Corruption has a way of catching up to the powerful. It is catching up to the priests in the United States and parts of Europe who sexually abused children entrusted to their care. It is catching up to those senior members of the Roman Catholic Church who minimized or turned a blind eye to the abuses. It has loosed parishioners' feelings of betrayal, anger and sadness.
The question is whether these forces are powerful enough to push the church into an honest self-examination. Walls of secrecy have concealed and perpetuated the abuse of children and adolescents. Will the walls be toppled?
These questions are nothing new to Canadians. A decade ago, a series of revelations about systemic problems with sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church shocked this country. The concealment of sexual abuse in the 1960s and '70s at Newfoundland's Mount Cashel orphanage, run by a Catholic lay order, and of abuse by priests in isolated communities, shook the province to its religious core.
The Winter Commission set up in 1989 by Newfoundland Archbishop Alphonsus Penney offered some soul-searching that seems apt today for the United States and Europe. The community's faith in priests gives the clergy its power, and creates opportunities for sexual abuse. The power of the church also means allegations can be denied and suppressed.
Every week, it seems, brings appalling new discoveries.
Rev. Paul Shanley, once famous as a "street priest" ministering to Boston's troubled youth, was the subject of molestation complaints as early as 1967, according to newly released documents. Incredibly, the Boston Archdiocese received warnings that Father Shanley gave an impassioned defence of pedophilia at an early meeting of the North American Man-Boy Love Association in 1979 -- yet the archdiocese allowed him continued access to children into the 1990s, and gave him good references.
Why did the church not take action for nearly four decades? Because senior officials were more concerned with protecting their institution's image than with protecting children. As the Winter Commission concluded in Newfoundland: "Church officials aligned themselves with the accused; their response to victims was thus inappropriate and un-Christian, and thus compounded the victims' initial sense of betrayal by the church."
The U.S. church has waited too long to change. In 1992, after earlier scandals, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops approved five guidelines for dealing promptly and strongly with sexual abuse. But as today's spreading scandal shows, guidelines are not enough.
The media are more vigilant in prying open church secrets. (The Boston Globe broke the scandal by pressing for court documents involving an abusive priest.) And prosecutors across the U.S. are taking an aggressive new tack with the church, serving subpoenas to demand information about suspect priests, and adopting a more liberal interpretation of statutes of limitation.
All this should prompt the Canadian church to have another look at itself. Guidelines in this country are not enough. In 1992, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops drafted a blueprint to ensure the detection and prevention of sex abuse; but only half of Canada's dioceses have developed strong, clear protocols for dealing with allegations, according to the Catholic Register newspaper. All churches should be required, by law and by their own internal rules, to report allegations to child-protection officials and police.
U.S. church leaders should know that Newfoundlanders' trust in the Catholic clergy, once lost, never returned. By the same token, it would be naive to think that Canada is immune to the U.S. nightmare. We have lived it already, and must ensure that no child ever lives it again.