The Spire

Kimberly Von Randow ‘28

Opinions Editor

In 1992, Sinéad O’Connor stood on the stage of Saturday Night Live, held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II, tore it apart, and told millions of viewers to “fight the real enemy.” The performance sparked widespread outrage. O’Connor was condemned by many, and the protest became one of the most controversial moments in the show’s history. At the time, it was easy to see O’Connor as someone attacking the Catholic Church. But today, knowing what we know about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis, that moment is much harder to dismiss.

O’Connor’s protest came years before the extent of clergy sexual abuse and institutional failures became widely understood in the United States. She was trying to draw attention to abuse within the Church at a time when many people were not prepared to listen. Since then, in 2002, The Boston Globe blew the cover on systemic child sexual abuse and concealment within the Catholic Church in Boston, and documentaries such as The Keepers have shown what happens to people who try to expose the perpetrators. 

That history came to mind when I read the recent findings of the Massachusetts Attorney General concerning the dioceses of Worcester, Springfield, and Fall River. The investigation found that hundreds of Catholic clergy members abused nearly 1,000 children over decades. Just as disturbing, the report documented failures by Church leadership to adequately respond to allegations and, in some cases, actions that allowed accused priests to remain in ministry or concealed the reasons for their removal.

As a Catholic student attending a Catholic institution, I find this difficult to process. It would be easier to separate myself from the story by saying that these were simply evil individuals who did not represent the Church. And certainly, the priests who abused children bear responsibility for their actions. But that response is not enough. The most difficult part of the abuse crisis is not only that individual priests committed horrific acts: It is that institutions entrusted with protecting people failed to protect the most vulnerable. When Church leaders knew about allegations and prioritized reputation, secrecy or institutional protection over the safety of children, the problem became bigger than individual wrongdoing.

That should force Catholics to ask an uncomfortable question: What does it mean to love the Church when the Church has done something deeply wrong?

I don’t think the answer is to abandon Catholicism. But I also don’t think the answer is to defend the institution at all costs. Catholicism teaches the dignity of every human person, the importance of truth, the need for repentance and the responsibility to care for the vulnerable. 

It is also important to recognize that the failures documented in this report do not represent every Catholic priest, bishop, or Church leader. Throughout the Church, there are countless priests and religious leaders who dedicate their lives to serving their communities, caring for the poor, accompanying people through grief and illness, and living out their faith with humility and integrity, many of whom I have had the pleasure of meeting here at Holy Cross. Their faithful service should not be diminished by the actions of those who abused their positions or those who failed to respond appropriately. Criticizing institutional failures is not the same as condemning the people who faithfully serve the Church.

Those principles cannot suddenly become less important when acknowledging them makes the Church look bad. In fact, perhaps the opposite is true. If we truly believe the Church’s teachings, then Catholics should be among the first people willing to demand accountability when Church leaders fail to live up to them.

This is particularly important at Catholic universities. Students should not be taught, explicitly or implicitly, that faith requires silence when the institution is criticized. A Catholic education should give students the intellectual and moral courage to ask difficult questions about their own tradition. We should be able to love the Church while honestly confronting its failures.

That is why O’Connor’s performance still matters. The point is not that every criticism of the Catholic Church is correct, nor that O’Connor was right about everything she believed. Rather, her protest reminds us that sometimes people outside an institution see its failures before the institution is willing to confront them itself.

The “real enemy” is not the Catholic who asks difficult questions. It is not the survivor who speaks about what happened. It is not even criticism itself. The real enemy is the abuse, secrecy, and institutional self-protection that allowed children to be harmed.

Loving the Church does not mean pretending it has never failed. It means caring enough about what the Church claims to be to demand that it become what it says it is. As Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, “There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known” (Luke 12:2).

Copy edited by Annamaria DeCamp ’27

Featured image courtesy of The New York Times