Alan Rusbridger at his brilliant best

A brilliant piece in yesterday's Guardian.

Anyone who tries to say anything about the times in which we live has to find Alan Rusbridger's piece exceptionally interesting.

Rusbridger is the former editor at the Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/31/alan-rusbridger-who-broke-the-news?CMP=share_btn_link

Blogpost comment on a spiritual occasion

A reader added a comment to a blogpost of February 11, 2017.

Thank you.

Recalling Diana's death

• On this day, August 31, 1997 Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed and their driver Henri Paul died in a car crash in central Paris.

And on this date in 1939 German troops dressed in Polish uniforms attacked the radio station at Gleiwitz, giving the German government an excuse to attack Poland the next day. The first day of World War II, during which approximately 50 million people lost their lives, of whom over 20 million were citizens of the Soviet Union.

Devastating report on Benedictine schools

In an article in The Tablet of August 18 Catherine Pepinster writes on a report into sexual abuse at two Benedictine schools, Ampelforth and Downside.

In the piece, Richard Scorer, who is a solicitor and has worked for many years on abuse cases and represented several survivors, is quoted.

He believes that celibacy is a problem: “I’ve been struck by psychological studies that suggest that once you have crossed the boundary of celibacy, a person does not have the understanding of how to behave.

A theologian suggested the problem went further than celibacy; there was a problem with Catholic theology on sex. “These monks had been led to believe that only sexual intercourse is sex, and so long as they refrained from that, it wasn’t a sin. So you have all kinds of abuse, but they still avoid heterosexual intercourse. The church needs to revisit what it teaches."

Priests at war

Comment:

The big row in the Catholic Church may well be between conservative closet homosexual clerics and liberal heterosexual clerics.

Click on 'Who is Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano?' to open.

Who is Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano?

by Brian Roewe

To the 2012 "Vatileaks" and other controversies that have enwrapped Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano in recent years have been added the release and reaction to the publication Aug. 26 of an 11-page letter from the 77-year-old prelate that accuses dozens of high-level church officials of a sex-abuse cover-up over allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

A lovely kind act of a young man

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

It really is amazing the wonder that is in front of our eyes. And what’s shocking is how often we miss it, pass it by, ignore it, simply don’t bother about it. It’s so true, we don’t see the nose on our face.

There must be something in the human psyche that sends us off chasing rainbows, always looking out for the extraordinary great things when so often it’s the little things, those seemingly inconsequential moments, events, acts of kindness, that bring joy to our lives.

The river Dodder rises in Glenasmole, meaning Glen of the Thrushes in Irish, flows into the Bohernabreena reservoir, which supplies water to Dublin, and on to Tallaght, Rathfarnham, Milltown, Ballsbridge and into Dublin Bay.

Over the years the relevant county councils have done great work in developing walk/cycle-ways along the river Dodder.

On Saturday, August 18, I cycled from Tallaght to Orwell Bridge. 

Most of it along the Dodder in open parkland, away from roads and traffic. The six kilometre cycle brought me through open countryside, nature at its best.

Along the cycle-way there are barriers or stiles, in place to keep cars and motorbikes away from the track.

It means the cyclist has to dismount and negotiate through the barrier, opening and closing it so as to negotiate the bicycle through. They are clever mechanisms, that is, when they work.

Going through one of these barriers I had trouble manoeuvring my bicycle.

Ahead of me were two boys, probably between 15 and 18.

One of them was 100 metres from the barrier when he saw that I was having difficulty at the barrier. I saw him throw his bicycle on the ground and coming towards me to help. 

My immediate reaction was to tell him I was okay. My pride had been hurt and felt that I didn’t need his help. But he insisted and explained that that particular barrier was a nuisance. Within seconds he had the bike over the barrier.

Of course I thanked him and then quickly asked him how long did he think I was cycling. He replied: ‘forty years’. ‘No’, I said, ‘I’m cycling 64 years’.

At this stage he was back at his bike about to ride off and as he cycled off he shouted: ‘fair fucks’.

Imagine the goodness and kindness of that young man. He was spectacularly obliging. The two of them had been messing about on their bicycles, maybe even doing wheelies, they were enjoying the fine weather in a beautiful setting. And then one of them saw me in my difficulty and came to my ‘rescue’.

I was flabbergasted by his kindness. Having recovered from my immediate silly pride I was greatly taken by his action.

Two days later I was negotiating that same barrier, successfully this time, but of course I was back thinking of the genuine kindness of the young man.

It’s most unlikely that he or his friend will see this column, it will not appear on the news. In many ways it is a non-event and it certainly is not going to set the world on fire. And yet, that small tiny insignificant event was for me something marvellous to experience.

St Therese of Lisieux says that it is not the extraordinary things that matter but the ordinary things that we do extraordinarily well.

My ‘rescue’ along the banks of the Dodder was just that.

