That’s more like it
The Irish state getting properly angry at last.
Ireland’s foreign minister summoned the country’s papal nuncio and demanded that the Vatican give a formal response to the Cloyne Report into the mishandling of clerical abuse.
That’s the stuff. Summoned; demanded.
The Cloyne Report said the Vatican, through its opposition to the Irish bishops’ 1996 guidelines for handling child sexual abuse, gave comfort to dissenters within the church who did not want to implement the procedures. In a letter to the bishops, the Congregation for Clergy described the rules as “merely a study document” and refused to give the document formal recognition.
Gilmore said the Vatican intervention was “absolutely unacceptable” and “inappropriate.” He said he had told Archbishop Leanza that an explanation and response were required as to why the Vatican had told priests and bishops they could undermine the rules.
That’s the ticket. Absolutely unacceptable; explanation required.
Responding to journalists’ queries, Gilmore said: “I want to know why this
state, with which we have diplomatic relations, issued a communication, the
effect of which was that very serious matter of the abuse of children in this
country was not reported to the authorities.”
Damn right! Finally.
And yet they still don’t seem to be as angry in Ireland at the Catholic Church for raping children, as people in Britian are because NOTW hacked peoples phones?
I could be reading it all wrong, or it could be the Irish thinking it’s “Our Church”, while the British are thinking “That bastard Murdoch.”
Nice to see the wheels coming off of the Catholic church’s privileged position in Ireland.
I think a far more important question, that should be asked and asked and asked, is: Why does any nation suppose that the Vatican is a state? Why do they have diplomatic relationships with a church? Why is the Roman Catholic Church given diplomatic privileges in any nation? Why do “papal nuncio’s” presume to pretend to be diplomats, representing one state to another? The absurdity of this should be apparent. It’s about time that someone simply pointed out that it is inappropriate for a church to have diplomatic privileges, or to presume to exercise worldwide authority over religious entities in different countries. China has the right idea here. The writ of the pope does not reach that far, nor should it reach into Ireland, Canada or any other country. If this was recognised, and it was clearly understood that the bishops in the US or Canada or Ireland were wholly responsible to see that their employees did not act in contravention of the law, perhaps they would show greater responsibility. So long as there is this wholly illusory idea that the Vatican has plenary authority throughtout the world this kind of idiocy will continue, and responsibility will be bandied about like a hot potato.
The explanation is simple. Priests are governed by Canon law. They are not subject to Civil Law. If the Vatican bothers to answer, that’s what they will say, but no doubt they will spin it out to many pages of bafflegab. But I doubt the Vatican will answer; they are answerable to God, not to any secular society and you know what the Pope thinks of secular society.
Summoning and demanding is all well and good, but it won’t mean much until we get to the shackling and incarcerating.
Still, it’s heartening to see.
I do wonder how the rank and file reconcile all of this.
In completely unrelated news, The Tom Clark article about Naturalism vs Theology that Ophelia has linked to in the Flashback section is totally awesome. I feel like a nerd for getting so excited by it, but srsly, it’s a brilliant summary and discussion and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.
Keith Harwood:
The explanation is simple. Priests are governed by Canon law. They are not subject to Civil Law. If the Vatican bothers to answer, that’s what they will say, but no doubt they will spin it out to many pages of bafflegab.
Let me elaborate on that.
As I understand it, Catholic canon law still says that canon law trumps all other law—Catholic clerics are required by to violate national laws and international human rights laws when the two conflict, and they very much conflict over this issue.
The supposed failure to implement the Irish Church’s reforms was a matter of Catholic policy. The Vatican reminded the Irish Church that its reforms would be all well and good, but there are some problems, and they must follow canon law, which was a coded way of saying you must not actually implement serious reforms like this.
Canon law is quite clear that avoiding scandal that would undermine faith in the Church is more important than obeying national laws, and more important than victim rights or justice.
