Posted on 03/13/2010 12:00:49 PM PST by presidio9
The Vatican on Saturday fought attempts to link Pope Benedict XVI to child sex abuse in a counteroffensive against the widening paedophilia scandals. "It is clearly evident that in the past few days there are some who have sought -- with a dogged focus on Regensburg and Munich -- elements to personally implicate the Holy Father in questions of abuse," spokesman Federico Lombardi said.
"It is clear that these efforts have failed," he said on Radio Vatican.
On Friday, the pope's former diocese of Munich confirmed a report that when he was an archbishop in 1980, he approved housing for a priest who was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex.
Six years later, the priest was given a suspended prison sentence for child sex offences. The archdiocese said the priest in question still works in Bavaria, with no known repeat violations.
The disclosure added to a growing scandal in Germany that has already come close to Pope Benedict's brother Georg Ratzinger, a former choirmaster.
The first revelations emerged in January when an elite Jesuit school in Berlin admitted systematic sexual abuse of pupils by two priests in the 1970s and 1980s.
Among other boarding schools implicated is one attached to the Domspatzen ("Cathedral Sparrows"), Regensburg cathedral's thousand-year-old choir which was run for 30 years by the pope's older brother Ratzinger, who is now 86.
Earlier this week, Ratzinger said the alleged sexual abuse in the 1950s and 60s -- which was before his time -- was "never discussed".
However, in the latest revelations, former choirboy Thomas Mayer told German magazine Der Spiegel he had been raped by older members of the choir and that Ratzinger had violent fits of outrage during rehearsals.
"Ratzinger, I saw him extremely angry and irascible during rehearsals,"
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Amen. As many as the Lord called out.
God willing, more every day.
It's not hundreds of millions - it's actually 2.6 billion.
That's an average of about $400,000 per case for approcimately 6700 cases spanning the timeframe of 1950-2002.
Only a plurality of those cases were ever positively substantiated - most of the settlements came in the usual American fashion of a plaintiff's attorney putting together a class action suit, combining several convincing and verifiable claims with a larger class of claims varying in substance and believability.
The fact remains that a sizeable number of Catholic priests preyed upon several thousand young people - including almost 500 pre-teens - over this 52 year period.
These crimes were committed against a total population of approximately 120 million American Catholics over two generations.
This means that approximately one-twentieth of one percent of Roman Catholics were directly violated by these criminals.
Therefore my view that the media portrayal - which implies that every other Catholic child has been molested and that every other Catholic priest is a child molester - is a false and slanderous portrayal.
As you know, we've had very polite by pointed theological debates in the past.
As to your specific points:
(1) That the priesthood attracts pedophiles and homosexuals. Any profession that holds out the opportunity of spending time with children while being placed in a position of authority or supervision over them will attract pedophiles. The ongoing situation in America's public schools is an excellent case in point.
Plenty of clergy in other Christian denominations have been arrested for similar crimes for the same reasons.
One could argue that homosexuals might gravitate to the priesthood because it is a good "cover" for a man who, if a layman, would be obviously a "confirmed bachelor." That's less of an issue lately, since the shame and scandal of public homosexuality no longer exists in our society.
(2) You say that the problem "continues unabated." To the contrary, since the CDF took over the role of investigating these claims, the number of new accusations has declined dramatically. Several hundred priests in that timeframe have been dismissed from the ministry and every diocese in America has adopted new policies and safeguards. Even before 2001, the majority of allegations involved incidents occurring during the period of 1965-1980 - a time when the Church was in great disarray.
(3) You continue to imply that the CDF was in charge of investigating these crimes during the period of 1981-2001, which is simply not the case.
(4) You reiterate the claim that the instruction on Crimen Sollicitationis was intended to punish those who went to secular authorities regarding crimes. That is simply not the case. The claim about such informers being subject to excommunication is simply out of order - the instruction says absolutely nothing of the kind.
(5) The doctrine regarding the nature of ministry isn't really material. The idea that Father Bill McGowan is able to offer the Eucharist and hear confessions and solemnize marriages not because Bill McGowan is so great but because he is simply an instrument Christ uses to exercise His earthly ministry isn't really a factor.
The issue is that anyone who holds an office of ecclesiastical authority - be he a Catholic priest or a Presbyterian elder or an Anglican parson or a Baptist pastor - can potentially misuse his authority.
