December 8, 2010
By Kelly Clark

A few days ago, I posted my thoughts on the thoughtless comments made by a representative of the Archbishop of Newark. (See here)  Today, I read about the priest abuse situation in Belgium.  An investigative commission released a report yesterday that estimated 2,000 abuse claims against Catholic clergy have been made.  Given that there are only some 4,000,000 Catholics in the entire country, this is staggering. 

What was the Belgian Church’s response?  This is the NY Times’ take on it: 

“Asked in March on television about the hundreds of complaints already surfacing, one of the church’s most senior figures, Cardinal Adrianus Simonis, shocked the nation by replying not in Dutch but in German. “Wir haben es nicht gewusst” — We knew nothing — he said, using a phrase associated with Nazi excuses after World War II.

“A lot of people perceived it as an affirmation of the culture of covering up cases,” said Professor Nissen, adding that it meant to many, “ ‘We should have known’ or ‘We knew but we didn’t want to know.’ ”

Why would a Belgian Cardinal respond in German with phraseology that hearkens back to the Nazi atrocity of the Jewish people during WWII?  Is he blissfully ignorant or is there a sinister motive?  I don’t know.  What I do know is that Church officials don’t focus on the survivors when they discuss the sexual abuse crisis.  Their focus remains inward, on the Church itself rather than the children who’ve been abused.  This is the problem and the crisis won’t abate until the Catholic Church is survivor focused rather than self-focused.