Posted on 01/18/2011 9:23:23 PM PST by Dr. Eckleburg
DUBLIN -- A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police - a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.
The newly revealed letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits...
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Where is the actual text? I wasn’t able to read it in the linked page.
It has become plainly obvious that the enemies of the Church have no interest in the truth. Their own comments condemn them.
Hmmm...that would seem to be giving the individual laymember quite a bit more authoritative latitude than the RCC typically grants, eh?
A lot of reporting about what the letter allegedly says but no transcript. The Miami Herald page gives an image of the letter but it is so small that you cannot read it. I am sorry but I just do not trust the media on this story, especially since the report alludes to confessions which opens up a whole other can of worms. Justice and Christian charity would withhold comment until the entire contents of the letter are printed. Of course those who already have an animus against the Catholic Church will naturally will jump to the worst conclusion without any idea of what the letter actually says. Disgusting.
I’m thinking it was intentional. I’ll wait until I read the actual paper before I make a judgement though.
Thanks for posting that. I read it carefully and found it instructive, logical, fair, easy to understand, and kind. A hotlink would be helpful because not many people are going to take the trouble to highlight, copy, and paste.
Frankly this is just another case in which the New York Times distorts matters. You can’t persuade me that a liberal New York reporter is going to be fair, and indeed she is not in her interpretation of anything people of faith might do. As the author at the link says, Why didn’t she do ten seconds worth of googling to find the truth? Clearly, she doesn’t want it.
When the prss uses Vatican instead of citing the office it came from I know they found some obscure memo from some non authoratative personnel.
“The letter nowhere instructed Irish bishops to disregard civil law reporting requirements,” he said in a statement early Wednesday”
I see I’ll amend my previous post. So once again there is confusion between what a priest had to do under canon law and what they must do under civil and/or criminal law.
The fact the press does not understand this does not surprise me at all.
“They need to hire some people who are more literate and can SAY what they MEAN instead of saying what they say and telling everyone else who reads the plain meaning of what is said that they are wrong”
Hopefully there are more literate than functionally illiterate on this boards.
“APOSTOLIC NUNCIATURE IN IRELAND
N. 808/97
Dublin, 31 January 1997
Strictly Confidential
To: the Members of the Irish Episcopal conference
—their Dioceses
Your Excellency,
The Congregation for the Clergy has attentively studied the complex question of sexual abuse or minors by clerics and the document entitled “Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response”, published by the Irish Catholic Bishops Advisory Committee.
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/vatican-warned-bishops-not-to-report-child-abuse?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+%2540The+Daily+Register%2541
The copy at the link will not enlarge for me. Do you know where else I might find it?
Hey someone brought up Hitler already. Are we on schedule or not.
It must not be a sin for Protestants to lie.
Yep decayed worms pour from their mouths.
A LINK to the actual letter written by Archbishop Storero.
Read it.
See if you think it measures up to Laurie Goodstein's "smoking gun" description.
Here is the key quote in the last paragraph.........."that in the sad cases of accusations of abuse by clerics, the procedures established by the Code of Canon Law must be followed meticulously......"
So, The Congregation for Clergy has concerns that provisions in the document prepared for the Irish bishops did not conform to Canon Law as it was in 1997. As a result, bishops acting on those parts of the proposal might take canonical actions against priests that are legally invalid. In other words, there could be miscarriages of justice. So what happens if miscarriages of justice occur? Well, the priests might appeal their case to Rome, and Rome might agree that there was a miscarriage of justice because the law was not applied correctly. In that case the bishop would be put in an embarrassing position.
So what about the issue of reporting predators to the police?
How did Laurie Goodstein frame this in her article for the Times? She wrote: “It [the letter] said that for both ‘moral and canonical’ reasons, the bishops must handle all accusations through internal church channels. Bishops who disobeyed, the letter said, may face repercussions when their abuse cases were heard in Rome.”
Utterly incorrect and a major (surpise) media distortion.
The only “repercussions” mentioned in the letter is the embarrassing situation a bishop would find himself in if he failed to follow the law and a miscarriage of justice resulted and Rome overturns it on appeal. Yet Goodstein makes it sound as if the letter is threatening bishops with some kind of retaliation if they don’t “obey” the letter. This is wrong on several levels. First, the letter is not an ultimatum. It is not a set of orders. It is an advisory statement cautioning the Irish bishops that they need to make sure they follow canon law so that miscarriages of justice don’t happen and then get overturned on appeal. There is no threat of retaliation here.
