Sexual abuse in the Church: facing the truth

The disaster is here before our eyes. And will haunt hearts and consciences for a long time. 

The veil has been lifted on what the members of France’s Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) unanimously describe as a "systemic" phenomenon. 

Mandated by the French bishops and religious superiors, commission members placed the victims at the center of their approach. They have dismantled the perverse mechanism that allowed the silence to last and the aggressions to continue. 

Basing their findings on the social sciences, they estimate that some 330,000 children were assaulted or raped over the course of seven decades by the very same people who were in charge of helping them discover Christ – priests, religious and lay people in the service of the Church. 

How can we not feel overwhelming revulsion, disgust and shame?

The obvious contradiction between words and deeds adds to the scandal of this attack on the weakest among us. 

This recursion of evil is evoking a deafening range of responses that will drown out the word of the Church for some time. 

The request for forgiveness on behalf of the bishops, expressed by their national conference president Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, was necessary. But more must be done in the months and years ahead to repair what can be repaired. 

The report mentions financial compensation and the use of restorative justice. 

It also proposes ways to limit the risks: professionalization of listening, reform of canon law, reflection on the figure of the priest and the secrecy of the confessional.

All Catholics must now take up this work and respond to it without fear and without giving up hope. 

One way to honor this virtue is to begin by recognizing how much this remarkable report is a service to the Church -- and to society as a whole -- because it is a work of truth.

Jérôme Chapuis is the editor-in-chief of La Croix.