As the Catholic Church comes to grips with the reality that a number of its priests and religious have engaged in abusive sexual practices, it must also come to grips with setting straight the historical record and cultural memories of a number of its prominent figures.
A substantial number of the abusers have been among the clergy’s leading citizens. Bishops, beloved pastors, school principals, and founders of Church institutions have been among the credibly accused. Congregations and faith communities have reacted with shock and disbelief that ‘their’ ministers have failed to observe the most basic and fundamental of interpersonal boundaries.
It is the combination of these two factors, the elevated status of the abusers and the disbelief of their communities which both create the problem of setting history straight and make it absolutely vital that the Church do so.
As a Church, the Roman Catholic is culturally more inclined
to honor, memorialize, and in physical and tangible ways acknowledge
contributions. Perhaps it is an outgrowth of our culture of the saints. We see
it all around us, on stained glass windows given by a prominent family, on
parish facilities named for a pastor who oversaw the growth of a parish, and on
high schools named for a bishop or cardinal. If you enter the web site of any
given diocese, chances are that the ‘About Us’ page will chronicle the history
of the diocese from its founding by its first bishop, through the ascendancy of
the current prelate. Step into a rectory, and chances are the hallway between
the waiting area and the reception parlors will be decorated with official
portraits of pastors down through the years. Knights of
So what is to be done when one of these honored names becomes connected, credibly, with sexual abuses?
The Church is wrestling with these issues now.
We believe that no wrestling should be required; the Church cannot continue to hold a name up in places of honor once it becomes clear that the owner of that name defiled it by abusing those in his or her care. It really is that simple.
Although some would complicate the issue, attempting to sustain the good name of a friend or colleague in the face of the fact that there is no good name left to uphold. In some ways, these memorials are the last bastion of denial for those who refuse to believe that their friend or colleague was a victimizer.
They will make a variety of arguments that right-thinking Catholics have come to recognize and refute.
He was a great Church leader who accomplished all of these great
things. We should honor him for that.
This is perhaps the most common and tempting argument. It almost works. Even some survivors get taken in by it.
We should not be tempted by it. For the abuser used those very accomplishments to gain power, and then he used that power to sexually abuse the very people for whom he was supposed to be accomplishing things! Indeed, it is the worldly success of these predators, whether as founders of institutions, or as liturgists, or as spiritualists which enabled them to get away with their abuses. Indeed, the accomplishments acted first as a lure for victims and then as a shield against prosecution.
Obviously that does not mean that we should destroy facilities and institutions created by these individuals; that would be self-defeating. However, we should not absolve the individual of responsibility for his lack of personal integrity and character simply because we enjoy some of the fruits of his labor. In particular, we need to make sure that any vestigial accomplishments are especially devoted to comfort and justice for the abusers’ survivors. For that reason alone, the abuser’s name should not be honored in such places.
Above all, we should remember that many fine Church institutions have been founded by individuals who did not prey upon those whose spiritual well-being was entrusted to them!
It was said, during the naïve period during which Mussolini
first came to power in
Finally, where do we draw the line? If a cleric built a great Cathedral but murdered his mother in the sacristy, does that (more than, for instance, a few rapes) suffice to remove him from places of honor?
We should not attempt to re-write history or to erase people from
historical memory.
To many of us who’ve been following this crisis from the beginning, this argument falls somewhere on the continuum between ludicrous and absurd. After all, it has been the Church which has done everything from denying what they knew to destroying documents to hide historical truth in this crisis. But, since the argument frequently arises we must step up to it.
It is one thing to acknowledge history. It is another to at once fully and selectively embrace it. When the Diocese of Knoxville retained in a place of honor in the Chancery a bronze bust of a founding Bishop who admitted to raping teenage boys using their spiritual counseling as an entrée, this demonstrates the sort of ‘doublethink’ of which George Orwell would have been proud. It is as if the person in the bust is a different person than the one who betrayed young lives and the trust of entire dioceses. But we know that such cannot be true. In the complete historical context this bishop betrayed the trust of tens of thousands of the faithful by accepting a position of honor and moral authority while having shown no regard for either.
If you are going to make the argument from history, you must make it from all of history. Not from your personal and selective memory.
There is another reason why this ‘don’t re-write history’ argument does not work.
