(OSV News) – As Theodore McCarrick faces criminal charges for allegedly sexually abusing a 16-year-old boy, the disgraced former cardinal’s legal defence team is now claiming he is in steep mental and physical decline and therefore not able to stand trial.

McCarrick’s lawyers filed a motion in Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court on January 13, citing a December examination conducted by David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. According to the motion, Schretlen found the 92-year-old McCarrick has neurological defects and impaired memory and cognition.

“Based on preliminary discussions with Dr (David) Schretlen, counsel have developed serious concerns that Mr McCarrick may no longer be legally competent to stand trial, because he would be unable to assist meaningfully in the preparation of his own defence or to consult effectively with counsel during trial with a reasonable degree of rational understanding,” the motion stated.

McCarrick’s lawyers had filed the motion to continue, seeking more time to prepare an eventual motion to dismiss.

Barry Coburn, one of McCarrick’s lawyers, declined to comment when reached by OSV News on January 18.

David Traub, spokesman for Norfolk County District Attorney Michael Morrissey, said the defence has not formally filed a motion about McCarrick’s competency, but rather raised the question in a filing seeking a delay in the proceedings.

McCarrick faces three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 in the Massachusetts court. Although the alleged abuse took place more than 50 years ago, McCarrick halted the expiration of the statute of limitations by leaving the state after the abuse took place, allowing for the criminal charges to finally be brought years later, according to attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

Garabedian is representing the alleged victim in the case, who is pursuing civil trials against McCarrick in New York and New Jersey courts. If McCarrick is ultimately found incompetent to stand trial, that will not stop the civil cases, Garabedian said.

Garabedian, who has represented numerous victims of clergy sexual abuse, told OSV News he is not surprised by the defence’s motion.

“For decades, I’ve seen priests as criminal defendants claim to have all of a sudden become infirm, mentally incompetent, or otherwise not able to testify,” Garabedian said. “It does not come as a surprise to me that Cardinal McCarrick would be trying to avoid a criminal trial taking place for reasons related to his mental or physical health.”

The complete defence report on McCarrick’s competency is expected to be filed in the next 30 days. If prosecutors do not agree with the defence report, the legal process allows for the court to appoint an evaluator to examine McCarrick and issue another report, Traub said. If there is a discrepancy between the two reports, the case would then be scheduled for a hearing in court.

Traub said if McCarrick is deemed incompetent, the case would not necessarily be automatically dismissed. The court could set a schedule to periodically check on McCarrick’s condition to see if he can be returned to competency through treatment. Traub acknowledged that such treatment is not likely in cases of age-related mental decline.

Garabedian said he took a deposition from McCarrick in 2020 for the civil lawsuits that lasted for more than six hours, though he declined to discuss McCarrick’s demeanour during that deposition.

McCarrick was charged in 2021 after an investigation started when Garabedian sent a letter detailing the allegations to the authorities. According to court records, McCarrick was close to the victim’s family, celebrating Mass at their home and even going on trips with them. The victim told investigators that McCarrick abused him during trips out of state. It also was under the guise of providing spiritual direction to the victim that the abuse took place, according to the criminal complaint.

If convicted, McCarrick faces up to five years in prison on each count.

McCarrick was once considered the most powerful cleric in the US, serving as the Catholic archbishop of Washington from 2001 to his retirement in 2006. He was well-known for his prolific fundraising.

Over the years, a number of men came forward accusing McCarrick of sexual abuse, among them seminarians. Two New Jersey dioceses conducted secret settlements with alleged adult victims of McCarrick in 2005 and 2007. However, the Archdiocese of New York in 2018 revealed they had received a credible allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against the then-cardinal. McCarrick was removed from public ministry in 2018, and eventually laicised by Pope Francis. He has been living at a facility in Missouri.

Garabedian said even if the Massachusetts criminal case is dismissed because of the competency question, the victim showed courage to come forward against the former cardinal.

“My client should be proud no matter the outcome in the criminal case for coming forward, standing and confronting evil, and proceeding with claims against Cardinal McCarrick,” Garabedian said. “It is an honour to represent him.”

