Extend the Rule of Law to the Catholic Church

Some ten months ago, Head Down Eyes Open posted a blog about the dark shame of systematic abuse in modern day Ireland as perpetrated by the Catholic Church. This was based on an exhaustive investigation that culminated in the some 5000 page Ryan Commission Report. Despite much deflective actions by the accused, the issue of child rape will not disappear as conveniently as some might want. On the heels of more disturbing revelations that reach to the heights (or depths) of the Vatican, head down eyes-opener Sean Deeley posts a reasonable plea to investigate perpetrators of such serious abuse.

In April 2005, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became a candidate for the highest office in the Catholic Church, much was made of his past links to the Nazis, including his brief membership of the Hitler Youth and service in a Wehrmacht anti-aircraft unit protecting a factory whose workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp. His wartime service and his deeply conservative reign as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith – where he was criticized for “theological anti-Semitism” and a series of reactionary positions on women, AIDS and homosexuality – raised questions about the appropriateness of the Vatican’s role in modern society.

Indeed, the sight of the Roman Catholic Church locking the door of the Sistine Chapel on its 115 eligible Cardinals to elect a new Pope and spiritual leader for the world’s one billion Catholics evoked a sense of wonder about concepts such as transparency, equality, democracy and justice in the 21^st Century.

8000 years of celibacy

One hundred and fifteen men – the vast majority between the ages of 70 and 80 years – with a collective experience of over 8,000 years of celibacy (or so we were led to believe), sitting down to pick one old man to provide global moral guidance in a world where women are disproportionately affected by the worst problems facing humanity. In Africa, where a growing number of people look to the Catholic Church for direction, it is women who bear most of the burden of extreme poverty, are more susceptible to infection with HIV/AIDS and now constitute a majority of the infected population; women who must care for the sick and the dying, walk further and carry more – whether it is water, or wood-fuel, or crops – as a result of climate change and environmental degradation; and women who suffer most because of lack of access to education, health services and protection.

Peddling lies about contraception

Membership of the Catholic Church is growing in Africa, where 15 percent of the total population – roughly 135 million people – have been born into or convinced to convert to Catholicism. In 2008, UNAIDS reported that Africa also remains the region most heavily affected by AIDS, accounting for 67 percent of all people living with HIV (22 million people) and for three quarters of all AIDS deaths in 2007. Almost 2 million Africans became infected with the disease in 2007. Globally, 35% of HIV infections and 38% of AIDS deaths in 2007 happened in Southern Africa where roughly one fifth of the population is Catholic. Lesotho – whose population is 70 percent Catholic – has one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world at 23.2 percent. In Mozambique where one person in four is Catholic, the epidemic continues to grow—exceeding 20 percent in some central and southern zones of the country.

According to UNAIDS up to ten times more girls than boys aged between 15 and 19 are infected. Many older girls and young women are coerced into having sex with older men as a result of cultural and social pressures. Women are particularly vulnerable due to widespread cultural and social factors which limit their ability to negotiate safe sex, either by refusing sex or by insisting on the use of a condom. Their plight has been worsened by the Catholic Church’s position on the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection: condom use is condemned by the Vatican as part of the “intrinsic evil of contraception”. In 2003, the World Health Organization denounced statements by the Vatican telling people not to use condoms to prevent AIDS because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass. WHO said: "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million."

In 2005, it was already clear that the “election” of another septuagenarian aficionado of the Billings Method offered little prospect of advance for the world’s most deprived women. In 1987 Ratzinger had responded to a proposal for education on the use of condoms in an AIDS-prevention campaign calling it “the facilitation of evil". In 2008, 60 Catholic groups wrote an open letter urging him to reverse the Vatican's opposition to contraception which they said "exposes millions of people to the risk of contracting the AIDS virus". His response, during his first papal visit to Africa in 2009, was to claim that the use of condoms to prevent HIV infection actually aggravates the problem, sparking outrage among health agencies trying to stem the spread of the disease.

