Jesuit Klaus Mertes © Julia Steinbrecht (KNA)
Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes criticizes what he sees as "fear-driven crisis management" by the bishops in coming to terms with sexual abuse. "Church language in dealing with abuse often marginalizes," Mertes criticized Friday in Bonn.
At the ZdK plenary assembly in Bonn, Mertes said: "If the abuse crisis is defined as a credibility crisis, we are already back to the institution and not to the people concerned."He does not deny that the church is in a crisis of credibility. "But it will not be overcome if the goal is mere restoration of credibility."
"What do we hear from those affected?"
Instead, the central question must be: "What do we hear from those affected – and what do they need??". To this end, among other things, the previous procedure of "recognition payments" should be examined. A better access to files also belongs to it. Helpful would also be "nationwide, independent and low-threshold contact points", as the study presented by the bishops on the sexual abuse of minors by priests also suggests.
Mertes is director of the Jesuit high school Sankt Blasien in the Black Forest. As the then director of Berlin's Canisius College, he publicized cases of abuse at the school, which is also run by Jesuits, in 2010, setting the debate in motion.
Church at a crossroads
The church is at a crossroads, Mertes warned. Many Catholics at the grassroots level expected all bishops to be willing to take responsibility for structural failures of the institution in a clearly recognizable way and to bring about a corresponding change in structures: "Whoever wants to clear up abuse of power in an institution must be willing to pay the price of stigmatizing the institution."
Many staff members have been doing hard work for years and are willing to pull the coals out of the fire for the church, the Jesuit continued. "But the willingness to share the stigma in solidarity, it seems to me, is coming to its end in these days and weeks."Those who toil daily on the plains and then have to read "absurd interviews" by one or another nuncio or cardinal, "will at some point also feel sadness and anger. And if bishops remain silent about it, then fewer and fewer believers can bear it."
"Monarchical structures"
Independent reappraisal and more participation of lay people, also in filling parish offices or bishop's chairs, were urgently needed. "Monarchical structures" on the other hand prevented self-enlightenment and correction. In his speech to the plenary assembly of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), which was interrupted several times by applause, Mertes went on to say: "If the church leadership is not in a position to demand and enforce compliance with elementary standards of decency and morality, especially among its leading personnel, then the meaning of its institutional constitution and thus also its right to self-determination is called into question."