Photo: Former Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick arrives at Dedham District Court in Dedham, Mass., on September 3, 2021, after being charged with molesting a 16-year-old boy during a 1974 wedding reception. (OSV News photo/Brian Snyder, Reuters)

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The report — He Purapura Ora, he Māra Tipu; from Redress to Puretumu — was tabled in Parliament on December 15, and it makes recommendations on how survivors of abuse in state and faith-based care should be heard and get redress for the harm suffered.

It has been welcomed by the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference (representing the country’s Catholic bishops), the Congregational Leaders Conference of Aotearoa New Zealand (representing Catholic religious orders and similar entities) and Te Rōpū Tautoko (the group formed to coordinate Catholic engagement with the royal commission).

Sister Margaret Anne Mills, president of the Congregational Leaders Conference, said: “I welcome this report and acknowledge the harm suffered by survivors of abuse and proposed actions to address and provide redress. We see the report as part of the vision to transform what we are doing today and into the future.”

Cardinal John Dew, president of the NZCBC, said: “We have been listening closely to what survivors have been telling the royal commission. We have previously indicated our support for the establishment of an independent redress scheme. This report gives a series of recommendations we can study to help us as we walk alongside survivors of abuse.”

Catherine Fyfe, Chair of Te Rōpū Tautoko, said: “Te Rōpū Tautoko members thank the commissioners for their work in preparing this report and look forward to helping Church leaders along the journey of reviewing and implementing the recommendations.”

The Church has been working proactively while waiting for the commission’s report. Te Rōpū Tautoko has created a roadmap of work that needs doing across all areas of the Church to make improvements in response to reports or disclosures of abuse in the care of the Catholic Church.

“Setting it out in the roadmap makes it clear to everyone the work that is needed and the progress being made,” said Catherine Fyfe. “This provides a sense of transparency and accountability.”

According to a statement by Public Service Minister Chris Hipkins and Internal Affairs Minister Jan Tinetti, the Government is starting work on developing a new, independent, survivor-focused redress system.

“The new system will be designed from the ground up in collaboration with Māori, who were heavily over-represented in state and faith-based care. The collaborative design will also be guided by the views of survivors and key communities, including Pacific peoples and disabled people,” Mr Hipkins said.

“The Government is moving on this now, before the royal commission finishes its other investigations, because we want to minimise delays for survivors who are waiting for their claims to be resolved. We are conscious of the age and ill-health of many of the survivors who suffered abuse at a time when care was heavily institutionalised.

“The royal commission has flagged areas where urgent action is needed before a new system is in place, such as advance payments for older or terminally ill survivors. They will be prioritised,” Mr Hipkins said.

Early next year, discussions will begin with key interested parties on options for how the collaborative design process could work, before the detailed design process begins in mid-2022.

The aim is for final decisions about the new system to be made by Cabinet around mid-2023, with the new system to be introduced soon after that.

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Archbishop-designate Andrés Gabriel Ferrada Moreira of Santiago, the new secretary, replaces 76-year-old French Archbishop Joël Mercier, who retired in September.

Archbishop-designate Ferrada received his doctorate in biblical theology in 2006 at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and served in a number of pastoral assignments in Chile. He was a faculty member of the theology department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile as well as director of studies at the major pontifical seminary of Santiago. He has been an official at the Congregation for Clergy since 2018.

The 52-year-old archbishop-designate was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile in 1999. According to court testimony, in 1988 when he was 19, he met the late Fernando Karadima, a former priest who was defrocked by Pope Francis in 2018. 

Archbishop-designate Ferrada later belonged to the Priestly Union of the Sacred Heart, a clerical association founded in 1928 that was led for many years – until it was shut down in 2012 – by Karadima, who also briefly was his spiritual guide. 

Known as an influential and charismatic priest, Karadima drew hundreds of young men to the priesthood, and four of his protégés went on to become bishops.

Archbishop-designate Ferrada and his brother were among the 10 priests in 2010 to publicly distance themselves from the union, which continued to be controlled by Karadima.

In a joint statement, they explicitly stated their separation from the union was because the accusations that were coming to light of sexual abuse by Karadima “seem plausible to us”.

