How about a synod on the history of sexual abuse in the church?

As has been widely reported, including here at NewGathering, within the next two weeks the Catholic Church will initiate a worldwide synodal process, which will culminate in a synod of the bishops of the world in 2023.  The topic of this synodal journey is synodality itself.  It seems Francis's hope is that, through this journey, the church will discern a synodal way of making decisions.  The synodal way will involve consulting with the whole people of God, carefully listening, and trying to discern the will of the Holy Spirit.  In these ways, it is profoundly in the spirit of Vatican II.

In June, 1985, National Catholic Reporter broke the story of sexual abuse of minors committed by Rev. Gilbert Gauthe of the diocese of Lafayette, LA.  Since then, stories have been broken periodically from virtually every region and corner of the church.  This week, in 2021, news continues to break - most recently in France.  This period of 36 years (so far) of breaking bad news covers virtually the entire span of my adult life.   

It has been abundantly clear, for many years now, that the church authorities are not able to get ahead of this story.  There are many reasons for this, some of them rooted in the nature of bureaucracy, some of them in the nature of church culture, organization and structure, some of them due to bad decisions and poor judgment.  Much of it is an attempt, perhaps misbegotten, to avoid lawsuits and their attendant devastating publicity and ruinous payouts.  

What we have witnessed over the last three+ decades is one failed attempt after another by church authorities and their advisers to control the story of the sexual abuse of minors.  It's past time to conclude that these stories are not manageable.  The bad news of clerical sexual abuse is too toxic to be contained.  The sex abuse story is an untamable dragon.

Francis's proposal to establish a synodal way offers the church a fresh way to try to address the problem of sexual abuse which has occurred in its past.  A synodal way would be, in some ways, the opposite of the control-and-conceal managerial approach which has failed so spectacularly until now.  A synodal approach would require that church authorities meet with victims, and then try to discern what to do about their testimony.   It would require that the authorities listen to the entire people of God about the problem.  And it would require them to be open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  

A synodal path doesn't guarantee that the church finally will get in front of the story of the sexual abuse of minors.  But all the other ways the church has tried so far have failed.  Why not give synodality a try?

Sexual abuse of minors: it's the French church's turn in the spotlight

I don't have a lot to say about this.  Headlines this week report that, over a 70 year period, somewhere between 220,000 and 330,000 minors were abused by French clergy and/or in a French church setting.  This is pursuant to an investigation by an independent commission.  It seems that only a small fraction of those numbers of abuse victims actually came forward to report abuse; the 220K-330K is an extrapolation done by experts and victims advocates.  In truth, we don't know exactly how many were abused; it could be those numbers, or even more, or many less.

One news account described this collection of cases as "systemic".  Probably that is accurate: it's difficult to believe that tens of thousands of cases of abuse could occur without church authorities being alerted to at least some of them, with the authorities failing to take sufficient corrective action.  It is systemic in the same way that police misconduct is systemic: there are bad actors in the rank and file; others in the rank and file are aware of the misdeeds but are disincentivized from doing much about it; and those in leadership have strong incentives to look the other way.  This is precisely how social structures enable sinfulness, and then prove to be resilient in the face of attempts to reform the sinfulness out of them.

70 years is a very long time horizon.  70 years ago was 1951.  Presumably, almost no abusers and their leaders from 1951 still are alive today.  For that matter, a teen who was abused 70 years ago would be an old man now (the commission report notes that the majority of victims are male).  Whether French law includes statutes of limitation, and whether they can be lifted, and whether the church would agree to compensate victims even if statutes of limitation remain in place, are details I don't know.  Certainly, younger victims whose abuse falls within the statutory window can expect whatever the French church can offer: compensation, payment for counseling and other treatment, an apology, a plea for forgiveness.  Any abusers still in ministry should expect to be removed, laicized, sued and possibly charged with crimes.

I don't know of a reason to expect this story will develop along different lines than it has previously in the US, Australia, Ireland, Germany, etc.  Those in favor of fundamental church reform will call for fundamental reform.  Those not in favor of fundamental reform will resist those calls.  Church leaders will try to say the right things, and will leave many people unsatisfied.  Francis will say empathetic things and point to church law reforms he already has implemented.  Most of the abusers will turn out to be retired or dead.  The victims will continue to be embittered.  People who are not stakeholders in the church will be frustrated that nothing more gets done.  The media will have a field day.  Politicians will try to leverage the situation for their political advantage.  Some of the faithful will care, and some won't.  Some will stay, and some won't.

These investigations, reports and all that flow from them are necessary.  I've commented before that I've seen this play out so many times now that I can't really muster shock or surprise anymore.  But the sour, sick feeling in my stomach hasn't abated.  I expect that the same sequence of reckoning could, and should, play out anywhere the church has been present - which is most of the nations in the world.  Every diocese and religious order has its sins it has tried to keep secret.  This exhausting, infuriating, interminable shining of light into dark places needs to continue until there are no more dark corners in the labyrinth which is the institutional Catholic church worldwide.   

Church visiting, and some miscellaneous thoughts on worship.

My wife and I were out of town this past weekend, visiting kids.  We stayed overnight Saturday into Sunday, something we don't usually do on these trips.  So Sunday morning, I rolled out of bed early (I rise early, my wife rises late), Googled "catholic churches near me", picked one out, and headed off to mass.

Married couples and communion

Jim McCrea shared a link to an article in Le Croix which I take to be a cry of anguish from a Catholic married to an Anglican.  The object of anguish is the Catholic Church's policy which forbids many/most non-Catholics from receiving communion.

Ecumenism

 This is my homily for yesterday, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time.  The readings for yesterday are here.  FYI, my wife's feedback for this one is that it was too much "head" and not enough "heart".  Too lecture-y.  It's something I'm always fighting.  My original plan was to have a mixed-denomination couple join me at each of the masses and share their personal experiences, but none of the couples I asked were able to be available.

Our Continuing Immigration Woes

The Trump administration had the news footage of the kids in cages.  Now the Biden administration has the images of men on horseback chasing down refugees at the border.  A really bad look, and now they are saying the ICE agents aren't riding horses anymore.  The horses actually weren't the problem. It was the policy.  

According to this article from Vox News, this is just a continuation of a longstanding history of exclusionary policy against Haitian asylum seekers:  

End of Present Surge by January

 Back on May 18th I predicted that the regular 2% decline per day in new Covid cases would not continue and concluded it could stagnate at some point during the Summer. 

Will the Current USA Pandemic Incidence Continue to Decline?

It did exactly that by mid June. However I had not taken into account a surge from the Delta variant.  Then on July 19th on the basis of the upswing of cases I predicted that we would  have another spike, possibility as bad as the Winter surge by Labor Day.

PANDEMIC PROJECTIONS: OLD AND NEW

The surge was not quite as bad as I had initially thought possible. People did change their behavior as cases began to skyrocket in August.

It seems that this surge peeked around Labor Day and has begun another descent. However right now it is close to it's old 2% per day decline.

INITIAL PROJECTION FOR DECLINE OF NEW CASES

We Could be Back To Our Summer Low Point Around Late January