The Papal Nuncio’s Letter to the Irish Bishops 31 January 1997 (Main Forum)

by James, Australia, Sunday, January 23, 2011, 01:31 (880 days ago)
edited by James, Sunday, January 23, 2011, 07:41

I hope no one minds me opening this as a new topic, but the discussion on this letter has gone off the page and most of the references to it in web pages earlier show extracts or images. I thought it important for everyone to read exactly what the letter says and then to read the response of the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi. I will then put in a bit of background and commentary.

This is Archbishop Storero's Letter

The Congregation for the Clergy has attentively studied the complex question of sexual abuse of minors by clerics and documents entitled “Child Sexual Abuse : Framework for a Church Response”, published by the Irish Bishops Advisory Committee.

The Congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force.

The text, however contains “procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems. If such procedures were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities. (my emphasis)

In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature.

Since the policies on sexual abuse in the English speaking world exhibit many of the same characteristics and procedures, the Congregation is involved in a global study of them. At the appropriate time, with the collaboration of the interested Episcopal Conferences and in dialogue with them, the Congregation will not be remiss in establishing some concrete directives with regard to these Policies.

For these reasons and because the abovementioned text is not an official document of the Episcopal Conference but merely a study document, I am directed to inform the individual Bishops of Ireland of the preoccupations of the Congregation in its regard, underlining that in the sad cases of accusations of sexual abuse by clerics, the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be meticulously followed under pain of invalidity of the acts involved if the priests so punished were to make hierarchical recourse against his Bishop.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/Ireland-Catholic-Abuse.pdf

This is Fr. Lombardi’s response as contained in The Catholic News Service,

Father Lombardi said, "One must note that the letter in no way says that the country's laws must not be followed." He told Catholic News Service Jan. 19 that the Vatican "does not have a universal, specific position on mandatory reporting because the laws and situations are so different from country to country."

However, he said, the Vatican has made it clear to bishops that in their policies for dealing with abuse accusations and in concrete situations "they must respect the laws of their country," including when those laws require the church to report accusations to police or the courts.

Some news reports and some groups of sex abuse victims have pointed to the 1997 letter as evidence that the Vatican directly orchestrated the response of bishops' conferences to the sex abuse crisis and that even in the late 1990s, not everyone at the Vatican was convinced that abusers should be turned over to the police.

Father Lombardi objected to the letter being presented as some kind of "proof" that the Vatican wanted to cover up cases of abuse.

Instead, he said, the letter demonstrates the seriousness with which the Vatican was taking the need to formulate and adopt comprehensive norms that could respond to the crisis, which already was affecting several English-speaking countries.

"The letter rightly insists on the fact that it is important that canon law be respected always, precisely to avoid giving the guilty well-founded reasons for an appeal, therefore obtaining a result contrary to that desired," Father Lombardi said.

The Jesuit also said people have to realize that the letter was written before 2001 when Pope John Paul II issued new norms for dealing with abuse allegations and made the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- headed by the future Pope Benedict XVI -- responsible for overseeing handling of the cases.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1100210.htm

There are a number of things to note about Archbishop Storero’s letter. The first is that it is pretty obvious that in 1997, the Irish bishops were proposing a regime of mandatory reporting to the police of allegations of sexual crimes by priests. This was not something revolutionary. The Australian Bishops policy of mandatory reporting in accordance with the common law misprision of felony laws or their statutory equivalents in various Australian States came out in 1996 with its Towards Healing document. Ireland is a common law country or, as Archbishop Storero puts it part of “the English speaking world”.

Misprision of felony laws in common law countries have been around for centuries. They were in force before Captain Cook sailed around Australia. The word “misprision” is so old that it has dropped out of our everyday vocabulary and only remains to describe a crime. The substance of the law is that if anyone has been given information which suggests that a serious crime has been committed, a failure to disclose that information to the appropriate authorities is itself a crime, unless there is a reasonable excuse. A confidential relationship, for example, doctor/patient, priest/penitent, lawyer/client etc. would normally provide a reasonable excuse.

Archbishop Storero’s letter indicates that he and the Vatican were aware of the misprision of felony laws – and in any event the Towards Healing document, published the year before in 1996 would have reminded them again.

That document also acknowledged that when a Bishop was investigating the criminal conduct of one of its priests towards children, the law did not regard that as a “reasonable excuse”. As I have mentioned a couple of times, Bishop Bede Heather of Parramatta in 1994 was subjected to a search warrant because he failed to give the information to the police from his investigation of complaints about the Brothers of St. Gerard. It was not a question of mandatory reporting being new – it had been around for three centuries in the English speaking world.