Thank you, young man, and remember Aesop’s words, ‘No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted’.

Pope Francis leaves Ireland on an Aer Lingus Airbus A321

Pope Francis is back in Rome.

He seems a kind and friendly person, who is genuinely interested in people, especially the marginalised.

For an 82-year-old man he had a gruelling schedule in Ireland.

How good it would have been for his PR to have had a woman sitting beside him at Croke Park, instead it was Cardinal Kevin Farrell and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

The optics were wrong.

Half the world's population are women. And then the sea of male clerics surrounding Pope Francis. It looks odd and it is odd.

Would all that has happened have happened if more women were watching?

Pope Francis in Dublin

Best to wait till after the Mass in the Phoenix Park before people comment on Pope Francis and clerical child sex abuse.

Large crowds on Dublin's O'Connell Street yesterday.

In typical Irish style, people coming into the street from the northside had to go through a security barrier. Such was not the case for people entering from Dame Street.

RTE made a serious mistake not having a native English speaker translating Pope Francis yesterday.

Hope they change that today.

Pope Francis hits the ground running

At least Pope Francis did not kiss the ground on arrival in Dublin nor was he wearing silly shoes.

Interesting watching the welcoming party at Dublin Airport. The papal nuncio seems to have been left on his own.

Among the clerics present was Cardinal Sean Brady, retired archbishop of Armagh.

Also there was Irish ambassador to the Holy See Emma Madigan. She will be replaced in September by Derek Hannon.

Church of Ireland Archbishop Michael Jackson was one of the welcoming party to greet Pope Francis at the airport.

"They take great care in flying the pope around",  comment by editor of The Irish Catholic on the Alitalia pilots who fly the pope. No doubt they take 'great care' with all their passengers.

The monsignor's 'body therapy'

French priest Monsignor Tony Anatrella has been accused of 'body therapy' in order to 'heal' homosexuality and having been involved in sexual abuse for more than 15 years.

Paris archbishop Michel Aupetit has said that Anatrella is no longer permitted to minister as a priest. Nor is he to carry out ' therapeutic activity'

Could one make it up?

What is it about priesthood and closet homosexuality?

Alcohol industry needs heavy drinkers

The  Guardian this week reports that revenue from alcohol sales in England would plummet by £13bn if customers complied with the recommended drinking guidelines, according to a study, that condemns the industry’s role in regulation.

Academics from the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) and the University of Sheffield’s Alcohol Research Group say their analysis shows the scale of the conflict of interest afflicting producers and retailers and that they should not be allowed to influence government policy on risky drinking.

The researchers found that if everyone stuck to the recommended limit of 14 units a week, alcohol sales revenue would decline by 38 per cent. 

To claw that back they would face increasing the average price of a pint of beer in a pub by £2.64 and the average price of a bottle of spirits in supermarkets by £12.25.

This morning BBC Radio 4 carried a story from The Lancet that claims it's possible that any intake of alcohol can cause damage to a person's health.

Pope Francis criticises clericalism in his letter

Pope Francis in his 2,000-word letter on Monday to all Catholics around the world writes: 

"Clericalism, whether fostered by priests themselves or lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning today.” 

In that same letter he stresses how the church is made up of all the people of God. 

“Indeed, whenever we have tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the people of God to small elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches, spiritualties and structures without roots, without memory, without faces, without bodies and ultimately, without lives.”

Remembering Michael Collins

On this date, August 22, 1922 Michael Collins was shot dead at Beal na Bláth in West Cork.

We waste far too much water

This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

It just takes a few drops of rain and the countryside is looking green again.

The MD of Irish Water, Jerry Grant tells us that as it stands Dublin has enough water for the next 70 days. That means we need an awful lot of rain to replenish our reservoirs.

Yes, we have neglected our water infrastructure. Successive governments have treated such an important natural resource as some sort of Cinderella. Many of our pipes are old and leaking. Now it’s dawning on us that something has to be done.

We’ve had our water meter debacle. Major rows loom concerning bringing water from Parteen Weir on the Shannon to Dublin. The bringing of water from Limerick to Dublin makes sense to me. If we can bring gas from Kinsale and Belmullet and electricity from Moneypoint why can’t we bring water from the weir at Parteen?

In the meantime, we need to be making frantic efforts to replace broken pipes and fixing leaks. We should also be building new reservoirs.

Close to where I live a large apartment complex has been built. I have no doubt it’s wired for everything, television, electricity, broadband and all done to the highest specification. And of course every apartment has a water supply from the mains.

All that water has been treated at great expense. How much of it is used to flush toilets, clean cars and water the grounds surrounding the apartments?

Why are we not installing tanks on new buildings to harvest rain water that then could be used for flushing our toilets and cleaning our cars? Plumbing a separate pipe system for this water in new buildings would not cost megabucks and think of the water that would be saved. All the talk at present is in conserving energy, why are we not talking about conserving water especially in buildings? 

