One year after publication of the Ciase reportthe Church of France has just met, with the Santier case, a new trauma. Beyond the nature of the acts committed by the former bishop of Créteil (acts of voyeurism committed in the context of sacramental confessions), it is, once again, the behavior of the institution that is questioned, and this for two reasons: in the first place, the lightness of the sanction pronounced; then, the secrecy of this sanction. However, if this institutional scandal, which is added to an individual scandal, paradoxically highlights the need for canonical justice, it unfortunately throws a hard light on the defects of this justice as it is currently applied.
Need for canonical justice
It is, in the first place, on the absolute necessity of canonical justice that we must insist. Contrary to those who, perhaps out of desperation, believe that there is nothing more to expect from the judicial institutions of the Church and that they must give way to the justice of the State, it is enough to remember that the latter has a limited scope as to the acts it can prosecute and the sanctions it may impose.
Therefore, to comply with the present case, apart from the fact that it is largely uncertain that a “bare confession” between two adults could constitute a crime under French law, the facts of which Monsignor Santier is accused, in which they were committed in 1990s, they were largely prescribed when the two victims came forward in 2019, so in any case, even if the prosecutor had been informed, no criminal prosecution would have been possible against the former bishop.
Moreover and above all, if the state justice can inflict prison sentences on the aggressors, it is unable, due to the healthy separation of civil and religious orders, to pronounce the ecclesiastical sanctions that the commission of such acts, i.e. the removal from the clerical state. Now, in fact, it is the retention of abusive clerics that was and remains the supreme scandal in the eyes of the victims.
Clandestinity and indulgence
But, secondly, it is the enormous flaws of canonical justice that the Santier affair has brought to light. Not that Rome was to blame for not having done anything: on the contrary, as soon as they became aware of the facts, he made sure that Monsignor Santier was deprived of his functions as diocesan bishop. And if this has not been the subject of a penalty in the strict sense of canon law, such as dismissal from the clerical state, it is because, apparently, the principle of the prescription of offenses, which is also valid in canon law, precluded the initiation criminal proceedings and, therefore, made it impossible to impose this sanction.
The fact remains that the way in which the Church has handled this affair is part of the continuity of its previous practice, which can be reduced to two terms: clandestinity and clemency. Clandestinity because, instead of dismissing Monsignor Santier from his office as bishop of Créteil pursuant to canon 192 of the code of canon law, which would have had the disadvantage of having to respect the rights of the defense, motivate the decision and publish, Rome preferred to ask him for the resignation pursuant to article 401 § 2 of the said code, a procedure that does not require particular justifications.
And the Roman secret has been doubled, in France, by the lie, since this resignation has been imputed to health problems, in spite of the most elementary truth … Indulgence, because, despite the extreme gravity of the facts (the desecration of a sacrament at the expense of young people welcomed in a house of formation and discernment), to Msgr. Santier, while engaged in a life of “prayer” and “penance”, was entrusted with the functions of chaplain of a female religious community, with the possibility of saying mass in public. A circumstance which, among other things, reveals the high consideration reserved by the hierarchy for this community and for the faithful who frequent the place of worship concerned …
For a long time the Church considered itself a “perfect society”, not in the sense in which its members would be, but where it intended to exercise all the attributes of a true society, especially the right to sanction its members. . Contempt for this ecclesial dimension, accelerated after the Council thanks to its erroneous reading, is today paid dearly. Has this price become so unbearable that it justifies the faithful in believing that the hierarchy is now convinced of the need to establish a justice that satisfies the fundamental criteria of impartiality, efficiency and publicity? With the Santier case it is still possible to doubt it.
