Madam, – While recognising some sign of positive, human feelings in the Pope’s response to the Irish victim’s of clerical sexual child abuse – his shame, regret and sorrow – nevertheless much more is needed. If a patient comes to hospital badly beaten, bruised and broken, they need more than compassion, regret and sorrow. They need a proper diagnosis. The patients are the survivors of abuse. Their healing needs a comprehensive diagnosis. In a deep sense, the bruised and broken patient is also the whole body of the Catholic Church. What is unacceptable in the Pope’s letter is the absence of a broader diagnosis. What is absent is an essential self-analysis of church structures. As a priest, I have been a complicit and silent participant in such structures.
What are these structures? They are the patriarchal, top heavy power structures that exclude women; they are the archaic symbols still existing in dress and language which endorse control and power; they are the infantilising notions of obedience used by the Pope and the hierarchy to control the laity as well as the priests and religious; they are the notions that are based on authority as power, rather than authority as knowledge and service; they are the culture of secrecy and institutional self-protection; they are the absence of freedom for individual expression and the absence of consensus of the local community; they are the divinisation of reason in doctrine and rules to the neglect of the human heart in values that respect every individual person.
The walking wounded survive better when the war is over and peace is declared. The war will not be over until the church has learned to view itself upsidedown. If Vatican II is ever incarnated, where the people of God come first, have a voice and are the church, then the patriarchal pyramid would be upsidedown and the church would then be, naturally, and without aggression, standing on its head. – Yours, etc,