I am forever gobsmacked at how profligate we are when it comes to how we care for our water. Like all other natural resources, it is limited.

It is easy to blame the county councils, Irish Water, the Government, every organisation under the sun but what am I doing, what are you doing to conserve water?

Right now we are dangerously short of water, especially in the east of the country.

Currently Irish Water is running an advertisement saying that every person on average uses 129 litres of water every day.

The next time you turn on your tap remember that all your water has been harvested and treated. Ask yourself how can I play my part in reducing the amount we use. Have you ever thought of trying to save water and then reusing it for cleaning your car or washing your windows? Do you leave the tap running when you are washing your teeth?

And now to enter the world of politics. How the Government mishandled the introduction of water metering was indeed idiotic and a scandal. How much did it cost to install all those water meters and will they ever be used?

The attitude of the then environment minister Phil Hogan left much to be desired. He exuded a mix of arrogance and stupidity? It would be interesting to know who made a killing on the installation of all those meters. 

Nevertheless, the current system is daft. 

It is broken and urgently needs fixing.

Log on to www.water.ie and do a check list how you can save water. 

Remember the Chinese proverb: ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.

Death of Prague Spring

Fifty years ago today, August 20, 1968 Warsaw Pact troops entered Czechoslovakia in opposition to the Prague Spring.

GDR troops were on the border ready to invade when they received an order from Moscow that German troops were not to enter Czechoslovakia. Opponents of reformer Alexander Dubceck felt that German troops back in Czechoslovakia would cause a much larger resistance.

At 23.00 on August 20,1968, 250,000 troops with 2,000 tanks crossed the border. The number of  troops from the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary grew to 500,000.

A lovely story on President and Mrs Carter

This is a wonderful story in yesterday's  Washington Post on former US President Jimmy Carter.

It stresses the goodness and simplicity of President and Mrs Carter.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/08/17/feature/the-un-celebrity-president-jimmy-carter-shuns-riches-lives-modestly-in-his-georgia-hometown/

Novelist shines light on false piety

The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Tmes today.

Michael Commane

Best-selling author John Grisham in his novel 'The Last Juror' tells the story of a young journalist Willie Traynor, who buys a poorly-run newspaper in Mississippi. The story hinges around the rape and murder of a young widow of two children, Rhoda Kassellaw. The perpetrator of the heinous crimes is Danny Padgitt a violent young man, who is a member of a family short in morals and big in all forms of crookery.

Willie finds his vocation editing and managing 'The Ford County Times' in Clanton. The Kassellaw rape and murder, and the corruption surrounding it catapults Willie into investigative and campaigning journalism. He's the man about town in Clanton. A kind and caring person too.

The novel is set in the 1970s, the war in Vietnam has claimed 50 thousand US lives and the young Willie Traynor is loud in his criticism of the war. He's a young idealistic journalist who believes in a fair deal for all, whites and blacks.

While there is no Catholic church in the surrounding towns and villages, there is a large number of churches where Christians of varying denominations worship. Willie is not a churchgoer but decides as part of his getting to know the place to take time out on Sundays to attend worship in all 88 churches in Ford County.

Concerning his church visits he writes: "More often than not the sermons were loud and long, and many times I wondered how such good people could drag themselves in week after week for a tongue-lashing. Some preachers were almost sadistic in their condemnation of whatever their followers might have done that week. “

“Everything was a sin in rural Mississippi and not just the basics as set forth in the Ten Commandments. I heard scathing rebukes of television, movies, cardplaying, popular magazines, sports events, cheerleader uniforms, desegregation, mixed-race churches, Disney - because it came on Sunday nights, dancing, social drinking, postmarital sex, everything."

Does it sound familiar?

Over recent Sundays, the Gospel has concerned itself with Eucharistic themes. This Sunday too, St John writes: "This is the bread come down from heaven; not like the bread our ancestors ate; they are dead, but anyone who eats this break will live forever."(John 6: 58)

The Mass is our highest form of prayer. It is also the community at prayer. The Mass has many aspects to it but one of its central themes is communion.

In my childhood, youth and early adulthood, people spoke about 'getting Mass'. Wasn't it a strange way of talking about a community at prayer? These days large numbers of Irish people don't 'get Mass' any longer.

It's far too easy to say that we live in a secularised world or, to quote TS Eliot how he "journeyed to London, to the timekept City, /Where the River flows, with foreign flotations. /There I was told: we have too many churches, /And too few chop-houses."

Have we forgotten about the communion aspect of Holy Communion/the Eucharist/the Mass? Has the central prayer of the Christian churches become some sort of overly-pious exercise that's out of step with how we live our lives?

Have ministers of religion prattled on talking much nonsense for far too long? Ordinary  people will “talk with their feet”  and  walk away when what they hear from the pulpit does not chime with the lives they live.

