by Fr. Tom Doyle, OP
"Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga of Honduras, who accused the U.S. attorneys who deposed Cardinal Bernard Law of using “Stalinist” tactics, said that clerics who have committed grave errors should be brought to justice by church tribunals. Revisionist history point one: raping children is an error, not a crime and the church tribunals, traditionally noted for slow non-functionality when it comes to due process, are the path to certain justice. Fr. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, an influential canon lawyer from the Gregorian University in Rome, published an article in 2002 replete with Vatican conventional wisdom. He said that civil authorities should be involved only after all church-based remedies have proven useless. He went on to assert that bishops are neither morally or judicially responsible for the acts of their clergy. He continued with the outrageous statement that a priest’s past acts of abuse should not be revealed to his congregation because he would be “totally discredited in front of his parochial community.”
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Cardinal Julian Herrenz, retired head of the Pontifical Commission for Legislative Texts, expressed some equally surprising opinions in an article published by John Allen in 2002. Presuming expertise in the field of behavioral science, he stated that pedophilia is a form of homosexuality. Stepping back into his role as a world-class legal expert, he rejected the idea that church authorities be requested, much less required to report abuse cases to civil law enforcement. His justification appears to have been the safeguarding of the “rapport of trust and secrecy” between bishop and priest..
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican secretary of state, was secretary at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2002 when he was quoted by John Allen as saying “In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offense of pedophilia is unfounded.” He went on to say that “...civil society must also respect the professional secrecy of priests, as it respects the professional secrecy of other categories.” There is nowhere in Catholic tradition, dogma or law where one can find any justification that supports this opinion.
In practice the policy has been to avoid contact with civil authorities and to cover up the crimes and the criminals. The newly created canonical tradition of referral to civil authorities is the result of one thing: the public outrage, the exposure from the media and the pressure for accountability in the civil courts. The appearance of the “Guide to Understanding” is a failed attempt at damage control through revision of history. It won’t work. The Vatican will never be able to “fix” the problem of clergy sexual abuse because the abuse is not the essential problem that needs fixing. It is the entire clerical culture that needs to be revamped from the inside out."
Background: A Dominican priest with a doctorate in canon law and five separate master's degrees, Rev. Thomas Patrick Doyle, O.P. sacrificed a rising career at the Vatican Embassy to become an outspoken advocate for church abuse victims. Since 1984, when he became involved with the issue of sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy while serving at the Embassy, he has become an expert in the canonical and pastoral dimensions of this problem—working directly with victims, their families, accused priests, bishops, and other high-ranking Church officials.
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