Our Crisis and Saint Thomas à Becket, December 29

"At the end of another long day trying to sign up new clients accusing the Roman Catholic Church of sexual abuse, lawyer Adam Slater gazes out the window of his high-rise Manhattan office at one of the great symbols of the church, St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

“'I wonder how much that’s worth?' he muses.

[When my parents would take my sister and I to visit Saint Patrick's a half century ago, we were always reminded that Saint Patrick's was built with the sacrificial giving of poor immigrants.]

"Across the country, attorneys like Slater are scrambling to file a new wave of lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by clergy, thanks to rules enacted in 15 states that extend or suspend the statute of limitations to allow claims stretching back decades. Associated Press reporting found the deluge of suits could surpass anything the nation’s clergy sexual abuse crisis has seen before, with potentially more than 5,000 new cases and payouts topping $4 billion....

"lawyers [are] fighting for clients with TV ads and billboards asking, 'Were you abused by the church?'...

"Lawyers acknowledged the difficulty of predicting what will happen but several believed payouts could exceed the $350,000 national average per child sex abuse case since 2003. At the upper end, a key benchmark is the average $1.3 million the church paid per case the last time California opened a one-year window to suits in 2003" (Associated Press, 12/2/197)

If we "cross the pond" to England and go back nine centuries, perhaps we can gain some insight....

First, some background

The Norman king "Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189)... ruled as King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and Lord of Ireland; at various times, he also partially controlled Scotland, Wales and the Duchy of Brittany. Before he was 40 he controlled England, large parts of Wales, the eastern half of Ireland and the western half of France—an area that would later come to be called the Angevin Empire" (Wikipedia).

Becket is "The 12th-century saga...of the deep friendship and later conflict between...Henry II...and his friend, Sir Thomas a Becket..., and how...the monarch decided to appoint Becket archbishop of Canterbury. Much to Henry's surprise, Becket was transformed into a deeply spiritual man of God, who took his new responsibilities very seriously....

"Becket went head-to-head with the king over the vigilante murder of an erring priest by one of Henry's knights. Henry's famous despairing cry, `Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?' -- leads to Becket's martyrdom in his cathedral" (USCCB) [It must be noted that the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that Thomas' conversion was less dramatic, says nothing about Henry's famous line and indicates that Henry's culpability for Thomas' murder is actually unclear.].

"Many people who venerate the name of Thomas Becket (and/or love the movie with Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole that carries his name) likely do not understand the cause for which he was martyred, and if they did learn it, would likely be scandalized given our current presuppositions concerning the prerogatives of the omnipotent State as opposed to those of the relatively impotent Church.

"For you see, one of the major points-of-contention between King Henry II and Archbishop Becket was the attempt by the king to bring 'criminous clerics' under the immediate jurisdiction of the royal courts rather than the ecclesiastical courts. Becket himself had no desire to be lenient with these priests—quite the contrary—but he suspected (rightly, as it turns out) that the king would use the coercive power of the royal courts to threaten church officials with punishment in order to bring them more and more under his control.

“'St. Thomas seems all along to have suspected Henry of a design to strike at the independence of what the king regarded as a too powerful Church,' the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us....

"The secular powers of the state begin a juridical process saying they merely want to punish 'criminous clerics'—and of course, who could be opposed in principle to that? But as events unfold, the same laws are eventually used to dispossess the Church of its money, property, and traditional rights and privileges....

"In an earlier article..., in which I argued that we needed more well-trained canon lawyers and staff to work on diocesan tribunals, I made the following comment:


'It is not sufficiently appreciated, for example, that the scandal of pedophile priests was in many ways a failure of bishops to use their tribunals properly. There were canonically prescribed processes in place to have each of those cases adjudicated before a tribunal. But many bishops chose instead to replace centuries of pastoral wisdom and canon law with the latest fads coming out of the psychological schools. Talk about selling one’s birthright for a mess of pottage. If each of those accusations of priestly misconduct had been properly adjudicated before a tribunal, as they were supposed to have been, rather than bypassing the process so that the bishop could handle things ''quietly,'' ''on the down-low,'' ''unofficially,'' we may have seen a very different outcome.'

"….bishops should not simply 'wash their hands of the problem'...by passing the judgment off to a psychological therapist (as was done before) or by passing the judgment off to a secular tribunal (as is being done now)….

"the current appeal to secular authorities arose precisely because certain bishops in the past acted not only irresponsibly, but also contrary to canon law. The result was that a later generation of bishops has been left scrambling trying to restore their credibility even though most of them did not cause the problem. And yet doubts remain that current bishops can be trusted either. This is unfortunate, but understandable. Actions speak louder than words.

"The right approach now should be: 'Let’s learn from the mistakes of the past and get back on the right track by establishing an ecclesiastical court system that can be trusted.' Restoring the proper role of the tribunals would clearly and publically [sic] separate these judgments from any personal animus or bias on the part of the bishop either in favor or in opposition to the accused, while not simply turning our priests immediately over to the whims of the secular court system with its politically ambitious prosecutors and highly-paid litigators who push for every-higher damages to line their own pockets....

"The question we must ask now is whether some bishops in the U.S. and elsewhere have under the current pressures from the secular authorities become like those who gave in to England’s King Henry II, assuming (as did their predecessors) that all legal functions properly belong to the state, and given this view, who are increasingly willing to turn over to secular authorities all determinations not only about guilt or innocence, but about, say, whether a couple is married or not, whether things like abortion and euthanasia are wrong, and whether marriage is something between a man and a woman. Too many in the Church seem to assume that if the state says something is a marriage, it is, and if the state dissolves it, it’s dissolved.

"Perhaps some need to be reminded who was given the power 'to bind and to loosen.' And then they need to spend some time in prayer at the shrine of Thomas Becket, considering very seriously the cause for which he was willing to sacrifice his life. (Professor Randall Smith, 6/5/14)

Epilogue (of sorts) about Henry II

The Lion in Winter deals with an older Henry II and the infighting among his sons, his estranged wife, and himself over whom is to succeed him.  At age 17, Henry II had become "the Duke of Aquitaine by marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine....Henry and Eleanor had eight children – three daughters and five sons. Three of his sons would be king....In 1173 Henry's heir apparent, 'Young Henry', rebelled in protest; he was joined by his brothers Richard [the Lion Hearted] (later a king) and Geoffrey and by their mother, Eleanor....Young Henry and Geoffrey revolted again in 1183, resulting in Young Henry's death....[Henry II] was succeeded by Richard.  Henry's empire quickly collapsed during the reign of his youngest son, John." (Wikipedia).

[English] Royal Family Tree 1819-2019