That’s the big underreported crux of the matter: nothing has changed, and the Catholic church has reminded the Bishops that nothing has changed, and that they cannot actually change it—they must always prioritize avoiding scandal over human rights, no matter what they say publicly.
That is the huge failure of reporting about this issue—the canon law directives that perpetuated the problem are still in place, and only the Vatican can change them.
So far as I know, they’re not doing that. Their plan is to publicly praise and promote “reform” while quite knowingly making real reform impossible.
That utterly hardcore hypocrisy is exactly what canon law dictates: it dictates precisely that the truth be suppressed as necessary to protect the image of the Church.
It’s not a failure to implement policy. The policies that were not implemented were window dressing, and systematically failing to implement them is the stated policy in canon law.
Since canon law trumps whatever the Irish Bishops say about reform policies—as the Vatican reminds them—what they say has no force, and was never valid. Like a US state law that’s still on the books after being struck down as unconstitutional, it is null and void.
Until the Irish Church denies that canon law trumps Irish policies, or the Vatican changes canon law to actually allow the Irish reforms, it’s all bullshit.
I have to think that it’s been intended as mainly window dressing from the start. The Vatican will allow the Irish Church to come up with serious reform policies, and even partially implement them, only because it would be even more scandalous to do nothing than to have a few more scandals. The image of the Church is still paramount, and appearing to be reforming itself is currently necessary, but the calculus of scandal is what really matters—not human rights.
Canon law doesn’t even allow them to prioritize human rights over the image issues.
Viewed as a state, the Vatican is a rogue state. By its own laws, it is required to undermine human rights laws in other countries, to protect itself. It is required to engage in criminal coverups of human rights abuses, and thus to perpetuate those abuses. It is engaged in an international criminal conspiracy, and is required to perpetuate that conspiracy.
That’s what the Irish Government needs to say, in no uncertain terms—the problem is Vatican law, requiring its agents to undermine human rights laws around the world.
The Irish Government knows that—it has smart lawyers studying these issues—but is pulling its punches.
It should say that if the Vatican doesn’t change the relevant canon law, the Bishops will be classed as agents of a rogue nation, engaged in a criminal conspiracy, and that if they don’t clearly renounce Catholic canon law on those points, they’ll be deported or imprisoned.
That would be more like it, but I’m not holding my breath.
Unfortunately, it does appear that even when damned as such, there’s no such thing as bad publicity in they eys of the faithful:
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/07/15/meanwhile-in-limerick/
I’m not interested in the church’s “response” because they’ve shown over and over that they can produce a hollow response. They are foxes demanding the right to investigate what happened at the chicken house. They deserve no more respect than a fair trial would show them.
Maybe our (Irish) government is finally getting
ballscourage:But of course, the Church still thinks Canon Law trumps civil law:
Here’s hoping they stick to their guns. Next we need to see conspiracy charges brought…
I agree with Hamilton Jacobi-o! where are the slave galleys when you really need them?
I agree with Pauly-O!
Gilmore is an atheist. The catholic church put a lot of effort, mainly through theor paramilitary wing, the Iona Institute, in telling people not to vote for Gilmores party in the last general election. The irony now is that they now have no political leverage that they can apply to oppose him.
Re Eric’s comment: ‘The Case of the Pope’ by Geoffrey Robertson goes into detail on why the Vatican’s claim to statehood is a sham.
The Irish Government is also seeking to make it a legal requirement that a priest who becomes aware of allegations of sexual abuse of a minor must report such claims to the police, even if the priest came by that knowledge during confession.
The Irish Government does indeed seem to be getting tough. Even more amazingly I head a BBC interview with a practising Irish priest who said he supported the Government in this.
As for recognising the Vatican as a state, I understand this came about during the 1930s when Mussolini granted the Vatican recognition as a state. I see no reason why the rest of world should be bound by an agreement made by two fascist dictators.
