The 3 Wise Monkeys, Sexual Abuse and the Prada Red Shoes

This is the famous 17th century carving over the door of the renowned Tosho-gu shrine in Nikko, Japan, which gave birth to the famous maxim: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil.  As Wikipedia remarks, "In the western world the phrase is often used to refer to those who deal with impropriety by looking the other way, refusing to acknowledge it, or feigning ignorance."

I was reminded of this phrase while reading a series of brilliant articles on the sexual abuse crisis  in the Catholic Church, written and posted by William Lindsey at his blog, Bilgrimage. In my opinion, these penetrating, truthful exposes belong on the front page of the New York Times. In a powerful section of his most recent post, William remarks:

For me, one of the biggest scandals at this point in the history of the Catholic church is the refusal of my brothers and sisters of the center even to discuss the abuse crisis—openly, honestly, and above all, as a theological datum without which it is impossible to talk about anything meaningful at any theological level today, whether the anything is ecclesiology, soteriology, ecumenism, theodicy, and so forth. It is scandalous enough that my brothers and sisters of the center can respond to the pained voices of their gay brothers and sisters as though our voices mean nothing and come from nowhere—and have no import at all for any of those important theological discussions.

But it is even more scandalous that my brothers and sisters of the center can, for almost a decade now, have heard (or at least had the opportunity to hear) one anguished voice after another of adult survivors of clerical sexual abuse, and can go on talking about the church and its future and mission in the world as if those voices have simply not spoken. As if they are not there. As if they do not count and as if what they say does not matter. Not at the center.

As if they have not completely interrupted the comfortable discussions of the center. As if they have not and should not make talk about God, love, salvation, communion, etc., well-nigh impossible for Catholics today. As if they do not make being Catholic well-nigh impossible today.

This final statement resonates so powerfully - "As if they do not make being Catholic well-nigh impossible today." If you have absorbed the full horror and implications of the sexual abuse crisis into your being (which can really only be done through prayer and contemplation), then nothing the hierarchy has to say on any subject at this point in history has any credibility. They have lost their credibility completely and we should not be listening to them until they have acknowledged the full scale of the sexual abuse crisis, recognized and publicly confessed their own scandalous culpability, revealed the full extent of the cover up and their continuing abuse of those victims who dare to speak up  and made appropriate penance and restitution. Wearing sackcloth and ashes for ten years and carrying a sign that says "I am a sexual abuse enabler" for twenty years would not even come close to an appropriate form of purification for the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead we get this:

Catholic culture at this moment, especially in the United States, is in a profound state of psychological denial and the pathology runs deep, very deep. As William Lindsey has pointed out in substantive detail here, (and by Terence Weldon at Queering the Church) the Hierarchy's present strategy is to blame others, gay men in the ministry in particular, for the current crisis instead of seeing the crisis for what it is, an evil in the Church that has been spawned by the abuse of hierarchical power. We need to use this theologically resonant term more often until the full force of the word is felt in the depths of the psyche and the soul. What the hierarchy has done (in collusion with the perpetrators) and is continuing to do regarding the sexual abuse crisis is an evil act committed upon the victims themselves and upon the whole  body of the community called Church. More than simple penance and restitution is called for. The crisis will not go away until the Catholic faithful themselves remove the blinders, recognize the full extent of this destructive pathology, and call for a thorough reformation of the governing structure of the Church. Until such a thorough reformation is undertaken, and firm structures of accountability put in place, we will simply continue to have more victims and the body of the Church will remain in a state of putrefaction.

FUTURE VICTIMS

(Photos taken with a heartbreaking sense of tragic irony at Stara Boleslav, sight of Pope Benedict's recent Mass in the Czech Republic)



And the hierarchy's and Centrist Catholics' response:

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