Michele Dillon analyses the way Church leaders have used silence, euphemisms and clericalism to control rather than serve the Church.

In Pope Francis’s concluding address to the leaders of the national conferences of Catholic bishops recently assembled in Rome (21-24 February 2019) to discuss the scourge of clerical sex abuse, he noted that “everyone knew of its presence yet no one spoke of it”. This is indeed true, and much of that silencing — whether in Ireland, the USA, Chile, Australia, or elsewhere – was a deliberate strategy of Church leaders.

For example, as we learned retrospectively, when in 1975 Irish (now-retired) Cardinal Sean Brady, in his capacity as a bishop’s secretary, interviewed a sex abuse victim of a serial priest abuser, he swore the 14-year old boy to silence (and his parents, too, were effectively silenced because they were not even allowed into the room when he was being interviewed). Subsequently, Cardinal Brady explained that an oath of confidentiality was administered to bring “solemnity” and formality to the proceedings. He also conceded that there “was a shroud of secrecy and confidentiality with a view to . . . not destroying the good name of the Church.”

Clearly, the “solemnisation” Brady had in mind was a word choice — and a strategy — to conceal something else: the use of power and the abuse of power.

Words to Deliberately Obscure

The great, late French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action elaborated on how word-games, including euphemisms, are a crucial strategy in the Catholic Church’s reproduction of inequality between the hierarchy and the laity. I recently wrote a piece for the National Catholic Reporter about how euphemistic language is not simply jargon or the pragmatic shorthand of insiders. It is used rather to mystify and to distract from and, especially, to deny a given reality.

Church officials use euphemistic language, Bourdieu argued, to inoculate themselves from acknowledgement of the real truth of Church practices and to convince the laity (and others) that there is nothing arbitrary about hierarchical power and the clerical privilege it embeds.

I thought about Bourdieu back in August as I read the findings from the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report on sex abuse in Pennsylvania Catholic dioceses.

Using Euphemisms to Conceal

The Report documented multiple instances of euphemisation in action. And indeed it called out euphemisation for what it is.

Summarising the analysis of the diocesan sex-abuse files conducted by the FBI, the Grand Jury wrote: “It's like a playbook for concealing the truth: First, make sure to use euphemisms rather than real words to describe the sexual assaults in diocese documents. Never say ‘rape’; say ‘inappropriate contact’ or ‘boundary issues'. When a priest does have to be removed, don't say why. Tell his parishioners that he is on ‘sick leave,’ or suffering from ‘nervous exhaustion.’ Or say nothing at all.” (Report: 2-3)

Euphemisms, as the Grand Jury noted, conceal the truth. And as Bourdieu elaborates, euphemisation serves to conceal the double-truth or the “coexistence of opposites” that is necessary to sustaining the Church’s power.

Double-truths and Contradictions

This is the truth that although, as the Second Vatican Council affirmed, the Church comprises the whole People of God — the laity and the ordained — in practice, the Church is structured by inequality that is sanctioned and consecrated by priestly ordination.

The fact that clerics engage in sex and the fact that such clerics are protected by the Church both materially and symbolically (through euphemistic language) illuminates the double truth of celibacy and sexual activity. It also conveys the truth that the priesthood, as the Vatican argues, is different. It “is of another order,” bound up with “the mystery of Christ” (see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Women in the Ministerial Priesthood”), but nonetheless concretised in particular ways by the Church. Indeed, its concretisation reveals the double-truth in the Church’s claim that “priesthood is a service and not a position of privilege or human power over others.”

Church Leaders Silent on Causes

Today, despite the fact that there is a great deal more talk in the Church about clerical sex abuse, Church leaders still struggle to name its root causes and to identify the necessary structural and cultural changes that might offer a credible path forward.

Only toward the very end of Francis’s relatively long speech does he intimate that the “plague of clericalism” is a “fertile” factor in the Church’s current, multifaceted crisis. And while he earlier notes that “It is difficult to grasp the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors without considering power,” he offers no comments on how power and clericalism are intertwined.

In my opinion, any emergent path forward must be grounded in Church leaders’ recognition of how sacramental power, that is, ordination, may contribute to the fermentation of abuse.

Allowing Clericalism to Continue

Francis frequently denounces clerical elitism and expresses concern lest “sacramental power [become] too closely aligned with power in general” (Joy of the Gospel par 104). In reality, however, power in the Church is inextricably bound to ordination. And ordination, by definition, consecrates a clerical culture as well as exclusionary practices toward the non-ordained.

Language, no matter how deftly employed, cannot obscure this reality.

Unless Church officials can come to recognise the standpoint of privilege and power that they occupy, and how it might be distorting their understanding of priesthood, of equality, and of sex and sex abuse, it is hard in the current moment to see a way out of the crisis they have created.

Meaningful Action Needed

Euphemisation has enabled the hierarchy to mask the double-truths (celibacy/sexual activity; priestly service/power) that have sustained its consecrated status for many generations of Catholics. But the effectiveness of that strategy may be waning.

In the US, for example, the laity’s declining confidence in Church leadership is palpable. Even more worrisome, within the space of just one year, there has been a precipitous drop in the percentage of American Catholics who rate the honesty and ethical standards of priests as high or very high: down from 49 per cent in 2017 to 31 per cent in late 2018, according to a Gallup poll.

It really is time for Church leaders across the globe to move forward from silence and word-games to meaningful actions that will accomplish structural and cultural change in the understanding of priesthood and power.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 236 April 2019: 8-9