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Posted on 04/13/2010 4:42:09 AM PDT by SJackson
Having criticized particular Catholic cardinals for blaming everything–including the Church’s sex scandal–on “the Jews”, let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue. To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse.
The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent. But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself.
Second, there is the tradition of forgiveness. Those of us outside the Church often think, perhaps, that the Church goes too far in forgiving. I was shocked when the previous Pope immediately forgave the man who tried to assassinate him. But this episode and other demonstrate that the tradition of forgiveness is all too real.
Third, there is the tradition of the Church regarding itself as a state. The Vatican is, after all, a nation state. The Catholic Church is not big on the separation of church and state, as are various Protestant denominations. The Catholic Church, like Orthodox Judaism, believes that matters affecting the faithful should generally be dealt within the church, without recourse to secular authorities.
Fourth, the Vatican prides itself on moving slowly and in seeing the time frame of life quite differently than the quick pace at which secular societies respond to the crisis of the day.
Fifth, the Catholic Church has long had a tradition of internal due process. Cannon Law provides for scrupulous methods of proof. The concept of the “devil’s advocate” derives from the Church’s effort to be certain that every “t” is crossed and every “I” is dotted, even when it comes to selecting saints.
None of these explanations completely justify the long inaction of the Church in coming to grips with a serious problem. But they do help to explain how good people could have allowed bad things to happen for so long a period of time. Nor is the Catholic Church the only institution that has faced problems of sexual abuse. Every hierarchical body, especially but not exclusively religious ones, has faced similar problems, though perhaps on not so large a scale.
The problem of hierarchical sex abuse has only recently emerged from the shadows. Singling out the Catholic Church, and for stereotyping all priests is simply wrong.
Pope Benedict, both before he became Pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue. He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims. He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization. Nor has he tried, as other members of the Vatican hierarchy have, to publicly blame the problem on “the Jews”, “the media,” and others.
It is obvious that despite Pope Benedict’s good efforts, more must be done, and not only by the Catholic Church but by all institutions that have experienced hierarchical sexual exploitation. They must create structures that assure prompt reporting, a zero tolerance policy and quick action, so long as these processes are consistent with due process and fairness, not only to alleged victims but to the accused as well. It’s easy to forget, in the face of real victims with real complaints, that there have also been false accusations as well. Processes must be put in place that distinguish true complaints from false ones.
Most important, this tragedy should not be used as an excuse to attack a large and revered institution that does much good throughout the world. Blame must be placed with precision and praise should be given with precision as well. The eleventh Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Stereotype, must never be forgotten.
Worst of all, the attempt by church spokesmen to dismiss the issue as “gossip” shows that nothing has changed. The people running the church appear to be just another corrupt arrogant elite.
Stalin and his successors wanted a method to topple the Roman Catholic Church so they hit upon the scheme of infiltration. Not by homosexuals at first, but by agents of the USSR. Those agents were to embed themselves in the Church, then worm their way into the decision-making jobs that would allow them to knowingly recruit homosexuals: send them to the seminaries and release them into the parishes to do their dirty work with most not knowing why there were being given this 'opportunity'.
The scheme began to work very well subsequent to Vatican II where anything was considered appropriate. It made it much easier to latch on to innocent children, use them then seek cover behind the cassocks of the corrupt bishops.
Changing the church back to the days of pre-Vatican II was the answer, and unfortunately the successors of Pope Pius XII knew that, vacillated, then continued down the road towards the damaging or destruction of the Church.
Each of these popes owe our Maker an explanation. That explanation will be difficult indeed!
The problem is that you don't understand "it". More than likely you're relying on something you've read in the secular left stream media and accepted it as factual. You should post a link to this source(s) that you're paraphrasing.
in this case the perpetrator priest had already been convicted in court of tying up and raping children, so confidentiality doesn't really apply.
If what you say is true then why hadn't this individual been incarcerated by secular authorities?
For some reason Pope Benedict (then a Cardinal) waited four years to defrock him, and in the meantime let him serve as a youth minster.
The decision to dismiss; defrock is a secular term not found in Canon law, a Priest from the clerical state lies with the Holy See not the local Bishop
Do you have a reference for that?
