Penn State and the abuse of the Catholic church

To the Editor: (of The Hour (Connecticut))

July 23, 2012

The abuse scandal at Penn State (Hour, July 12) begs comparison with the ongoing problem in the Roman Catholic Church. While our sports-obsessed culture has grabbed today's headlines, the church problem is obviously more important. It is after all a worldwide phenomenon and one that has particularly affected the Diocese of Bridgeport (i.e., Fairfield County). In both cases leaders looked the other way and even actively connived in allowing sexual predators to endanger more and more children.

The differences are instructive. A year after the Penn State problem became public, we have seen not only the conviction of a perpetrator but also the removal from office of three powerful leaders who looked the other way: the president of the university, the athletic director, and the famous football coach. The University commissioned no less than a former FBI director to conduct a thorough and impartial outside investigation.

By contrast not a single bishop in the United States has been removed from office or even officially chastised for failing to prevent sexual abuse. When Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law, the most prominent senior cleric, resigned under pressure at the end of 2002, he was rewarded with an honorary post in Rome. It is true that the U.S. bishops have instituted policies to prevent future abuses, but compliance has been imperfect even by their own standards. There has been little visible effort to bring all of the nation's dioceses into accord with the new norms.

Readers may wonder why the church, in response to a vastly larger scandal, has responded less effectively than the university. One reason is clericalism--the culture that thrives when an all-male clergy (bishops, priests, and deacons) puts its own interests ahead of the church as a whole. This culture is self-perpetuating because the leadership of the Catholic Church is so tightly concentrated in its all-male hierarchy.

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It is not heretical to suggest that the church government has something to learn from the American model. How far church governance has drifted from the "people of God" may be seen from an incident last May when Fairfield University (a Catholic institution) sponsored a conference intended to elicit desiderata for consideration in the appointment of our next bishop. The assembled Catholic laymen and women produced a modest and thoughtful list of suggestions, which was duly forwarded to the apostolic delegate. But there were no priests or deacons present. They had been invited, of course, but the interim management of the diocese had forbidden their participation. Joining such a group, it was feared, might give the false impression that laypeople had a voice in the governance of the church!

John Fitzpatrick
Norwalk
Read the full letter at the Hour