Church should have heeded lesson of history on child abuse

THE Catholic Church might appear to be facing its gravest and most desperate hour. Not so.

Historian JF Loughlin of Catholic Encyclopaedia fame wrote of the challenges that confronted Pope Adrian VI upon his investiture in 1522: “His Holiness had to reform a court that thrived on corruption, and detested the name of reform.”

In his first major address to his Christian flock, Pope Adrian launched a scathing attack on the Church, which was rocked by scandals of all sorts. He declared: “So much has vice become the accepted norm that those who are polluted are no longer aware of the stench. I ask you, my brethren, where will it end?”

He warned that if God permitted the persecution of the Church it was because of the sins of men, and especially those of prelates and clergy. Among the sins that Adrian listed was sexual abuse of children by men of the cloth.

The pontiff thundered: “This accursed malady has spread from the head to all the members, from the common worshipper to the Church hierarchy. God will be avenged!”

He then reminded Mass-goers throughout the Christian world that Christ himself had denounced child abuse as the most atrocious crime against God and humanity.

Pope Adrian had inherited from his predecessor, Pope Leo X, what historian Fr Philip Hughes called a Church torn apart by “a rotten mass of parasites, prostitutes, perverts, bravos and bullies”.

Pope Leo had punished trespassers on his 10-square-mile game reserve near Rome by having their hands and feet cut off, their homes burned down and their children sold off as servants. But he never raised a whisper against rampant sexual abuse among clergy and lay Catholics alike.

During successive pontificates, over many centuries, a blind eye was turned against child sexual abuse because it just didn’t register as a wrongdoing in the same way as other moral transgressions, including far less serious ones.

For some strange and sinister reason, the Church hierarchy throughout the ages has either condoned, evaded, or gone into denial about sexual abuse.

Pope Adrian was among the precious few pontiffs who took a tough stand against sexual abuse, but even he couldn’t stamp it out among clergy who just couldn’t resist the temptation to abuse defenceless children.

At a far earlier period of Church history, St Augustine warned there would be scandals in the Church “till the end of time”, and stressed that Christ himself had issued a similar warning to his disciples.

The great Cardinal Newman frequently reminded his fellow clergy and lay Catholics that it was always better to endure the shame and punishment that resulted from exposure of a sexual crime than to conceal it.

“Confess it now. Cry halt. Intervene and protect,” he cautioned. “Do not sink deeper into a pit of degradation and horror by remaining silent and acquiescent. Your silence will make you an accessory to that unspeakable predation of God’s little ones.”

In other words, don’t cover up child sexual abuse. If only the Church had heeded this advice.

Richard Power

Boherload House

Ballyneety

Co Limerick