Make no mistake.
The only transparent thing in Pope Francis’s volte-face on Fr. Marko Rupnik is its late and utterly reactionary character.
Unless and until Francis tries his depraved former confrère in full view of the broad public and publishes a complete account of the case’s appalling mismanagement, the only possible surmise for candid minds will be that his decision was a desperate attempt at damage control in the wake of universal and incandescent worldwide outrage at the pope’s original and persistent refusal to deliver justice in the first place.
Even in the highly unlikely event that Pope Francis should give the disgraced former Jesuit a full and unexceptionably fair public trial, even if he does publish a complete account of the business with all deliberate haste, his belated conversion would scarcely have managed to salvage any part of his own legacy or – infinitely more important – to repair any of the damage he has already wrought to rule of law in the Church.
That damage is catastrophic.
Justice must be seen to be done
The question is not one of Rupnik’s guilt, but of confidence in the Vatican’s ability to deliver the substance of justice through due process.
The mere practicalities of guaranteeing a fair trial for Rupnik at this stage would be daunting for a justice system impervious to meddling, in which every lawyer was a Penyafort or a More and every judge a Cato. Given what we know of the Vatican’s judiciary machinery and culture – and the record of the man with ultimate charge of it – to believe that anything approaching transparent justice were possible, sight unseen, would itself be both maudlin and criminal.
It is morally impossible to credit the pope’s intentions.
The late Robespierrean turn of our fiddling, bronze-bearded pontiff came only after almost everyone – even most of those in his army of Renfields – balked at his shamelessness. Anything short of perfect transparency will be lethal not only to the integrity of any judicial process, or to the pope’s own reputation – already hopelessly tainted and tattered – but to the entire apparatus of ecclesiastical government.
Any attempt to deal with Rupnik by means of a quick and quiet “administrative process” should meet with a general revolt of the whole People of God.
The bishops of the world must understand that their own credibility depends entirely in this hour on their willingness to demonstrate manly fortitude. Their continued silence in the face of what mere sanity compels candid minds to judge the most flagrant disdain for bodies and souls – for lives and property, for faith, for justice, for decency, for common sense – bespeaks consent to it.
The memory of it will remain not only with the faithful but with women and men of good will everywhere, until the end of days, when there will be, in any case, a heavy reckoning to make.
Failure to communicate
The official communications apparatus of the Vatican had nothing to offer regarding sanctions, restrictions, or other measures usually imposed on an accused cleric as a matter of course even before any authority looks into the matter. They could not bring themselves to say where Rupnik is or what he is doing, let alone who is supposed to be watching him.
“I have nothing to add,” said the Prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, Dr. Paolo Ruffini, when pressed for details regarding the pope’s decision itself. Ruffini could not say – or would not say – when, precisely, Pope Francis took his decision.
In strictest fairness, Ruffini’s ecclesiastical betters likely told him nothing. No one minimally acquainted with reality and conversant with the circumstances could plausibly give credence to anything they proffered, in any case. Time and again, they and their lackeys have proven how unreliable is their word.
“I believe that what Pope Francis has done to face the plague of abuse is known to all,” Ruffini said – after saying he had nothing to add.
Indeed, Pope Francis’s work is evident in Buffalo, NY. It is on display in Crookston. Mn., in Cincinnati, Oh., in Nashville and Knoxville, Tn., in Sacramento, Ca., in Lincoln, Nb. and Green Bay, Wi., and that is only a small sampling of one country.
Ireland and Poland reap the fruits of his prodigious labor. France and Spain await the harvest of his mighty efforts.
Who can hear the name of Francis without thinking also of Inzoli, Ricca, Danneels, Barros, Errazuriz, Ezzati and Barbarin, Zanchetta, Ricard?
Ruffini was right.
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Dear Christopher R. Altieri, you write with a passion for The Church & a love of the divine truth, justice, & compassion she is commanded to exemplify to the whole world.
Tragically – with shameful consequences unfolding before our eyes – Pope Francis & his chosen are either ignorant of or ignoring of Jesus Christ’s deepest prayer:
“[Father] Sanctify them in The Truth; Your Word is Truth. As You have sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, so that they also may be sanctified in Truth.” John 17:17-19
To many good Catholics around the world, Pope Francis & his chosen team increasingly appear as sacrilegious deceivers rather than sanctified in Truth.
