...reading the reports of investigation into child abuse within the Church. Sickening. The detailed report on appalling extreme phsyical cruelty and sexual assaults inflicted on children in institutions run by religious orders in Ireland the 1940s-70s has now been matched by a report on sexual predators among clergy in the Dublin diocese with teenagers from the 70s onwards.
One Catholic commentator has announced that the abuse is all since the Second Vatican Council and that it was perpetrated by "post Vatican II, open-windows, relevant...ecumaniacs, liturgical animators" but this is wishful thinking. The Second Vatican Council cannot be blamed for what went on in children's homes in Ireland in the 1950s, and, alas, the culture of cover-up that was used in the 1970s and 80s did not begin at Vatican II either. We do ourselves no favours by trying to write bracing denunciations of modernism instead of confronting the horrid reality of wrongdoing wherever it has occurred.
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Congratulations for facing up to the horrible things that have happened and showing compassion to the victims rather than score cheap points about who or what is to blame.
I am sad and disappointed about all of this. The RC Church in Ireland and else where has now got some real soul searching to do, to ensure that all of those damaged or hurt are given the much needed help and support they need.
The reality is stark and threatening for the Church in Ireland, the inevitable impact world wide will be enormous.
Sad times indeed.
Thanks for what you have written. I too read some of the 'blame Vatican 2 commentaries'...........I am an orthodox Catholic, Pro Pope Benedict and the 'hermeneutic of continuity' etc but just don't get the above mentioned commentaries. It appears that many (perhaps the majority - the statistics would be interesting) of the clerical perpetrators of abuse received their formation in the pre-Vatican ll Church.
Compulsory education in institutions is characteristically modernist. Arnold's reforms of Rugby were really the first flicker of the attitudes that led to the First and Second World wars (not that Arnold himslef can be blamed for not seeing where his ideas would ultimately lead).
The modernist mentality is that institutions are better than parents and tutors. It quickly leads to repression. I think once the Church scandals have run out we will quickly see new ones linked to secular 1950s education.
Anonymous. Vatican II was not "the event" which ruined an otherwise thriving, orthodox, traditional church.
The Council was called because the Church was in severe difficulties responding to the modern world. Whilst the hope was that it would act like a magic wand, from the experience of past councils, this has never happened. There were serious problems before the council and there were serious problems after. The generation that fell away were mostly educated in 1950s Catholic schools, after all.
However now we are just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It takes considerable time for a Council to settle down and be digested. Some things, like leaving evangelism to the clergy, we will not go back to for a long time. Other things, like "risen Christ" crucifixes, we now see to be a bad way of interpreting the Council.
Thank you so much for this. It saddens me more than I can express here when I read statements and articles and speeches by Church leaders (particularly in North America, where I live) in which they seek to downplay the horrors suffered by so many. I fear that in their attempts to minimize the scandal, they are leaving behind those whose lives were destroyed by men who claimed to be holy and who were in positions of unquestioned authority. This lack of leadership is truly grievous.
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