From the WSJ Opinion Archives
PEGGY NOONAN
The Pope Steps In
Can he save the American church from the sex-abuse scandal?
It has been said of Pope John Paul II that he has lived the great life of the 20th century, a life utterly emblematic of its struggles.
The pope is an old man, gravely ill, exhausted by his ascesticism. He is unable to show feeling or emotion through the Parkinsonian mask that freezes his features. When I saw him walk into a room two years ago--bent, moving slowly, his left eye drooping and rimmed red--his face seemed that of a half-submerged whale looking silently at the world, a great mammal risen from the deep.
In the midst of this suffering he is handed a great and final challenge. It is of a piece with his actions in resisting the third great "ism" of the 20th century, a materialism that has brought what he calls "the culture of death." Next week, he meets the cardinals of the American church, to discuss the sex scandal that threatens in some ways the death of the church in this country.
In abruptly calling them to Rome, the pope declares the scandal a crisis. American Roman Catholics would agree. The problem within the church is systemic--in one of the grimmer cases, a serial-abuser priest explained that he in fact had been sexually abused by a now dead cardinal--and calamitous, with further calamity waiting down the road as trial lawyers line up for their spoils. But that is not the worst of it. There is no estimating the damage already done to the church's authority, its very respectability. And there are the abused children, who until the scandal had almost never received an apology.
The pope is dependent on those around him not only for factual information but for a truthful interpretation of the facts. He is not in America, and much of what he hears is filtered through the Vatican apparatus. One hopes he knows that the American church needs his leadership now, his authority, his standing as a great man who can be trusted. His American cardinals and bishops are losing that authority.
The pope has no doubt been told, repeatedly, that this is a media-driven scandal. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick this week told the Washington Post, his parish paper, that journalists are having "a heyday." The cardinal no doubt believes this to be true, but it is not.
Members of the media are leery of sex scandals and the church--for several reasons. They fear accusations of an anti-Catholic bias. They fear alienating 60 million readers and watchers. Moreover, American television news shows are not generally drawn to stories that are time- and labor-intensive, and that involve expensive legal proceedings to secure documents. TV air can be filled with easier, less inflammatory stories, with stories that are amusing and, as network producers love to say, poignant.
Only one newspaper, the Boston Globe, had the persistence and courage to tackle this story by forcing the Boston archdiocese to release internal documents that finally revealed the scope of the scandal. The rest of the media, with some exceptions, such as National Review, had to be pushed. Often by ardent Catholics.
The pope should be told that sexual abuse by priests is the heart of the scandal, but only the start of the scandal. The rest is the racketeering dimension--the fact that a RICO suit has been brought, could be brought, against the church, charging that it acted as an institution to cover up criminal behavior by misleading, lying and withholding facts. The church has long attempted to keep priest-abuse cases quiet through the paying of hush money--estimated at a billion dollars so far--to families instructed to sign confidentiality agreements.
And it is a scandal in which not adults, not those able to care for themselves, but children--children--have knowingly and continually been put at risk. The church has deliberately allowed children to be put in close proximity to men it knew to be dangerous, if not deadly, to their safety and souls.
The pope should be told that some of the cardinals he will meet are, or have been, excusers or enablers of sex-abusers. Some are so sympathetic to abusive priests that they have written touching letters to them. No one has yet unearthed such a letter to any of the victims. This week the bishop of Joliet, Ill., Joseph Imensch, said that while priests who sexually abuse children should lose their jobs, priests who sexually abuse adolescents and teenagers have a "quirk" and can be treated and continue as priests. The leaders of the American church have acted, as one observer put it, as if compassion for victims is not part of their consciousness. Yet their compassion for colleagues is as florid as it is chilling.
Cardinal McCarrick has suggested that the church needs a declared policy. Perhaps. But the pope must know that when he speaks of guidelines such as "It is wrong not to protect children from known sexual predators" he will be speaking not to men who have never heard such guidelines but to men who have crossed them.
The pope chose, in his reign, not to govern the church strictly, trusting instead in local bishops. Cardinal McCarrick referred to this. "You can suggest, you can cajole," he said. "But if a bishop really thinks he has it under control in another way then it's hard to get him to change." He added, "If the Holy Father says 'I think everybody should do this' then we all tend to do it." The pope should know that that is the attitude of the American cardinals going in, that they tend to view his directives as suggestions.
The pope should know that many of the cardinals he will speak to have grown detached from life as it is suffered through by ordinary people. The princes of the church live as princes of the world. They live in great mansions in the heart of great cities, dine with senators and editors, and have grown worldly not in the best sense, in real sophistication and knowledge, but in the worst. They are surrounded by staff who serve them, drive them, answer their call. They are used to being obeyed. We all suffer from some degree of arrogance. But I have never seen star treatment ennoble the object of that treatment.
It would be wonderful, finally, if the pope spoke to the world about his recognition of the gravity of the situation, and his grief, and what hard steps he will take to save the soul of the American church.
He could begin with leaning toward a cardinal kneeling before him, thanking him for his long years of effort, and then removing and taking away his cardinal's hat and ring. Thus showing the cardinals and the world that he will not accept the continuance of the calamity.
He could start with Cardinal Bernard Law, whose actions have at least broken the spirit of the law. That would send a message to those in the church who need to hear it, that covering up, going along, and paying off victims is over. That careerism is over, and Christianity is back.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her new book, "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan," is just out from Viking Penguin. You can buy it here at the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays.