I’ve long wondered about the ethical nature of Catholic confession… it seems like they require even the most dangerous people to confess, and the priests expect that the right to keeping confession private is sacrosanct. Yet should it be? I’m pretty sure psychiatrists and doctors are required to report situations where a person is a danger to themselves or others. Perhaps its more like lawyer-client privilege, where I think reporting is not mandated, but should it be? Surely the priests must recognize that dangerous people like the child rapists (or even more mundane criminals) should be sent to the law to keep them from inflicting more harm. Its not like they can pull the whole “well, if we turned them in, they wouldn’t confess” card, since they are already holding a “you go to Hell if you don’t confess” card.
It appears that ratboy (aka the pope) may cancel his visit to Ireland next year.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/papal-visit-in-doubt-as-relations-worsen-2822410.html
You lucky, lucky bastards!
Sajanas,
I am aware of no other profession that requires practitioners not pass on information passed on by a client if that information suggest harm is being done, or is likely to be done, to others. Not even lawyer-client privilege goes that far, and normally requires a lawyer to inform the authorities in certain circumstances.
Don’t some psychiatrists/therapists/etc have confessional-like rules? Or am I wrong about that.
Ophelia,
Not sure about therapists as there are so many different types. But psychiatrists are medical doctors and would be covered by the rules pertaining to medical doctors. In the UK that means normally a doctor may not disclose to a third party anything the patient has told her without the patients consent but there are exceptions. Mainly those are when there is a danger of harm being done to others, or when the patient is unable to consent either in an emergency or because of mental impairment. If a psychiatrist believes a patient is a danger to themselves or others then (in the UK at least) they have not only the right but a duty to inform the appropriate authorities. Normally that means detaining the person in a secure mental unit.
It’s been a little while since I reviewed privilege law (gee, this is a different definition of “privilege” than I’m accustomed to discussing here), but my understanding is that, in American law, communications with psychologists, doctors, and clergy can be, and frequently are, privileged. And of course the same goes for communications with (us) lawyers.
With regard to Sajanas’s question, the clichéd distinction in the attorney-client context is that if someone runs into my office holding a gun and tells me “I need you to represent me! I just shot and killed a guy on the street outside!”, that’s a privileged communication that I can’t disclose to anyone, even if I decline to represent the person. But if the same person runs into my office holding a gun and says “I’m going to need you to represent me—I’m about to shoot and kill a guy on the street outside,” that’s not a privileged communication, and very possibly I’m legally obligated to report what (s)he just said to the proper authorities.
I’m not sure whether that distinction applies to members of other professions who hear similar kinds of admissions. Given the power of (the other kind of) religious privilege, I have my doubts that any American legal authority would hold a Christian clergyman legally responsible for failing to report admissions about criminal activity that he heard during confession or some other analogous kind of religious counseling. Even, alas, if the admission is “I’ve molested children, and I’ll do it again.”
It’s a gnu-ish sentiment, but it seems to me that clergy-congregant confidentiality is a wrongheaded and worthless symptom of religious privilege. I don’t see what harm would be done to the legitimate interests of society if religious believers, while conversing with (or confessing to) their clergy, were occasionally forced to choose between (1) staying out of jail and (2) admitting that they had committed serious crimes.
@Rieux
Thanks for the info… sometimes simple questions can be hard to get simple quick answers to. I guess my main problem with privilege is that if you’re a lawyer on retainer for someone, and they are committing multiple criminal acts, it seems to make the lawyer an enabler for that crime. Perhaps the lawyer would be just as implicated in any crime at that point. The priests seem to be in much the same position as the lawyer in the sex abuse scandal… they receive confessions from child abusers, forgive their sins and tell them not to do it anymore, but they continue to re-offend. So, its clear that they are dangerous, but Catholic confession (at least, to me, as an outsider) seems to presume that each confession is an end to problem, so they don’t take any action.
Plus, it just seems weird to me, since the Catholics are the only ones that require confession, that they should get some sort of privilege which is just as good, if not better, than that given to people that preform similar consoling roles in society.