“We are and have been totally open to collaborate with civil and canonical justice and in full communion with the authority of our church in Santiago and with the Holy See and the Holy Father, the pope,” the priests said in the 2010 statement.

Archbishop-designate Ferrada was one of a number of people who testified in civil court proceedings after a criminal complaint was filed in 2010 by victims of sexual abuse by Karadima.

Then-Father Ferrada stated that he witnessed Karadima’s unwanted sexual advances, abuse of power and manipulation as early as the mid-1990s, “but no one ever did anything about it”, according to news reports in 2010.

The court dismissed the lawsuit, saying there was not enough evidence to charge Karadima, but the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith conducted its own investigation and sentenced him in 2011 to a life of prayer and penance after he was found guilty of sexual abuse.

Photo: Pope Francis meets Chilean bishops in 2019 (CNS Photo)

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Hamilton Bishop Stephen Lowe, secretary of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, said the revised code makes it clear that bishops must take decisive action when abuse is reported to them.

The upgraded code makes punishment for offences compulsory under canon law, as opposed to being suggested, as in the previous version. It also now
includes abuse of adults and vulnerable people (described as persons with “an imperfect use of reason”), as well as the persons under 16, covered by
the previous code.

It states that a priest who abuses, commits indecent exposure, or grooms someone “is to be punished with deprivation of office and with other just penalties, not excluding, where the case calls for it, dismissal from
the clerical state”.

“This new chapter of canon law sets out how the Church must deal with abusers, in addition to the criminal law sanctions,” said Bishop Lowe. “It removes a bishop’s former discretion to use canon law to punish someone who has committed abuse.

“The Church’s canon law exists alongside the civil and criminal law of the land,” he added.

“This revision of canon law covers the discipline of the Church, alongside and beyond the civil law, covering, for example, processes for Church discipline in the light of a civil prosecution, or for matters that might not meet the criteria for a civil prosecution.

“This affirming and widening by Pope Francis of the Canon Law provisions against abuse is welcome and timely, especially as it comes during the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care, which the Catholic Church strongly supports,” said Bishop Lowe.

“The Catholic Church accepts the responsibility to act when abuse occurs in the Church. We will act by listening, learning and supporting those affected
by abuse. We will act swiftly on complaints and follow them through. We will hold those to account who have been proven responsible for abuse. This
upgrading of canon law affirms  that.”

The last revision of Chapter VI of the code was in 1983, and the revision approved in early June began in 2009.

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Cardinal Marx released a statement on June 4 and, with the Pope’s permission, a copy of the letter dated May 21, in which he told the Pope: “It is important to me to share the responsibility for the catastrophe of the sexual abuse perpetrated by representatives of the Church over the past decades.”

Pope Francis did not immediately accept the cardinal’s resignation. In his statement, the cardinal said Pope Francis asked him to continue his ministry as archbishop “until his decision is made”.

In his letter to the Pope, Cardinal Marx said that “the investigations and reports of the last 10 years have consistently shown that there have been many personal failures and administrative mistakes” in handling abuse allegations, “but also institutional or ‘systemic’ failures”.

But, he said, “some members of the Church refuse to believe that there is a shared responsibility in this respect, and that the Church as an institution is hence also to be blamed for what has happened”.

Those same people, the cardinal said, “therefore disapprove of discussing reforms and renewal in the context of the sexual abuse crisis”.

Cardinal Marx, who is still more than seven years away from the normal retirement age for bishops, is the past-president of the German bishops’ conference and is one of the main proponents of the German church’s “Synodal Path” process of consultation, prayer and discussion about necessary reforms in the Church. The process has been controversial because of some of the ideas being debated in connection with power, sexual morality, priesthood and the role of women in the Church.

The cardinal is also a member of Pope Francis’ international advisory Council of Cardinals and is coordinator of the Vatican Council for the Economy.

In his statement June 4, Cardinal Marx said the clerical abuse crisis obviously requires improved oversight and administrative systems, but even more it shows the need for “a renewed form of the Church and a new way to live and proclaim faith today”.

Investigating how allegations were handled in the past and holding to account bishops who failed to act promptly and appropriately is important, the cardinal said, but it is not enough.