Is much of the current anger and alienation that we are witnessing the result of years of neglect and a silly style of pious religion? It made life easy for the high priests but now it is all collapsing.

Unfortunately in the shadows there is a tendency to hark back to an old church, an old “piousity” professed by self-styled 'religious' groups who claim an inner track to God.

For the Eucharist, Communion and Mass to be real, to be holy and make sense, they must  convey the genuine prayer of the people.  In addressing God, we must always be prayerful, devout, and thankful.  God does not want us to put on a show.

In all his wandering around churches, despite journalism’s innate scepticism, Willie Traynor is impressed, inspired too by Pastor Cooper, who was at peace with himself. His sermon was about tolerance and love. "Love was Christ's principal message", John Grisham's Willie Traynor tells us.

Donald Wuerl

In the mid 1970s I was a student in Rome.

At the beginning of a new term a priest entered the lecture hall to take class. I was flabbergasted. 

On arriving back to San Clemente on the Via Labicana after the day's lectures I said to the late John O'Gorman that I had the weirdest man ever teaching me today. I went on to explain why I considered him so weird.

The lecturer was Fr Donald Wuerl, now cardinal archbishop in Washington.

Donald Wuerl was rector at St Paul's Seminary in Pittsburgh from 1981 to 1985. 

In 1982, he was made executive secretary to Bishop John Marshall of Burlington, Vermont, who was leading a Vatican-mandated study of US seminaries in the US.

He succeeded McCarrick as archbishop in Washington. 

Donald Wuerl was bishop in Pittsburg from 1988 to 2006.

The Grand Jury in Pennslyvania has criticised Cardinal Wuerl in its report published this week

Wuerl had major disagreements with the late Archbishop Hunthausen in Seattle. In May 1986, they found themselves with opposing positions on proposed state legislation to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in employment.

In these extraordinary days how could any clergyman say a word in public about the family?

'Gay priests should be honest about their sexuality'

Below is the second of two articles that have appeared in The Tablet by former Dominican James Alison.

These two articles should be read and dicussed in every Dominican priory around the world. They should be read by every priest in the world. But of course they won't. The pain, nonsense, silly piousity will continue. And under no circumstances will there be a mention of them in Dominican priories of formation.

Alison tells it as it is.

The lies, denial, dishonesty, human suffering are enormous.

James Alison has to be lauded for his honesty and his sense of the real.

In case it is not obvious, I write neither as a journalist, a sociologist nor an historian. I am a priest who aspires to be a theologian, one who is entirely complicit with the realities involved. I realised, more than 20 years ago, that the only thing stronger than the systemic trap in which I found myself, as it tried to spit me out, was forgiveness. Every accusatory approach, every desire for vengeance, every culturally or politically convenient way of point-scoring, merely helps tighten the self-defensive knots of the system. Hence the title of my first book to deal with this issue: Faith beyond Resentment.

I have tried since then to incarnate and to preach forgiveness long before its need has been recognised, aware that no apparently sacred earthly structure (“principality” or “power” in St Paul’s language) can withstand the recognition that it is based on a lie. It is forgiveness that opens up the truth of things by revealing contingency and mutability, things that can be let go, where only sacral fixity and necessity seem to reign.

I offer, then, an abbreviated reading-from-mercy of some elements of how we got here. Think back to the late nineteenth century. You have the beginnings of the strong impulse to female equality that would soon change voting laws throughout the Western world. You have the beginnings of psychology, and with it the talkability of things that had previously not been mentionable, as well as a growing recognition of the objectivity of elements of human “subjectivity”. You also had the coining of the term “homosexual”, shifting the definition from the criminal to some sort of quasiclinical way-of-being. And you had, in different languages, a growing literary fiction exploring in ever less coded ways the lives and desires of people we would now describe as gay or lesbian.

If you were born in the 1890s, laws against homosexuality, blackmail, violence and mysterious suicides would have been in the formative ether of your growing up. It was still a world in which most professions would be male-only for some more decades to come, and an informal “don’t ask, don’t tell” about many indiscretions would have been standard.

Fast forward to someone born in Europe or North America in the 1990s. A different universe: female equality dramatically closer; psychosexual realities discussed openly; being gay no longer either criminal or clinical; same-sex marriage on the horizon; and a plethora of literature, films, role models and so on enjoyed as much by straight as by gay people. There are many problems still in many places, but how far from the world where the British government could ensure the execution of Roger Casement by leaking diaries where he named his lovers, thus shocking a great man’s highly placed supporters into shamed silence?

And what of clerical life over the same century? While the young men born in the 1890s might not have had words or names for themselves, one thing was clear: in a brutal world, a monosexual clerical caste where no one questioned your unmarried status was the safest place to be. This was not only because you would be physically and legally safer in a genuinely “don’t ask, don’t tell” world but also – and this is the part often forgotten – because if you wanted to be good, you may well have been horrified at the squalor, moral and otherwise, that seemed to be what your boyish love would turn into over time, with no models better than young comrades, dead in war. In a clergy in which the only teaching was about acts, it was not only a safe space but one in which, by avoiding those acts, you could aspire to goodness.