Eric, countries recognize the Vatican diplomatically because not doing so would be refusing to acknowledge that the Lateran Treaty of 1929, in which Italy granted it independence, was legally binding. Demanding that we derecognize the Vatican as a country would be akin to derecognizing any other theocracy: maybe it would make a political point, but it would fail to acknowledge the reality on the ground, which is that the Pope is for all practical purposes, the King of an independent city-state.
However, in that case, Catholic priests should be viewed as either agents of a foreign government or employees of a corporation that just happens to be owned by a foreign government. They’re still subject to the laws of the country in which they work, so, just like Italy arrested, tried, and convicted CIA agents for kidnapping after intercepting an attempted “extraordinary rendition” mission, Ireland should both arrest and try Catholic priests involved in sexual abuse and its coverup and demand an explanation from the Vatican government for the actions of its agents. And then, maybe, if the Vatican refuses to cooperate, they could embargo it and expel its operatives. :-) Or maybe I’m just wishing at this point.
Thanks Rieux. (I didn’t know that about the uninvited confession being protected even if the lawyer doesn’t agree to represent. At least not without an appointment. snicker) (But actually I suppose I mean it literally. If I’d had to guess beforehand, I think I would have guessed that if there’s an appointment and the client says “I did X and Y” then that would be privileged even if the lawyer doesn’t take the case, while running in brandishing a gun would obviate privilege. I think I would have guessed that the lawyer would have to consent to listening to the potential client to set the privilege meter ticking.) (In fact I don’t quite see why that’s not the case. There’s privilege even if the information is forced on the lawyer? Seems odd.)
Different Paul – and apparently that’s what Ireland will now be doing. At last.
PS Rieux I’m not second-guessing you of course, just surprised at the way of things.
Political bluster! Lets wait and see if proper legal reforms are actually implemented.
But even as political bluster it makes a refreshing change. Still, without legal reforms, not good enough; quite right.
Like Rieux, I am a lawyer and not au fait with attorney-client privilege, but my recollection is that he is correct with regard to attorney-client privilege, which is that a confession by a client (or prospective client) to a past crime is privileged, a statement of intention to commit a future one is not. With regard to doctors, the Tarasoff case in California makes it clear that a psychiatrist, for example, must breach confidentiality with the patient if there is a threat of imminent harm to a third party (in addition to the issue mentioned by Matt, where confidentiality is breached because of the patient’s risk of self-harm). And there are mandatory reporting rules for teachers and health-care providers on reporting suspected child abuse. I don’t know what the rules are for clergy, Catholic or otherwise.
How did I miss this entire story?
Incredibly glad you’re posting about it. Must go get caught up now.
Are foreign vatican operatives granted Vatican citizenship when receiving the nightgown and choker?
There is NO Irish law that requires mandatory reporting – although they propose to introduce one now. The Catholic Church has “Guidelines” that say credible allegations of child abuse should be reported. Guidelines are not part of Canon Law or State law. The Vatican does not agree with mandatory reporting – nor do some Irish clergy. There is nothing sinister about this.
Over 10 years ago there was a major debate in this country about creating a law re mandatory reporting. The idea was supported by the ISPCC and Barnardos; these are advocacy groups that demand changes in the Constitution to protect children etc. It was opposed by organisations of social workers and care workers. These are the people who actually deal with troubled families and would be the ones required to report allegations to the police and then face enraged parents if the claims turned out to be false. (After all the family would still be troubled and now would have a GENUINE grievance against “interfering” social workers.)
It was decided at the time not to introduce mandatory reporting, so for the past 10 years and more State procedures were actually LESS rigorous than Church ones. The State is now introducing mandatory reporting in a fit of anti-clerical hysteria – and at the same time denouncing the Vatican because it objected to procedures that the State had decided not to implement! This kind of lunacy will do nothing to benefit children.
@Rory Conner
The problem with your post is that the Cloyne report pretty clearly shows that the church *said* it was going to do mandatory reporting and then did not in the vast majority of cases. That’s why people are angry.
