the Second Vatican Council despite “criticisms that were expressed by bishops and cardinals who felt that this initiative would disrupt the Church and prove to be a fiasco." Likewise, said Montalvo, Pope Paul VI, through his encyclical Humanae Vitae, “never shrunk from proclaiming and teaching the truth about the dignity of human life" even “in the face of vocal opposition and awful dissent." And Pope John Paul II, said Montalvo, though “visibly weakened and limited by his physical condition, continues to press forward on the mission to which he has been called by almighty God."
July 1, 2003 The Holy See announces the appointment of Bishop Sean O’Malley of Palm Beach, Florida, as the new archbishop of Boston. Vatican sources cited O’Malley’s experience in dealing with the sexual abuse crisis in Palm Beach and also in Fall River, Massachusetts, his positive public image in the Boston area, and his Capuchin Franciscan spirituality in explaining the appointment.
July 7, 2003 Rodriguez revisited his comments on the American crisis in an interview in Rome with the National Catholic Reporter. “I don’t repent," Rodriguez said. “Maybe I was a little strong, but sometimes it’s necessary to shake things up." Rodriguez said that he did not question the suffering of victims of sexual abuse, or deny the failures of some bishops to intervene. What he wanted to raise, he said, is a question of emphasis. In the context of massive global poverty and injustice, does sexual abuse by Catholic priests merit the extensive coverage it received in the American press? “Many people said that I am against the media, but this isn’t true," Rodriguez said. “Sexual abuse is heartbreaking and victims deserve compassion. What I’m against is the lack of global perspective." Rodriguez also said he hopes the crisis is teaching the American bishops a new style of leadership. “Bishops of the First World sometimes saw themselves as related to wealth, power, and privilege," Rodriguez said. “I’ve even seen that in the Vatican, where First World bishops are sometimes treated with more respect than bishops from the Third World, because they are seen as VIPs.... Perhaps this is calling the bishops to become servants, closer to the people," he said.
July 29, 2003 The Worcester Telegram and Gazette reported on a 1962 Vatican document titled Crimen Sollicitationis, which decreed that canonical investigations of various sorts of sexual misconduct by priests, especially as it pertained to the confessional, were to be covered by pontifical secrecy. Excommunication was the penalty for violations. CBS gave the story national exposure on August 6 with a segment that began: “For decades, priests in this country have abused children in parish after parish while their superiors covered it all up. Now it turns out the orders for this coverup were written in Rome at the highest levels of the Vatican." Canon lawyers and Church spokespersons, however, said that the document imposed secrecy only on canonical procedures, and did not prohibit anyone from reporting criminal acts by priests to the police. Moreover, the document’s relative obscurity and short duration in force meant, these sources said, that it did not set the pattern in the Church for the handling of sex abuse cases. The Vatican had no official comment, but on background spokespersons echoed the analysis of canon lawyers and the U.S. bishops’ conference.
August 23, 2003 John Geoghan was murdered by an inmate at a prison in Shirley, Massachusetts. Geoghan had been held in protective custody, but still had some limited contact with other inmates. The Vatican had no official comment, but Herranz gave an interview to the Roman daily La Repubblica on August 25 in which he referred to the death as a “painful" incident. “As soon as I heard, I prayed for his soul and for his aggressor," Herranz said. Asked what lesson the Church might draw from the episode, Herranz replied, “That there is always the reality of sin in the world, in this case the sin of homicide. What caused this we don’t know. We can’t judge. Now all is in the hands of God, the Supreme Judge: only he knows how to judge because he knows that even the most persistent sinner in the end can repent. Maybe Geoghan in prison had already begun to repent for the evil he did." Asked if the Holy See was succeeding in crushing the problem of pedophilia in the Church, Herranz said, “The drama of pedophilia is a problem that doesn’t regard just priests of the Catholic Church, but the entire society. It’s enough to look on the Internet. I don’t understand why it’s talked about only with the Church, as if somebody wants to sully its image in order to take away its moral force." The reporter then said that priestly pedophilia in the American Church was a reality that couldn’t be ignored. Herranz responded, “That’s true. But pedophilia is only minimally identified with the Church, touching scarcely 1 percent of priests. Meanwhile for other categories of persons, the percentages are much higher. In any event, this is a very painful question for the Church, because the Church is the first to condemn pedophilia as an abominable crime and for this reason has launched a very severe discipline with tough disciplinary measures, which are difficult to equal in other civil societies."
SPANNING THE CULTURAL GAP BETWEEN ROME AND AMERICA
As is clear from the above chronology, the Holy See responded to the American sexual abuse crisis at times with deep doubts about the cultural forces in the United States driving the scandals, as well as reservations about some responses from the American bishops. At the same time, discussion in the American press and on the American Catholic street was often fueled by assumptions about why the Vatican was acting, or not acting, that inflamed passions. Often, neither side trusted the other.