However, as the century evolved, the world moved on at every level. With far fewer

single-sex professions and associations, the traditional “don’t ask, don’t tell” was falling apart. Following the mass mobilisations of the first half of the century, many more young people became aware of others like themselves. They began to live relatively openly, with ever less police attention or employment discrimination. Decriminalisation advanced all over the Western world. Primitive attempts to “cure homosexuals” yielded to the scientific realisation that there is a relatively stable lifelong orientation underlying “being this way”, and no pathology intrinsic to it. The science was firm by the 1950s, and has only been growing clearer since. Moreover, lifelong models of decent living – coupled, single, with children – were becoming available. In short, for gay and lesbian people at least, the social ether was unimaginably healthier.

Meanwhile, the clerical safe space with its (comparatively) soft, informal “hypocrisy” was, by comparison, becoming an ever more unsafe space. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not particularly cruel when it is just the way things are for the whole of society. But when it shifts into becoming an ever more explicit imposition on a small group in the midst of a growing ease around them, you are heading for an artificially constructed trap, not least because those on the outside can see ever more clearly what those on the inside have to pretend isn’t there. Think of the politically inspired imposition of an already socially moribund “don’t ask, don’t tell” on our militaries in the 1990s. The result was an increase in persecution, dismissals, fearfulness, vindictiveness, loss of talent and power to the zealots.

However, the biggest threat to the old safe space came as science caught up with the evidence of people’s lives: that a same-sex orientation is a more or less stable, regularly occurring, non-pathological minority variant in the human condition. What must it have been like for a gay cleric of the generation of Paul VI? You have lived through the social and psychological changes of the century, and you rejoice, as the second Vatican Council did, at all that was positive in the post-war years. And yet at the same time the previous world’s “underside” (identification with which you might have been at some level fleeing for decades, and for good moral reasons) was about to creep not only into the open, in the carnavalesque sense of Stonewall and subsequent Pride movements, but into the soul, as something that you just are.

It is no surprise that the first ever public use by Roman congregations of the word “homosexual” is in some short paragraphs in Persona Humana, a “declaration on certain questions concerning sexual ethics” issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1975, whose main thrust is to insist that no understanding of “being” should ever be allowed to justify “acts”. Although the link was not fully explained in 1975, the underlying reason is clear: the maintenance of the evil of the “acts” depends upon the status of “being that way” as somehow negative or anomalous. For if the “being” were a nonpathological minority variant, then of course the “acts” might in some circumstances be an appropriately human expression. By 1986 the rationale needed to be made more explicit, and so in another document from the CDF the “homosexual tendency” had to be described as “objectively disordered” in order to maintain the “intrinsically evil” nature of the acts (“On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons”, also known by its opening words Homosexualitatis problema).

And with that description, an aprioristic deduction was made to trump any human scientific learning, and the once safe space became a definitional trap for any who had entered into it, and for all those entering into it henceforth. Let me explain. Think of those coming into the seminary world between, say, 1960 and 1990. They will have been undergoing a shift in understanding from a world in which “acts” were bad and “being” meant “not like them”, to a world in which “being” meant “actually quite like them, and so what?” and “acts” being fairly banal. Given that some realise they are gay when prepubertal and others not until middle age, you can imagine that a significant number of young men, unsure of themselves and formed, at least in part, by traditional attitudes placing them at risk of hell, join the seminary half-believing in their disordered being. Eventually they find others like themselves, and it may only be years after ordination that, through love or learning, they discover that there is nothing wrong with their “being”.

If the discovery that what their employer teaches them about themselves is wrong is made early enough, they may leave. If it occurs during their own personal and professional growing up as priests, they may realise that their commitments to the discipline of celibacy or vows are not valid. For such commitments were assumed while those making them were under the influence of a false teaching concerning themselves, a teaching imposed on them as if from God by their employer. So, loving the priesthood, they continue their work (some are too old to be able to leave without penury) and may entertain discreet relationships in good conscience.

Thus you have the bizarre situation in which a teaching that, in context, originally helped genuinely pious gay men who wanted to live chastely (and I imagine that at least a couple of recent Holy Fathers were of this sort) has become converted by “facts on the ground” (and the theological attempt to resist them) into a trap. Those who become relatively healthy through their experience with others like themselves in their ecclesial belonging learn discretely to ignore both a teaching based on a falsehood about who they are, and the formal commitments made while under the illusion of that false teaching, and it becomes functional for everyone to turn a blind eye. The same teaching is functional for those who are extremely unhealthy (re-inforcing their refusal to accept who they are) and for opportunistic careerists, enabling these latter types to become the most vociferous allies of the genuinely pious, but frightened, senior celibates in the maintenance of the appearance of the old world. Doesn’t that look like much of the senior clergy from, say, 1965 to 2013?

