The letter issued by Pope Francis yesterday about clerical sex abuse has been greeted with dismay by representative groups of sex abuse victims. I am not surprised.

Sadly, the letter does no more than state the obvious. That sex abuse of children is appalling. That those responsible should be held to account. That those who facilitate abuse or attempt to cover it up should also be made accountable.

A fifteen year old could have written any of that in a school essay, and been given a 'C' and the instruction: “Must try harder.”

The truth is that it is Pope Francis, and his circle of advisers in the Vatican, who must try harder. Subjected to careful scrutiny, the letter he issued is pathetic in its lack of any meaningful effort to say how the Roman Catholic Church really intends to address the issue – both historic and current – of the child sexual abuse, carried out by members of the clergy, and buried by members of the hierarchy in countries all over the world for decades.

There are other issues about Pope Francis' letter, which tell us a lot about the Church; and also about the extent to which so many who consider themselves members of the ‘faith' seem to be in denial. Mary McAleese, I am thinking of you. Mary Hanafin, I am thinking of you too.

DIVERSIONARY TACTIC
For a start, the Pope’s letter is addressed to the People of God. This, lest there be any doubt, is a direct reference to Roman Catholics. They are the “People of God.” No one else counts as equal in the eyes of heaven.

Intentionally or otherwise, Pope Francis is saying, in effect, that all of the rest of the world’s population, outside the 1.2 billion that are currently identified by the Vatican as Roman Catholic, are actually not truly “people of God”. And that their feelings in relation to the whole issue of clerical child sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church don’t matter.

This is a grave insult to a vast number of people.

It would have been easy to avoid being offensive. The Pope, and his scriptwriters in the Vatican, could have framed what he had to say as an open letter to the people of the world. But instead he elected to be sectarian, addressing only Roman Catholics.

In taking this approach, however, Pope Francis is also ignoring the stark truth that countless thousands of victims of clerical sex abuse have left their Catholicism far behind them and have no intention whatsoever of going back. They want nothing to do with the Church, unless it is to witness the guilty individuals, and their superiors, making full and proper recompense for the injuries inflicted. Seeing their abusers locked up and behind bars might also be welcome. Hearing the same old apologies reheated is certainly not.

To say nothing of any substance in what had been heralded as a potentially historic letter is bad enough. But condescending to the victims – in the way that the Pope does – is far, far worse.

There is a line where Pope Francis says: “The pain of the victims is also our pain.”

Think about it. The clear message is this: “We are suffering as much as you are.”

Does he not realise that this is the height of presumptuousness? Or that it is deeply insensitive, an affront to the depth of the trauma that countless real victims actually suffered.

Neither Pope Francis nor any other bishop, or cleric, could ever feel anything resembling the naked fear, confusion, hurt, pain, loss of self-esteem, depression, suicidal feelings and worse, that were forced on individuals, directly as a result of the brutal torture, to which so many children were subjected over prolonged periods by their abusers, both lay and clerical.

The Pope is everywhere described as a humble man. Well, not here: the grim truth is that for him to suggest an equivalence is hopelessly thoughtless, and arrogant in the extreme.

On a number of occasions in the letter, Pope Francis refers to the idea that the abuse is in the past. It is a classic diversionary tactic, an attempt to evade the sordid reality, which is this: much of the abuse may have been in the past, but the cover-up and denial has been recent and is ongoing.

To understand the full gravity of this, we have to ask: why is he writing this letter now?

Pope Francis is writing it now, only because the revelations about the scale of the Church’s wrongdoing, as an institution, in the state of Pennsylvania, forced his hand. And because he is coming to a country where people have made it clear that they have really, finally had enough.

PENANCE WILL HELP

For students of religion, it is impossible to miss the fact that there is an element of absurd delusion at the core of his message. As it happens, it gets to the heart of the delusion around which the whole edifice of Catholicism is built.

He says of the victims: “Their outcry was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it, or sought even to resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity. The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side he stands.”

It is worth reading that again. As a statement of the Church’s position, it is mind-boggling in its crassness.

Is he saying that the ‘Lord’ was blind to what was happening until now? That the 'Lord God' simply didn’t know about the rampant abuse of innocent children – until 2018! Despite having come down on earth and lived for 33 years as if human? You can bet that this shit has been going on since long before the Church even existed. It got worse as a result of what went on in the cloistered realms of the patriarchy of the Church. But priests hardly invented it.

If it is at all conceivable that he didn’t know, we have to ask: well, what does this say about ‘the Lord’?

In truth, of course, an all-powerful, all-seeing, interventionist God – which is how he has been characterised by Pope Francis – cannot possibly plead ignorance.

Elsewhere, as a form of mitigation, the Pope makes much of the fact that some of these abuses go back 70 years.

