A bishop’s troubling comments on sexual abuse

Recently, Bishop Steve Lowe of the Auckland and Hamilton Catholic dioceses publicly commented on sexual abuse, relativising that it was not confined to the church but widespread in society.

It doesn’t seem right, however, to conflate sexual abuse in the church with sexual abuse in society.

While sexual abuse is widespread, it assumes additional gravity when perpetrated by those who were supposed to be pastoral leaders, exemplars of holiness and goodness.

Priests and bishops represented God to those whom they sexually assaulted. They used their status to deceive people. Many victims were children and vulnerable adults.

Because the perpetrators were priests and bishops, the effects have grave spiritual and faith-based consequences added to the physical and psychological harm.

Lowe also trashed the media for “sensationalising” sexual abuse in the Church.

He said, “media would have us believe that it [sexual abuse] only exists in the Catholic Church”, and “we have got a media that wants to sensationalise and doesn’t know how to report”.

I think New Zealanders are served relatively well by the equanimity of journalism in NZ. The media reported only what victims themselves said they experienced, and what the church itself reported.

For example, NZ’s Catholic Church admitted 14% of clergy had been accused of abuse since 1950.

What the media added – and appropriately so – was that reported cases could only be part of a much larger scale of abuse that still remains hidden, given only a small percentage of cases are ever reported.

Further, if we compared what the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care said with what the media reported, then we couldn’t fairly accuse the media of sensationalism.

For example, the commission’s Marylands Report detailed unbelievable horrors suffered by vulnerable boys in the care of the Catholic Church.

Chairperson Coral Shaw stated: “We are aware of no other circumstances or institution where the sexual abuse has been so extreme or has involved such a high proportion of perpetrators over the same extended period of time as that at Marylands School.”

However, Shaw provided no comparative data. Therefore, we are left wondering how such superlative claims could be made without proof that Maryland’s was actually the worst.

What makes Catholic Church-based sexual abuse unique compared to sexual abuse in society, and what gives Catholicism’s clergy sexual abuse scandal its gravity, is the bishops’ response.

From Ireland to New Zealand, with almost every country in between, there is something sinister about the way Catholic bishops responded.

This tells us that their episcopal ministry itself is problematic.

For example, it cannot be a coincidence that Catholic bishops worldwide followed the same “playbook” revealed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report of 2018, which identified a series of practices “that regularly appeared, in various configurations”, in diocesan files.

Such a thoroughly thought-through system with a clear set of goals to maintain secrecy, avoid scandal at the price of keeping children safe, protect the institution’s reputation, preserve its assets rather than justly compensate victims, is unique to Catholic bishops’ response worldwide.

Further, when lay people are found guilty of sexual abuse, they are punished and removed from the place of offending. But this seldom happens to predator priests.

We have to ask: why did Catholic bishops who were supposed to care for people, routinely choose to send priests who raped children back into parishes and schools where they continued to abuse? Why did they let it happen after they knew? Why did they “export” abusers to vulnerable countries where they continued to abuse? Why have they financed offending priests’ legal defence but not paid due compensation to victims?

The brutally honest answer is because they could.

They had the power to stop the abuse. But they chose evil over good. This is what makes abuse in the church different from abuse in society.

It is not just about the crimes of perpetrators, but also about the complicity of church leaders who enabled them and covered up for them.

So, the way abusive priests are treated in the church is quite different to how abusive laypersons are treated in the church and in society. Therefore, for all the trashing Bishop Lowe does of the media and survivors who speak up against abuse, for example, Snap’s disclosure to the royal commission, there is a difference.

For all the breast-beating Lowe asks his followers to do to atone for “the sins of the church”, the People of God are not responsible for the sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy and covered up by bishops. They are responsible for their silence, but not for the abuse.

As theologian and former priest Thomas Doyle said, “the blame for abuse by priests lies directly on the hierarchy and structure of the Catholic Church which responds to allegations of abuse by calling a lawyer rather than caring for the victims”.

Pope Francis himself said the responsibility falls, above all, on the bishops.

They had the power to stop the abuse. But they chose evil over good.