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It’s been a fortnight since Archbishop Tartaglia apologised to the 46 victims of church abuse between 2006 and 2012. It is now time for the Scottish bishops to continue the apology process.
Obviously on many occasions and at different times assessment of the six year clerical training period has been an abject failure. We don’t know how many cases are child abuse or homosexual in nature. We do know now- fairly recently – that a reason for joining the priesthood can be to get at children , although this may not have been appreciated earlier. If the six year course is just a celibacy test, since the extensive study of theology is ultimately pointless since irrelevant to parish work, obviously what attention was paid was to Being Careful About The Women. And the vocation nonsense has not helped. We all know cases where vocation, if genuine, withered and died before a meaningless ordination , although few if any resulted in paedophily.
Mistakes were made, and child abusers were sent to parishes. Worse- much worse- when found out they were sent to other parishes.
To look back to years of receiving the Sacraments – and being chided from the pulpit – by one later to be revealed as a child abuser is a shattering experience. Obviously the bishops can never have experienced this. We don’t know what intellectual qualities have been discovered in them by the Vatican diplomats who choose our bishops. But surely they must have enough nous to be able to understand this shattering experience. Putting known child abusers to other parishes may be the single most important reason for the loss of two generations to the Church.
It is now time, having apologised to the abused, to apologise to the rest of us. There may still be some who care enough to listen.