Apologies and the Catholic Church

By James Gerwing, MA, MEd.

 

I was born and raised a Roman Catholic. At 19, I entered the novitiate of a Benedictine monastery in Saskatchewan, made vows as a monk and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood. After seventeen years of monastic life, I left the order and the priesthood to pursue a career in the secular world. The Catholic Church has remained an essential element of my thoughts and feelings.

Like others, I became aware of the apologies expressed to the First Nations peoples for what happened in the residential schools run by religious bodies. These apologies found a welcome audience in religious communities. Not always so among the First Nations and the general public. This reaction mystified church-goers. We apologized, they thought, what more do they want? The reason becomes clear after a careful analysis of the language of the apologies revealed their limitations.

Between 1986 and 1998 the United Church of Canada (1986 and 1998), the Presbyterian Church in Canada (1994), the Anglican Church of Canada (1993), the Catholic Church (National Meeting 1991), and the Oblate Order (Catholic) (1991) made six statements of apology regarding the residential schools. Dr. Janet Bavelas, Professor of Psychology at the University of   Victoria, in “An Analysis of Formal Apologies by Churches in Canada to First Nations” (2004) (unpublished) studied the language of these apologies. Her analysis indicated that “most of the churches’ references to their offenses avoided describing themselves as agents of wrongful actions.” Among other expressions of avoiding direct responsibility, Bavelas referred to their use of the passive voice to distance the agent or not even naming the agent at all, the use of infinitives to distance the action from the agent, and other methods of evasion.   With almost no exception they never took direct responsibility by naming themselves as the agents of offences. A common formula, taken from the Presbyterian apology, illustrates this: “There was opportunity for sexual abuse, and some were so abused.”

A complete apology is addressed to the victim, names itself as the agent who is now sorry, identifies the offence committed against the victim, and then takes realistic steps toward reconciliation. Without that, apologies are not complete.

The publication of the abuses perpetrated in the Residential Schools made it necessary for the churches to make these apologetic statements. Their choice of language demonstrates how reluctant they are to take full and clear responsibility for their actions. Why did churches resort to evasive language when voicing their apologies? Did the churches in Canada agree with the government’s policy of assimilation by using the children to destroy the language and culture of Aboriginals? If so, did they also agree on the way it was to be accomplished? Would any family of these church communities agree to the forcible removal of their children from the bosom of the family into a completely foreign environment where they could not speak their own language, engage in any of their familiar patterns of behavior, or participate in their traditional rituals?

If there is any reasonable explanation for the churches’ imperfect apologies, part of the answer lies in the belief within these institutions that they possess a divine character. Admission of guilt would cast doubt on the legitimacy of their claim of being founded by God or Jesus Christ, or on the validity of their claim to teach, to preach, to baptize, to convert the rest of the world to their beliefs.

I do not wish to argue the legitimacy or the logic of any Christian Church’s claim to divine origin. Since I am most familiar with my own church, I will confine the following remarks to the Roman Catholic tradition.

The gathering of First Nations with Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 provided an opportunity for the Catholic Church to make a more complete statement of apology. Not so. Benedict allowed no disclosure of his actual words to them. Judging from comments made by First Nations leaders, the language remained the same as before.

Pope Benedict’s letter to the Irish Catholic Church in March 2010 for clerical abuses to their children uses exactly the same language. “It must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred.” Beyond asking the laity to pray for the welfare of the church, he offered no concrete plans to right the situation.

The language used by the Catholic Church to describe itself reveals the fundamental attitude toward the church as institution: “The City of God,” “Perfect Society,” “Holy Mother Church,” “Mystical Body of Christ,” and “Spotless Bride of Christ.” These expressions reveal a culture of both respect and impregnability. Church leaders by divine right of ordination identify themselves as that church. Despite the collegial teachings of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960’s, the Catholic hierarchy does not in practice accept that lay people are an essential part of the Catholic Church. When they use the word “church” in such sentences as “the church teaches,” they see only the hierarchical component.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches, particularly after the Protestant Reformation, that it is the only true church founded by Jesus Christ on the twelve apostles. Therefore, it is the only road to salvation. The Roman Magisterium (teaching authority) reiterated that tenet in July 2007, stating that others should not even be using the word “church” in speaking of themselves. They ought to use the term “ecclesial communities” because they are imperfect, having lost the apostolic succession and therefore lack a valid priesthood.

The language used to describe the priest as an alter Christus (another Christ) is also instructive. The priests acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) when doing the sacraments. No matter how poorly he does things, the sacraments are effective, ex opere operato (by the very act of doing). This creeps into everything he does. All he needs to do is say the right words and perform the correct actions to make the sacrament effective.

In addition to the tenet of divine institution, the Catholic Church claims infallibility in its pronouncements on faith and morals. This doctrine was defined in 1871 at the First Vatican Council. Infallibility establishes an atmosphere of intolerance. Every statement emanating from the pope, or any Roman office for that matter, seems to demand absolute adherence. Bishops the world over claim, or act as if they claim, a share in that infallibility. It filters down to priests and religious. From childhood, Catholic children have generally been taught never to doubt or question the priest under pain of sin, no matter how ignorant the man might be. If they hear it from the pulpit, it must be true.

