1115.org

Last week, the Pope’s handpicked number two official in the Vatican made some criminally tone-deaf remarks about the clergy abuse scandal, when he said that while there was certainly some suffering by the victims, and by their families, it was the church that suffered the most (or, if you prefer to read it that way, the church’s suffering was the most important):

The abuse crisis has caused “so much suffering for the victims, for the families of the victims and above all to the church…”

So what did His infallible Holiness do this week? Reprised that statement with even greater tone-deafness.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” Benedict said, adding that he would work to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood. “It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission.”

Not even the token acknowledgment of the suffering of the victims and their families this time. Somehow, victims noticed:

At a news conference in Boston organized by a victims’ group, Mr. Costello, who said he was abused by a priest in West Roxbury, Mass., starting when he was 10, said he was shocked that the pope would talk about his own suffering and that of the church while making no mention of the harm done to victims.

“What about the suffering of the children?” he said, adding that he planned to travel to New York to read aloud the names of victims on Friday while the pope addresses the United Nations.

Here’s one reason it may be difficult for the pope to understand how it all could have happened: he has been unwilling to meet with victims of the abuse. Apparently, his empathy does not extend that far.

At the vigil in Washington, another victim, Peter Isley, who is a national board member of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the pope’s comments rang hollow.

“The pope says he has empathy and that he doesn’t understand how this could happen, and yet he is not willing to talk to actual victims to get our input,” he said.

Various victims’ organizations requested several months ago that the pope or his representatives meet with them during the papal visit, Mr Isley said, but all such requests were met with silence.

Note that the victims were willing to settle for meeting with the pope’s representatives. But the pope wants his words on the scandal to just be papal bull. He wants to go on pretending that the scandal is only about some priests incomprehensibly betraying their mission. He wants to go on ignoring the role of bishops as facilitators. In the words of Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability (a Web site that documents the sexual abuse scandal):

“Rather than shifting attention to pedophile priests, he needs to focus on the culpability of bishops,” she said. “The crisis occurred because many U.S. bishops were willing to hide their priests’ crimes from the police with lies.”

His Holiness Pope Benedict the Umpteenth is not going to do very much to heal the deep wounds this scandal has inflicted on U.S. Catholics till he is willing to admit that it is the role of the complicit bishops that has caused so much anguish that conflicted so many of his flock. It wasn’t “how could the parish priests do this?”, it was “how could their bishops have conspired to cover it up and allow the predators to continue their abuse unchecked in a different parish?”. It is the role of the bishops that defines the real crisis of faith for many devout or once-devout U.S. Catholics. Apparently, all that the Pope’s visit will do is dishearten them even more.

It’s inconceivable that the pope and his advisers and representatives are really blind to all this. So why is the pope taking the stance that he is? What explains his determined blindness? Could a certain German priest have some ugly secrets of his own that never came out? Maybe he’s in no position to cast the first stone at the bishops in question?