Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Nuns — nothing but the purity of virginal self-sacrifice for their Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, unburdened over the decades by the countless and ubiquitous allegations about the depraved activities of Catholic priests. Until now.
For as long as we can remember, the Catholic Church’s priest class has been facing profound accusations of sexual misconduct. I wouldn’t claim to be a moral exemplar. I, like most of you, am just a Canadian citizen with concerns. It is important, however, to point to systems of power, often unquestioned, and ask critical questions.
In 2004, a commission found over 4,000 priests faced accusations of sexual abuse of youth over the last five decades. Perhaps partially as a result, membership and influence of the Catholic Church has been declining in Canada for decades. The most precipitous decline has been between 2001 and 2021, with 12,793,125 Roman Catholics in 2001 at 43.2 percent of the population and then 10,799,070 in 2021 at 29.9 percent.
How will this affect public policy, politics, and so on? The moral stature of the Catholic Church has been devastated internationally with the effects of these crimes, which have traditionally been deliberately hidden. The above declines in the total number of Catholics in Canada have a corresponding problem with acquisition of a new class of nuns. There were 47,000 nuns in Quebec alone in 1961. That declined to less than 6,000 by 2018.
A spokesperson for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto has argued that becoming a nun has an attraction of experiencing faith in a way that is “real and that’s robust” for younger women. But this is opining. We have to be realistic. Not only is this class of women declining precipitously; it has encountered a few recent potshots in the media. As Molly Hayes in The Globe and Mail noted, “A 97-year-old nun has been criminally charged in a historical sexual-assault case connected to a notorious residential school in Northern Ontario.” Brett Forester has reported similar stories. Are we witnessing a descent of nuns to rival that of priests?
Many of us believe that churches could be moral exemplars. They could be institutions representative of a philosophy of love and forgiveness. Yet we’re always disappointed, when this ideal is absent. Regular Canadians are not stupid; they’re just busy with getting by the days of the week at work and at home. They know people who have been affected or know of people who have been affected by the crimes of the Catholic Church.
Canada deserves better; the victims deserve better; Catholic clerics deserve better; and, most importantly, the followers of the Catholic Church deserve better. As a non-religious person, I have hope that the Catholic Church can morally renew itself. Proper accounting for a) crimes of priests and nuns against individuals and b) crimes against Indigenous peoples can be the first major, practical step in doing so.
If the Catholic Church morally regenerates, that might make (remaining) Catholics feel better about their church bureaucracy, not necessarily feeling better about the dictates of their religion.