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THE TABLET


THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY Founded in 1840


LISTEN TO THOSE SINNED AGAINST A n underlying theme of the shameful story of cleri-


cal sex abuse in the Catholic Church has been the neglect of the victims. At last this is changing, and next year’s intense study of the whole issue being


organised at the Gregorian University in Rome will mark a watershed in the way this aspect is treated. The proposed symposium has the support of the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, and will bring together experts and those with pastoral experience in the field.


So far there are no plans to include victims themselves, which


would be a loss. It is not simply that they need to be heard as part of a possible healing process. The marginalisation of vic- tims represented a mindset whose origins lay in traditions of Catholic spirituality that emphasised the avoidance of sin and the recovery of sinners through penance and repentance. That mindset implied that the real tragedy of an act of sexual abuse by a priest lay in the defilement of the priestly office by the commission of an act of unchastity, rather than a grave and possibly permanent psychological injury inflicted upon an inno- cent and defenceless child. Those with that mindset, blinded by the lesser evil, could


not see the greater. It meant the Church, in response to acts of abuse that came to official notice, gave priority to the treat- ment of the transgressor and forgot about the one transgressed. This was the very essence of the clericalist deformity of ways of thinking and acting in the Church that prepared the way for all the scandals of cover-up, denial and deception.


By no means everyone in the Church has learned this lesson.


The Rosminian order has failed to respond adequately to reve - lations of sexual abuse at one of its institutions in Africa. One priest involved was one of the best-known Catholic priests in London, the late Fr Kit Cunningham of St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place. Before he died, he even returned his MBE to Buckingham Palace because he felt it had been awarded under false pretences. Those whom he had served and who had loved him in London have found it hard to believe he was capable of such crimes: perhaps the knowledge of his own depravity could have added to his sensitivity as a pastor; it almost cer- tainly lay behind his heavy drinking. It was only the surfacing of some of his victims years later, however, that exposed his true history to public view. The Cunningham case confirms what a unique and essential service to the Church victims proffer, yet it is one that the Church has barely recognised. One key speaker at the Gregorian event will be Baroness (Sheila) Hollins, the former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists who took part in the pontifical visitation of the Irish Catholic Church. She has played a central role in placing victims at the centre of the Church’s concern. She has said that in her professional experience, men who become child abusers were invariably abused themselves when they were children. This raises the question, urgently calling for further research, into how many priest abusers were themselves abused in childhood (but not necessarily by priests). If this import - ant link in the chain of causality has been missed, that is one more damaging consequence of marginalising the victims.


GREECE MUST NOT BE CAST ADRIFT N


ow and again there is a crisis in international affairs that requires a return to first principles. The plight of the Greek economy is such a case. It has illu- minated both the strengths and the weaknesses


of the whole European project. The European Union was con- ceived and structured by its founding fathers as an expression of solidarity, not just for sentimental reasons but because they saw that, in a dangerous world, nations, like people, are stronger when they stand together. The 1930s Depression and the Second World War had taught Europeans just how destructive unbridled economic forces and unbridled national - ism could be. Europe’s leaders were determined that, if at all possible, this dire history should not be repeated. The institutions put in place to express these ideals, how-


ever, were inevitably less than perfect and open to abuse. Such was the scale of the 2008 crisis in the world economy, the resilience of the European system was bound to be tested up to the point of destruction. The storm would find the weak- est point, as storms do, and it is no surprise that that turned out to be Greece. As the senior Greek Catholic archbishop, Nikolaos Foskolos of Athens, has indicated in a prescient inter- view on Vatican Radio, the Greeks treated their accession to the EU 30 years ago as an excuse for a party. Far from aban- doning old habits of not paying their taxes and of passing backhanders in return for favours, Greeks slipped further into economic unsustainability, hoping German taxpayers would pick up the bill. It was a third-world economy, unable to sup- port the first-world living standards to which the population


2 | THE TABLET | 25 June 2011


felt entitled. At the insistence of the rest of Europe, Germany in particular, this had to stop. With the world economy slow- ing down, Greece was no longer able to pay its way by repeated borrowing. The wolves howling at the door are again national - ism and market forces – in this case, the cry that Greece should be abandoned by its friends and expelled from the single cur- rency zone, even from the EU altogether, and then left to be devoured by its creditors. The British Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted


Britain will offer “not one penny more” to the international bail-out of the Greek economy, even if Greece overcomes its present bout of civil turbulence and adopts the raft of further austerity measures the beleaguered Government of George Papandreou (and the EU Commission) think necessary. But Mr Cameron’s appeal to nationalistic populism is not econom- ically responsible. Even putting morality aside, Britain needs a thriving eurozone for the sake of British as well as European interests. If 2008 taught anything, it was that global economic forces know no boundaries. But the Greek people deserve some sym- pathy too – up to a point. The “indignant ones” who have taken to the streets in protest were not responsible for the 2008 world economic crisis, merely its latest victims. In a society where corruption starts at the top, ordinary people feel little choice but to go with the flow. A moral change will have to come from the top, too. Greece’s good fortune is to have a Prime Minister who seems courageous, principled and untarnished by scan- dal. The rest of Europe should help him, not cut him loose.


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