Curt Smith: Catholic Church must go from contrite to transparent

As a Protestant in public ministry, I agonize with my Catholic brothers and sisters in the faith along with the thousands of victims sexually abused by clerics in the scandal engulfing the church. Recent revelations suggest a tipping point, and it is a precarious point indeed.

It is so serious that, unless Roman Catholics take bold, decisive actions immediately, satisfying both the internal and external imperatives, I believe the church will suffer irreparable, irreversible harm across the world.

Christianity is the world’s most-followed faith. About a third of humanity identifies as Christian. Among the many expressions of the faith by these 2.51 billion believers, almost half practice Roman Catholicism (1.24 billion, according to Gordon Conwell Seminary). By comparison, Evangelicals, among whom I number, comprise about 350 million Christians.

So Catholicism is the most prevalent form of Christianity and is our most visible witness. Yet today, from a rare cardinal resignation to a pope remaining silent when credibly accused of protecting and promoting a serial child predator, the world sees the Catholic Church stonewalling rather than seeking and speaking truth. The only semi-independent review estimates that perhaps 4 percent of the 100,000 clerics serving in America from 1950 to 2000 molested children. This pattern is now being uncovered in Europe, South America, Australia and elsewhere. But still there is no candor, no disclosure.

Bad news comes from the secular media or law enforcement, followed by church apologies with scant details. This is not working, not for the faithful nor for a skeptical world turning cynical.

To regain its moral authority, Catholics must satisfy both an internal and an external imperative.

The internal imperative is revelation. Every detail must be disgorged and brought to full public light. Immediately. We know the facts are available. It turns out that meticulous church records detailing a heart-breaking and infuriating cover-up are the core of the report released last month by a Pennsylvania grand jury. Every fact, every name, every payment (more than $3 billion in America alone), every child, adult, seminarian, male and female—everyone harmed must come to light.

Only full, complete, unhindered revelation will allow the faithful to begin to heal from the harm done to them and the cause of Christ by predators protected by leaders fearful of harm to the church’s reputation. This is surgery on the church’s soul, for which there is no anesthesia.

The external imperative is contrition. The world needs to see brokenness, not silence. The Catholic Church has harbored a horde of pedophiles and given them sanctuary. More cynical critics say the church fostered this horde. The child victims certainly number in the hundreds of thousands worldwide, lives permanently scarred and altered by the very spiritual leaders called to nurture them in the faith.

This affects central Indiana, too. The archbishop of Indianapolis from 2012 to 2017, Joseph Tobin, has been singled out as a close associate and protege of perhaps the worst American clerical offender in a shocking shattering of silence by a top Vatican official. But Tobin’s views outlined in this recent Vatican revelation help explain tepid public-policy positions during his tenure here.

If these two imperatives—revelation and contrition—are not met, how can the Catholic Church ask God for favor? This is the ultimate risk: divine judgment, not man’s law or disapproval. We know this because of what the Bible teaches in Galatians 6:7: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

Indeed, God will not be mocked. Let’s pray this tipping point does not become a slipping point for the Catholic Church.•

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Smith is president of the Indiana Family Institute and author of “Deicide: Why Eliminating The Deity is Destroying America.” Send comments toibjedit@ibj.com.