The pope making an apology today on behalf of the Catholic Church is a significant development from an organization that has spent who knows how long, in denial about those abusers who have hidden themselves within its structure. The sad irony is that the church presents itself as a redemptive force for good in human affairs while it has, by its silence, condoned the very worst forms of abuse visited upon the most vulnerable individuals, children without parental cover, by its officers and priests.

Anyone who is unsure of the Catholic Church’s culpability in these matters need only look online to find a Pandora’s catalogue of abuses and misappropriation of power. Why do these things bother me? In the first instance I believe that we as individuals shoulder a burden of responsibility to those less fortunate than ourselves, this is an absolute baseline position, it is within our power to extend a helping hand however we can, particularly where children are concerned. Huge organizations like the Catholic Church have a duty of care to those who find themselves at their mercy, if they are incapable of providing even the most basic levels of human decency then the entire organization is suspect, its foundations undermined and its validity compromised. Anyone or anything who offers leadership, guidance or counsel is morally obligated to provide nothing less than the very best that their resources allow. The Catholic Church failed spectacularly in this and has demonstrated itself to be a haven for the most unacceptable aspects of human behaviour.

I’m bothered in the second instance because I was an adult before I discovered the extent to which my mother was a victim of the Catholic Church and its abuses in Ireland. So traumatised was she by her experiences that, even now, she refuses to speak about her time in an institution euphemistically called an orphanage – she was not an orphan. In respect of her integrity and confidentiality I can say no more about that. Her brothers lives too were devastated, one of them died in mysterious circumstances that were never investigated while in the ‘care’ of this group of people. The surviving siblings, there were four, went on to lives blighted by substance abuse and deformed by the fact that they were used as slave labour and endured unspeakable abuses at the hands of priests at a time when they should have been in receipt of the education to prepare them for their adult lives.

These are not characters from history, the victims of workhouses or poorhouses described in Dickensian nightmares, these are people who endured these privations as recently as the 1970s. They walk among us now, they drive cars, watch TV, they are our contemporaries, they’re not Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby sanitised by the passage of time and ‘progress’.

As a child I observed adults stiffen and go rigid with fear simply at the sight of a Catholic priest. I was warned to stay away from them in no uncertain terms and when I asked why offered some garbled explanation about them being busy and not to annoy them. Now as an adult myself who has worked with severely damaged children I understand the gaping wound that unresolved trauma becomes. These things don’t just go away, they may be hidden, buried and never discussed but no healing occurs unless they are consciously dealt with by the individual who has been burdened with them.

Having spoken with some of the survivors about this apology, they’re adamant that they are not victims and do not want the victim stigma so they prefer to consider themselves as survivors, they are underwhelmed and see it as no more than a political gesture. As one of them mentioned to me, to paraphrase, “Everyone seems to be falling over themselves to apologize to everyone else these days over some abuse or other. And if I hear another official say lessons have been learned…”

And it’s true, we are not very effective in our dealings with one another. We seem at times to be purveyors of matters that we know are below what is acceptable. We are human, we are potentially extraordinary, it begins with how we treat each other, particularly how we treat those who are most vulnerable and in need of support and never underestimate the importance of the example that we set our young people and children. The greatest redemption comes by not compromising human standards in the first place. If we are to genuinely refine and advance then we must do better. Talk is, well, it’s easy to talk. It is by our actions we are known, it is by the presence that our actions cause us to be a home to that we are recognised.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8577740.stm