At the outset, it should be said that both formulas used here—the Vatican and the American Catholic street—are ideal types to which no actual person or community perfectly corresponds. As discussed in chapter 2 and throughout this book, not everyone in the Vatican thinks the same way, and this has been true of the American situation as well. At critical junctures, such as what response to give to the Dallas norms or what policy to adopt on the admission of homosexuals to the priesthood, there have been serious internal disagreements within the Holy See. At the same time, as noted above, American Catholics are also divided on what caused the crisis and what to do about it. In contrasting Roman and American attitudes, it should be understood that we are talking about clusters of ideas rather than specific persons or institutions. Many Americans are sympathetic to elements of the Roman diagnosis, and many Vatican officials are open to much of what America would regard as essential to addressing the crisis.
The aim of this section is to engage in an act of translation, so that both the Holy See and the American Catholic community can understand what the other party is trying to say. One may not agree with any given sentiment that comes from the American Church, or any given decision from the Holy See, but these matters cannot be discussed constru
ctively until the values that motivate the proposals and decisions are properly understood. The objective is thus one of clearing the air, making conversation possible.
How America Misunderstood Rome
1. Power. Many Americans take it as axiomatic that the Vatican’s top concern is the preservation of its own power. Reading the crisis through this prism, observers in the United States often presumed that the Holy See was primarily concerned that the already-rambunctious American Catholic Church would slip further from its control. Its decisions were assumed to be driven by the desire to preserve an ancien régime in which American bishops are subservient to the Pope, and thus not to the people or communities they serve. Many American Catholics believe that the Holy See tries to keep the local church in the United States on an especially short leash, because anything that happens in the United States will be studied and imitated elsewhere.
This bias in favor of seeing power as the driving force in Vatican psychology led to serious misunderstandings. The best illustration came in mid-October, when, as reviewed above, the Holy See turned down the norms adopted by the American bishops at Dallas and proposed a mixed commission to resolve the differences. Those norms had envisioned that bishops would remove priests from ministry on the basis of their administrative authority, without a canonical trial. Many commentators in the United States, and a broad swath of the American public, assumed this was a Vatican power play intended to assert control over the American Church, especially to thwart the zero tolerance stance that had become the cornerstone of the American approach. It took time for the real issues to emerge, that the Vatican’s primary concern was a clear definition of the offense and due process for the accused. The objection was never to zero tolerance, but zero tolerance for what and after what process. Far from being a heavy-handed Vatican intervention, the revisions were actually welcomed by many American bishops and canon lawyers—including, ironically, many of the more liberal bishops who normally complain about Rome telling America what to do. In this case, they shared many of the same reservations, especially in terms of restorative justice. The American press largely missed this story, especially in the crucial early stages, because it was stuck with the power model through which every Vatican action is understood.
Insistence that the Vatican should leave the American Church alone was at times voiced in the same breath with the demand that the Pope take personal charge of the situation and crack heads. The fact that the Pope did not “fire" bishops responsible for allowing abuse to continue was a constant source of outrage. It was in some sense a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. In fact, the Vatican’s tendency to leave bishops’ conferences to solve their own problems outside the doctrinal realm was never more clear than in the American crisis. Early on, officials in Rome concluded that the American cultural and legal situation with respect to sexual misconduct was unique and that the proper response had to come from the local Church. Whatever one makes of this stance, and it is obviously open to critique, it does not seem the behavior of a power-obsessed cabal concerned only with potential threats to its own control.
2. Fear. In the American press, the issues within the Catholic world most commonly linked to the abuse crisis are those involving sexuality and gender—women’s ordination, clerical celibacy, and homosexuality. Given that the positions upheld by the Holy See on those issues face terrific pressure in much of the developed world, it is sometimes assumed that the Vatican is afraid that things are slipping out of hand. Some believe this fear is compounded by the fact that celibate males who lack a mature personal understanding of the issues under consideration set Vatican policy on sexuality. (Whether that is a fair assumption is beside the point.) Connecting these dots, many Americans have assumed that the Vatican is afraid that the abuse crisis might unleash new pressures for doctrinal change on matters of sexuality, or, in the case of celibacy, change in this discipline.
