A national day of reconciliation or reparation should be established by the Catholic Church to acknowledge its failings over child sexual abuse, the editor of a Red emptorist publication has proposed. Father Gerard Moloney also recommends a more formal structure at national or diocesan level in which bishops and religious superiors could meet victims of sexual abuse to provide help.
Father Moloney suggests the measures would go a long way to wards rebuilding trust and restoring what he describes as the "fractured relationship" between clergy and people. He says the church should announce the national day when suitable liturgies would be celebrated in which the church as a whole, including religious orders and congregations, would acknowledge its failure to deal effectively with clerical paedophilia in the past and would seek forgiveness.
His views in the editorial in the current issue of Reality also include the proposal that as part of the day of reconciliation, the church would undertake to provide continuing pastoral care, including generous financial assistance, to those whose allegations of clerical sexual abuse had been proven. He says it would be a wonderful jubilee year gesture.
Father Moloney says the needs of the victims of sexual abuse and their families must be paramount. All that most victims wanted was to have their voices heard, to be given the opportunity to describe what happened to them, which was so necessary for healing.
Bishops and religious superiors had offered to meet victims and provide whatever help they could, but perhaps now was the time to establish some type of formal structure, at national or diocesan level, in which this could take place, he says.
It would be in a public or private setting, depending on the wishes of the victims, and would demonstrate the church's seriousness in wanting to listen to victims and their families, many of whom had felt ignored in the past.