This week, we learned that the Archdiocese of Montreal will indeed pay 14.8 million to victims of sexual assault. This is good news for victims. We can only applaud this “fair and reasonable” agreement reached last April, according to Judge Bisson.
There is more good news in this settlement. Maître Alain Arsenault, the victims’ lawyer, congratulates the Bishop of Montreal for his openness and his positive attitude. He hopes that the other cases in court will be able to experience the same “fair and reasonable” outcome with other religious institutions in Quebec. Since it was “the first time in Quebec that a diocese has settled a class action”.
It took decades to obtain a “fair and reasonable” settlement against an institution that preached and still preaches sexual relations between humans in an archaic way. Suffice it to mention the institutional positions on contraception, here is an institutional church that still resists transparency and truth.
Moreover, this institution has trained and tolerated priests who have undergone trials. They were charged and put in jail. What’s worse is that several did not seem to suffer from any guilt after their conviction. How not to be indignant at an institution that has accepted into its midst beings so unworthy of the self-proclaimed mission of this same institution? How not to be amazed that, in some countries, we can count up to 10% of the clergy who have committed acts of sexual abuse on adults, women and children? How to understand that an institution that speaks of love every Sunday had no consideration for the victims for decades, when the bishops and the Vatican knew what was going on there?
It is not a small problem as some clergymen want to present it to us. No ! This is a serious problem that involves the whole organizational regime of the Church and the whole ideology of thought of this institution on sexuality. The least we can say is that it is a sick institution!
Fortunately, the courage of the victims will perhaps serve to free this institution of its privileges; traditional privileges, fiscal privileges, economic privileges, etc. With the series of trials awaiting it, it is to be hoped that the institutional Church will no longer have the means to maintain its privileges. She may then be able to understand what it means to be a victim.
It will then be able to follow and support in a strong and active way the socially committed lay Catholics whom it has left aside, and even excluded, in certain respects. The latter have been engaged for years alongside various types of victims in several social, economic and even political organizations; sometimes even with victims of sexual assault.
It would be really good news to see an institutional Church put into practice in a concrete way the imperative to rise up against all social exclusions. Therefore, to side with all victims of systems of exclusion as the Nazarene did. Taking a clear and unequivocal bias, in concrete practices, would constitute more than a positive “openness and attitude”. It would be to put the boots in motion according to chops which currently have no more social relevance.