Catholic Whistleblowing (or Not) (Part 1)
When wrongdoing is widespread – as it was at Enron, as it
seems to be at much-sinning Wells Fargo Bank and the Catholic Church – you look
for a whistleblower to step forward. When
he appears, he may not be the person you hoped for.
The Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal first came to light
in 1985. A priest in Louisiana Gilbert
Gauthe admitted sexually abusing 37 young boys, and some believed he abused
as many as 70. Gauthe was moved from
parish to parish as his proclivities became evident. Finally he was jailed. Partly in response, two
priests and an attorney, all familiar with Gauthe, presented to influential
Catholic bishops a Manual
for dealing with the expected future sexual molestations by Catholic clergy.
Gauthe’s case contained elements of the story that would
play out repeatedly in the following decades.
First, the offending priest is presented as a bad apple, an unfortunate
pervert. Second, the priest’s protectors
and enablers assert their own innocence.
They thought the priest could be reformed through prayer and therapy. The third element is resolution. Infrequently
it included jail time for the offenders.
More often there were settlements, which usually included nondisclosure conditions,
and prayers. Always there are prayers
for victims and their families and friends.
It’s the healing of the victims that is paramount, the Church insists.
The abuses continued. Some priests were found guilty of hurting
more than 100 young boys[1]
over years of activity. The bishops came
up with Restoring
Trust in 1994. It suggested
policies that would reappear in later documents. They included education, employee screening,
oversight, reporting as long as the confidentiality of the confessional is
honored, and treatment of abusers.
The problem didn’t stop.
The Boston Globe published its 2002 investigation of abuses and
concealment in Boston. So the bishops
tried again with the "Charter
for the Protection of Children and Young People". The Charter stuck to the Church’s focus on
the abusers and their victims. It also sounded
a new note: the bishops acknowledged their obligation to protect children and
young people. They apologized for their
mistakes. They declared
a page had been turned and the Church was newly alert to the problem.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops engaged The John Jay College of Criminal
Justice to study the problem. Its 2004
report praised the Church’s conscientious and good faith cooperation in
providing information. More than 10,000
individuals made allegations of sexual abuse to the researchers, who admitted
that many years often pass before the abused are able to acknowledge what
happened. It was probably worse than
they found.
The report calculated 4% of active priests – more than 4,000
– in 1950-2002 were accused of committing acts of abuse. But only about 1,000 of those priests were
reported to the police, leading to just 100 serving jail time. Of the priests 149 abused more than 10
victims each. And it might have been
worse.
Still more abuses surfaced.
In 2008 Pope
Benedict said he was ashamed of the U.S. scandal. He wanted to heal the wound. A couple of years later it
came out that he concealed sexual abusers when he was archbishop in Munich.
The Church settled more cases. It paid $660 million in Los Angeles, $166
million in Oregon, $210 million in Minneapolis-St. Paul, and on and on. It has paid out nearly
$4 billion so far[2]. Priests have been accused of abuse in
every state and in more than 93% of U.S. dioceses.
In 2014 Pope Francis established Pontifical
Commission for the Protection of Minors. It aimed to advise the Pope how to make sure
these abuses don’t happen in the future.
In August
2018 a Pennsylvania Grand Jury issued the results
of its investigation into child sexual abuse by priests and related
cover-ups over a period of 70 years. The
information had been concealed from the John Jay College and other investigators. Pope
Francis again acknowledged the suffering of the abused and affirmed his
commitment to protect minors and vulnerable adults. Clericalism
– the placing of priests above all others – is the cultural basis for both
abuse and its concealment, he said.
Allegations of wrongdoing have come generally from the
victims themselves. They are expressed through attorneys or journalists or survivor groups. They have not come from whistleblowers until
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò wrote his letter in August
2018. In it he claimed Pope Francis and
many other high-ranking Church officials concealed decades of sexual
abuses by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
In light of the pervasiveness of abuse in the Church over decades, the
dearth of priest-whistleblowers is striking. Priests know each other very well. For years, they study together in small seminary
classes, forming bonds that last lifetimes.
They spend their careers living next to one another in small
rectories. Each works in a limited
number of dioceses or regions for decades.
They attend classes, conferences, and retreats together. They regularly hear each other’s confessions. They are separated from the rest of the world
by their special belief that they can turn bread and wine into the body and
blood of Jesus. And by their peculiar vow
to be celibate.
It makes no sense to suppose that only the abusers – just 4% of the
community – plus the bishops who shuffled them around, knew about their
wrongdoing. It is more likely that the
number of priests and lay employees of the Church who were aware – or had good
suspicions – of what was going on was far greater than the number of actual
abusers. But these many thousands of
silent observers produced no significant external whistleblowers until Viganò
stepped forward.
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