Both Reformed Christians and Catholic Christians agree that their pastors are instruments used by the Lord and that as persons they have no special merit in themselves. Where Reformed and Catholics differ is in (1) the nature of the duties they perform: Catholics believe that Baptism is truly regenerative and that the Eucharist is truly transubstantiated and (2) the duration of their obligations: Catholics believe that priests are forever marked by their ordination.
(6) You claim that Benedict XVI was "personally at the center" of the latest news story. He wasn't. First, clearly the perpetrator was the person at the center. Second, the individual who enabled the perpetrator - Msgr. Gerhard Gruber - already came forward and admitted that he facilitated the reassignment of the perpetrator in question.
Um, Harley-D, your link clearly demonstrates that the original letter Crimen Sollicitationis was issued by the CDF in 1962, 19 years before Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the CDF.
He wrote the 2001 instruction on Crimen Sollicitationis - in which he pointed out that various aspects of that 1962 letter were null and void because they contradicted the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983. The message of his instruction on the letter was that prelates could not use the pretext of hiding behind a liberal interpretation of a 1962 letter that, in 2001, had already been obsolete for 18 years.
My FIL was EO. My MIL was RC. The children were raised in the RCC. My FIL said to his dying day the cover up was as bad as the crimes, that they should have thrown the doors open and prosecuted the criminals instead of protecting them.
Of course what did he know about law enforcement and doing the right thing, he was only the commissioner of the state police at one time in his career. Thanks be to God, he came to live with us before he died and heard The Gospel preached every Sunday he came to church with us. He became a Born Again Christian prior to his death.
I don't think his story is unique. A lot of people became open to going to other churches when they saw how little regard the RCC had for their children in handling this criminality.
Here is a copy of the actual letter sent out in 1962. Note paragraph 11 which specifically lays out the punishment of excommunication for anyone speaking about these accusations/crimes.
In quickly glancing over this document I also noticed PARAGRAPH 42a which says that if the council deems the alleged victim's accusations to be without merit, then all the "documents of the accusations should be destroyed."
We can only guess the size of the Vatican shredder.
How can any parent, any Christian, any human being, think anything less? And yet so many RCs remain silent.
If these crimes were simply homosexual in nature, they would be bad enough. But they are crimes against children, and those crimes destroy those children. What parent in their right mind would send their child to a parochial school run by "celibate" men and women who purposely deprive themselves of God's gift of a family and children?
When we look around and see so many homosexuals these days it is no coincidence that when asked many many of them say they were raised Roman Catholic. Until that protected abuse ends, we can expect more of the same.
Of course what did he know about law enforcement and doing the right thing, he was only the commissioner of the state police at one time in his career. Thanks be to God, he came to live with us before he died and heard The Gospel preached every Sunday he came to church with us. He became a Born Again Christian prior to his death.
I don't think his story is unique. A lot of people became open to going to other churches when they saw how little regard the RCC had for their children in handling this criminality.
AMEN!
Hmmmm....so it was. I'm a bit surprised. How many Crimen Sollicitationis are floating around? I'll have to do a bit more research.
But, that does raise the issue as to who wrote this one and it doesn't change the facts that documented in the 1962 Crimen Sollicitationis the position of the Roman Catholic Church was obviscate, move people, and hide the facts. The Pope being head of the CDF later had to know what edicts had been written. And yet during this time he did nothing to change this policy? To me it cast the Pope in a worst light-not better. Of course, I'll have to track down his Crimen Sollicitationis.
wideawake: I appreciate your responses as you seem to be given an even-handed account of the situation. I have to plead ignorant on the practical functioning of the Romanist Church so I appreciate your description. Along those lines is where I think it get's interesting and the thing that concerns me is this paragraph:
Hours later, the Munich archdiocese admitted that it had allowed a priest suspected of having abused a child to return to pastoral work in the 1980s, while Benedict was archbishop. It stressed that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger didn’t know about the transfer and that it had been decided by a lower-ranking official.
What bothers me is how an ArchBishop could be left uninformed of a pedophile in his diceose, or whatever the jurisdictional name is? What do these Archbishops do? I'm sure there is a ton of politics involved at that level yet I'm still dismayed that that serious of offense could be handled by subordinates. Is there a reasonable explanation for this?
