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In Context

Looking at today's section of the Rule (RB 30, which you can listen to here), I could not help thinking that Benedict nowadays would be accused of abuse. Readers of Colophon know that we are deeply grieved by what we have learned in recent years about abuse perpetrated by Catholics and that we have no truck with cover-ups or attempts to pretend that it is anything other than evil. However, anyone with an ounce of historical awareness must surely realise that our understanding of childhood and what constitutes abuse has changed over time. The sexual abuse of children never has been and never could be acceptable; but "corporal punishment" takes us into a grey area. In Benedict's day, a box on the ears or a slap or a wallop was obviously perfectly acceptable, as it was in society generally until comparatively recently. It would not be so today; but in our anxiety to rid the Church of the evil of abuse, I have sometimes wondered whether we are in danger of treating everything as equally important; which means, of course, that everything is equally unimportant. Personally, I hate the idea of hitting anyone, but I am also made uncomfortable by the way in which some elderly priests and religious are being attacked for having sometimes slapped their pupils at a time when society did not condemn such practices. It reminds me that prayer for right judgement is never out of fashion.