Michael W. Higgins is distinguished professor emeritus, senior fellow at Massey College. He is currently writing a book about Pope Francis.
What a dark week for the Catholic Church in Canada. A class-action suit against dozens of clergy in the archdiocese of Quebec seemed like just another sadly predictable iteration of a common theme: the enduring legacy of clerical sexual abuse. A reminder, as one venerable monsignor remarked to me, that it is like Chinese water torture. Will it ever come to a merciful end? Will it end at all?
The recent revelation was shattering owing to the inclusion of allegations against one of the “princes of the church,” Cardinal Marc Ouellet. The allegations against the cardinal have yet to be tested in a civil court, although Pope Francis has concluded that there is insufficient evidence for a full canonical investigation. In a statement Friday, Cardinal Ouellet said he “firmly denies” the allegations, calling them “defamatory.”
A woman, currently identified as “F,” alleges that while working for the archdiocese as a pastoral agent during Cardinal Ouellet’s tenure as archbishop (2003-2010), he inappropriately touched her various times. She concluded later that his alleged behaviour constituted sexual assault. She complained to the archdiocesan authorities and then to the Pope himself, and that’s where it stood – until she joined a class action and the cardinal’s name surfaced in the context of other names.
I am in no position to judge the merits or veracity of the charges, but the mere fact that the allegation now has public exposure raises genuine issues of abiding concern for reform-minded Catholics. This is far from the first instance of a senior prelate like a cardinal finding himself at the heart of a controversy involving sexual impropriety, assault or predation.
Hermann Groer, the archbishop of Vienna from 1986 to 1995, was removed from office as a consequence of a multitude of complaints about his sexual behaviour with seminarians. The tardiness of Rome’s response – John Paul II stood adamantly behind Cardinal Groer for a long period – seriously damaged the reputation of the Austrian church. Keith O’Brien, the archbishop of Saint Andrews-Edinburgh (1985-2013), the senior-ranking U.K. prelate at the time, stood down as a cardinal – a hitherto unprecedented action – and retired from public life because he was accused of sexually exploiting seminarians and young priests. He relinquished his right to attend and to vote in the conclave that elected Pope Francis. Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington (2001-2006), fell from grace with a thunderous ferocity. His well-chronicled history of allegedly seducing and exploiting young priests whom he nefariously dubbed his “nephews” resulted in a minutely detailed report from the Vatican – again unprecedented – culminating with his removal from the cardinalate and reduction to the lay state, the severest sanction Rome can impose.
The most controverted case to date is that of Australian George Pell, the cardinal chosen by Pope Francis to introduce and preside over financial reforms of the Vatican economy. Cardinal Pell was accused of preying on altar boys while Archbishop of Melbourne (1996-2001) and was extradited to his homeland, tried and sentenced to jail. Upon a successful appeal, his case was overturned, and he resumed residency in Rome.
This is the pool in which Cardinal Ouellet now finds himself. Whatever judgment or conclusion emerges in his case, the shadow of accusation alone is sufficient to ensure that his status as papabile (considered Pope material) is now permanently gone.
Cardinal Ouellet has held many portfolios in and outside Rome, is a polyglot, an able administrator (specifically as head of the Dicastery of Bishops), a sound if conventional theologian and a cleric who believes in a vital priesthood and the efficacy of seminaries. In fact, he is a priest of the Society of St. Sulpice, a French-founded order committed to educating priests.
It is a depressing irony that the scandals surrounding Cardinal Ouellet and other clerics are in part the result of seminary formation itself, the very incubator of the clericalism that infects the church from the top down. As the priest-psychologist Henri Nouwen observed of his own seminary training in Holland, although the courses were interesting and the fraternity of like-minded individuals welcome, the two pivotal things he did not learn was how to pray and how to be intimate, the two indispensable qualities of any effective priestly ministry. And by intimate he did not mean an invitation for an erotic free-for-all; he meant being comfortable in your own skin, having an integrated sexuality.
To achieve the latter, the church needs to rethink how it shapes its priests. It needs to shift the mindset away from the clericalist mentality of entitlement and invulnerability – and bring an end to the culture of abuse.
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