Regardless of the objective facts about Ratzinger . . . there’s plenty of truth to your assertion about far too many of the Roman Catholics et al hereon.
Ratzinger’s 2001 letter, sent to the world’s bishops, reiterated the punishment for anyone going outside the church with allegations of priest sexual abuse. It reminded the bishops that the result of someone going to a teacher or a police officer or a social worker or even to a parent with an allegation of sexual abuse against a priest would be excommunication for the accuser.
#############
Power mongering bureaucratic Convenience at its . . . .
AAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH
Thanks for your candor.
Sobering.
The most probable pedophiles in order are:
Fathers
Teachers
Coaches
Protestant ministers
Priests are way down on the list.
So if a Father is a teacher of mid-high history, coaches the girl’s basketball team and is a youth minister at his church on weekends/Sundays — watch out! He would be much more prone to pedophilia that any priest.
This is what is so unbelievable. The second there is an allegation the police should be called. It's the cover up that makes this so much worse.
I doubt the truth of this, but that's not really the point. The key is what does that organization (church, school, Scouts etc.) do when there is an allegation. Is the first step an internal investigation, or are the authorities called?
I think you will find in at least 90% of the cases involving Evangelical or Reformed churches the authorities are called almost immediately. The problem in the case of the RCC is the authorities were never called. The priests were transfered and in most cases abused children where they were transfered to.
The obvious conclusion is for the RCC protecting it's reputation is more important than protecting children.
Harley-D, as far as I know the only documents by the name of Crimen Sollictationis are the original rescript of 1962 and the instruction on the rescript of 2001.
As regards to why the Pope waited until 2001 to revoke some of the terms of the original, the simple answer is that the objectionable terms were rendered obsolete by the new Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1983.
The promulgation specifically states that any preexisting canon law documents that contradict the new Code are null and void.
The 2001 instruction was meant to specifically rule out attempts by predators and their attorneys to shoehorn the 1962 rescript into post-1983 legal proceedings.
And, by the way, I think it is absolutely sound practice to not publicize the name of someone accused of abuse until it has been ascertained that the accusation has merit. Quite often on FR we see stories about men who are falsely accused and convicted of rape and even when they are finally vindicated, their good name is still forever ruined. False claims should be shredded.
And it is also clear in retrospect that discipline and rehabilitation - which were thought of in such a hopeful light in the 1960s - are not very useful in the context of predators like this.
Keeping these matters private in light of what was known about such criminals in 1962 may have seemed prudent at the time. Knowing what we know now about the nature of this inclination and the crimes that inevitably result from it, it is clear that once a claim of abuse has been substantiated the only person whose privacy should be a concern is the privacy of the victim.
BTW, DE your claim about "so many homosexuals being raised Roman Catholic" is, you have to admit after the first moment's reflection, just silly.
One out of every four Americans is Roman Catholic - there are quite a few homosexuals who were raised Pentecostal and Baptist. Here in the NYC area it's pretty much a running joke that everyone living in Manhattan who has a Southern accent is a flamboyant homosexual - and they've all got a "horror story" about being raised Baptist. In other words - they're upset about growing up in a normal Christian home.
And, the_conscience, the Archdiocese of Munich is enormous. It covers half of Bavaria, which has 13 million people, of whom almost 8 million are Catholic. Joseph Ratzinger was the Archbishop of almost 5 million Catholics, almost 1,000 parishes, over 5,000 clergy, 20,000 other employees as well as numerous hospitals and several universities and colleges.
No one dealing with a entity that size can get anything accomplished without delegating.
If you want to make the argument that the Archdiocese should be broken up into smaller and more manageable dioceses, I'm right there with you. I can't even imagine keeping tabs on 25,000 individually.
Well, the facts are the facts.
The Church has a lot of work it needs to do.
At the same time, condemning all the Catholic faithful and clergy because of the actions of these criminals and predators is simply unfair.
It is not a phenomenon unique to the Catholic Church.
That's not the question. The question is when did he know it? Nor is the size of his jurisdiction all that impressive when if you consider whether a police commissioner of New York City would be unaware if one of his captains was engaging in such behavior and disciplined for it would the police commissioner be ignorant of it or would that have reached his desk? It's not plausible that Ratzinger did not know of the report at the time and the cover-up just makes it look worse. As the great Marshak said:
When the truth is found to be lies
and all the hope within you dies
Then what?
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