“As a bishop I have an ‘institutional responsibility’ for the acts of the Church in its entirety, as well as for its institutional problems and failures in the past,” he wrote. “And have I not helped to foster negative forms of clericalism by my own behaviour and the false concerns about the church’s reputation?”

Above all, he said, church leaders must ask themselves if the focus really is on survivors and others impacted by sexual abuse.

“With my resignation, I would like to make clear that I am willing to personally bear responsibility not only for any mistakes I might have made, but for the Church as an institution which I have helped to shape and mould over the past decades,” the cardinal said.

Cardinal Marx told reporters during a news conference on June 4 at his residence in Munich that he had been thinking about giving up his post since the beginning of the year “and then during the Lent period in prayer and meditation”. He said his letter to the Pope was written during the Easter season.

He explained that he had consulted with Pope Francis during an audience on May 21, where he read the letter to the pontiff. Soon after, the Pope sent him an email, Cardinal Marx said, and afterward in a phone call, they agreed that the letter could be made public on June 4.

Explaining how his decision came about, he said that last year, “I held a service in the cathedral where we were asking for forgiveness from the victims of sexual abuse, and there I said the sentence, ‘We have failed’, and when I was home I thought who is ‘we’? Do I not also belong there?”

He continued, “It is easy to say such words, but much more difficult and that is why it took some months to make it out with yourself what this means for you personally”.

Cardinal Marx added that he is not tired of his job. He pleaded for the renewal of the Church, and said his service to the Church is not ending with his resignation, noting that he has enjoyed being a bishop and priest.

The cardinal’s move comes ahead of an experts’ report expected be published this northern summer concerning how sexual abuse cases were handled in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

Initial reactions to the cardinal’s announcement showed a mixture of respect and dismay, the German Catholic news agency KNA reported.

Bishop Georg Baetzing of Limburg, president of the German bishops’ conference, said he regretted the move. Cardinal Marx had, he said, “done ground-breaking work for the Church in Germany and worldwide.” Bishop Baetzing described the cardinal as “one of the pillars of support” in the conference, and would continue to be needed.

The president of the lay-led Central Committee of German Catholics said its members were deeply shaken.

“The wrong one is leaving,” Thomas Sternberg told the regional newspaper Rheinische Post. If the Pope accepts the cardinal’s resignation, he said, then an important personality in German Catholicism would be lost.

A representatives of a victims’ group expressed respect for Cardinal Marx’s action.

Matthias Katsch, spokesman for the victims’ association “Eckiger Tisch” (Nonround Table), told KNA the cardinal “has understood that those who have created this mess are unable to clean it up again”. Katsch said he had experienced Cardinal Marx as one of the clergymen “who was prepared to listen.”

Photo: Cardinal Reinhard Marx (CNS)

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The revision of “Book VI: Penal Sanctions in the Church”, one of seven books that make up the code for the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, was promulgated on June 1 and will go into effect on December 8, Pope Francis wrote.

Rewriting 63 of the book’s 89 canons, the revision addresses a host of issues that have come up in the life of the Church since St John Paul II promulgated the code in 1983. The descriptions of crimes of sexual abuse, including child pornography, are more explicit, and the required actions of a bishop or superior of a religious order in handling allegations are more stringent.

The revised canons also include new references to the attempted ordination of a woman, and to a variety of financial crimes; as with the new canons dealing with sexual abuse, they rely on language from laws promulgated separately over the past 20 years.

“In the past, much damage has been caused by a failure to perceive the intimate relationship existing in the Church between the exercise of charity and recourse – when circumstances and justice require it – to the discipline of sanctions. This way of thinking, as experience has taught us, risks leading to a life of behaviour contrary to the discipline of morals, for the remedy of which exhortations or suggestions alone are not sufficient,” Pope Francis wrote in “Pascite Gregem Dei” (Shepherd God’s Flock), the apostolic constitution promulgating the changes.

While Church law applies to all Catholics, the Pope said, for bishops, the observance of canon law “can in no way be separated from the pastoral ‘munus’ (service) entrusted to them, and which must be carried out as a concrete and inalienable requirement of charity, not only toward the Church, the Christian community and possible victims, but also toward those who have committed a crime, who need both mercy and correction on the part of the Church”.