As I understand it, the underlying problem is not really about whether you have blanket “mandatory reporting” of absolutely all suspicions of child abuse, but whether the Catholic Church has ever been serious about reporting credible allegations, or even substantiated allegations, or even known serial offending.
There sometimes are reasons not to report incredible allegations of abuse. For example, if some pissed-off parishoner says that Father Murphy buggered her child in the confessional at Easter, and it turns out that Murphy was demonstrably at a conference on another continent at the time, maybe that shouldn’t be reported to the police. It’s crazy talk. (Although worth looking into because it’s crazy talk. WTF is up there? Should something be reported?)
Unfortunately, the Church has disqualified itself from being trusted with making reasonable judgments about what’s a credible allegation. It has systematically tended to judge credible allegations as incredible; worse, when allegations have been shown to be credible, it has often chosen not to look for substantiation. Still worse, when the substantiation is there, it has systematically chosen to harbor probable and even known child abusers, and avoid telling the police. Over and over, all over the world, as a matter of policy.
How can you trust an organization to judge what’s a credible allegation when you know you can’t trust it to report what it knows to be true?
How can you trust such an organization when its secrecy and denialism are not just matters of prevailing corporate culture, but written into its own “laws”, which it says trump all other laws?
As I understand it, there is a fundamental conflict between the requirements of canon law and the requirements of civil law. That fundamental conflict is not with respect to the details of reporting thresholds.
It’s about what is considered a legitimate goal or motive.
Canon law, as I understand it, says that the clergy must put a high priority on protecting the reputation of the Church—including, when it comes down to it, keeping even known crimes secret if the cost to the Church’s credibility is high.
The Church’s own interest in furthering its sacred mission requires prioritizing the avoidance of scandal over protecting children, or at least prioritizing it high enough that it will systematically tend to sacrifice the goal of protecting children, to some substantial extent.
Irrespective of the details of procedures, thresholds of judgment, and on, that’s seriously not okay.
In civil law, if you don’t report crimes within your organization, saying “it would have been embarrassing to admit that was going on” is not a valid excuse. Not even close—it’s damning, because it gives a clear motive for a criminal coverup, which is not an excuse at all.
Suppose a stock brokerage knows that some of its brokers are cheating customers. If it fails to report those crimes to the relevant authorities and says “We couldn’t afford to—we knew if that became public, we would have lost a lot of customers!” If you say that in a civil court, you are admitting to criminal conspiracy, and you go to prison.
That’s what the Catholic church has been doing, as a matter of stated policy—it has allowed systematic, criminal abuse of some of its customers, and failing to report it or even hushing it up, to avoid losing other customers.
As I understand it, that is still the stated policy of the Catholic Church, in canon law. Canon law still says that the avoidance of scandal is a high priority, and that it is a high priority because the Catholic Church’s mission—the service it provides to a billion customers—is so all-fired, cosmically important.
Imagine a stock brokerage with bylaws that say the services of the company are so important that avoiding scandal is necessarily a high priority.
Imagine executives of that company in a civil court, being accused of conspiracy to cover up the cheating of some of its customers, knowing that it would perpetuate such cheating by prioritizing things as it does.
If the executives say “We had to do it, because our bylaws say to,” they’ll go to prison.
Even if they don’t say that in court, or in public, but it comes out that their bylaws do say that, and their memos affirm it, it’s quite damning. It’s compelling evidence that the organization’s criminal coverups are designed into the basic structure of the organization, and predictably result in actual criminality.
What would happen to such a corporation if all that came out? If by some miracle it didn’t go out of business, the civil authorities would rightly put strict demands and controls on that organization.
First off, it would have to change its bylaws. It would have to repudiate the rationale for hushing up known and suspected criminality in its ranks. That would not be negotiable.
Second, all of the managers who contributed to the problem, actively or negligently, would be out. They’d resign or be fired, if not get banned from the industry or thrown in jail.
