Professor Patrick Hannon offers some rules for clear thinking on an emotive issue for the faithful
Among the people affected by the child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church are men and women for whom faith and church are deeply important. I'm not thinking now of victims/survivors of abuse, but of folk who have been shocked, angered, thrown into dismay by the spate of revelations of harm and betrayal, who are nevertheless held by their religious convictions and loyalties and who want, desperately, a truthful and just end to the present distress.
It's hard to live with the tensions inherent in this state of affairs, and it's sometimes hard to avoid reacting: against the Church person who seems more interested in defending Church institutions than in acknowledging fault and making reparation; against the journalist who takes liberties with the facts, spins a story, gratuitously questions the bona fides of every representative of the church; sometimes even against a survivor who seems implacable, impervious to every effort to make up for the wrong done.
Perhaps we're still at a stage in the process of disclosure/reparation when it's impossible to think straight about what has been uncovered about the misdoings of Catholic clergy and religious, and about the ineptitude and apparent dishonesty with which many complaints have been met. Some people fear that we shall never emerge from it. But attempts to think straight and to act justly and with compassion are not helped by the polarisation which constantly threatens public debate about child abuse in Ireland.
Polarisation
It's depressing to be a party to conversations in which all media people are assumed to be interested only in getting at 'us' and in circulation or audience figures. Of course it's depressing too to meet hostility toward all clergy and religious on the basis of the conduct of some. Polarisation precludes reconciliation - one should perhaps say precludes truth, the only sure basis for healing, and for a just resolution of all of the problems which attend the abuse of children.
It may be that a public working-through of the specifically Catholic Church dimension of the problematic is necessary before Ireland's wider problem can even be addressed. And in terms of the purging of the Church, it's imperative that no short-circuiting of this process is attempted. But it's well to keep in mind that the wider problem will not be addressed so long as we are locked into the Church context. And even the Church dimension can't properly be addressed if a polarisation of viewpoint is allowed to set the terms of debate.
Resolution? - 'Rules for the Debate'
At an especially low moment in the US debate about abortion, the late Richard McCormick SJ commented upon the destructive polarisation which had come to mark that debate. ''Many of us have become bone-weary of this discussion. But to yield to such fatigue would be to run from a problem, not wrestle with it. If stay we ought and must, then it may be of help to propose a set of 'rules for conversation', the observance of which could nudge us toward more communicative conversation.'' McCormick formulated a set of nine such 'rules', and some of them might be instructive for us.
For example he calls on protagonists to identify areas of agreement, to represent opposing positions fairly, and to focus on the core issues. These ideas may seem obvious, bland even, and yet only with difficulty are they implemented in practice. McCormick explains why: 'Where issues are urgent and disputants have enormous personal stakes and investments, there is a tendency to draw sharp lines very quickly and begin the shootout.'' But if Irish society is to deal effectively with what is a highly complex problem, mere rants and diatribes won't avail.
Two other rules, adapted, could improve our debate; as expressed by McCormick they are Avoid the use of slogans and Distinguish the pairs right-wrong, good-bad. Elaborating on the first of these he writes: ''Slogans are the weapons of the crusader, one who sees his role as warfare, generally against those sharply defined as 'the enemy'. Fighting for good causes clearly has its place, as do slogans but slogans are not very enlightening conversational tools, simply because they bypass and effectively subvert the process of communication.''
Sloganising or something like it occurs when media coverage of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is put down to anticlericalism, or hostility to religion, or concern for sales. It occurs also when all Church authorities are portrayed as interested solely in the preservation of the institution or of their own power. It occurs when - one hopes now rarely - complainants are dismissed as trouble-makers. And it occurs when abusers are scapegoated or demonised.
Right and Wrong; Good and Bad
The meaning of McCormick's second rule, Distinguish the pairs right-wrong, good-bad, may not be immediately clear, but the main idea is plain enough. The answer to the question whether I'm a good or a bad person depends not only on what I do but also on what I understand and mean by what I do. I could do something right (help someone in need, say), but for the wrong reason (to show off), or with a bad attitude (condescendingly); and in that case my motive and attitude will take the good out of it, as we say in ordinary speech.
By the same token I could do harm, but without meaning to, or in the mistaken belief that I was doing something good. What I did was undoubtedly wrong, but you can't conclude that I'm therefore a bad person. Again we recognise that possibility in ordinary speech when we say that so-and-so 'couldn't be blamed', that he or she 'couldn't help it', because of ignorance or mistake, or because driven by fear, or even by some compulsion outside of conscious control.
And of course it's a matter of common human experience also - and a characteristic theme of the Bible - that people who have done evil things may repent of their wrong-doing and try to mend their ways. So from the fact that someone has acted wrongly, it doesn't follow that she or he is a bad person; and since the outsider normally doesn't know what goes on in the heart of another, it behoves us not to judge. This doesn't detract a whit from our entitlement to be appalled at wrong-doing, or our obligation to condemn it in the strongest terms. It does affect the question of how we ought to deal with the wrong-doer.
It's understandable when people who have suffered abuse, whose suffering has perhaps been aggravated by attempts to evade responsibility and to cover up, are unable to acknowledge such possibilities - which makes it all the more moving when individuals display the compassion which recognition of them calls for. It's a different matter when commentators depict attempts to draw attention to these dimensions as institutional self-exculpation, or as seeking to minimise the enormity of abusers' crimes.
Three More Rules
To the foregoing selection from McCormick's list of 'rules for conversation' I think we might add three further proposals.
The first is that all parties should respect each other's bona fides. I grant that this is difficult, if not in some cases impossible. How can you accept the bona fides of a Church or other official if you even suspect that that official's concern is not with your problem but with protecting the institutions of which he or she is a custodian? How can Church people respect the bona fides of media or other commentator who is determined to have the last ounce of the last pound of flesh, regardless of accuracy or of the claims of fairness. And whilst the bona fides of complainants must always be fully respected, that can't mean ignoring the fact that some accusations are false.
The second rule is that there must be 'patient attention to the facts' - the phrase, I think, is Iris Murdoch's. What are the facts about the incidence of child abuse among the clergy? Do we know any facts about the putative connection between the present discipline of celibacy and child sexual abuse? (It can't be right to refuse to explore the question.) Are there different kinds of offenders, and what are the facts about the possibilities for rehabilitation? What are the facts about this or that individual who has been convicted and who has now paid the penalty laid down by law? Discussion so far has not always been marked by patient attention to the facts.
The third rule is that the word 'Church' should not be used when what's meant is nuns or brothers or bishops or priests. The Second Vatican Council went to pains to repudiate the notion that 'Church' is identified with office-holders and those ordained or consecrated to special roles or states. That hasn't put an end to the practice - including among Church officials themselves - of speaking as though it is.
This is not, I'm afraid, a piece of harmless carelessness, and it can give rise to misplaced and dangerous loyalties. Loyalty to 'the Church' is loyalty to the whole community called Church. Normally this calls for loyalty to the leadership, but victims who are Catholic are also of the Church, as are their families and friends, and as are the people in the pews. Loyalty to the Church may well require stringent criticism of leadership, and it will certainly require resistance to any attempt to evade responsibility or to cover up wrong.
It's not, I hope, unrealistic to look forward to a time when the problem of child sexual abuse in Ireland can be addressed calmly and with maximum effectiveness. And for the Church debate and for the wider debate that is still to come, perhaps some 'rules' such as those here suggested might not come amiss.
Fr Patrick Hannon is emeritus professor of moral theology at Maynooth and parish chaplain in Donabate. This article is adapted from a chapter in his Right or Wrong? Essays in Moral Theology (Veritas 2009)