Well, I’m sorry: if the Lord, or God, is involved in hearing these ‘cries' now and responding, then we have to infer that the same Lord was happy to let them proceed, until the screams and shouts got so loud that they couldn’t be ignored any more…

In another bizarre twist, Pope Francis then says that he “makes his own” the words of Cardinal Ratzinger (a man who, by the way, failed dismally to deal with clerical sex abuse), who had things to say in 2005 – that’s right, about the suffering “endured by the Redeemer.”

Throughout the Pope's letter, one insult is heaped upon another in this way. There is no reference here, for example, to the far more important suffering endured by the victims. God’s suffering is what matters! The same God who did nothing to stop this appalling abuse…

It is a tired old theme that he repeats like a mantra.

"Today we are challenged as the People of God,” he says with a lack of self-reflection that is honestly astonishing, "to take on the pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit.”

Reading that, I wanted to scream: you cannot take on the pain of victims. You haven’t, you can’t and you won’t! This is just waffle, and arrogant, self-deluding waffle at that.

“Today we want solidarity,” he says.

Not we ‘show' solidarity. We ‘want'.

Can he not see that this is far too much to ask of the the majority of victims? Why should they show any form of solidarity with their abusers? That is the last thing most of them feel, or want to feel.

Victims of child sex abuse have different ways of looking at their relationship with the Church. Some are supremely forgiving, and that is their right. But the vast majority want justice. They want criminal investigations. They want the perpetrators not to get off scot free. And they also want the compensation to which they are entitled paid in full, out of Church coffers.

The letter contains further platitudes about the need for personal and communal conversion – whatever that means – when what is really needed is a complete change in the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to its relationship to the State; and in particular, to the fact that it has always seen its interests as being of greater importance than the laws of the land, in Ireland and elsewhere.

"To do so,” Pope Francis says about ‘communal’ conversion, "prayer and penance will help.”

I have thought about this for a while. Mulled it over. Held it up to the light. There is no way, it seems to me, of seeing this injunction except as a form of victim-blaming. It would be one thing if he talked about the need for the clergy and the hierarchy to do “penance” – but to imply that ordinary Roman Catholics or, more perversely again, the victims themselves should participate in “penance”, for crimes that were committed by someone else against them, is a shocking mockery of those who have been wounded by child sex abuse, in many cases irreparably.

And there is more in the same vein.

"When we experience the desolation caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, 'to insist more upon prayer', seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church.”

In other words, Pope Francis is telling victims of clerical sex abuse, and of the scandalous cover-up of the crimes that were committed against them: “Shut up and pray and you will learn to love the Church again.”

When you look at it closely, it is indeed an appallingly insensitive, unjust, inadequate and wilfully condescending piece of self-exculpation.

I know that the Irish bishops are stuck with the letter, even if some might like the Pope to have gone further. But for Bishop Leahy of Limerick to describe it as a clarion call is grossly, hopelessly misplaced. Rather, as Maeve Lewis, the Executive Director of One In Four implied, it is a complete damp squib.

EVIL ACTS
At this grievous moment in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, there are things that Pope Francis might have said, which would deserve that kind of praise. He can use the following copyright-free, if that is any help in his currently stalled quest to do the right thing.

• We have decided to put €100 billion of the vast fortunes we have accumulated in land, property, businesses, artworks, buildings, investments and cash into a fund to recompense victims of clerical child sexual abuse all over the world. We will come up with more if necessary.

• We will give the civil authorities in democratic countries, and perhaps in others, unlimited access to any and every file which relates to child sex abuse; and we openly and categorically confirm that we wish to see all of those clerics responsible brought fully and finally to justice and will assist in this process.

• For the avoidance of doubt, we specifically agree that any member of the hierarchy or senior member of a religious order, who engaged in a conscious cover-up, or who exposed children knowingly to further danger should also be questioned and charged if that is appropriate.

• We hereby commit unreservedly to removing from office any Cardinal or Bishop who can be shown to have participated in a cover-up, or who moved a cleric who was an abuser from place to place knowingly, and thereby facilitated the abuse of an even greater number of innocent children.

• We commit to an internal campaign of re-education of clergy, to ensure that the poison which we as an institution have injected into the lives of the different nations of the earth is eradicated to the greatest extent in our power. And that review will include an open-ness to bringing an end to the vow of celibacy for priests.

• We also commit to ending any and every form of discrimination against women in the church, or by the church, including allowing women exactly the same access to the priesthood as men. We apologise unreservedly to all women for the suffering they have experienced at our hands, and because of our prejudices, in the past.

• We also commit to an end to the discrimination against gays, including an acceptance without reservation that sex between members of the same gender is not in any way ‘unnatural’, 'sinful’ or to be condemned. We apologise unreservedly to all gays for the suffering they have experienced at our hands, and because of our prejudices, in the past.

• Finally, in recognition of the evil acts which have been committed against children by some of our bishops, priests, brothers and less frequently but on occasion by nuns, and which we, as an organisation, consciously allowed to continue, we hereby withdraw from any ownership of schools and pass these over to the good offices of the State to run, starting in Ireland. We do not deserve your forgiveness, but we ask for it.

Please.