French priestly abuse inquiry draws a prince of the Catholic Church into its net

An ongoing investigation into the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in France revealed this week that eleven former and serving members of the hierarchy, including the retired Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, face either prosecution by the civil authorities or disciplinary action by the Church itself. 

A commission of inquiry looking into complaints dating as far back as the 1950s found last year that the sexual abuse by priests of underage boys and girls was widespread throughout France, as it has been in many other countries. Now the net has been widened to include those supposedly in charge. The total of claims filed has risen to 216,000, with another 124,000 cases under review involving lay teachers at Catholic schools. 

Also this week, shocking details emerged of gross misconduct and sexual grooming by priests at Blackrock College, one of the most famous Catholic schools in Ireland, celebrated in particular for the number of its pupils who go on to play rugby for the national side. It is reported that 57 former pupils have claimed they were abused on campus by members of the clergy, resulting, thus far, in financial settlements totalling €5m.

And just today, it has been disclosed that the Jesuit Order in Ireland has so far paid out €7.4m by way of settlements and legal costs to 78 victims of priestly abuse and is investigating a further 71 alleged cases, with others in the pipeline. A total of 43 priests stand accused, including one particularly prolific cleric at Belvedere College, alma mater not only of James Joyce but of half the Republic’s Great and Good. Twenty years ago, the faithful in Ireland would have been shocked by such a revelation. Today, it is very much par for the course.

Worldwide, the number of priests convicted of sexual offences against minors has grown steadily over the last 20 years as victims come forward who in earlier times would have been unwilling to take on the power of the Church or too ashamed to admit what took place. The pattern of behaviour that has been exposed has led to a crisis of faith in every country in the world in which the Church of Rome once held sway, begging the question, is being ordained into the Catholic priesthood in itself an occasion of sin? 

According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, which bills itself as “the acknowledged authority on all disputed questions,” occasions of sin are “external circumstances – whether of things or persons – which either because of their special nature or because of the frailty common to humanity or peculiar to some individual, incite or entice one to sin”. 

It goes on: 

It is important to remember that there is a wide difference between the cause and the occasion of sin. The cause of sin in the last analysis is the perverse human will and is intrinsic to the human composite. The occasion is something extrinsic and, given the freedom of the will, cannot, properly speaking, stand in causal relation to the act or vicious habit which we call sin. There can be no doubt that in general the same obligation which binds us to refrain from sin requires us to shun its occasion. Qui tenetur ad finem, tenetur ad media (he who is bound to reach a certain end is bound to employ the means to attain it). 

It is not hard to imagine such a definition being read from the pulpit in Catholic seminaries by a red-nosed monsignor either as guidance or as a terrible warning to those who choose to embrace a priestly vocation. The Church knows that it has failed. More to the point, it knows that it has been found out. What we will never know – and which the Vatican will never admit – is how many thousands, perhaps millions, of the faithful down the centuries were violated when young by priests who regarded such activity as one of the perks of the job. 

Cardinal Ricard, handed his red hat by the controversial Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, is probably not one of the worst. He has admitted that some 35 years ago, while a parish priest in Marseille, he forced himself on a 14-year-old girl, causing her life-long anguish. He told the investigating body looking into claims made against him that he greatly regretted what happened. But he presumably failed to mention what he did either to Benedict before the then-Pontiff elevated him to the College of Cardinals or to Pope Francis, who in 2013 confirmed him as president of the Congregation for Catholic Education. It must have seemed to him a small matter, best forgotten. The assumption has to be that only his confessor knew the truth and that, in more favourable circumstances, Ricard would have gone to his grave with his reputation intact. 

He is not, of course, alone. Ten bishops, some of them still in place, have been investigated and could end up in jail, where they could be joined by dozens of more junior colleagues. Elsewhere, in the US, Australia, Latin America and across Europe and Africa, the number of bishops and priests guilty of engaging in sex acts with children of both sexes could in the end run into the thousands. 

Until very recent times, the Church, with papal approval, worked steadfastly to sweep the issue under the carpet. Bishops and archbishops, advised by Pope Benedict when Vatican Secretary of State, chose to move offending priests around rather than reporting them, while denying that the problem was in any way serious or widespread. 

Prominent among the enablers was the late Cardinal Bernard Law, who as Archbishop of Boston knew exactly what was going on throughout New England but opted to protect the reputation of the Church rather than safeguard the many children whose lives were ruined by priests in his charge. When the cardinal’s lamentable response was finally exposed by the Boston Globe, the Vatican was forced to act: Law was summoned to Rome, where he was appointed to a number of the highest positions in the Church’s governance and made Archpriest of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the most venerated sites in Rome, the burial place of no fewer than six Popes. 

As a direct result of the Church’s wilful blindness, priests in many cases became serial offenders, relying on the fact that the children they abused would not dare to denounce them and that, even if they did, their parents wouldn’t believe them and the worst that could happen was that they would be moved to a different parish 50 miles down the road where they could begin their depredations anew, free of suspicion.  

All that has now changed. Confronted by the enormity of its crime – and the growing rejection of its authority in matters of faith and morals – Rome is belatedly ready to come clean, so that thousands of victims are coming forward, seeking not only compensation, but validation. 

Nothing can be done for the generations of girls and boys who suffered in the past. Their only hope was that the God they believed in knew the truth and would punish those responsible. Did the priests who engaged in rape and other acts of molestation also believe this, or did they feel that, by a show of contrition, their place in Heaven was assured? We will never know. 

What we do know is that the Church, governed by a supposedly celibate hierarchy and priesthood, proved a perfect vehicle that allowed its clergy to betray their calling with near-absolute impunity. 

For those priests who successfully resisted the temptations of the flesh, most obviously the signature desire to defile children, the revelations of recent years have been a purgatory. It is almost certainly true to say that most of the clergy during the two thousand years of the Church’s troubled history remained true to their vows and, alongside the rejection of science and burning of heretics, did their best to preach the gospel. But it is also true that a significant minority did not and that many others turned a blind eye to the perverted acts of their fellows. 

But acts have consequences. France, for long regarded as the First Daughter of the Church, is no longer a Catholic country. Most of its congregations are without a full-time priest and only an estimated 10 per cent of the population regularly attends mass. The same is true of Ireland, and of Spain, even of Italy and Poland. Latin America, with its population of 660 million, is increasingly secular. By one reckoning, Brazil could be more than 50 per cent evangelical Protestant by the end of the present decade. 

Priestly abuse is by no means the only reason for the decline in Catholic observance. But it is likely to be the one to which most born into the faith would point if asked why they lost all trust in the priesthood and its message. The Church not as a refuge, but as an occasion of sin, is a reputation that it may never live down. 

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