Tom Heneghan is a former religion editor for Reuters. He now writes from Paris for the Tablet in London and Religion News Service in Washington.
PARIS — The seemingly never-ending clerical sexual-abuse crisis haunting the Roman Catholic Church has brought to light more than just crimes and cover-ups.
The pain and shame wayward priests have imposed on their victims are, of course, the worst part of the scandal. But the management issues that lurk behind the scandal may turn out to be just as important for the Church going forward.
As the abuse scandal has shown, many bishops — the middle-management level in the Church’s organization chart — have proved unprepared and often unable to handle the crisis their wayward frontline staffers have created. And, except for rare cases, it is very hard to make them take responsibility as managers.
Since the scandal first broke as a major news story in the United States in 2002, the Church’s tendency has been to see the problem as a personal weakness to be pardoned and fixed. Its legalistic defenses seem devoid of the morality priests preach about.
A bishop is asked to do not one, but two jobs: He must be both a religious leader and a secular manager.
So far, the focus has tended to be backward-looking — toward the predatory priests and their victims, who have tended to be underaged boys.
In other large organizations, senior management would identify the middle managers responsible for failures and have them improve or leave. But bishops answer only to the Vatican, which cannot watch every diocese around the world, and there is no clear and transparent system of accountability for them in their dioceses.
Two hats
A bishop is asked to do not one, but two jobs: He must be both a religious leader and a secular manager. Many have not been trained to do the latter and have ended up doing it badly. In at least some cases, this unpreparedness has made the problem worse.
As religious leaders, bishops are appointed by the pope in Rome to oversee their dioceses and lead the priests in them. In religious matters, they are the ultimate local authority in doctrinal affairs and the only ones who can perform certain liturgical functions such as ordaining priests or confirming Catholics.
Pope Francis in Rome is in charge of appointing bishops to their roles | Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images
Their strictly secular duties include ensuring the diocese uses its money wisely, deals correctly with its staff and complies with civil laws. They usually have staff to help them with these issues, but they are ultimately the boss.
The trouble is that the seminaries that train men for the priesthood do little to prepare them for management. While some might have a course on psychology or parish life, their emphasis is mostly on theology, canon law and liturgy.
They also impress on seminarians the idea that ordination makes a priest superior to lay people, which is part of the phenomenon of clericalism that Pope Francis frequently denounces.
Cover up
Thanks to reports on abuse over the past decades, we know that bishops often sent wayward priests to rehabilitation or moved them around in the diocese to hush up a scandal.
They failed to recognize that the sexual-abuse cases they learned about were illegal acts. And by staying silent, they put the Church’s interest in avoiding scandal ahead of their duty to report a crime.
Bishops also seriously misjudged their role when they stonewalled and refused to meet victims of abuse, opting for aggressively legalistic defense strategies that made them appear heartless.
Take French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who has repeatedly denied any guilt in a trial for non-denunciation of an abusive priest in his Lyon archdiocese — despite the fact the abuser admitted his guilt to the cardinal years before he was finally removed from ministry. The priest was defrocked in July.
French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin has been under pressure for not denouncing an abusive priest | Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP via Getty Images
Barbarin — who has “stepped back” from his post as archbishop but has not resigned — was convicted in March and given a suspended sentence. He has appealed, hoping to clear his name, and the court should announce its decision on January 30.
His approach has infuriated victims and attracted more than 100,000 signatures on a petition — launched by a priest — for him to quit.
Other bishops and priests in similar situations have fixated on the issue of monetary compensation for the victims, prompting criticism that they simply want to buy their way out of the problem. For preachers who denounce society’s materialism, this does little to foster confidence in them or the Church as an institution.
When more than 3,000 victims contacted the French bishops’ commission on clerical abuse — which is due to deliver is report in 2021 — within the first six months of its work, the bishops said they were considering paying a flat sum of several thousand euros each to victims abused as minors.
The announcement immediately prompted questions as to why they would not wait for the commission, whose report could suggest higher payments. The bishops’ suggestion they might ask parishioners to contribute to these payments also met with widespread skepticism.
Declining promotions
These strains on the bishop’s office come at a time when the decline in vocations narrows the pool of candidates for higher office and more and more priests tapped for promotion are turning down the honor.
About two weeks ago, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the top Vatican official for appointing and managing bishops, revealed that the proportion of those who decline to take on the position has grown from 10 percent to 30 percent over the past decade as the sexual-abuse crisis grew in scope.
The Catholic Church needs to redefine the role of bishops and, if necessary, separate their religious role more from the management side. Bishops could retain control over the religious side of their positions, for example, while sharing the management role with a council of lay advisers.
Change will, of course, take time, because the bishops’ power is at stake.
There could also be what’s called a “third-party reporting system” that creates a confidential way to file complaints of misconduct against bishops, something dioceses in northern New England already have introduced and could be scaled up.
Change will, of course, take time, because the bishops’ power is at stake.
Reform means handing over more responsibility to lay Catholics, both women and men. That is a step many bishops still do not want to take. But as reports of abuse stack up and trust plummets, it’s one they need to start to seriously consider.