Protecting child abusers

A widening child sex-abuse scandal in Europe now looks likely to raise further questions about Ratzinger’s suitability to act as a moral beacon for the 1 billion Catholics around the world. In recent weeks, he has been implicated in the Church’s failure to protect children who were being subjected to unspeakable horrors at the hands of Catholic priests who were supposed to protect and care for them. As Archbishop of the Diocese of Munich and Freising in 1980, Ratzinger reviewed the case of Father Peter Hullermann, accused of sexually abusing boys, including forcing an 11-year-old to perform oral sex. Ratzinger approved a proposal to transfer Hullerman to Munich, allowing him to return to full pastoral duties shortly afterward – and to find new child victims. The pope is also accused of intervening to prevent the dismissal of Reverend Lawrence Murphy who is reported to have sexually abused 200 particularly vulnerable young boys at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin where he was responsible for their care.

References in a New York Times report to correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin to Ratzinger warning that failure to take action against Murphy could undermine the moral authority of the Church are chillingly reminiscent of correspondence to Pope Pius XII during the Second World War imploring him to speak out against the killing of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. In September 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, warned Pius that Jews were being massacred in frightening proportions and forms. When Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, subsequently warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral standing, he was told that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews. Yet Pius was already well aware of what was happening: in 1942 Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius about Jewish deportations, and a year later the pope’s Slovakian Chargé d'Affaires reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.

As head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith between 1981 and 2005 Ratzinger was also well aware of what was happening to tens of thousands of young children who were being sexually abused by Catholic clergy. He was responsible for Vatican investigations into sex abuse between 2001 and 2005. Observers are asking how many of these abuse cases were reported to civil and criminal authorities? And where is the line between the Vatican’s insistence on secrecy and passive collusion in these cases – between cover-up and complicity?

Corrupt Culture of Cover Up

This is the question which Cardinal Seán Brady - head of the Catholic Church in Ireland - is also facing, amid increasing calls for a police investigation to determine whether he committed a criminal offense in 1975 when he failed to report sexual abuse by the notorious pedophile Reverend Brendan Smyth. Instead of informing police about the crimes, Brady and other clergy responsible for the enquiry covered up Smyth’s crimes, forcing a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old who had testified against Smyth at a Church enquiry to sign secrecy oaths. Smyth later admitted to molesting and raping about 100 children in Ireland and the United States and was convicted and jailed. Many of these offenses were committed after the abuse enquiry that Brady was involved in.

Brady admits now that he should have done more, but says he had been following orders from his superiors at the time. He may be satisfied that this line of defense relieves him of any responsibility to Smyth’s victims, but it didn’t work at the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust, and it remains to be seen whether or not it would wash with a jury of his peers.

Similar questions are also being asked about the role of the Vatican in suppressing information about pedophile priests and clergy in different countries. Were these decisions to cover up sex abuse taken in consultation with – or under the direction of – the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, or the pope himself? Concern is rising over reports that only a small proportion of cases are ever given full church trials and that even fewer result in priests being defrocked. The same questions about transparency, democracy, equality and justice that marked Ratzinger’s election to the papal office continue to raise doubts about the appropriateness of the Vatican’s place in modern society.

Systematic Suppression of Truth

But while it is difficult to reconcile the Church’s claims about compassion and love with its institutionalized protection of its pedophile personnel and its suppression of the truth, it is incomprehensible that the people who facilitated this evil can be allowed to remain in positions of authority and responsibility within the Church. Surely the criminal justice authorities in modern, democratic countries cannot be satisfied that the Church has been made subject to the law while the individuals who suppressed evidence, swore victims and witnesses to silence, and facilitated the repetition of their crimes remain in office? Unless these officials are investigated and held legally accountable for their actions, the Rule of Law cannot be said to hold sway over the Catholic Church and there will be clergy who feel that they can continue to rape and abuse children with impunity, and officials who will continue to cover up their crimes.

/SD

The Child Brides of Yemen

Immediately prior to the massive earthquake that hit Haiti on 12th of January, Head Down Eyes Open had started to focus on Yemen, a country that has found itself bang slap in the middle of the war on terror and the struggle for hearts and minds in the Middle East. One month on, Haiti has practically consumed our every waking hour. Both myself and Joe were dispatched to Haiti and hence the blog has been inundated with stories and posts from the striken region. Now, though Haiti undoubteldy still struggles, there are signs of recovery and the long road ahead is being chartered. We would like to return to Yemen before resuming the normal mish mash of musings from the margins. We would also like to take the opportunity to thank all of you who voted for the HDEO blog (a mere one year old this month) to be nominated for an Irish Blog Award. We really appreciate it and will continue as best we can to knock out more and better posts (and now tweets too) in the years ahead.

