The monks of Downside have announced their intention to leave Downside Abbey and find a new home. In some ways it is not a great surprise. There are only 12 monks left, the governance of Downside School was made independent last year and they are presumably rattling around in premises designed for several times as many people.
But we need also to consider the backdrop of the abuses so thoroughly documented by IICSA. The inquiry found that over decades there had been a refusal to cooperate with the statutory authorities over child sex abuse perpetrated by monks. Given that old attitudes die hard, removing the monks from the vicinity of the school is probably best all round, both for the safety of the pupils and to move the monks out of the reach of temptation.
There has been a little comment on Twitter expressing regret at the monks’ departure. Few of these have faced squarely the background of abuse. Where it has been referred to it has been described as a “period of evil” which has brought down the Abbey. I’m profoundly sceptical about that interpretation. Admittedly we only know about abuse victims from the last few decades. Any older victims are now dead and unable to tell their story. But there’s no reason to think the abuse only happened within living memory.
Some conservative Catholics put the blame on Vatican II and the changes that followed. But I know of Benedictine abuse which preceded Vatican II.
One of the great characteristics of the Catholic Church and Catholic faith is its attachment to continuity and stability. It deals in what it regards as unchanging eternal truths. So why would we not believe that the church’s attitude (and that of the Downside monks) towards covering up abuse has been similarly stable over a long period? Without access to historical records that I’m pretty sure have long since been destroyed there is no means of ever of proving it.
But if it is true that abuse and cover up has been going on since the abbey and school were established in Somerset in 1814, then the monks’ departure from next door to the school is a matter for celebration, not sorrow.