If it's true, whether he "served as a youth minister" or not was up to his local superiors; they had every right and power to remove him from active ministry of any kind at any time. The Pope doesn't go around picking "youth ministers" for parishes on the other side of the world.
Thank you, Mr Dershowitz.
All that Kiesle (the case you are talking about) requested from the Vatican was a dispensation from the obligations of the clerical state (meaning that he would be dispensed from the vow of celibacy, so that he could legitimately marry in the Church). That was the only thing this office handled: it did not deal with disciplinary matters, and Kiesle had already been disciplined by his bishop by being suspended from the exercise of his priestly faculties. He was essentially living as a layman under the supervision of his bishop; the first couple of letters were simply standard requests for dispensation, and there was no indication of any particular urgency or the fact that this man had committed what are called “grave sins,” which would probably have speeded it up.
When the bishop did write later, he mentioned that the man had molested boys, pleaded no contest, and received a THREE YEAR SUSPENDED SENTENCE. In other words, the civilian courts didn’t take it very seriously, either, and certainly no description of his acts was ever sent to Rome. How was the Vatican office to know, particularly since this office was not the one that was concerned with disciplining priests (suspending them) but only with requests for dispensations.
The new canon law had been put into place to prevent men from lightly accepting the obligations of the priesthood and then shrugging them off at a moment’s notice (dispensations had become a flood in the preceding years), so the policy was generally to wait until they were 40 before dispensing them. He was dispensed when he was 40, marrried, and went on to molest more children.
Nobody in Rome was “forgiving” Kiesle. The people who dropped the ball on this one were the civilian courts and the bishop. It was the bishop - not Rome, and not with Rome’s consent - who let him work as a volunteer youth minister after he had been suspended (although there is no indication that he molested any of the children in the program). It was the courts that didn’t even take the charges that seriously and gave him essentially no punishment.
Kiesle was not in any active priestly ministry at the time. He had been suspended from the exercise of the priestly ministry and was essentially just waiting to be dispensed from his vows so that he could marry, when the bishop (not Rome) let him volunteer as a youth minister. Goodness only knows why the bishop (long retired) would have made such a decision, but he did, and he certainly did not ask Rome’s permission.
I would love for the church to explain these “traditions” to me if it were my child that was abused. I would then explain one of my “traditions”: cutting off body parts of those who harm my children.
Good words from Dershowitz. He can be a raving leftist flake at times, but just when I start to mentally dismiss him, then he stuns me with a really good article showing genuine respect for the law and the Constitution.
You don’t have a correct understanding if we are referring to the same case. “De-frocking” a priest involves a long canonical process that is designed to protect the rights of defendants and takes a long long time, and this priest was so ill that the pope preferred something quicker.
As far as forgiveness goes, judge not lest ye be judged. Part of the problem is that you don’t understand the relationship of a priest to a bishop. A Bishop is to a priest what a father is to a son, and they owe them the same duty. I’m sure you know parents who have intervened on their children’s behalf even knowing that they were guilty of a transgression. Also, forgiveness itself is part of the role of any priest, including bishops. You are correct that forgiveness cannot be completed until restitution has been paid, and that is the part that most people would like to forget, as did a lot of bishops.
I would not defend any illegal behavior by any cleric, sexual or otherwise. I would, however, defend the Church when a story that actually points out that the Holy Father and the rest of the Vatican have been out in front on this issue.
This is just one more attack on a conservative, pro-life, high profile group that represents a threat to the secular lifestyle.
The police would then stop by to explain one of their traditions: "don't take the law into your own hands".
"Ah feel yer pain," though. A member of my family was attacked by a sexual predator (most emphatically not a member of the priesthood, FWIW), and my first impulse was to arm myself like Rambo and hunt him down.
I didn't. Eventually he was caught, though, and is now doing time --- but not before attacking a number of other victims.
This tradition was of great comfort to the early reformers of the 15th through 17th centuries such as Jan Hus and William Tyndale and to an extent Martin Luther and his friends.
I agree with you 100%. Those who bend over backwards to defend and excuse that which shouldn’t be defended to protect the church in the end do the institution more harm.
“at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse.”
Then how did the number of abuse cases decrease so sharply in the late 70’s early 80’s?
Freegards
{{Sigh}}
So many feel free to weigh in with an opinion despite a lack of knowledge.