Over the years, he said, it became clear that the code’s description of crimes and penalties needed to be “modified in such a way as to allow pastors to use it as a more agile salvific and corrective instrument, to be employed promptly and with pastoral charity to avoid more serious evils and to soothe the wounds caused by human weakness”.

The revised book was presented to the press on June 1 by Archbishop Filippo Iannone and Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. In 2009, Pope Benedict had asked the council to begin the revision project.

The revision moves the canons about the sexual abuse of children – on the part of a priest, religious or layperson working for the Church – out of the section on violations of the obligation of celibacy and into a newly titled section of “Offenses Against Human Life, Dignity and Liberty”.

It adds to canon law the crime of “grooming”, calling for penalties, including dismissal from the priesthood for a cleric who “grooms or induces a minor or a person who habitually has an imperfect use of reason or one to whom the law recognises equal protection to expose himself or herself pornographically or to take part in pornographic exhibitions, whether real or simulated”.

However, the revised language still refers to rape and other forms of sexual abuse as “an offence against the Sixth Commandment” – You shall not commit adultery.

The continued use of the Sixth Commandment to refer to any improper, immoral or even criminal sexual activity “is traditional” in Church law, Bishop Arrieta said, and for Catholics its meaning “is clear”, which is necessary when drafting a law that will be valid on every continent and in every culture.

In incorporating recent Church law regarding abuse, the new code does not refer to abuse of “vulnerable” adults or “vulnerable persons” as Pope Francis did in his May, 2019, motu proprio, “Vos estis lux mundi”.

Bishop Arrieta said the term “vulnerable person”, while understood and recognised in the law of many countries, is not universally accepted as a legal category of persons deserving special protection. Instead, the new law refers to people whom the law recognises as deserving of the same protection extended to minors, and those with “an imperfect use of reason”.

The revised law also foresees penalties for “a person who neglects to report an offence, when required to do so by a canonical law”.

Bishop Arrieta said that provision refers to the obligation to report serious crimes, such as sexual abuse, to Church authorities, not civil authorities. If criminal reporting to the state is obligatory, the state will enforce that, he said.

The revised code also says, “Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a ‘latae sententiae’ (automatic) excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state.”

Given that Pope Francis in April 2020 formed a second “Study Commission on the Female Diaconate,” Bishop Arrieta was asked why the revised canon did not specify priestly ordination, leaving open the possibility of ordaining women to the diaconate.

Canon law, he said, relies on the current state of the teaching of the Church. “If we come to a different theological conclusion, we will modify the norm,” he said, just as was done in January when Pope Francis ordered a change in the wording of canon law so that women, as well as men, could be formally installed as lectors and acolytes.

Photo: A Latin-English edition of the Code of Canon Law (CNS Photo)

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The cardinal spoke during opening statements by the Catholic Church at the second phase of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care’s hearing on redress in Auckland on March 22.

“Our hope is that this commission will lead us and help us to be a better church – and that is a church (in which) this disgrace of abuse will be addressed, will cease, and our church will always be a church that gives life and hope. That’s our mission as a church.

“It is always to give life, the life that Christ offers us. We know that, in this, we still have much to learn.”

In preceding days, the hearing heard from representatives of the Salvation Army and the Anglican Church in New Zealand. Late last year, survivors of abuse in care in the three churches gave evidence in the first phase of the hearing. Similar hearings have been held on abuse in care in state institutions.

The redress hearing is one of several involving the Catholic Church in the overall royal commission, which is looking primarily at abuse from 1950 to 1999, although experiences outside these years may also be heard. Abuse being investigated includes sexual, physical, emotional, psychological abuse and neglect.

Cardinal Dew said he was grateful that the Catholic Church was being given the opportunity to engage in the hearing, “to continue our learning, and to learn with you.”

He greeted survivors present and said he wanted “to assure you that we have listened, and we are listening.”

“I and we are ashamed and saddened by what has happened.”

