Pope Benedict these days spends a lot of time apologising for the sins of his fathers. He has little option, given the intensity of the fury and indignation directed at the Catholic church for its mishandling of sex abuse.Last week, before 15,000 priests – the largest gathering of Catholic clergy in history – he did so again, begging forgiveness from God and from those affected, while promising to do "everything possible" to ensure that such abuse will never occur again.
What action is he promising? It's not immediately obvious.
The attempt to pin blame on Pope Benedict for decisions taken (or not taken) decades ago, and the calls by victims groups and their lawyers for him to resign, have obscured the fact that the mishandling of these cases in the past was not by the Vatican, but by the local church; and it is the local church which has had to put its house in order (and mostly, at least in English-speaking countries, it has done so).
It was the bishops in dioceses who failed to act on the accusations, or who – especially in the 1970s-80s – moved priests between parishes after spells of therapy rather than removing them from active ministry. Rome only entered the picture when a petition to laicise a priest was made by a bishop.
It is now a matter of record that, back in the 1980s, those petitions languished.
But laicisation made no difference to whether an abusive priest had contact with children; the key decision – to remove the priest from active ministry – was made (or not) by a bishop. Rome played no part in that process, and the accusation of some US lawyers that there was some kind of Vatican-ordered cover-up has proved baseless.
The Vatican's failure speedily to laicise priests convicted of abuse was still serious. Laicisation is the punishment for abuse of minors called for by the church's own law, and not to make use of that punishment – within the church's juridical system – amounted to a further injustice and scandal.
It needed putting right.
And it was, by the man who is now pope, when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he introduced sweeping reforms to procedures, enabling priests convicted or convincingly accused of abuse to be summarily dismissed from the clerical state.
The 2001 reforms also included the order that all serious allegations against priests be forwarded to him at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; there, in its offices by St Peter's Square, each Friday for four years, he sifted through some 3,000 files, coming to realise the horror and scale of sex abuse of minors in a way that few in the church – or in wider society – ever have.
This pope knows better than almost anyone the addictive, compulsive nature of sex abuse; the devastating impact it has on victims; and the way it is concealed, often for years, beneath layers of shame, denial and complicity of abuser and victim.
It was also in 2001-2002 that the church in the UK, the US and Ireland began its own reforms, to ensure that every allegation – however old, or apparently spurious – was always acted upon, and immediately referred to statutory authorities, as the key elements in procedures and guidelines whose thoroughness and transparency are models for comparable institutions.
Abuse of minors is not something institutions are usually upfront in admitting; British schools or local councils, for example, are under no obligation to make public abuse allegations, and almost never do. Yet the Catholic church in England and Wales each year publishes a report listing the number of new allegations, whether the abuse is alleged to have taken place yesterday or 30 years ago.
Why doesn't the pope order that this same model be extended to the church in all countries of the world? Wouldn't that be one clear example of doing "everything possible" to ensure abuse cannot again be covered up or ignored? It may well happen: there have been rumours for some months that a new, "global" policy is being designed by Vatican lawyers.
But it's more complicated than it looks. Catholics, as good citizens, are obliged to obey the law of their land; the church's own law demands it; and there is little point in Pope Benedict saying so.
Nor would an instruction to all the bishops of the world always to report every abuse allegation to the police guarantee that the allegation will be acted on. In some countries of the world, sex abuse of minors is not a crime; in others, the police do not bother to act or require bribing to do so.
It is a very "Anglo-Saxon" assumption that alerting the civil authorities results in swift and effective action. In some countries, a bishop handing the matter over to police would amount to washing his hands of the problem.
Whether or not a new "global Catholic policy" is coming or is even possible, Pope Benedict can still continue to take action, as he promised last week. He can lay siege to a clericalist mentality that prefers to keep everything "within the family" for the sake of the church's reputation. He can demand that the voice of the victims always be heard.
He could write a strong letter to the world's Catholic bishops that inaction on abuse is never acceptable. He can continue to listen to the stories of the victims on his visits to different countries, making himself party to their pain and their healing.
And, of course, he can and will continue to beg forgiveness, on behalf of the whole church; because saying sorry once just isn't enough.
SIC: GCUK