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How can Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo characterize the Church's meltdown of leadership and morality by the words: "some real problems within the church have been magnified to discredit the moral authority of the church"???

As if the problems don't speak for themselves - as if the problems in their raw, simple detail are not enough to discredit the moral authority of the Church! I want desperately to trust my bishops again and to follow their moral guidance in this modern world of double-speak and deception. Over all, in the Catholic Church's 2000 year history, I do believe it has done more good than harm. But, if Church leaders really think their problems have been "magnified" and are really much smaller than they appear, I am troubled. In truth, their problems are bigger than they appear.

The sexual abuse issues point to a much larger problem of secrecy and abuse of power. As much as I was horrified to learn of the deliberate decisions made to shuffle sex abusers around, I was equally disturbed to ponder the motivations and mindset of those making these decisions. Did they think they could do things that would never be questioned? Did they believe hiding evil justified embarrassment? Were they the "father" and we (the laity and parish priests) the 10 year olds who couldn't understand or be consulted? Did they think this evil wasn't so bad? Did they even consider the impact of one more child being abused when they gave the go ahead for a bad priest's new assignment?

I haven't talked to the bishops, so I don't know - but I've got an awful lot of unanswered questions that need to be addressed before I trust again.

" ... the crisis that has been used to discredit the church."

And just who "used" the crisis? IMHO the Bishops discredited the Church from within. It will take a generation to undo the damage done ... the next generation of priests and bishops.

"We all know that we are going through difficult times and that some real problems within the church have been magnified to discredit the moral authority of the church,"

I don't know about that, but I do know that in dioceses where the problem was recognized and dealt with early on in the scandal (Belleview, IL for example) the bishop and honest priests have eliminated priest abuse of kids.

I am reminded of the book "Secrecy and Power" about J. Edgar Hoover(rumored homosexual). How Hoover built quite an organization through PR, unquestioned authority, blackmail, and threats.

If you look at threads in the Religion ghetto, where the Catholic Caucus on FR resides, you'll find that the most dogmatic of your brethren are in denial as to the root causes of the scandal - secrecy and abuse of power. Every excuse is plausible to them, from blaming it all on Vatican II, to secular society outside the Church, to arguing that the Church is actually more moral than the rest, and that the articles are just attacks on superior morality. The strawmen pop up, from every gay man who ever lived to all psychologists (most of whom had recommended time and again that abusers not be returned to duty, but were ignored).

They then go on to lament the loss of liquid assets in settlements as depriving so many of so much good which could be done with those funds, yet ignoring the fact that the money was sitting there, unused and accumulating in gross amounts while the chanceries were poor mouthing on every charitable or developmental work.

How can Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo characterize the Church's meltdown of leadership and morality by the words: "some real problems within the church have been magnified to discredit the moral authority of the church"???

All you have to do is look at the actions of groups like Voice of the Faithless and people like James Carroll, Richard McBrien, Joan Chittister and Frankie Kissling to see that Montalvos' description is accurate. Opportunists have seized upon what happened to promote a liberal agenda and weaken the absolute teachings of the Church. You're guilty as well, painting with such a large brush and characterizing what has happened as a meltdown. Take a look at the Catechism. It hasn't changed. What happened in Boston is not reflective of what has taken place in the vast majority of dioceses around this country. Boston has long had the reputation of being a cesspool. Is there some rot and corruption in the episcopacy? Sure there is. Just as there was when St. Atahanasius wrote "The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." in the 4th century.

See what I mean?

They're really nasty buggers, too.

The sexual abuse issues point to a much larger problem of secrecy and abuse of power. As much as I was horrified to learn of the deliberate decisions made to shuffle sex abusers around, I was equally disturbed to ponder the motivations and mindset of those making these decisions.

As a life long Catholic, I don't know which hurt more - the fact that certain priests committed these deeds, or the fact that the Bishops tried to cover it up or even pretend it never happened and re-assigned them.

