LONDON LETTER:Leading politicians were not prepared to criticise Pope Benedict directly on the issue of the Vatican's handling of clerical child sexual abuse, writes MARK HENNESSY
THE VISIT by Pope Benedict XVI to England and Scotland last week could have been a disaster. Indeed, more than a few involved were worried: about the crowds who would come to see him and the prospect of large-scale demonstrations, and about the often gratuitously antagonistic commentary in much of the British press in the days before he arrived.
Instead, it bordered on the triumphant. Decent crowds, if not those matching the 1982 visit of Pope John Paul II, turned out to see him. Even larger numbers gathered as his popemobile passed by in Edinburgh, London and Birmingham, though a significant percentage were not locals, but tourists, or eastern European immigrants.
And he received wall-to-wall coverage from Sky News and BBC News, but that, it must be said, had as much to do with 24-hour news channels’ obsession with “events”, with images of a VIP’s motorcade leaving one location only to arrive at another minutes later, with relatively meaningless commentary covering the two.
That protesters attacked the pope on so many fronts – from clerical child sex abuse to the church’s refusal to consider an end to priests’ celibacy; from the Vatican stance on the ordination of women priests to the issues of faith schools and the pope’s attitudes to homosexuality and condoms – probably ensured none of the messages hit home.
In truth, Pope Benedict should have placed himself on difficult ground with his opening remarks to journalists travelling with him from Rome. He expressed his “shock” at discovering the existence of clerical child abuse, leaving the impression he was somehow on the margins of the crisis rather than the Vatican’s disciplinarian who is blamed for doing so much to cover it up.
The Catholic Church, he said, had not been “sufficiently vigilant and not sufficiently quick and decisive to take the necessary measures”. If so, then the pope himself is the one who has not been “sufficiently quick and decisive”, and, so far, there has been no note of personal culpability in anything he has said on the controversy that now grips the church worldwide.
The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, the group that represents many of the victims of priests in the United States, rejected the pope’s declarations, saying: “It’s disingenuous to say church officials have been slow and insufficiently vigilant in dealing with clergy sex crimes and cover-ups. On the contrary, they’ve been prompt and vigilant, but in concealing, not preventing, these horrors.”
The issue has not scarred UK public opinion in quite the same way as in Ireland and other European countries, partly because the church was less dominant in times past, but also because the Catholic Church’s response in England and Wales, while defective in many areas, has been better than elsewhere.
Nevertheless, three-quarters of the UK population believe the Catholic Church has not done enough to deal with the legacy of pain – with just over half of declared Catholics polled sharing the same opinion. It is noteworthy that Catholic opinion is not even stronger than this.
Certainly, leading politicians were not prepared to criticise him directly on the issue, preferring, as did prime minister David Cameron, to concentrate on the pope’s message that religion has a role to play in wider society and that every individual has a wider social obligation to others.
Undoubtedly, the visit has done something to settle relations between the Catholic and Anglican churches, which were upset last year by the pope’s clear attempt to poach conservative Anglican vicars who opposed their church’s ordination of women and the demands from many that these women should be able to become bishops.
That issue is not likely to disappear. The Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who was deeply annoyed by the Vatican’s action last year, recently drily pointed out that the pope and he shared common interests: a love of cats and of collecting Anglican priests.
The question now is: what will be the legacy of the pope’s visit? The Catholic Church is on the same wavelength as Mr Cameron when he talks of “the big society” and a greater role for voluntary groups, including churches, in the supply of social services. Indeed, the church warmly welcomes the language coming from No 10.
However, squalls lie ahead. The new government has already said the first sections of the equality Act that passed into law before Labour left office would come into force in October – legislation which the pope described earlier this year as an unjust limitation “on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs”.
The Catholic Church fears the legislation would prevent Catholic schools from insisting that employees are fellow- religious. Legal opinion seems split on the impact of the legislation, since there is no express prohibition of harassment on grounds of sexual orientation or religious belief for consumers, but those with a grievance could bring discrimination claims.
What of the truly secular notion to live and let live?