Pity our cardinals cannot call: “Time!”; and locate one of their number who is fully sanctified in Truth to begin the major task of firing & hiring & repairing The Barque of Peter.
Ever following Jesus Christ, our True Shepherd; love & blessings from marty
At this perfect moment in the trajectory of “the-Buenos-Aries-Pontificate,” it is worth watching and listening to the hour-long “rhapsody-to-Jorge-Bergoglio” given to us in 2013 by Theodore McCarrick, explaining to the audience and the world just how blessed we are to have been given “God’s gift of this Holy Father…Jorge Bergoglio.”
This is jam-packed with sociopath-cult-groomer-speak, as McCarrick promises, at about the time 1 min 50 sec, swooning about the “very special man God has given us as our Holy Father.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b3iaBLqt8vg
And in his mercy, to remind us that “God will not be mocked,” we are all now given this divine memo: Theodore McCarrick recommends the Pontiff Francis…
You know, I thought I was cynical about the hierarchy of the church and how it deals with victims of abuse by its clergy, but, I just realised that actually, it is they who are even more supremely cynical when it comes to how they view and treat us mere laity. Chris, you have again revealed their treatment of us lesser mortals so clearly and powerfully. And they think it’s the traditionals (in diapers) that alone are clericalist – how self-delusionist, these current self-protecting collectives in power are doing far more clericalist-based damage to the church and its people. One has to ask why these protectionists are behaving the way they do. I believe Sipe nailed it in his 11-point thesis: http://www.awrsipe.com/click_and_learn/2008-10-preliminary_considerations.html
Just one thing: PLEASE ADD to your list at the end Bishop Saunders of Broome Western Australia, the highest cleric in Australia to be ‘on trial’; for a horrific history of sexual and emotional abuse, embezzlement, bullying, and cover up that would rival McCarrick any day. Now, now the Bishops of Australia are getting angry at him, not because he abused young Indigenous men but because of the huge amounts of money he embezzled from them. It took so much pressure from ‘us’ to get to this point after 5 years of pushing exposing and trying to make sure he didn’t get away with it: Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders: Pope-ordered investigation alleges as many as 71 victims (18 September 2023): https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/investigation-has-found-broome-bishop-christopher-saunders-likely-to-have-sexually-assaulted-four-youths-c-11940349
“after 5 years of pushing”. Sorry, that should have read 2-3 years of pushing. Either way, inertia (do nothing) is one of the first tactics employed to neutralize of an embarrassing though true story and/or victims (see https://eprints.qut.edu.au/205923/8/Stephen%20Edward%20de%20Weger%20Thesis.pdf … pp. 119 and 230).
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
What confronts adult victims when they report clergy sexual abuse.
Below seeks to explain why the realities of likes of Rupnik and other misconducting and abusive clergy needs to be suppressed: We are not talking here about a wayward cleric but of a deeper reality that the RCC fears deeply will be exposed in full.
As revealed in the documentary on the late Richard Sipe, “Sipe: Sex, Lies, and the Priesthood”, released last year, one of the best kept secrets of the RCC is that around 50 percent of clergy have given up on celibacy/chastity, while the other 50 percent experience it as a constant struggle which often results in ‘lapses’. In Australia since the 1950s, using the statistics of the Royal Commission and Sipe’s and other estimates, based on a one-to-one clergy/adult ratio, there may have been around 9,640 women, and 4,820 men who have experienced clergy sexual activity with adults (CSAWA) and/or clergy sexual misconduct against adults (CSMAA).
Another source recently estimated and confirmed by the Vatican, that worldwide, there are at least ‘ten thousand children of priests’ and this figure is considered to be ‘conservative’. However, this estimate does not include CSMAA by religious Brothers, or permanent Deacons (married or not), who have produced children; nor that which resulted in abortions; nor CSMAA against other clergy; nor can it include same-sex CSMAA including between or by Religious Sisters. As such, we can extrapolate that the actual number of CSMAA cases which do not ‘end in pregnancy’ and which do not even involve intercourse, would be into the many hundreds of thousands.