Tangentially, I hope it also hints at why such a mutually deceptive gay-heavy world has been so useless at dealing with child abuse. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” can function as a way of genuine mercy among gay men who don’t want to cast stones in a glass house where the assumption is of relationships that may be illicit according to house rules, but are neither illegal nor pathological. But it can also be used (and certainly has been) as a cover for blackmail by those who have genuinely illegal and pathological behaviour to hide. The combination of these two has led to an inability to distinguish, in practice, between “naughty” gay men and “criminal” paedophiles. The instinct not to want to know, especially if senior people are involved, is very strong, as the Chilean debacle has demonstrated.

What is to be done, and what is quietly happening? The first thing is for lay Catholics to be encouraged in their fast-growing acceptance that being gay is a normal part of life — this despite fierce resistance from some elements of the clerical closet. Pope Francis’ reported conversation with Juan Carlos Cruz – a gay man abused in his youth by the Chilean priest, Fr Fernando Karadima – is a gem: “Look, Juan Carlos, the Pope loves you this way. God made you like this and he loves you.” The Pope’s words led to much spluttering and explaining away from those who realise the moment you accept “God made you like this” then the game is up as regards the “intrinsic evil” of the acts.

Nevertheless, it is only when straightforward, and obviously true, Christian messaging like Francis’ becomes normal among the laity that honesty can become the norm among the clergy. Otherwise we will continue with the absurd and pharisaical situation in which there is one rule for the clergy (“Doesn’t matter what you do so long as you don’t say so in public or challenge the teaching”) and another for the laity, passed off as “the teaching of the Church” and brutally enforced, for instance among employees of schools, parish organists, sports coaches and the like.

Only when it is clear (as it increasingly is) that the laity are quite confident in the (obviously true) view that “if you are this way, then learning to love appropriately is going to flow from this, not in spite of it” will it be possible to change, without scandal, the formal rules regarding the clergy. I bring this out since much was made of Francis’ reported answer to the Italian bishops when he was asked if they should admit gay men to the seminary: “If you are in any doubt, no.” This was read as Francis being against gay men. I read the remark differently: that of a wise and merciful man addressing a group of men, a significant proportion of whom are gay, and telling them, in effect, that only those among them who are capable of honesty in dealing with their future charges should induct people like themselves into the clergy: “Are you yourself going to vacillate in standing up publicly for the honesty of the young man? If so, don’t make his future dependent on your cowardice.”

It looks to me as though the Lord’s mercy, already reaching lay people as relief and as joy, is beginning to pierce the clerical closet in the shape of a firm, but gently upheld, demand for penitential first-person truthfulness as we are painfully let go from the systemic trap. The alternative, as Francis surely knows, is to continue with liars inducting liars into a game, the closet forming and enforcing the closet. And all of us finding that the Lord’s vineyard is very properly being taken away from us, its terrified tenants, and put into the hands of others, determined neither by sexual orientation, marital status or gender, who will produce its fruit.

James Alison is a priest, theologian, lecturer, retreat giver and itinerant preacher. When not on the road, he lives in Madrid, Spain.

Pennsylvania's grand jury report

Below is the introduction to the report of the Grand Jury on the conduct of priests in Pennsylvania. It covers six Catholic dioceses in  54 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties.

I. Introduction

We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have heard some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic

Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else,

someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.

We were given the job of investigating child sex abuse in six dioceses - every diocese in

the state except Philadelphia and Altoona -Johnstown, which were the subject of previous grand

juries. These six dioceses account for 54 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. We heard the testimony

of dozens of witnesses concerning clergy sex abuse. We subpoenaed, and reviewed, half a million

pages of internal diocesan documents. They contained credible allegations against over three

hundred predator priests. Over one thousand child victims were identifiable, from the church's

own records. We believe that the real number - of children whose records were lost, or who were

afraid ever to come forward - is in the thousands.

Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent. Some were manipulated with alcohol or pornography. Some were made to masturbate

their assailants, or were groped by them. Some were raped orally, some vaginally, some anally.

But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to

protect the abusers and their institution above all

As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be

prosecuted. But that is not to say there are no more predators. This grand jury has issued

presentments against a priest in the Greensburg diocese and a priest in the Erie Diocese, who has

been sexually assaulting children within the last decade. We learned of these abusers directly from

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their dioceses - which we hope is a sign that the church is finally changing its ways. And there

may be more indictments in the future; investigation continues.

But we are not satisfied by the few charges we can bring, which represent only a tiny

percentage of all the child abusers we saw. We are sick over all the crimes that willgo unpunished

and uncompensated. This report is our only recourse. We are going to name their names, and

describe what they did - both the sex offenders and those who concealed them. We are going to

shine a light on their conduct, because that is what the victims deserve. And we are going tomake

our recommendations for how the laws should change so that maybe no one will have to conduct

another inquiry like this one. We hereby exercise our historical and statutory right as grand jurors

to inform the public of our findings.

