Students need to be there for the discussion

A panel discussion held on Feb. 6 about Pennsylvania’s 40th Grand Jury Report was an opportunity for candid conversation on reconciling Catholic identity with the Church’s sexual abuse crisis and cover-ups.

Despite the event’s importance, it was sparsely attended by St. Joe’s students, predominantly attracting community members including Charles Gallagher, a former prosecutor who worked on a 2005 grand jury investigation of sexual abuse concealment within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Contributions from people outside the St. Joe’s community can add new dimension and insight to open forum discussions, especially those regarding issues as widely impactful as sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Events like last week’s panel can and should be promoted to members of the outside community.

However, as part of a Catholic university, St. Joe’s students have a responsibility to be informed on the topic of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

Even if we do not identify as Catholic, and whether or not we have ever known anyone who was a victim of priest abuse, we live and learn in an environment steeped in Jesuit-Catholic identity.

Catholic values are enshrined in our General Education Program in the form of Faith, Justice, and the Catholic Tradition, the theology requirement.

An education on Catholicism is incomplete without an understanding of the institution behind it, and that requires learning about the Catholic Church’s internal structuring and its institutional history of protecting priests who commit sexual abuse. Last week’s panel was an opportunity to learn from experts who have worked with victims of priest abuse and who study the crisis within the Church.

Scheduling conflicts and busy days may also be to blame for the lack of turnout from St. Joe’s students, and that is perfectly understandable. With discussions as important as these, however, the focus should be on making time rather than finding the time.

It is, of course, uncomfortable for anyone, regardless of religious identity, to confront such an overwhelming crisis. It is beyond uncomfortable for people of the Catholic faith to reconcile their religion with the Church’s failure to shield countless victims who once found refuge in Catholicism.

However, it must be possible for Catholic people of faith to have their own relationship with their religion while also personally acknowledging and confronting the Church’s systemic problems, whether that be their protection of abusive priests, their refusal to ordain women or their outdated stances on human sexuality.

Being close to an institution with systemic problems does not mean that a person or an organization automatically subscribes to what that institution does and believes.

However, the Catholic Church is an immensely powerful organization. As students at a Catholic university, we can’t afford to be uneducated on the harm that the Church has caused both continents away and right here in Philadelphia.

It is only through informing ourselves on this issue, and the people and institutions responsible for it, that we can begin to support survivors of priest abuse and open up discussion.

After the release of August’s grand jury report, the St. Joe’s community was reminded of how close it is to the Church’s sexual abuse crisis when an email memorandum disclosed that a priest cited in the report was employed in the Division of Student Life during the 1976-1977 academic year.

There was another grand jury report, too, released after the 2005 investigation into the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. That report revealed more than forty years of abuse concealed by two cardinals and named 63 offending priests.

And 14 years after that, one of the prosecutors who worked to bring justice to those priests’ victims spoke up at a panel discussion on yet another grand jury report which brought to light an abuse crisis spanning six dioceses and numbering 300 abusive priests and nearly 1,000 victims.

That is indicative of a cycle, and it is one we all have an obligation to break through action which can only begin with acknowledgment and meaningful discussion.

—The Editorial Board

This week’s Editorial Board is comprised of the Editor in Chief, News Editor, Opinions Editor, Editorial Page Editor, Lifestyle Editor and Assistant Lifestyle Editor. This editorial reflects the views of the Board and not the entire Hawk staff.