Third, it would have to submit to special oversight, to make sure that it really cleaned up its act. It would not be allowed to clean up its own act, and be trusted to actually do it. No way in Hell. There’d be a lot of court-appointed overseers, frequent audits, whistleblowing hotlines, retraining for employees to ensure that they know the old regime is gone and the old order has been replaced with a new order, etc.
IMO, most of the same things ought to happen to the Catholic Church.
All of the high-ranking clerics should resign, from the bishops up to the Pope. They all knew what was going on, and were at best negligent. Even the ones who didn’t like it should resign—nobody blew the whistle enough to count as a whistleblower, as opposed to a coconspirator or (in a few cases, maybe) a negligent incompetent. They have all disqualified themselves from management roles in a trustworthy organization.
Anybody who doesn’t explicitly renounce the basic Machiavellian principle of prioritizing scandal avoidance should obviously be out. That’s a no-brainer. They obviously cannot be trusted—they can be trusted not to be trustworthy.
Remaining priests should receive special training about how the old days are over, and they should be watched. They should not be trusted to report abuse, themselves. Civil authorities should do things like regularly sending flyers and questionnaires to all Catholics asking about any abuse they know of, etc.
And of course, the Catholic Church should rewrite canon law to renounce the idea that it is above the law, and that secrecy is so all-fired important because the avoidance of scandal is a high priority.
Until that happens, it should be assumed that the same sort of shit will very likely happen again. There should be a presumption of guilt, because the Church itself is still telling us that it is above the law, and that avoiding scandal is a high priority, inevitably at the expense of other priorities, such as protecting mere children.
That’s true even if its specific guidelines and canon law procedures about child abuse change to something seemingly reasonable in the details. The basic problem is not in its detailed laws, but in its core rationales. Those core rationales imply that the detailed laws are less important than the core priorities, and we should not be surprised if the Church doesn’t follow its own detailed laws and rules, or systematically abuses whatever wiggle room they allow.
Of course they’ll game whatever system they put in place, if they think they can. They’re supposed to. Canon law itself says so.
So long as the core rationales of canon law are inconsistent with responsible handling of child abuse, we shouldn’t be the tiniest bit surprised if the Church doesn’t actually follow its own detailed procedures, or games them in self-interested ways, at the expense of victims. We should be surprised if they don’t.
Catholics should not complain if the Catholic Church gets less leeway than secular organizations in making judgment calls about child abuse—e.g., having blanket mandatory reporting, with very little wiggle room about credibility of accusations.
The Catholic Church is rightly considered particularly suspect, and should explicitly be considered suspect by law, given its history and (1) the fact that it has not replaced the guilty and negligent parties in its managerial ranks, and (2) has not repudiated its core “legal” rationales that perpetuate the problem.
Those factors demand special treatment of the Catholic Church, relative to, say, social workers and care workers.
If similar systematic corruption—including continuing rationalization of corruption, and continued employment of known conspirators—is ever found in the ranks of social workers and care workers, then they too should be treated as highly suspect. Of course they should.
Until then, squawking about unequal burdens placed on the Catholic clergy is bullshit. The Catholic church is not being discriminated against.
The Church is still being discriminated for, e.g., by not having to sack all of the bishops and Cardinals and the Pope, not being forced to rewrite its basic we’re-above-the-law “laws,” and being allowed to continue to do business at all.
A whole bunch of known crooks are being allowed to keep running their own avowedly secretive, authoritarian, power-hungry, intrinsically corruption-prone business in all other respects, and they’re squawking about being discriminated against because we quite obviously rightly don’t trust them about child sexual abuse?
They’re lucky they’re not faced with Jesus-loving mobs with pitchforks, putting millstones around their necks and throwing them into the sea.
I’m absolutely not advocating that, but a few legal reforms and real crackdowns would certainly seem to be in order; any squealing about their being unduly and unfairly put upon should be met with ridicule, or slack-jawed astonishment.