Now Fr. Lombardi says "One must note that the letter in no way says that the country's laws must not be followed." This is the same argument that he has raised before that because the 1962 Ottaviani directive and the 2001 Ratzinger directive, does not specifically say, “Do not go to the police”, then there is no prohibition on going to the police. As I have explained many times before, this just mangles the plain meaning of the words “pontifical secrecy”. But here he is doing the same thing to the 1997 letter.

The Irish bishops proposal is very clear – they were proposing mandatory reporting as they were required to do under Irish law. Archbishop Storero’s letter then says,

“The Congregation wishes to emphasize the need for this document to conform to the canonical norms presently in force. …The text, (that is, the Irish bishop’s proposal) however contains procedures and dispositions which appear contrary to canonical discipline and which, if applied, could invalidate the acts of the same Bishops who are attempting to put a stop to these problems.”

(my emphasis)

Archbishop Storero agrees with me on this. Mandatory reporting as required by Irish law is contrary to the 1962 Ottaviani directive to maintain “pontifical secrecy”. But not only that, according to Fr. Sean McDonagh, this is exactly the way the Irish bishops interpreted that document as well as the later directive from Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001 that used the same terms.

http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?mode=thread&id=38698

Now if that is not a directive to the Bishops not to go to the police, then I don’t know what is. The Bishops want a system of mandatory reporting and Archibishop Storero says no you can't have it because it is contrary to "canonical discipline", ie "pontifical secrecy". It is an explicit instruction to break Irish law. Not only that, Archbishop Storero knew what he was doing in 1997.

“Since the policies on sexual abuse in the English speaking world exhibit many of the same characteristics and procedures, the Congregation is involved in a global study of them.”

Finally, what was Archbishop Storero's explanation for insisting on canon law being followed? - it might result in some technical invalidity of the defrocking procedure. The only technicality could be because the bishop had broken "pontifical secrecy" by reporting to the police - again confirming the plain meaning of the 1962 directive.

So, what happened after this “global study” was completed? After Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O'Connor got into hot water over some cover up, the British bishops engaged Lord Nolan recently retired from the House of Lords to prepare a report in April 2001 and he says that the bishops have an obligation to report – nothing surprising in that.

A month or two later, Cardinal Ratzinger issues his directive in May 2001 again imposing “pontifical secrecy” in the same terms as Cardinal Ottaviani’s 1962 directive.

The last paragraph of Fr. Lombardi’s letter tries to create a smokescreen – the letter was in 1997 before Cardinal Ratzinger took over the portfolio in 2001 and directed all abuse allegations to come to him and he would decide what would be done. Lombardi’s statement suggests that the position had changed. It had not.

“Pontifical secrecy” in the same terms was again imposed with no exceptions for countries where the law required mandatory reporting. Sure, concessions were given to Australia and Britain, and to the US in 2002, and so what Archbishop Storero said in his letter was true – there was dialogue with at least those three particular episcopal conferences and concessions given. But there were an awful lot of English speaking countries still bound by “pontifical secrecy” – Ireland being one of them. And it was not only English speaking countries. France had a similar requirement.

All Josef Ratzinger had to do in 2001 was to put in a few words into his directive to the effect that “pontifical secrecy” did not apply to reporting such crimes to the police where the local law required it. He knew that was all that was needed.

And that gives the lie to this statement by Fr. Lombardi,

However, he said, the Vatican has made it clear to bishops that in their policies for dealing with abuse accusations and in concrete situations "they must respect the laws of their country," including when those laws require the church to report accusations to police or the courts.

That only ever happened when the Bishops went to Rome and said that things were getting too hot for them. That happened in Australia with Bishop Bede Heather. It happened in England with similar pressure on Cardinal Cormack Murphy-O'Connor, and the Americans were deluged with the problems with Cardinal Law etc. etc. that after their Dallas meeting they went to see Josef Ratzinger personally, and got their dispensation.

And if Lombardi's statement were true, where is the evidence that even in one of the 3,000 cases that Josef Ratzinger handled after 2001, he instructed the bishop to report the matter to the police? None so far has been produced.

Given all their knowledge about the position in the English speaking world and their "global study", the only inference that can be drawn from the documents themselves and the behaviour of Josef Ratzinger, Tercicio Bertone and John Paul II is that they had agreed that they would continue with the cover up wherever they could get away with it.

Tags:
Federico Lombardi, Archbishop Luciano Storero