Once you are a priest, you are a priest for life. The vow is permanent. You can choose to break your vow and stop performing priestly duties, or the Church can forbid you from performing priestly duties and representing the Church. Either way, you are still a priest. This is why it is a long, long process to “defrock” a priest; it’s passing a judgement on a covenant between a priest and God.
Secondly, the era of these abuses was a time when the psychiatrists were telling everyone that pedophiles could be cured. Church leadership thought these priests could be salvaged. Only 20 years of experience has taught us that pedophiles cannot be cured.
Thirdly, there is an element of militant homosexuality in the priesthood. Most were ordained in the 50’s and 60’s. Thankfully, they are retiring and will not be around much longer to protect their fellow deviants.
This is a great time of cleansing for the Church. We Catholics will be better off once we are tempered by fire.
This is from Matt Archbold at Creative Minority Report:
The Associated Press Is Lying
Most of you have heard the news that the Pope (then Cardinal Ratzinger) delayed in defrocking a pedophile priest in California in 1985. The Associated Press, and the rest of the media bandwagon, have heralded this report as ‘the smoking gun.’ Only, one problem. It’s a lie.
To portray this incident and the letter as a smoking gun is a willful misrepresentation of the truth. Want to know why I say that? I don’t need to tell you because Phil Lawler has done the job already.
Now the key questions:
• Was Cardinal Ratzinger responding to the complaints of priestly pedophilia? No. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the future Pontiff headed, did not have jurisdiction for pedophile priests until 2001. The cardinal was weighing a request for laicization of Kiesle.
• Had Oakland’s Bishop John Cummins sought to laicize Kiesle as punishment for his misconduct? No. Kiesle himself asked to be released from the priesthood. The bishop supported the wayward priest’s application.
• Was the request for laicization denied? No. Eventually, in 1987, the Vatican approved Kiesle’s dismissal from the priesthood.
• Did Kiesle abuse children again before he was laicized? To the best of our knowledge, No. The next complaints against him arose in 2002: 15 years after he was dismissed from the priesthood.
• Did Cardinal Ratzinger’s reluctance to make a quick decision mean that Kiesle remained in active ministry? No. Bishop Cummins had the authority to suspend the predator-priest, and in fact he had placed him on an extended leave of absence long before the application for laicization was entered.
• Would quicker laicization have protected children in California? No. Cardinal Ratzinger did not have the power to put Kiesle behind bars. If Kiesle had been defrocked in 1985 instead of 1987, he would have remained at large, thanks to a light sentence from the California courts. As things stood, he remained at large. He was not engaged in parish ministry and had no special access to children.
• Did the Vatican cover up evidence of Kiesle’s predatory behavior? No. The civil courts of California destroyed that evidence after the priest completed a sentence of probation— before the case ever reached Rome.
Care to name some names?
I see nobody here "defending" or "excusing" anything. But it would be nice to have the truth -- the whole truth -- told, and the media hasn't been doing that in the latest round of cases. It's not "defending" or "excusing" the inexcusable to insist that innocent people not be railroaded or slandered.
This latest round of attacks is nothing more than an attempt to smear the man who has done more than any other single individual to clean up the problem. Why? Politics, and the desire to sell papers.
I think we all understand the complexities of the situation and the media bias. The real problem isn’t why didn’t the Pope defrock wayward priests, which he certainly should have done and could have done, protests that it is a long legal process not withstanding. The problem is why didn’t the church report to law enforcement that preists were commiting crimes. The then future (now current) pope has the problem of explaining why he (and other church officials) didn’t involve law enforcement when he possibly knew crimes were being committed. As in watergate, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
Since the cover-up paper trail has a few links to the sitting pope, the media goes into hyper-drive and this is the result. It is all the more interesting because the RCC claims for itself the supreme authority of morals and the pope claims for himself the title of Vicar of Christ. And the reality is that there has and will continue to be multi-million court settlements to victims in this debacle.
What would Jesus do? Personally, I think he would have shinned the light of day on this the moment he became aware of it. If Jesus would turn over the tables of the money changers at the temple without considering the effect it would have politically, imagine what he would have done if he knew that some who (rightly or wrongly) claimed to be priests of Jehovah committed sex crimes with children.
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