This introduction will briefly describe the sections of the report that follow. We know it is

very long. But the only way to fix these problems is to appreciate their scope.

The dioceses

This section of the report addresses each diocese individually, through two or more case

studies that provide examples of the abuse that occurred and the manner in which diocesan leaders

"managed" it. While each church district had its idiosyncrasies, the pattern was pretty muchthe

same. The main thing was not to help children, but to avoid "scandal." That is not our word, but

theirs; it appears over and over again in the documents we recovered. Abuse complaints were kept

locked up in a "secret archive." That is not our word, but theirs; the church's Code of Canon Law

specifically requires the diocese to maintain such an archive. Only the bishop can have the key.

The strategies were so common that they were susceptible to behavioral analysis by the

Federal Bureau of Investigation. For our benefit, the FBI agreed to assign members of its National

Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime to review a significant portion of the evidence received

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by the grand jury. Special agents testified before us that they had identified a series of practices

that regularly appeared, in various configurations, in the diocesan files they had analyzed. It's like

a playbook for concealing the truth:

First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults

in diocese documents. Never say "rape"; say "inappropriate contact" or "boundary issues."

Second, don't conduct genuine investigations with properly trained personnel. Instead,

assign fellow clergy members to ask inadequate questions and then make credibility

determinations about the colleagues with whom they live and work.

Third, for an appearance of integrity, send priests for "evaluation" at church-run psychiatric

treatment centers. Allow these experts to "diagnose" whether the priest was a pedophile, based

largely on the priest's "self-reports," and regardless of whether the priest had actually engaged in

sexual contact with a child.

Fourth, when a priest does have to be removed, don't say why. Tell his parishioners that

he is on "sick leave," or suffering from "nervous exhaustion." Or say nothing at all.

Fifth, even if a priest is raping children, keep providing him housing and living expenses,

although he may be using these resources to facilitate more sexual assaults.

Sixth, if a predator's conduct becomes known to the community, don't remove him from

the priesthood to ensure that no more children will be victimized. Instead, transfer him to a new

location where no one will know he is a child abuser.

Finally and above all, don't tell the police. Child sexual abuse, even short of actual

penetration, is and has for all relevant times been a crime. But don't treat it that way; handle it

like a personnel matter, "in house."

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To be sure, we did come across some cases in which members of law enforcement, despite

what may have been the dioceses' best efforts, learned of clergy sex abuse allegations. Some of

these were many decades ago, and police or prosecutors at the time simply deferred to church

officials. Other reports arose more recently, but involved old conduct, and so were quickly rejected

on statute of limitations grounds without looking into larger patterns and potential continuing risks.

We recognize that victims in these circumstances were understandably disappointed there was no

place they could go to be heard.

But we have heard them, and will tell their stories, using the church's own records, which

we reproduce in the body of the report where appropriate. In the Diocese of Allentown, for

example, documents show that a priest was confronted about an abuse complaint. He admitted,

"Please help me. I sexually molested a boy." The diocese concluded that "the experience will not

necessarily be a horrendous trauma" for the victim, and that the family should just be given "an

opportunity to ventilate." The priest was left in unrestricted ministry for several more years,

despite his own confession.

Similarly in the Diocese of Erie, despite a priest's admission to assaulting at least a dozen

young boys, the bishop wrote to thank him for "all that you have done for God's people.... The

Lord, who sees in private, will reward." Another priest confessed to anal and oral rape of at least

15 boys, as young as seven years old. The bishop later met with the abuser to commend him as "a

person of candor and sincerity," and to compliment him "for the progress he has made" in

controlling his "addiction." When the abuser was finally removed from the priesthood years later,

the bishop ordered the parish not to say why; "nothing else need be noted."

In the Diocese of Greensburg, a priest impregnated a 17-year-old, forged the head pastor's

signature on a marriage certificate, then divorced the girl months later. Despite having sex with a

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minor, despite fathering a child, despite being married and being divorced, the priest was permitted

to stay in ministry thanks to the diocese's efforts to find a "benevolent bishop" in another state

willing to take him on. Another priest, grooming his middle school students for oral sex, taught

them how Mary had to "bite off the cord" and "lick" Jesus clean after he was born. It took another

15 years, and numerous additional reports of abuse, before the diocese finally removed the priest

from ministry.

A priest in the Diocese of Harrisburg abused five sisters in a single family, despite prior

reports that were never acted on. In addition to sex acts, the priest collected samples of the girls'

urine, pubic hair, and menstrual blood. Eventually, his house was searched and his collection was

found. Without that kind of incontrovertible evidence, apparently, the diocese remained unwilling

to err on the side of children even in the face of multiple reports of abuse. As a high-ranking

official said about one suspect priest: "At this point we are at impasse - allegations and no

admission." Years later, the abuser did admit what he had done, but by then it was too late.

