Do the current child protection norms need a radical overhaul?
The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged abuse has just become even more disturbing. The original allegations were made by men who were adults, or at least not pre-pubescent, at the time. A sexually active priest with a taste for younger men is detestable, but that’s not the same as being a child rapist.
It turns out we may have been too kind to McCarrick. On July 19, the New York Times published an interview with a 60-year-old man identified only as James who claims that “Uncle Ted”, who baptised him, began abusing him at the age of 11 and continued for two decades.
Before the Times story broke, several commentators pointed out that McCarrick was the architect of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, more commonly known as the Dallas Charter. The revelation that he allegedly abused young men was supposed to throw the integrity of the Charter itself into question. But then McCarrick could easily have taken a strong stand against child abuse in order to deflect attention away from his sexual impropriety with adults.
The question now is whether James’s story changes that. After all, surely McCarrick wouldn’t design a trap clever enough to catch him. Should we scrap the Dallas Charter and start again? It’s relevant to ask whether McCarrick abused any children after James. According to the Times, he began molesting James around 1971. That’s the same year he allegedly molested the 16-year-old altar server – legally a minor, but not a child – in New York. It’s also more than three decades before the Dallas Charter was approved. No other allegations of child abuse have been made at the time of writing.
Based on current information, it seems that the claimed abuse ceased at some point in the 1970s, perhaps because McCarrick grew to understand the legal risks. As I wrote in these pages three weeks ago, McCarrick was able to escape scrutiny, with subordinates intimidated and alleged victims paid off, because nothing he did was technically illegal. The vast majority of his victims were adults, and the claims relate to the grey area between consent and non-consent.
So, it’s still possible that McCarrick crusaded against child abuse as a sleight of hand. No one would suspect that a great foe of child abuse was, in fact, abusing adults.
And the Dallas Charter is quite thorough, after all. For instance, in order to avoid complaints becoming lost in the vast ecclesiastical bureaucracy, it requires bishops to meet victims and their families. Dioceses are also instructed to inform the entire parish if their pastor has been credibly accused of molesting children.
The methods used under Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston to “avoid scandalising the faithful” – that is, shelter abusers and silence the abused – were addressed one by one.
Whether the Dallas Charter could have protected James is difficult to say. What’s disturbing is that there is no procedure at all for dealing with priests who have consensual sexual contact with other adults – even if the consent was only nominal, and the other adult is a priest or seminarian. If McCarrick confessed abuse, that would have been bound by the seal of the confessional.
Canon law also makes a distinction between public and private offences. According to Canon 1395 §1: “A cleric who … persists with scandal in another external sin against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue is to be punished by a suspension.” The phrase “with scandal” basically means that the sin is public. Those who can keep their offences quiet have less to fear.
Better than revising the Dallas Charter, then, might be drafting a new charter laying out mandatory procedures for priests who break the vow of celibacy with young men, especially seminarians. Our culture is coming to realise consent is more than a mere yes-or-no proposition. Powerful men – be they prelates like McCarrick or film directors like Harvey Weinstein – can take advantage of their subordinates with legal impunity.
Because McCarrick was renowned throughout the global Church, this may even be an occasion for the Holy See to review the section of canon law pertaining to violations of clerical celibacy. Right now, predators are less likely to be punished if they silence their victims. Do these offenders really deserve a lighter sentence only because they avoided causing a scandal?
A cynic would wager that such a Charter would never be commissioned, because it would inevitably invite speculation about violations of clerical celibacy more generally. The offhand way McCarrick’s dioceses handled his “indiscretions” suggests the bishops are well used to concealing them.
For every priest like McCarrick who violates the law of celibacy to prey on young men, we must imagine there are dozens who take up with men and women their own age. Who knows? We could be watching the American Church’s next great scandal emerge before our very eyes.
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