This assumption is a misreading. It is true that most Vatican officials, especially those at the highest decision-making levels, tend to hold conservative views on sexual morality and are resistant to pressures for change. But they are not making policy on the sexual abuse crisis on that basis, because they take it for granted that there will be no such change, at least under the present Pope. Many Americans assume most Vatican moves are calculated with respect to these issues, as if they represent top institutional priorities. In reality, Vatican officials do not spend much time thinking about these questions, largely because they regard them as settled. It would not have occurred to then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to evaluate the proposed norms from the American bishops or calls for a plenary council from the perspective of their potential impact on the debate surrounding women’s ordination or the discipline of celibacy. It would be like suggesting that the U.S. Defense Department is crafting strategy in the Middle East in order to defend the presidential veto over acts of the legislative branch. Whatever most officials in the Pentagon might make of that bit of constitutional law, it would never have occurred to them to think it was in jeopardy, and hence it’s not part of their calculations. One needs to search for their motives elsewhere, and it’s much the same for the Vatican with respect to the American crisis.
Moreover, psychologically, Vatican officials understood themselves to be reacting with relative calm in comparison to the American bishops, who many in the Vatican felt were driven by fear of adverse financial impact, negative publicity, and “damage control" into adopting measures not in the long-term best interests of the Church. This is why, some Vatican officials believed, a number of American bishops were hesitant to defend the Church in the public discussion, or were too eager to surrender chunks of their episcopal authority either to civil prosecutors or to lay review boards. By way of contrast, many Vatican officials regarded themselves as capable of applying a more rational and thoughtful approach because of their distance and objectivity. Whether that is accurate or not is for the moment beside the point. What is relevant is that “fear" was not a driving force in the policy calculations of the Holy See, at least in the sense in which critics intended it.
3. Denial. Many American Catholics feel that officials in the Vatican “don’t get it," that they are “in denial" about the seriousness of the American situation. This accusation hung in the air especially in the early stages from January to March 2002, when the Pope had not yet spoken. In fact, Vatican officials had their own reasons for not putting the Pope on record about the American crisis sooner. For one thing, despite repeated references to a papal silence, John Paul had already spoken several times on the issue of sexual abuse by priests, including in the United States. In June 1993, the Pope sent a four-page letter to American bishops in which he referred to “shocked moral sensibilities." Later that year, in August, before a crowd of eighteen thousand in Denver’s McNichols Arena, the Pope condemned the “suffering and scandal caused by the sins of some ministers of the altar." Then, in an address to the Roman Curia in December 1993, John Paul said, “Among those that are particularly painful are sexual (deviations) which sometimes have involved, I say it crying, members of the clergy." Most recently, in the November 2001 document Ecclesia in Oceania, John Paul wrote, “Sexual abuse within the Church is a profound contradiction of the teaching and witness of Jesus Christ."
That Vatican officials did not rush out new statements in the early stages of the crisis perhaps illustrates an underestimation of its seriousness, since the Pope often repeats points that he wishes to emphasize. But it has to be remembered that the Holy See was taking its cues on the issue to a significant extent from the American bishops, some of whom were advising Rome that premature papal statements might backfire, keeping the story alive artificially or even providing fodder for civil litigation. Further, the Pope no doubt felt caught between expressing his pastoral concern for the American situation, but also backing up his senior managers in the United States.
At no stage did anyone from the H
oly See express anything other than revulsion at the sexual abuse of children by priests. What Americans sometimes interpreted as denial was more like ambiguity, born of the widespread sense within the Vatican that factors other than the crime of sexual abuse were contributing to the crisis. From a Roman point of view, those factors included: anti-Catholicism, opposition to the Church’s countercultural stands on abortion and sexuality, the desire to cash in with large financial payouts, and the exploitation of the crisis by activist groups of both left and right to advance their pet causes. The hesitance of some Vatican officials to engage in public acts of contrition was, to some extent, a hesitance to fuel these forces perceived as hostile to the Church. In other words, these Vatican officials may have believed that by not being more contrite or self-critical, they were helping the American Church defend itself. This belief may have been in error, but in any event it is not denial.
There was a further layer of ambiguity in the Holy See, having to do with international perspective. During much of 2002, the Catholic sex abuse crisis received saturation coverage in the American press, so that it became the top item on the agenda, in some cases the only item on the agenda, for the American bishops. They were constrained by the force of overwhelming public attention. When the Vatican did not exhibit the same level of engagement, many Americans took this as evidence of willful denial. In fact, however, public opinion and the media overseas simply did not replicate the environment in the United States. During the spring of 2002, the major religion story in the Italian press was not the American crisis, which drew relatively little attention, but the thirty-nine-day standoff between Israelis and Palestinians at Bethlehem’s Basilica of the Nativity. It was this drama that was on the front pages of the newspapers every day, and the lead item on the evening news. While Americans were frustrated that the Holy See did not have a laser-beam focus on their crisis, some in the Vatican were equally annoyed that the fate of the holy sites did not seem important to the American Catholic community. In other words, what Americans sometimes read as denial, some officials in the Holy See regarded as a matter of perspective.
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