Simply put, history is not the Church’s primary mission. The Church’s primary mission is ministry to and the well being of its constituency. That means all of its constituency, including those whom it has betrayed by permitting sexual predators to serve amongst its clergy. When memorializing history conflicts with the primary mission, then the Church must find another way to remember its history while serving its primary mission. We maintain that there is a way to do that, via the retention of historical records and the writing of complete and accurate accounts which are publicly available to those who would research them for whatever reasons.
The Church will not be materially hampered in its sacred mandate if it is deemed necessary to re-name a parish hall or to retire the portrait gallery in the front hall of a rectory. Indeed, in a year or two, few will recall or care that it was ever any other way.
As historical documentation, a bronze bust, a row of
portraits in a rectory, or a name upon a parish hall has little to no intrinsic
value. They say nothing more about the accomplishments of the honoree than does
the simple naming of a park ‘
Indeed, such memorials do positive harm due to their lack of historical explanation and context. People who see them may wonder about the truthfulness of the survivors. After all, the statue or photograph is still there. And there is nobody to ask why it is. People looking at the display case or memorial wall don’t have access to any disclaimers that explain that things are as they are for the reason of documenting history.
We maintain that for virtually any abuse survivor, the elevation of any known abuser to a place of honor is an impediment to healing.
And we maintain that for any potential abuser, the survival of another abuser’s good name in the clergy removes a major incentive to avoid the sorts of transgressions that his or her predecessors committed.
Again, by and large when we see this historical argument, there is a very strong personal connection between the person making the argument and the accused. This is very much an ad hominem issue, except in this case it may not be a fallacy.
It doesn’t really hurt anything, let bygones be bygones.
This is a variant on the oft-repeated argument towards victims that they should ‘move on.’
It actually says more about the person making the argument than anything else.
At the end of the day, it says that the individual does not want to face up to the unfinished business of giving victims the kind of justice and safe environment for healing to which they are entitled. It blames the victim not so much for his or her abuse, but for the work that is necessary to right the wrong.
This blame is misplaced and badly so.
If doing the right thing for abuse survivors necessitates a coat of paint on a parish facility, or the changing of a sign, or the replacement of a piece of stained glass, or the interruption of a parish or diocesan routine to accomplish one of those things, it is not the fault of the survivors. It is the criminal sexual predators who wore clerical cloth and of those who protected and enabled them who caused the changes to be necessary.
The fact is when a any survivor, encounters the name of any abuser in a place of honor he or she cannot ‘let bygones be bygones.’
If the Church wants these issues to fade then it must do
whatever is necessary to see that clerical sex abusers are disqualified from
institutional memorials. This will not, of itself, ‘let bygones be bygones’ but
it will certainly remove an absolute impediment.
What will we tell people? There will be questions; maybe we should just
leave it alone.
This argument stems from a reluctance to face and tell the
truth. Yes, there will be questions. They should be answered, and truthfully.
The Church, from the
We have to get the agreement of the Parish, or the Chancery, or the
Priests’ Senate or…
We see this ‘passive-aggressive’ argument all too often. We will be told by an official that he or she agrees with our position on the matter, but that ‘my hands are tied.’ We have seen a parish point to the diocese and a diocese point to a pastor or parish council as being the responsible decision-maker.
We know one key truth; that the Church is not a democracy. It is a feudal fiefdom of which the bishops are the landlords of record.
Sometimes, the Church seems to forget that we survivors and survivors’ advocates know this. Ultimately, each letter on every sign and every nail in every rectory wall is there at the bishop’s pleasure. For religious orders, it is the Provincial or the Superior General who can mandate, without recourse, the correction of a memorial. We have seen that, once the right words are said to the right person, change is usually immediate and complete.
At the end of the day, the Church needs to clean up after itself. Many of the perpetrators are dead, while their victims live on with the pain that they caused. We are aware that this is an extension of a job which the Church wishes it could put behind itself and be done with. Believe us when we say that many of the survivors would as soon that their pain would just go away as well. Removing the reminders of abusers is one necessary step in making the pain go away for both sides of this crisis.
Ultimately, the Church must remember that it does not get to dictate what victims need to heal. Rather it must ethically and morally comply with every reasonable request that is made of it. This is one of those requests, and we do not understand why it continues to be a struggle.