Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of CIASE, responded to the critique by defending his team’s work.
“Criticism of our report is of course legitimate. I wrote about it in the foreword. But in this case, I feel sadness, and even grief, because I myself am a member of this academy,” the senior civil servant told La Croix.
“The rules of due process and simple confraternity could have justified prior exchanges, if not an adversarial debate. Nothing that happened was elegant or fair, even if I have great respect for some of the signatories.”
Moulins-Beaufort wrote an article on Nov. 29 insisting that the French bishops would not play down the CIASE report.
“It is important to understand that it is not so much in the face of the damning figures established by CIASE and debated by some that the bishops have decided to assume the institutional responsibility of the Church and to speak of a systemic dimension,” he wrote.
He continued: “These figures were an indication for us. It is by listening to the victims, those whose testimonies CIASE has gathered, those whom we have been meeting for years, that we have made progress. It is by placing ourselves before the Lord.”
“Priests have committed acts of violence and sexual aggression against minors, priests have been guilty of acts of spiritual control, in too great a number for us to consider this as a marginal phenomenon.”
The CIASE report made 45 recommendations, including a request for the Church to reconsider the seal of confession in relation to abuse as well as changes to Church law.
The critique’s authors noted that the report recognized that there was no causal link between celibacy and sexual abuse.
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But they said that “recommendation 4 deals with priestly celibacy and invites [the Church] ‘to identify the ethical requirements of consecrated celibacy, in particular with regard to the representation of the priest and the risk incurred of bestowing on him the status of hero, or of placing him in a position of dominance.’”
They argued that “this recommendation falls outside the scope of the commission’s competence.”
In conclusion, the academy members underlined that an independent study of clerical abuse was necessary.
But they wrote: “The recommendations of a commission without ecclesial or civil authority can only be indicative to guide the action of the Church and its faithful.”
“Some of them could prove ruinous for the Church. They carry the seeds of a multiplication of procedures initiated by false victims, to the detriment of those who have really been victims of predators.”
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