Now What?
“Venit, vidit, vicit,” is how I think it would be in my lousy Latin.
“He came, he saw, he conquered.” That would be Pope Benedict all right. I have to say his performance during his US trip was masterful. Though lacking the charisma of his predecessor, he made up for it with a certain folksy charm by so openly enjoying the adulation he received anyway. And he didn’t slip up even once.
He actually talked about the clergy sex abuse crisis, even met with a few victims. And so the word will go out that yes, the nightmare is over at last. “Roma locuta est, causa finita est.”
Yes, Rome has indeed spoken, but is the case really closed? One strong indication it just might not be came from one Richard Sipe, who stood up and fingered Cardinal McCarrick.
Now, not only is Sipe a leading expert like the much more widely-known Tom Doyle, but while Doyle has been dealing with victims and enjoying(?) the media spotlight, Richard Sipe, as a psychologist and former monk, has been quietly talking all this time with perps and enablers and the like. Before now, his public statements have been pretty general, and he’s doubtless had strong professional and ethical as well as personal reasons to be reserved. He’s strongly hinted at times that he could identify abusers high up in the hierarchy, but as far as I know he’s never actually named names before.
So for him to speak out to power, especially now, and openly accuse one of the senior members of the American hierarchy should be very big news. It may not undo the effects of the pope’s PR blitz, but it definitely keeps the ball in play. And now that people are finally concentrating on the hierarchy’s role in all this, it may help take it to a new level altogether.
Because it just occurred to me, if it’s over (whatever the frak that means) then NOW IS THE TIME for all the doors still locked to open, all the skeletons to come out of the closet, all the unspeakable stories still untold to be at last uttered, and thereby laid to rest.
I know that a lot of stuff was deliberately left out of lawsuits to keep them somehow credible enough to win a settlement. Weird stuff. Sometimes really weird stuff. Not just by lawyers either. Many survivors have decided not to mention certain things for their own protection. But if that’s all done with now, now is the time for it to come out.
To Wit: ritual abuse, group activities, Satanism, drug-running, murders. To start with.
Not to mention the longstanding tradition of secular collusion, and the civil authorities co-operating in the cover-up. The Church could only maintain such a powerful secret legal system of its own with support from the State. Though formalized in Canada, it happened here in the United States, too.
For some of us, the crisis will never end. No matter how much healing occurs, for some survivors, Catholicism will be as triggering as fireworks are for some veterans. If it is over, there needs to be watchdog groups to keep an eye on the Church and continue to pressure them for openness and accountability. And the history of this time needs to be written.
What survivors and their families have suffered, the struggles they have endured, must not be forgotten. Otherwise, it will be not as if the scandals never happened, it will be far worse. For fallen human nature has not changed. Children will continue to be abused, women seduced in the confessional, and even worse things will happen and be concealed. And in the end, it is only the collective experience of the people, only history, that will survive to inform and guide future ages.