by Mary Cullen

What happens when we listen to victims and survivors of abuse?  What impact could their experience have on the  culture and theology of the Catholic Church??

A great deal, according to a major new report from Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies.   It argues that the whole Catholic Church should listen more to the victims and survivors of clerical child abuse and the experience of affected parish communities, and consider appropriate action.

The report, entitled The Cross of the Moment, is based on research led by the  Centre for Catholic Studies. It is the first study of how the abuse crisis has impacted the whole Catholic community in England and Wales.

The report suggests that aspects of the culture and practices of the Catholic Church are implicated in how clerical child sexual abuse has happened. They also partly explain how the response of the Church has often failed, causing further pain and harm, described by victims and survivors as ’secondary abuse’.

The report invites groups across the Catholic community to listen more deeply to the voices of those directly and indirectly affected and consider what may need to change in Catholic culture and theological understanding.

It responds to Pope Francis’ proposal that to move forward, the Catholic community needs ’a continuous and profound conversion of hearts attested by concrete and effective actions that involve everyone in the Church’.

Focus

The focus of the research was to listen to the voices of victims and survivors of abuse and their families. It also listened to others either directly or indirectly affected by the abuse crisis including parish communities, laypeople, priests, deacons, bishops, religious communities and safeguarding staff. The report presents theological reflection on the experiences described.

Although the report recognises that progress has been made in safeguarding practice and in finding more compassionate ways to accompany and support victim-survivors, it concludes that more work is needed. It suggests learning from restorative justice and healing circle practices to find ways to heal relationships between victim-survivors and the Catholic community. It also suggests habits of clericalism are changed and accountability within the Church’s structures is improved.

The researchers carried out 82 interviews and four focus groups. The participants were drawn from 14 of the 22 Catholic dioceses and 16 religious orders across England and Wales.

All the research participants who had experienced sexual abuse in a Catholic setting had also experienced being treated inadequately by a representative of the Church when they came forward with an allegation or sought support around a disclosure. Many disclosures were met by denial, disbelief or a lack of compassion for the person and their pain.

A survivor explained this as ’how the institution treats you, how the institution ignores you, how the institution doesn’t want to know you’.  Another survivor said that ’you want belief more than anything or any financial compensation, before anything whatsoever, for somebody to say that they believe you means everything’.

Some victim-survivors had also later experienced sensitive support and solidarity but there were not enough of these ’glimmers of hope’.

Photo by Umit Bulut on Unsplash