"I'd rather die than go back to him" - the plight of Aisha.

It was every little girl’s dream - she was to get a new dress, jewellery, sweets and a party for all her friends. (Photo, left, Aisha was 10 years old when she was married. Today, two years later, she is still hoping for a divorce).

What 10-year-old Aisha (not her real name) did not know was that after the wedding party she would have to leave school, move to a village far from her parents’ home, cook and clean all day, and have sex with her older husband.

“He took out a special sheet and laid me down. After it, I started bleeding. It was so painful that I was crying and shouting, and since then I have seen him as death.” 

After a week of fighting off her husband every night, Aisha’s father was called. He had received 200,000 Yemeni Rial (US$1,000) for his daughter in `shart’, a Yemeni dowry, which he could not pay back. 

“My Dad made a cup of tea and put some pills in it, which he gave me. The pills made me feel dizzy,” said Aisha. “My Dad told me to sleep with my husband, or he would kill me, but I refused.” 

Instead Aisha broke a glass bottle over her head in a desperate attempt to stay awake. “My Dad hit me badly. I was bleeding from my mouth and nose,” she said. 

After spending a few months in her husband’s home, where she said he would regularly drug her and beat her, Aisha managed to escape. Now, two years later, aged 12, she is unable to divorce him. 

No Child Protection

A bill passed in parliament in February 2009 setting the minimum age for marriage at 17 was rejected by the Islamic Sharia Codification Committee which said it was un-Islamic, according to local women’s rights organizations. 

So, for now, there is no law protecting children against early marriages in Yemen. 

”I don’t call it marriage, but rape,” said Shada Mohammed Nasser, a lawyer at the High Court in Sanaa. She has represented several child bride divorce cases in court, but admits she has lost most of them. Only a handful of child brides have successfully managed to divorce their husbands. 

“The law on marriage stipulates that a girl should not sleep with her husband until she is mature,” said Nasser, which according to the law is the age of 15. “But the law is not enforced.” 

A girl can be married at just nine, but cannot legally seek a divorce until she is 15 or older.

Just under half of Yemeni girls, 48 percent, are married before they turn 18, according to the Washington DC-based International Centre for Research on Women. This is classified as underage, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Yemen has signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

"The greatest problem facing Yemeni women today is child marriages," said Wafa Ahmad Ali from the Yemeni Women’s Union, which has long campaigned for a raise in the minimum age of marriage.

"These early marriages rob the girl of the right to a normal childhood and education. The girls are forced to have children before their bodies are fully grown instead of going to school and playing with other children," she said. 

While politicians wrangle in parliament, young girls like Aisha are caught up in a violent world of adults which they are too young to understand, let alone escape. 

”These are our traditions,” said Aisha’s father. However, he admits that Aisha might have been too young for marriage. Though she now has a lawyer, Aisha cannot divorce until the two men who control her (her father and husband) agree on how much money each will receive. (Photo, right, Shada Mohammed Nasser, a lawyer at the High Court in Sanaa, talking to the parents of a child bride outside court.)

What Aisha wants is clear: “I’d rather die than go back to him,” she said, wiping a tear from behind her veil.

This post and photos was based on an original report with our friends in IRIN.

/PC

"Abuse was the System" - The Dark Shame of Systematic Abuse, Torture and Slavery in Modern Day Ireland

This week the Ryan Commission, which was established 9 years ago to inquire into the systematic abuse of children in Irish religious institutions, issued its 2'565 page report. The findings are simply horrific. Ryan went so far as to say that not only was there systematic abuse but "abuse was the system". 

As an Irish citizen I feel an unsettling mix of extraordinary shame and a rasping relief that the contents of this report are now open to public scrutiny. It causes deep shame but could deliver us into a truly modern era, free and healed from the hypocrisy of the Catholic clergy. 