Cardinal Dew was dressed in a suit and tie while he addressed the hearing. The royal commission directed that no attendees at public hearings should wear religious attire or uniforms, as that could be triggering for survivors, “and survivor well-being is integral to the work of the inquiry.”

Speaking after Cardinal Dew, Sally McKechnie, counsel for Te Ropu Tautoko, a body set up by the New Zealand bishops and religious congregation leaders to liaise with the royal commission, noted that the cardinal would address the hearing again March 26.

“As Cardinal John will emphasize on Friday, the bishops and congregational leaders express their deep regret that any person has suffered harm while in the care of the Catholic Church when they should have been safe,” McKechnie said.

“The church recognizes that, collectively, there has been a failure — certain individuals have very obviously failed, and there is no question that how and why these failures occurred needs to be examined and remedied. The bishops and congregational leaders will continue to work to improve these redress processes so that all survivors who engage with the church are heard and supported,” she said.

Speaking before these statements, Katherine Anderson, counsel assisting the royal commission, said preliminary data indicated that “it’s very clear that the Catholic Church has received a significantly higher volume of disclosures of abuse than have the other faiths, including the Salvation Army and Anglican Church that you have heard from this week and last week.”

“The preliminary figure is in excess of 1,100 disclosures of abuse,” Anderson said.

Previous testimony indicated some 236 such disclosures in Salvation Army settings in New Zealand, and various estimates from individual Anglican bodies, including 53 claims of abuse in Auckland Anglican Diocese and up to 80 at Christ’s College in Christchurch.

The national leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Christopher Longhurst, told the hearing that SNAP is asking that “any redress process be survivor-focused and survivor-led.”

Longhurst added that SNAP “is asking that all redress processes be managed by a body that is totally and truly independent of the relevant faith-based institution.”

“To secure the trust and confidence of survivors, a secular statutory body must be set up to deal with redress,” he said. He also asked for proper compensation to facilitate people’s rehabilitation.

On March 23, the hearing was scheduled to hear from Dominican Father Tom Doyle, a U.S. canon lawyer. Representatives from the Marist Brothers, the Society of Mary and from the Catholic Church’s National Office for Professional Standards were also scheduled to speak at the hearing.

The New Zealand bishops and religious congregation leaders joined leaders from other denominations in seeking to have the church included in the work of the royal commission, which, when first established, was limited to inquiring into abuse in state care. It was announced that the terms of reference would be broadened in 2018.

The royal commission is to deliver its final report to the governor-general by 2023.

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While utterly condemning sexual abuse on the part of some Catholic clergy and religious, I do have a problem in assessing situations only in terms of the knowledge and understanding of human psychology that we now have from the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

A lot of the offending we hear about took place in the 1950s-1980s, and, in order to help comprehend what took place, without excusing the offending, it is worth looking at certain societal norms of that time, and at what some of the thinking was that informed the approaches taken in response.

The ability to discern sexual deviancy, or the inability to live a celibate life in potential candidates, would have once have been minimal or non-existent. It seems that the expressed desire to be accepted was often enough. Even those who recognised their own disordered desires might well have seen the priesthood or religious life as a safeguard against indulging them, rather than as an opportunity to do so.

When the offending did occur, the victims, particularly children, would mostly have kept silent out of a learned respect for the priest or religious, or knowing their parents would not believe it could possibly happen.

If it came to the ears of the bishop, the same ignorance and naivety would have led him to believe that, by moving the offender elsewhere, he would be removed from the source of temptation and be able to make a fresh start, having been assured by the offender that he was sorry and would not do that again. Of course, the sinfulness would have been clear to all parties, but we Catholic Christians, in particular, are raised in the assurance that, if we repent and confess our sins, we can be forgiven, and have the slate wiped clean.

Also, there was no comprehension of how deeply the abuse would affect the victim into the future.

In relation to this, I have often heard older Catholics, and especially ex-Catholics, talking about how they were treated by teaching religious decades ago, and how it has affected them. I am not a cradle Catholic (however, a convert of over 50 years) so was educated in the state school system in the 1950s-1960s. I can, and do, assure such people that, despite being a girl, I was not spared caning, being strapped and having pieces of blackboard chalk thrown at me! But clearly again, religious orders must have accepted many unsuitable candidates just because of the need of numbers, and such people would have taken out their unhappiness and frustration on the children (and probably on their fellow religious!).