Elsewhere we saw the same sort of disturbing disdain for victims. In the Diocese of

Pittsburgh, church officials dismissed an incident of abuse on the ground that the 15-year-old had

"pursued" the priest and "literally seduced" him into a relationship. After the priest was arrested,

the church submitted an evaluation on his behalf to the court. The evaluation acknowledged that

the priest had admitted to "sado-masochistic" activities with several boys - but the sadomasochism was only "mild," and at least the priest was not "psychotic."

The Diocese of Scranton also chose to defend its clergy abusers over its children. A diocese

priest was arrested and convicted after decades of abuse reports that had been ignored by the

church. The bishop finally took action only as the sentencing date approached. He wrote a letter

to the judge, with a copy to a state senator, urging the court to release the defendant to a Catholic

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treatment center. He emphasized the high cost of incarceration. In another case, a priest raped a

girl, got her pregnant, and arranged an abortion. The bishop expressed his feelings in a letter:

"This is a very difficult time in your life, and I realize how upset you are. I too share your grief."

But the letter was not for the girl. It was addressed to the rapist.

The church and child abuse, past and present

We know that the bulk of the discussion in this report concerns events that occurred before

the early 2000's. That is simply because the bulk of the material we received from the dioceses

concerned those events. The information in these documents was previously kept hidden from

those whom it most affected. It is exposed now only because of the existence of this grand jury.

That historical record is highly important, for present and future purposes. The thousands

of victims of clergy child sex abuse in Pennsylvania deserve an accounting, to use as best they can

to try to move on with their lives. And the citizens of Pennsylvania deserve an accounting as well,

to help determine how best to make appropriate improvements in the law.

At the same time, we recognize that much has changed over the last fifteen years. We

agreed to hear from each of the six dioceses we investigated, so that they could inform us about

recent developments in their jurisdictions. In response, five of the bishops submitted statements

to us, and the sixth, the bishop of Erie, appeared before us in person. His testimony impressed us

as forthright and heartfelt. It appears that the church is now advising law enforcement of abuse

reports more promptly. Internal review processes have been established. Victims are no longer

quite so invisible.

But the full picture is not yet clear. We know that child abuse in the church has not yet

disappeared, because we are charging two priests, in two different dioceses, with crimes that fall

within the statute of limitations. One of these priests ejaculated in the mouth of a seven-year-old.

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The other assaulted two different boys, on a monthly basis, for a period of years that ended only

in 2010.

And we know there might be many additional recent victims, who have not yet developed

the resources to come forward either to police or to the church. As we have learned from the

experiences of the victims who we saw, it takes time. We hope this report will encourage others

to speak.

What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of

the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls,

and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For

decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been

protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes,

we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.

Recommendations

Grand jurors are just regular people who are randomly selected for service. We don't get

paid much, the hours are bad, and the work can be heartbreaking. What makes it worthwhile is

knowing we can do some kind of justice. We spent 24 months dredging up the most depraved

behavior, only to find that the laws protect most of its perpetrators, and leave its victims with

nothing. We say laws that do that need to change.

First, we ask the Pennsylvania legislature to stop shielding child sexual predators behind

the criminal statute of limitations. Thanks to a recent amendment, the current law permits victims

to come forward until age 50. That's better than it was before, but still not good enough; we should

just get rid of it. We heard from plenty of victims who are now in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and even

one who was 83 years old. We want future victims to know they will always have the force of the

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criminal law behind them, no matter how long they live. And we want future child predators to

know they should always be looking over their shoulder - no matter how long they live.

Second, we call for a "civil window" law, which would let older victims sue the diocese

for the damage inflicted on their lives when they were kids. We saw these victims; they are marked

for life. Many of them wind up addicted, or impaired, or dead before their time. The law in force

right now gives child sex abuse victims twelve years to sue, once they turn 18. But victims who

are already in their 30's and older fell under a different law; they only got two years. For victims

in this age range, the short two-year period would have expired back in the 1990's or even earlier

- long before revelations about the institutional nature of clergy sex abuse. We think that's

unacceptable. These victims ran out of time to sue before they even knew they had a case; the

church was still successfully hiding its complicity. Our proposal would open a limited "window"

offering them a chance, finally, to be heard in court. All we're asking is to give those two years

back.

Third, we want improvement to the law for mandated reporting of abuse. We saw from

diocesan records that church officials, going back decades, were insisting they had no duty to

report to the government when they learned of child abuse in their parishes. New laws make it

harder to take that position; but we want them tighter. The law penalizes a "continuing" failure to

report, but only if the abuse of "the child" is "active." We're not sure what that means and we

don't want any wiggle room. Make it clear that the duty to report