As all politicians know, resignations have power. They can dislodge leaders and shake governments. Geoffrey Howe’s devastating resignation speech in 1990, which precipitated the downfall of Margaret Thatcher, is one memorable example.
The resignation of abuse survivor Marie Collins from a Vatican commission set up by Pope Francis was not designed to topple the Holy Father but to challenge the status quo. And it seems to have worked: her comments are still being discussed in Rome.
When the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors met for its plenary assembly last week, discussions focused on two issues that led to Collins’s resignation: the Vatican refusing to always acknowledge letters from abuse victims and its reluctance to promote guidelines on handling abuse claims for bishops’ conferences around the world.
Will Marie Collins’s decision to resign help to bring about the reforms she is calling for? It’s still too early to tell. The debate following Collins’s departure shows just how much the abuse commission relies on the co-operation of other Vatican departments, particularly the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (CDF).
The department’s head, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, waded into a row with Collins when, during an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he insisted that the CDF had cooperated with the abuse commission – even though it reportedly took the department more than a year to send a representative to meet members.
But the most influential factor in Collins’s departure was the CDF’s refusal to reply to letters from abuse victims. The department argued that this was firmly within the remit of a victim’s local bishop, and that interference from the Vatican would be disrespectful.
But Collins told the Catholic Herald: “It might not be respectful to the local bishop but it did not seem to matter in the least that it was disrespectful to the survivor – hence my resignation.”
If the letter issue proves a deal-breaker for members of the commission, as it has for Marie Collins, there is a chance that the fight against abuse will grind to a halt. Canon lawyer Ed Condon sympathises with Collins’s concerns, but he says he understands the CDF’s reluctance.
“Despite appearances,” Condon points out, “it isn’t that big an organisation, and the department which handles sexual abuse allegations is frankly tiny given its global purview. Putting themselves on the hook to generate letters to everyone who writes to them is a large task. Marie Collins’s objections notwithstanding, there is considerable scope for things to go wrong.”
Condon also argues that the commission’s desire to see universal guidelines on abuse might be counter-productive. “Some bulky set of ‘guidelines’ from Rome would serve little purpose,” he says, noting that it would be almost impossible to draft guidelines which could be used by bishops in the US as well as the Congo.
But Baroness Hollins, who sits on the pontifical commission, remains hopeful.
“I do believe that a solution will be found to the need to give timely and appropriate replies to correspondence from victim survivors,” she says. “But at the moment the right skills are not in place where they are needed. I don’t know how long this will take.”
The commission is already helping to change the system, she believes. It is in touch with bishops’ conferences and religious superiors from around the world, advising them on their response to abuse.
Baroness Hollins also believes that Collins’s resignation might be helpful “in some ways” as it has alerted senior figures in the Vatican to the problems that the commission is facing. But she adds that “at the recent commission meeting members missed Marie’s contribution”.
This is not surprising. Collins was a unique voice, in that she had lived through the pain of abuse herself but believed in the commission as an instrument for change. (In contrast Peter Saunders, another abuse survivor who served on the commission, this week called for it to be dismantled altogether).
Collins’s resignation has at least simplified a tangle of concerns into two pressing issues: bishops’ conference guidelines and answering letters. If the Vatican can resolve even one of the two, Marie Collins’s departure may have proved fruitful after all.
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