As chief spokesmen of a divine and infallible church, the clergy acquire a tremendous sense of power coupled with a desperate fear of anything that might erode that power. Fear demands certitude. Fear allows no questions, no doubts. Fear demands absolute answers and an unchanging ideology.

When I was a monk, Abbot Severin Gertken called his status “the grace of office.” Once he became abbot, his word was the word of God. To disobey him was to disobey God. He claimed an indisputable right to determine the will of God for each of his monks.

A clear expression of that mentality occurred during a meeting of the lay Religious Educators (of which I was one) in the Archdiocese of Seattle in the mid 1990’s. After a period of liberal change in attitude and practice under Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen, a more conservative administration took charge and began to wear down the rights which lay employees of the archdiocese had won. At that meeting the lay educators of the parishes expressed concern that they were no longer being consulted on matters affecting them. One of the Archdiocesan officials blurted out, “Face it, people, you are not part of the official structure of the church.” These are not isolated examples.

This same attitude crops up in the countless cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in North America and the world. Doyle, Sipe and Wall, in Sex, Priests, and Secret Codes; the Catholic Church’s 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse, 2006, outline the story in detail. American bishops consistently and systematically evade the truth about their knowledge of the sexual abuses done by their clergy. When confronted with their own letters proving their awareness, their typical response is, “I must have forgotten that.”

Bishop Rembert Weakland reported that the most common practice of bishops dealing with pedophile priests is to keep shifting them from parish to parish, dioceses to diocese, country to country, without warning anyone that this person is a threat to their children.

Brought to court, dioceses use every legal tactic available to defend the good name of the church (themselves). It is not at all uncommon that when all is ready for the courtroom the diocese will make a financial settlement on condition that the victim remain forever silent. Too often the victim is intimidated and stigmatized as an enemy of the priesthood and the church. That makes the victim feel guilty for what happened or for speaking out about it.

The recent revelation in Canada of Bishop Raymond Lacey’s involvement with child pornography and Archbishop Mancini’s comments reveal that nothing has changed in the mentality of the hierarchy. Lacey told his parishioners that he was taking some “much needed time for personal renewal.” Mancini called Lacey to offer prayers, and told a reporter (Globe and Mail, October 2, 2009) that the church is made up of many individuals beset with problems and “there but for the grace of God go any number of people.” He expressed compassion for Lacey, but precious little for his victims.

Even the most ardent and loyal Catholics are beginning to voice their abhorrence for the “sins of the Fathers” and the persistent sidestepping of responsibility. They feel betrayed by their leaders.

The abuses suffered by the First Nations in the Residential Schools of Canada are part of the larger and continuous history of abuse by Catholic clergymen. Now that the veil of secrecy has finally been removed, the hierarchy has not found an honest way to deal with it.

Strange as it may seem, the Catholic Church does have a perfect and radical and healthy solution: full confession. Very early in their instruction, Catholic children are taught the Act of Contrition. The following prayer is entrusted to memory:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

If this Act of Contrition were couched in the same language as church apologies referred to above, it would sound like this:

O my God, I am so terribly sorry, more than I can say, that you were offended and I hate what happened. It was an unfortunate exception. I sincerely hope that nothing like this will ever happen again and that steps will be taken to prevent anything like it in the future. Amen.

The second version acknowledges no personal responsibility for the sins committed.

But another problem arises for Catholics in the sacrament of confession. Sin is taught as an offense against God. Penitents go away thinking that having confessed their sins and having them forgiven by God through the absolution of the priest that all is now forgiven; the slate has been washed clean. There is no need for them to do anything else.

Still another and more perplexing aspect of clerical abuse of children lies in the findings of psychological studies of the personality traits of Roman Catholic clergy. Study after study reveals that a huge percentage, some studies say over 90%, of priests have arrested emotional development. They are stuck at the teenage stage, having entered their clerical studies as teenagers and not developed to more developed stages. Their training does not include personal development. This comes out in their repeated assertions that “the kids are resilient. They’ll get over it.” This reveals an enormous emotional disconnect. The pedophile priest has no grasp of the trauma which is named as “soul murder.” He goes to confession and the slate is wiped clean. He may even think that he can “sin no more,” but there is almost no evidence of cures for pedophilia.

Explicit and clear admission of full responsibility to victims of abuse, whether for what happened in the residential schools or in cases of clerical abuse, would go a long way to restore some of the credibility lost in the earlier apology statements. Without full confession, sins are not forgiven, neither by God nor by the community.  The truth, and only the truth, the full and unvarnished truth, is the road to freedom from the mess.  Truth in words is useless if not followed up with the deeds that flow from that truth.  That is what is not happening in these apology statements:  the words are equivocal, the deeds are non-existent.

Churches proudly claims to be the guiding light for private and public morality to the extent of arguing that there is no basis for morality in secular philosophy. However, it is one thing to teach morality in word. It is quite another thing to teach morality in action. By their unwillingness or inability or refusal to take full responsibility for the sins of their members, church authorities have effectively chosen to abandon the high moral ground, have eroded confidence in the public forum, and have contributed to a high degree of cynicism in the world at large. I believe that the churches have seriously compromised their right to make moral pronouncements. They have acted exactly like the corporations they so often disparage. Protect the business, the institution, regardless of the rights of the individuals who suffer at their hands.

Full confession is the first step in the process of reconciliation. It is not too late to start over. It would be unbelievably liberating for all of us.