Child abuse in the Catholic Church: An 'Irish' problem?

There is a scene in Colm Toibin’s new novel “Brooklyn” which is absolutely shocking in light of recent revelations about abuse in Ireland’s Catholic Church.

Toibin’s book is about a young Irish girl who is encouraged to go to America by her mother and sister. The girl, Eilish, settles in Brooklyn.

It is not easy, but Eilish begins to adjust, thanks in large part to a friendly priest, Father Flood, who has many connections in New York.

Flood is almost a symbol of the way the Catholic Church helped make life easier for Irish immigrants in the U.S. That alone seems like a hard thing to fathom, given the extent of abuse chronicled by Ireland’s Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.

This, of course, comes after the American Catholic Church struggled with its own lies, cover-ups and scandals related to sex abuse.

But there is an even more striking scene in Toibin’s book, one which has all the sordid elements -- religion, sex, priestly power -- we have been reading about in the news.

At one point, Eilish believes she might be pregnant. She is not married. 

Being a good Irish Catholic girl in 1950s New York, one of the first things she does is go to Confession.

“Do you love one another?” the priest asks Eilish. Then he asks, “What will you do if you are pregnant?”

It seems we have the set up here for the typical sex-loathing, authoritarian priest who is about to condemn this poor, scared girl for daring to express love with her body.

“For your penance,” the priest concludes, “I want you to say just one Hail Mary, but say it slowly and think about the words, and you must promise to come back in one month. If you are pregnant, we will have to talk again, and we will help you in every way we can.”

What is this? A benevolent priest? Offering solace rather than condemnation?

This type of priest seems almost unbelievable, given the climate created by recent revelations of child abuse.

Last week, the commission in Ireland found that abuse was rampant for decades in Ireland’s Catholic institutions.

You don’t have to be affiliated with William Donahue’s Catholic League for Civil Rights -- which smells anti-Catholicism in the widespread reporting on this issue -- to see that the avalanche of reports about clerical abuse will make it impossible to talk about priests and the church without also dealing with abuse.

There is one final thing worth adding about the confession scene from Toibin’s book. The priest is not an Irish one. He is, instead, from an Italian-American parish.

It’s not really fair to ask if Toibin is suggesting that an Irish priest would have been much less understanding. Then again, Toibin doesn’t need to make any such suggestion.

Already, scholars and experts have concluded that the problem of Ireland’s Catholic Church was exported to the American Catholic Church.

That is the entire premise of investigative reporter Joe Rigert’s book "An Irish Tragedy: How Sex Abuse by Irish Priests Crippled the Catholic Church" (Crossland). That sounds like it could be the title of the report about Ireland released last week. But, in fact, Rigert’s book came out last year and focuses on the American Catholic Church.

So, to use Rigert’s title, is this truly an “Irish” tragedy which happens to have been spread to other countries? 

For a long time, Irish Americans have been very happy to talk about all the great things the Irish exported and which popped up in America and other diaspora nations.

Well, now, despite what the Catholic League for Civil Rights says, it seems time to ask some uncomfortable questions. 

First and foremost, the victims of abuse need to be treated as just that -- victims, rather than inconvenient reminders of some bad things that may or may not have happened long ago.

More broadly, the extent of abuse appears to have now made it almost impossible to talk about the Catholic Church as it relates to anything but abuse.

And that is a shame for those of us who know that there are many priests such as those Colm Toibin wrote about -- helpful, humorous, pious.

If it is a shame, though, it is a shame of the Church’s own making.