The desire to avoid scandal would have been a major driver in covering up offences and trying to move on, but it has to be said that avoidance of scandal was rife in secular society also, until about the 1980s. How many unmarried mothers were sent out of town by their parents until after the baby was born? And how much obvious domestic violence did we once turn our backs on?

It is very different today. We all have a good grasp of human psychology, discerners of vocations are fully trained, the religious and priestly life (in New Zealand anyway) is no longer seen as a family honour as it once was, we do not tolerate abuse of any kind in our society, and we do not keep silent about it. Children also know their rights, and are educated to speak up if they are offended against.

But it was not always like this at all, and I think we must take this into account if we are to fully comprehend what happened in the past.

Alison Hale is a Catholic from Christchurch.

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In mid-July, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published Vademecum (“Handbook”), a 17-page step-by-step-guide to help bishops and other Church religious administrators handle accusations of abuse by clerics against minors.

Complaints of abuse in the New Zealand Catholic Church are handled under the A Path to Healing, Te Houhanga Rongo protocols, introduced by the bishops in 1993 and updated several times since.

The Church urges victims of abuse – past and present – to complain to the Police or, if victims prefer, to the Church’s National Office for Professional Standards (NOPS), which can appoint independent investigators to examine complaints.

Cardinal John Dew, the Archbishop of Wellington and Metropolitan Archbishop of New Zealand, said he and his fellow bishops would look at the Vademecum guidelines closely and discuss them at their next full bishops’ conference meeting in September.

“It is a complex document,” said Cardinal Dew. “We will be looking carefully to see where it fits in with the civil and criminal law of New Zealand.

“The bishops believe that every person has an innate human dignity – te tapu o te tangata – and therefore all forms of abuse are unacceptable and indefensible.”

Cardinal Dew said NOPS was also reviewing the Vademecum document to identify if changes may be needed in A Path to Healing.

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This is what has happened in other countries and reform processes have started in places like Australia and Germany, said Dr Myriam Wijlens at a lecture in Auckland on March 11.

Dr Wijlens, who is a theologian, canon law professor and member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, stressed that reform has to address issues at their roots, touching and impacting the whole body of the faithful.

She said guidance for the necessary reform comes from the Second Vatican Council.

The Holy Spirit guided the council and is also guiding its reception and implementation, even though different Church members and local churches might be at different points in the process.

Pope Francis has picked up on some key aspects of Vatican II teaching in the way he has stressed the importance of “synodality” in the Church.

Most important in his understanding is how he sees the need that the whole Church, all the faithful, begin by listening to the Word of God and to each other. This occurred first in the synod on the family in 2014 and 2015. Bishops were not asked to report what they think the faithful believe, but rather they had to ask the faithful themselves to report what they believe. This was something new.  It had not happened in previous synods, Dr Wijlens explained.

“Synodality thus begins with listening to all [the] faithful. This method will impact all future synods. It will also impact all discernment and decision-making processes on all levels in the Church on all major topics,” she said.

Dr Wijlens, who is Dutch and is a Professor of Canon Law at the University of Erfurt in Germany, explained how this approach derived from the Second Vatican Council’s location of the office of the bishop within a theology of the People of God.

Key to this is a new understanding of revelation itself.

“Before the council, revelation was a set of doctrines about God formulated by the hierarchy that the laity would learn by heart. Vatican II understands revelation as God speaking to men and women as friends to enter with them in fellowship. It is an encounter with God. The Holy Spirit leads into relationship and understanding and of decisive importance is that the Word of God is listened to and heard by all [the] faithful – including the ordained members of the People of God,” she said.

“Revelation occurs within the whole People of God in a complex network of relations between all the faithful, be they laity, religious, theologians, bishops, pope, college of bishops. It can only be understood under the guidance of the Holy Spirit through a complex interaction of all the faithful – each and every one – according to his or her position and function.