Worse, Goodstein makes it appear that the Vatican is threatening bishops with retaliation if they report predators to the police. The subject of reporting pedophiles hasn’t even come up yet. And she is wrong when she says that the letter states that “the bishops must handle all accusations through internal church channels,” as opposed (presumably) to reporting predators to the police. But the document says nothing of the kind.
There is nothing in the document saying that a bishop must keep information about predators secret. What the Congregation objected to was mandatory reporting. One can think what one likes about the wisdom of mandatory reporting, but there is a big difference between saying, “You must keep all cases of this from the eyes of the police on pain of Vatican retaliation” and saying, “Hey, maybe there needs to be some discretion exercised and it shouldn’t be automatic reporting.”
Goodstein thus implies that the letter suggests something it doesn’t. The letter doesn’t state that the Congregation for Clergy is opposed to reporting predators to the authorities. Instead, it says . . .
In particular, the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature”.
This is the end of the quotation from the Congregation for Clergy. Note the closing quotation marks.
So the Congregation for Clergy is saying, “We’ve got reservations about the situation of ‘mandatory reporting’ on moral and canonical grounds.” It’s telling the Irish bishops about an issue that could come up down the road. It is easy to see how such a policy could fall afoul of canon law, which contains provisions protecting an individual’s right to his good reputation. An overzealous application of a mandatory reporting policy could unjustly deprive innocent people of their reputation—and more.
The draft policy of the Irish bishops would have meant that just on suspicion that abuse may have been taking place (suspicion being a subjective state that is very easy to come by) one would have to report the priest or religious to the police. No provision was made for distinguishing between suspicions that were credible or well-founded and those that weren't. Similarly, no provision was made for doing a preliminary investigation. Instead, Church workers were to make the mandatory report “without delay.”
I hope this is helpful to the silent lurkers and those who read this thread in an honest and open frame of mind. Most minds are already made up on this issue and articles such as this in the New York Times, are clutched at with unrestrained glee. So be it.
You forgot one....Protestants abuse children too./ sarc
See the link in post #52.
It's small but readable.
So it was basically a letter saying they were studying the proposed response and as such had no compelling authority at all. That it was concerned if Canon law was not followed a Bishop’s action to stop abuse could be overturned? Much like losing a civil or criminal case on appeal because matters of law were not followed.
That the proposed mandatory of any and all suspicions (not actual cases) of abuse no matter when they were alleged to occur should be considered more carefully.
Oh yeah that is a smoking gun alright.
The NYT and their rabid acolytes of falsehood and calumny need to learn how to read. But their blackened consciences and blind hatred shelter them from the ability to comprehend anything with the words Vatican on it.
Jesus said a tree is known by its fruit (or fruitcakes). One Bishop said 40% of priests are gay, and they haven’t been moved from their positions. The Catholic church rejected God long ago. The fruit it plain to see. The defensive arguments and spin on this post reveal those who serve something other than God.
It doesn’t matter that the church has gone way beyond any secular or other religious group in dealing with these cases and instituting directives that ARE BINDING to protect children.
It doesn’t matter that one-half of the accused priests in the US are innocent.
It doesn’t matter that the Church is doing the best it can to clean up the abuse of the past.
All that matters is that it happened and because the Church is a lightening rod for the World it gets all the blame.
Are there evil people in the world? Yes, and some are even in the Church.
But, eventually, the evil is exposed and the cleansing occurs. The Church is not a human creation. It is populated with fallen humans though and as fallen humans working out salvation in fear and trembling, evil can occur.
I read the article. Couldn’t read the letter. Does anyone have a link for the letter?
Indeed. And contradicts the *Once a Catholic, always a Catholic* adage.
Not to mention, it leaves an out for the Catholic church to do nothing about corrupt politicians. That way, they don’t have to take a stand and get in trouble with any one.
You notice, as well, that for the outspoken stand the Catholic church rightfully takes against abortion and homosexual marriage, they are pretty impotent when it comes to actually taking action.
They don’t deal with the likes of Kerry, Kennedy, Pelosi, and a whole host of other liberal politicians, they don’t deal with the priests in their midst who commit willful sin, and they don’t take a stand against lay Catholics who vote liberal.
Lots of hot air.
The incapability of people on these threads to actually DISCUSS the TOPIC of the ARTICLE POSTED makes these threads useless.
They devolve into 5,000+ reply wastes of time.
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