The report investigated the known chronic abuse carried out by religious orders throughout Ireland when they were charged with the care of vulnerable, poor and uneducated children. It paints a dark picture of a priest-ridden country where children were systematically abused and the population systematically turned a blind eye. It portrays a country at the genesis of its independence which chose to hand unaccountable power to the self-declared omnipotent church, perched on its unassailable moral highground, and a State that ignored its own responsibilities to its citizens. A State that covertly colluded with child abusers over some 60 odd years. 

The report churns out horror after horror perpetrated by pervert priests. From forced labour, separation of siblings, young children being lied to about thier parents being dead, brutal beatings and endemic sexual and physical abuse. The investigation categorically tracked down more than 800 abusers in some 200 institutions over 30 odd years. These are most likely a representational ratio from a statistical certainty of a mob of molesters which was so widespread that it touched every community and town in Ireland.

The Irish Times, in a poignant editorial, had this to say: "There is a nightmarish quality to this systemic malice, reminiscent of authoritarian regimes. We read of children “flogged, kicked . . . scalded, burned and held under water”. We read of deliberate psychological torment inflicted through humiliation, expressions of contempt and the practice of incorrectly telling children that their parents were dead. We read of returned absconders having their heads shaved and of “ritualised” floggings in one institution.

We have to call this kind of abuse by its proper name – torture. We must also call the organised exploitation of unpaid child labour – young girls placed in charge of babies “on a 24-hour basis” or working under conditions of “great suffering” in the rosary bead industry; young boys doing work that gave them no training but made money for the religious orders – by its proper name: slavery. It demands a very painful adjustment of our notions of the nature of the State to accept that it helped to inflict torture and slavery on tens of thousands of children. In the light of the commission’s report, however, we can no longer take comfort in evasions."

The Report's findings will not shock many people in Ireland, merely the fact that they have now seen the light of day. We have all grown up with the untouchable power of pompous priests. In my own school we had a serial abuser. All parents knew and opted to ignore it, to carry on in denial, such was the punitive power of theology over the huddled masses of a nation coming out from under its colonialist yoke. We all heard the stories of young girls, raped and impregnated by uncles or neighbors (or priests on occasion) and sent to industrial homes run by nuns to live out their institutionalized days in servitude to the very people who demonized them.

Ryan goes to some lengths to point out the rays of hope and light. The rare, humane company of a kind priest or nun that maintained the sanity of so many. We don't want to paint a picture of a completely tarnished religious order throughout the country; but in essence that is what it is. So widespread and deeprooted was the abuse that it required thousands of non-abusers to turn a blind eye, a degree of abuse in itself.

The report will have a great effect on Ireland in both a cultural and spiritual sense. Gone is the hubris and abuse of power of the Catholic church and gone forever the remants of reverence and deference that so many Irish communities had for their priests - a trait handed down from the schools and pulpits governed by the very same preachers.

This week I am thinking of Mannix Flynn, a man whose company I kept in Dublin in the nineties after I had read his novel 'Nothing to Say'. Mannix was a great writer and playright whose work brilliantly depicted his days as a former resident of one of Ireland's more infamous industrial schools in Letterfrack, savagely run by the Christian Brothers. Drinking with Mannix one night in Dublin after his biographical one man play James X had received standing ovations, he said something to me like: I was abandoned and brutalized by my country so I have abandoned and brutalized myself (in reference to his hard drinking and drug taking). 

I also remember one of our recently departed writers John McGahern who tried so hard to hold a mirror up to Irish society and to hold its clergy accountable. His own childhood was deeply marked by predatory priests and a family fully in thrall to the Church's twisted morality. He once remarked for instance: "When I was in my 20s it did occur to me that there was something perverted about an attitude that thought that killing somebody was a minor offence compared to kissing somebody."  And writers like John Banville who wrote movingly on this topic in the New York Times today. Am not sure why writers are providing such solace or reference during these times, but so be it. Maybe the new spiritual void will be filled by people far more worthy.

Finally of course, such a post would be erroneous without mentioning all the victims of abuse who have had to suffer in silence for decades. Those who have had to relive the horrors of their abuse as they cooperated with the Ryan Commission and, maybe worst of all, have had to suffer further indignities and humiliations at the hands of the Catholic church who chose denial, collusion and cover-up as their preferred approach to deal with the victims of thier systematic abuse. Shame on them, it's a legacy from hell.

/PC