“Such an understanding can only be appreciated in conjunction with the doctrine that, through baptism, all the faithful participate in the threefold ministry of Christ – priest, prophet and king. And that we all receive charisms as well as the doctrine that the Holy Spirit is active in each and every one.”

As a result of this, Vatican II introduced the doctrine of the “people of God” and inserted this in its document on the Church before the council spoke about the hierarchy. By doing so, it was then able to affirm the infallibility, not only of the pope and college of bishops, but of the whole Church.

Dr Wijlens quoted paragraph 12 of Lumen Gentium.

“The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when ‘from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful’, they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, [in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of (people) but truly the word of God].” (Lumen Gentium #12)

Tensions

Important, therefore, Dr Wijlens said, is the insertion of the people of God before the treatise of the hierarchy and the new understanding of revelation. How did this impact the synod of bishops? The synod of bishops was the result of another debate in the council, which was to clarify the relationship between the pope and the (college of) bishops.

That treatise on that topic was not rewritten in light of the doctrine of the people of God. Hence two different understandings stood – so to speak – side by side.

“In itself this was not new. Vatican II does it time and again, as it is a peaceful way of renewing because almost all can find themselves into either the one or the other understanding,” Dr Wijlens said.

The council was aware of this, in as much as it was aware that not all issues were definitely decided. Often the council declared that the post-conciliar Church would have to deepen a new understanding. It was a trusting in the continuous working of the Holy Spirit and thus introduced a dynamic understanding of the faith. At the same time, it could give rise to post-conciliar tensions, Dr Wijlens said.

Pope Francis has struck out in a remarkable direction, in line with Vatican II teaching on revelation and the people of God, she said.

He begins with the people of God and locates the hierarchical authority within it. Pope Francis said that the sensus fidei (the sense of the faith – also called the sensus fidelium – the sense of the faithful) “prevents a rigid separation between the teaching and the learning Church, since the flock likewise has an instinctive ability to discern new ways that the Lord is revealing to the Church”.

“The synod of bishops is the point of convergence of this listening process, conducted at every level of the Church’s life. The synod process begins by listening to the people of God, which shares also in Christ’s prophetic office, according to a principle dear to the Church in the first millennium – what touches all is to be discussed and decided by all,” the Pope said.

“He elaborates,” Dr Wijlens said, “that we have to continue to listen to the pastors. Through the synod the fathers – the bishops – act as authentic guardians, interpreters and witnesses to the faith of the whole Church, but they need to discern carefully from the changing currents of public opinion.”

Law

Dr Wijlens also spoke about the task faced by legislators in redrafting Church law after the council, given the different perspectives side-by-side in council documents. A middle path was adopted in the drafting of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

Diocesan synods, diocesan pastoral councils and parish pastoral councils were all catered for.

“[But] it should be noted,” Dr Wijlens said, “that there is no institution in a diocese in which laity can participate that is obligatory for a bishop.”

“If a bishop wants to govern his diocese without the participation of any lay person, he is able to do that and he would act in conformity with the law of the Church. Yet, by doing so, he would not receive the new understanding of Vatican II.”

Dr Wijlens said that, during her recent visit to Australia, she discovered that only one third of Australian dioceses have a diocesan pastoral council. She understood that the situation was better in New Zealand dioceses.

But “if we go by the intentions of the Second Vatican Council, we have to say the diocesan pastoral council cannot be a mere option, it should be obligatory unless there are circumstances that prevent having such a council”.

Such circumstances could be where it is dangerous for Catholics to meet because of political conditions, she said.

Dr Wijlens said she wanted to be realistic.

“A bishop who does not internalise the theological notions will convoke a body for the sake of being able to say that he has such a body.”

“No legislator can ultimately determine how to use these bodies and how to use them best. What is required is an internal disposition on the side of the bishops to appreciate the gifts of baptism and thus to listen to the working of the Spirit among the faithful, as well as on the side of the baptised to see and discover their own responsibility to work for the well-being of the mission of the Church.”

Dr Wijlens finished her talk with a cautionary note: “Canon law does not solve all problems. [What is] necessary is really an internal disposition to listen to the Word of God and to each other, to discern what the Holy Spirit is conveying to us here and now.”

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