In my recently released PhD I asked the question: how do survivors of clergy sexual misconduct against adults in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) describe and understand their experiences of reporting that misconduct to Roman Catholic Church authorities? The findings were that, to varying degrees, those officially reporting CSMAA to the Catholic Church, in this study at least, experienced blockages to being sincerely personally believed, to their abuse being validated, and to their lives being fully redressed. These blockages in turn were related to those RCC officials dealing with the cases being unable to genuinely and fully agree that CSMAA was/is a serious issue of professional abuse enabled by steeply imbalance power contexts. It also became apparent that the RCC deeply fears exposure of this form of clergy sexual abuse.
According to Anson Shupe’s theory of clergy malfeasance, when secret deviancies and corruptions occurring within elite institutions such as the RCC are exposed, those elite institutions automatically react by attempting to deflect and deny responsibility, and by covering up these deviances. To accomplish this, neutralisation techniques are employed so as control what the public hears. For the RCC one ‘deviancy’ that needs to be strongly suppressed or neutralised is that many, many more clergy are engaged in both clergy sexual activity with adults (CSAWA), and CSMAA, than those sexually abusing children. However, as Sipe (2008) has troublingly hypothesised, all expressions of sexual activity, misconduct, and abuse, are in fact inter-connected and create a deep culture of fear of exposure that could undermine the core male clergy power structure of the RCC.
The most crucial element that needs to be fully grasped when dealing with CSMAA and even CSAWA, especially in this context of the RCC, is that CSMAA, does not happen because of adult vulnerability: all the cases in my Masters and PhD research clearly showed that CSMAA happens because there are clergy that are willing to groom and exploit vulnerable adults and explain away their behaviour, often criminal, as acts of love, (or weakness). This is clearly professional misconduct and a deep betrayal of everything the clergy and the RCC stands for. Victims who report CSMAA need to, therefore, be sincerely validated and even thanked for attempting to reduce sexual misconduct within the RCC. But they are not. Why?
One of the main reasons is that no one is aware of their plight. Furthermore, lawyers are reluctant to take on cases of CSMAA simply because the existing laws make it virtually impossible to disprove consent: The still erroneously held ‘belief’ is that being an adult (over 18) they have automatically consented. Our government now needs to step up and seal up this flaw in the law, and the subsequent sequalae of effects this has on victims/survivors of this insidious form of clergy and other professional abuse. We need to catch up with such as those USA states that have now criminalised sex between clergy and parishioners.
In the Western world at least, sexual misconduct in other professions, no longer accepts automatic consent in professional contexts. However, because of a general perception of clergy as unique, respected, celibate/chaste, socially elevated ‘holy men’, clergy are not perceived in the same way as ‘professionals’. However, those who have researched professional sexual misconduct within institutions have clearly concluded that clergy are religious professionals with even more power and contexts with which to abuse others than their secular counterparts.
In the fallout of the RCC’s ambivalence and ambiguity concerning CSAWA and CSMAA, the victims/survivors of CSMAA and those who dared to report it and then object to how they were treated when they did, have been left feeling abandoned and unhealed and even further traumatised. Survivors of CSMAA, when they report such misconduct need legal and psycho/spiritual validation, as well as sincere and just responses to their abuse-affected lives.
Dear Stephen de Weger, thank you for this valuable, data-full comment.
It is surely time that the truth was out.
The truth, the whole truth & nothing but the truth.
To continue with the majority of Catholic clergy living a lie is spiritually deadly. There will be no flourishing spiritual life in The Church until these circumstances change. No wonder so many deny The Resurrection, miracles, & The Real Presence.
“The unspiritual are interested only in what is unspiritual, but the spiritual are interested in spiritual things. It is death to limit oneself to what is unspiritual; life & peace can only come through concern for the spiritual. That is because to limit oneself to what is unspiritual is to be at enmity with God; such a limitation never could and never does submit to God’s law. People who are interested only in unspiritual things can never be pleasing to God.” Romans 8:5-8
Am wondering if CWR might invite you to pen an article on the actual situation in The Church, as a stimulus for Catholic clergy & lay to comment on what steps are needed to bring back honesty in our clergy and renew our respect for them.
Always in the love of King Jesus Christ; blessings from marty