My first visit to Liverpool afforded me enough time to visit the two cathedrals. I liked “Paddy’s Wigwam” much more than I expected to. I can imagine that on a day with the sun streaming through the coloured windows, it would be particularly beautiful. The Anglican Cathedral is a more traditional design and a magnificent building of immense proportions.
The Walker Art Gallery houses a wonderful collection, including some famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings and other gems such as William Frederick Yeames’s picture of a Royalist child being interrogated by a soldier, And When Did You Last See Your Father? A young boy dressed in sky-blue silk stands alone in the centre of the canvas in a circle of light, dwarfed by a hostile, helmeted soldier who menaces him with an upraised arm but who, along with his cohort, is sunk in shadow.
The pathos of the scene connected somewhat with the purpose of my trip, which was to address the Newman Society on the subject of child abuse, and specifically the work of spiritual and psychological healing for abuse survivors modelled on a programme called Grief to Grace.
I am happy to give such talks because trying to advertise such a programme, let alone get practical or financial support for it, is an uphill struggle. I never give such a talk without discovering that there is someone in the audience directly affected by the issues, someone who is grateful to hear that trauma of abuse explains why previously good, God-fearing and loving people find their lives fall apart in the wake of it.
On this occasion a woman stands up to speak, her voice breaking with emotion. She tells how between the ages of seven and nine her son was an altar server and was abused by a priest. She is angry with the Church not just because it happened, but because in the wake of it happening she says she met a climate of hostility within the Church for disclosing it. Her son went off the rails in the years following, becoming a drug addict. She hasn’t seen him for months.
“It would have been nice,” she says with dignity, “if just once, someone from the diocese or the parish had called to ask how he was. This programme needs to be in every diocese in every country.”
The new Vatican commission on safeguarding seems, frankly, to be rather toothless. As far as I am aware, it has made no recommendations on how to reach out to those affected by abuse. It is, of course, vital to safeguard children in future, but if you are a survivor of clerical abuse, the Church proudly advertising her safeguarding credentials is not a solution to the crisis; it is more a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. If you search the Vatican website for anything to do with “healing abuse victims” all you find are guidelines published in 2011 which recommend that episcopal conferences put in place measures for spiritual and psychological healing of victims. To my knowledge, there has been no review of how or even whether this has been done.
The lady I met in Liverpool says there was no recourse for her or her son to such help. Until there is, the abuse crisis is live in the Church. I like to quote the maxim of St Ambrose in this context: “You can see the whole of the Church in the soul of one person.” Until anyone affected by clerical abuse has found spiritual and psychological healing, there is still a crisis. The lives of victims, not the standard of safeguarding, is the measure of its intensity.
For this reason, I am alarmed by reports that the Pope may have relaxed the automatic laicisation of priests convicted of child abuse; in the case of Fr Mauro Inzoli, rehabilitating him only for him to face trial by the Italian authorities. I take no delight in the idea of priests being laicised (indeed, it is a misnomer), but have we grasped the nature of this crime? Can a priest, who daily touches Our Lord’s Body and is convicted of desecrating the bodies of Jesus’s “little ones”, over whom he was given a Father’s care, continue to represent the person of Christ?
It is right to hope God will judge him mercifully and forgive, but the dignity of the priesthood, and indeed the dignity of victims, should surely take precedence over sympathy for his plight.
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