Some weeks ago BBC in its series The World Uncovered, showed a programme on Catholic priests and child abuse. The programme had been preceded by an advertisement, shown regularly, announcing that one hundred million children worldwide were in the care of the Catholic Church. The inference was clear: these children were at risk.

The programme was superbly produced. The running commentary of a former priest abuser added reality to the accusations. Catholics who saw the programme were shocked, alarmed and hurt. Priests are very special in the Catholic Church.

They are those sons of the Faithful who, chosen by God and by the worshipping community, are the vehicle through which Our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary becomes, not only a historical event, but the sacrificial reality which we share in the intimacy of his body and his blood.

The presence of the priest, accompanying us from baptism to death, is the living reminder of a Lord who walks with us on our own Emmaus. This was not what the BBC presented. It was rather the opposite. What we saw was depraved priests, cunning enticement, incomprehensible collusion of transferring bishops, and a culpable demand of absolute silence from Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI.

There is no excuse, no way of justifying the abuse of anyone by anyone. There is something awful when it is an abuse of the vulnerable and the innocent. This is magnified when it is a priest who breaks the trust of parents and children and breaks the trust of all those for whom he has said Mass.

And indeed the trust of the Lord himself, as vulnerable on the altar as on the cross. It must be underlined however that the Lord does not choose his priests from among the angels. He refused this choice event for his own apostles. This refusal of angels comes at a cost. Priests are chosen from imperfect societies and from among sinners like ourselves. There is however another strange affair. I will relate it.

An event occurred during the week after the BBC programme. The Irish Government published a detailed account of crime in Ireland with specific information on child abuse in preparation for new laws meant to protect children.

The official abuse statistics of the Government of the Republic of Ireland, over a period of time, showed that 4% of child abuse had been committed by priests and religious, i.e., monks, brothers and nuns.

That left 96% of the cases of abuse that had not been done by priests and religious. The largest single category was teenagers, accounting for 25% of the cases of abuse. The comment on this, remarked that teenage abuse remained a hidden category treated with silence. Professions associated with abuse included doctors, sports instructors and carpenters.

The situation within which abuse takes place is in the first place in the family, i.e., incest. As in the case of teenagers this was a category around which there was secrecy and silence.

There is another fact that goes contrary to received ideas. Children who were abused did not, in the majority of cases, turn out to be abusers in later life. A number of abusers had not been abused in childhood. In other words there was no correlation between being abused and abusing.

It should be noted that the percentage of priests abusing being 4% of the total number of abuse cases in Ireland is about the same percentage as given by Bishop Greely for the USA. He gives a more approximate figure of 4% to 5%. Ireland and the USA are the two countries of the largest number of cases of priests abusing.

The figure in France is not statistically relevant – there are very few cases of priests abusing. Over the past five years there have been three cases in France: two concerning priests from Quebec where one was charged with abusing in Senegal, and the third priest was a worker priest charged with 16 other men with abusing children in a family at Outreau.

It turned out that the story was made up by the parents who were the ones doing the abusing. In the same country there may be a significant difference between dioceses.

In Ireland the dioceses of Ferns and Dublin are the dioceses from which most of the Irish cases are quoted. But the Diocese of Cork and Ross has recorded only three cases during the same 40-year period and some Irish dioceses have recorded none.

If it seems that priests are the major abusers part of the reason is the tendency of the media in the case of priests to lump together all cases, stretching back over the period from the end of the 1940s to date. In some instances the priests are already dead and in some instances abuse may be linked to an institution, e.g., an orphanage, which has already been closed by Church or State.

Another reason is the high news profile of priests. The discovery a few months back that there was much abuse among sports coaches in Ireland was only news for a week. Sex abuse in other religions only make a few lines in the inside page of a newspaper. And yet we know that every religion with a clergy has a number of cases of clerical sex abuse. In the case of priests, it is always news and always likely to pull a readership or TV and radio audience.

Secrecy

What about secrecy and bishops transferring priests who abused? There was secrecy, denial and some bishops dodged the uncomfortable question of sanctions against an abusing priest by simply transferring the priest to another diocese and an unsuspecting bishop. However the extent of a bishop’s culpability depends on the period when this was done.

Until about 30 years ago it was believed that sex abuse of children was, like any other act of illicit sex, only a matter of morality. It was treated in exactly the same way, i.e., confrontation, penitence, forgiveness and transfer away from what was thought to be only a particular cause of temptation and sin.

When it was recognised that child abuse was more than this, it was thought that psychological treatment could cure. It was only about 15 years ago that it emerged that a cure was likely only in a relatively few cases. The lack of knowledge was not only the Church. Sex registries, now compulsory in many countries, are only about twelve years old.

A bishop who transferred a decade ago is in a different category of guilt than those who transferred thirty years ago. It should be noted that today if a report of abuse is made against a priest he is likely to be pulled out of ministry immediately. If after investigation he is proved innocent he then returns.

Secrecy is another issue, and secrecy was not only bishops. We can see from the Irish statistics that it includes teenagers and in all countries incest is surrounded by secrecy. I would suggest that there is likely to be secrecy where acknowledgement is likely to affect the cohesion of family or neighbourhood. Few parents in the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s would have reported abuse or even the rape of adults. Illegitimacy was hidden by adoption.

Finally the BBC accused Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, of demanding silence of the victims and therefore colluding with transferring bishops.

In the case of Ireland, Prime Minister Bertie Ahern has publicly thanked Benedict XVI for his assistance to the Irish Government during their handling of cases in Ireland. Bishop Walsh, former Administrator of the Diocese of Ferns and who was given the task of “cleaning up” the diocese after the resignation of the former bishop, rejected the criticism of the Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger’s role.

Rome, he declared, had done everything they could and without the help of Cardinal Ratzinger, he as administrator could not have accomplished what he had done. He quoted Benedict XVI as saying that he couldn’t understand how a priest could abuse children and then say Mass.

I have written this not only to assist Catholics in understanding the context in which priestly abuse takes place, but also in thankfulness for the many, many priests, living and dead, who have accompanied me on my pilgrimage to the Heavenly Jerusalem.

I am certain that my readers would agree with me that the extraordinary wonderfulness of the many is far greater than the vices of a few.