THE TABLET

THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY FOUNDED IN 1840

JEAN VANIER’S FALL FROM GRACE

WAKING UP TO MALIGN ABUSES OF

POWER

Revelations that Jean Vanier had indecent and abusive sexual relationships with at least six women have been deeply shocking to the many who revered him in his lifetime as a living saint. The French Canadian founder of the L’Arche movement, which does wonderful and inspiring work with mentally disabled people, was clearly flawed in a way that few suspected. None of his six victims was disabled but they were all connected with L’Arche. The evidence indicates that their involvement with him caused them long-term emotional harm, which he repeatedly refused to acknowledge.

Two details make the disclosure in a report commissioned by L’Arche International, the charity he founded, particularly distressing. Vanier was a close disciple of a French Dominican priest, Thomas Philippe, who had been sanctioned in 1954 by the Holy Office (later called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) for his unorthodox spiritual practices, including the sexual abuse of women.

Vanier denied knowing about this until much later, which was a lie and a cover-up. And Vanier incorporated similar sexual abuse into his own spiritual counselling practices. The abuse did not involve full sexual intercourse but stopped just short of it, and he told the women he abused that they were fulfilling God’s wishes by participating in it. Clearly he had a strong psychological hold over them, and clearly they were vulnerable to exploitation by this deliberate blurring of the lines between sexuality and mysticism.

So was he just a conman, a hypocrite and a pervert? And where does this leave his legacy? The fact that Jean Vanier created something beautiful in L’Arche is undeniable. His insistence that the disabled have as much to teach the rest of us as we have to teach them does not become untrue because it was he who said it. L’Arche International’s present leadership has acted impeccably over these allegations. Its very existence is owed to him as much as to anyone, as indeed is all the good it has done over the decades. That good has not been undone by these revelations.

Jean Vanier’s fall from grace coincides with the conviction of Harvey Weinstein for sexual abuse, including rape, for which he will undoubtedly be jailed. He is one of Hollywood’s most prolific and renowned film producers, with films to his credit ranging from Shakespeare in Love to Pulp Fiction. They do not cease to be good because he produced them.

Nor do the sculptures of Eric Gill cease to be beautiful because he is now known to have been a sex abuser; nor does the fact that Placido Domingo has this week admitted to the harassment and abuse of women mean that none of his operatic performances really reached the excellence they were acclaimed for. But this is an age that has begun to recognise, thanks partly to the #MeToo movement, not only how lasting and deep the emotional damage of sexual abuse can be, but how widespread it still is, and how often it involves the malign exercise of male power over women and children.

LABOUR LEADERSHIP

CONTEST

A DIVIDED PARTY WILL NEVER WIN

ELECTION

The internal debate that the Labour Party has been conducting while selecting the next party leader will have been in vain unless it answers some very hard questions. Why did it go into an election with a leader that many Labour candidates plainly did not believe in as a future prime minister? Why go into that election without a clear position on the major issue of Brexit? Its mistakes enabled Boris Johnson to win a near landslide overall majority of 80 seats – Labour’s gift to him. Many of the individual items in Jeremy Corbyn’s policy package were valid – indeed Mr Johnson has been busy borrowing some of them – but put together, Labour’s manifesto appeared confused and unrealistic. Two of the three candidates in the election to replace Mr Corbyn as leader, which started this week, have recognised that; the third, Rebecca Long-Bailey, has stood by her belief that Mr Corbyn scored 10 out of 10 as party leader. Loyalty is admirable, but not at the expense of truth. She has good ideas – on the green economy and on corporate governance reform for instance – which will prove an asset in the longer run, whatever role she is to play in Labour’s future.

Sir Keir Starmer, the front-runner and most experienced and convincing of the three, has tiptoed tactfully round the fact that some of those party members he must appeal to share Ms Long-Bailey’s view. But he has also told the party that while not repudiating Mr Corbyn, it should also embrace Tony

Blair, Labour’s most successful post-war leader with three election victories to his credit. Statistics published this week make a relevant point. While poverty, measured by such factors as life expectancy, was substantially reduced under Mr Blair’s administration, the policies of the governments that followed, including the coalition led by David Cameron, have seen a distinct and alarming increase.

Health inequality is a key measure of social injustice. This is the sure ground that Labour should campaign on, where Mr Johnson is weakest.

Lisa Nandy, the third candidate, has shone through in the leadership contest as someone who is not afraid to challenge the party to raise its game. What the debates between the three demonstrate is that Labour has people of quality and conviction offering themselves for such a thankless task as Leader of the Opposition at a time when the government is enjoying a comfortable majority and the next election is almost five years away. It was a shrewd move for Sir Keir Starmer to say that if he was elected he would offer the other two candidates for the leadership a place in the shadow cabinet.

That should help to unite the party – in Westminster and in the country – behind his leadership. One of the major flaws of Mr Corbyn’s years in office was the way the party’s leader in Parliament had been imposed by the party membership against the wishes of most Labour MPs. A party as divided as that will never win power, nor deserve to.

2 | THE TABLET | 29 FEBRUARY 2020