I'm still Catholic and I still have faith in my church because I know that the majority of the clergy are honest. Still, this undermines my "faith" in the powers that be within the hierarchy of the church.

For heaven's sake:

1). The scandal involves less than 3% of all priests in the United States.

2). The issue is NOT pedophilia. 99% of the cases involved teenage boys who were minimally sexually mature. The issue is one of homosexual priests who failed to conform with their vows of chastity.

The press LOVES the term "pedophile priests" since it has snappy alliteration and aids the liberal agenda to discredit traditional moral authority ("homosexual priests" lacks penache and doesn't convey the proper bias of predation). The press has failed to accurately report the facts of the scandal, naturally enough, since to do so would delegitimize the homosexual political agenda so popular in that press.

3). Protestant married clergy has three times the rate of reported sexual abuse as Catholic priests (as reported by a University of Pennsylvania study done in 1998, I think was the year). There are twice as many Protestant clergy serving prison terms for sexual offenses as there are Catholic priests serving time for the same reason.

Why doesn't the press report such things? Well, how might fashionable agenda to normalize homosexual behavior and marriage best be realized? Discredit the single largest congregation of traditional morality in the nation, as a beginning. Silence it. But if the issue to silence it is an issue that discredits liberal political goals (homosexual clergy, homosexual marriage, homosexual Boy Scout leaders, etc., etc.), then give the story a view that reveals only a few of the facts.

That strategy seems to be working, by the tone of things even here, at Free Republic.

4). Fortunately, this will pass. This is a time for purification of the Church, for removal of homosexual agenda from Catholic seminaries, for reinvigoration of Church teachings regarding sex and sexuality that have become lax, even endorsing immorality, in the minds of baby-boomer theologians and moralists. Church teachings have not changed, I must emphasize. Teachers were (and are) in error and their errors will be purged from the living Church, but that will take time. As a cardinal in the Vatican court said, when Napoleon said he would destroy the Church with his military and political power, "We cardinals have not succeeded in destroying the Church from within, for 1,800 years: what makes Napoleon think he will succeed in a few decades?"

The gates of hell will not prevail against it.

The paradox about this particular scandal is that is was caused chiefly by the same people who then proceeded to break the scandal and try to spin it for their own purposes: liberal dissenters and sexual revolutionaries.

In any human institution there will always be some sinners. Nothing in this world is ever perfect. But the reason why there were more active homosexual priests than there should have been (probably 2 or 3% or thereabouts) is that the Church was caught up in the countercultural revolution that began in 1968 and more or less coincided with the Second Vatican Council. Some factions in the Church, almost entirely liberal dissenters, decided that the sexual revolution belonged to them as well as too all those happy hippies at Woodstock. They began to preach and practice, covertly and sometimes openly, "sexual freedom."

The Boston Globe, one of the main sources that broke the scandal, did so in an effort to weaken the Church. It's ironic, because the scandal was caused by the very same attitudes that the Globe otherwise supports. That's why they pretended that it is only a pederast scandal, when in fact the real root of the problem was homosexuality and sexual profligacy--causes that the Globe normally supports. The number of pure pederasts is relatively small.

The Globe was a sympathetic supporter of NAMBLA, which had its roots in Boston, but they just couldn't resist breaking the story because one of the founders of NAMBLA was also a Catholic Priest. Needless to say, they blamed the Catholic Church, not NAMBLA, for the crisis. The bishop was put in the hot seat while NAMBLA is rarely mentioned.

The evidence suggests that the worst offenses took place a couple of decades ago, although a few offenders still remain. Things were already relatively better when the scandal actually broke.

Nevertheless, there's no doubt that many or most of the bishops failed in their duty to lead and discipline the Church, and that many of them are continuing to fail now. The crisis won't die until the bishops start doing their jobs. Presumably that's what the representative was trying to tell them. Regretably the bishop's meeting in Dallas was a dismal failure, and they still haven't confronted the real problem--lack of faith.