When was Vatican II wrapped up, and when would the effects have started being felt?
Posted on 04/09/2010 11:02:30 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES – The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.
The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.
The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.
The Vatican refused to comment on the contents of the letter Friday, but a spokesman confirmed it bore Ratzinger's signature.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Please read the entire article before ya rip the Vatican.
Ping of interest.
I gotta tell you that I don’t like what I’m reading, and I also like less, in light of this, that Il Papa moved the metropolitan* (Levada) into his former office at the CDC.
(*Oakland is a suffragan diocese in the Metropolitan of the archdiocese of San Francisco.)
AP has ignored 40 years of a much larger scale abuse in America’s Public Schools.
Who believes the timing around easter is a mere coincidence?
There is either something going on here with at least some of these accusations being credible or this is one of the most highly coordinated and cynical attacks on the papacy since Humanae vitae.
“....ship them off to Iran to live with their totally screwed up Muslim brothers.”
.
Why ship them all the way to Iran? Their totally screwed up Muslim brothers are living right here.
This renewed assault on the Pope orchestrated largely by the NYT should be taken for exactly what it is: An effort to destroy the traditional Catholic Church and make it little different the mainline Protestant religions.
Because the Pope is staunch traditionalist and supports the efforts of traditional Catholics, he has come into the crosshairs of the Left.
Most of the cases we read in the paper about abusive priests happened decades ago and the depraved priests have since been removed from their ministries. I support punishing ALL child molestors to the fullest extent of the law.
But for people who ARE truly concerned about this issue, you should focus most of your attention and energy where the problem is mostly occurring these days: In our public schools.
I think the reforms of Vatican II greatly diminished the standards and discipline of the Catholic Church. While it is true that pedophile priests existed in the Church prior to Vatican II in 1963, the vast majority of priests involved came into the Church after the Second Vatican Council. Standards were lowered and a number of depraved individuals entered into the priesthood who had no business being there in the first place.
Since the pedophile priest scandal erupted, the Church has in fact implemented comprehensive reforms designed to prevent this from occurring again. Candidates for vocations are now subject to thorough psychiatric review and screened to ensure they are capable of celibate life.
I am a Eucharistic Minister at my parish. And even my archdiocese, mere volunteers such as myself were subject to intense training on child sexual abuse and recognizing its symptoms. I can only imagine the intensive screening and training candidates for religious orders receive these days.
Of course we are ALL sinners. The Catholic Church is a man-made institution. There are always temptations. There is always weakness and sin. A few rotten apples that slip through the cracks always cast a negative shadow on the overwhelming majority of priests and nuns who are outstanding selfless servants of God who devote their whole lives to the Church and serving others.
So let us always be cognizant of the true agenda of those who ceaselessly attack the Holy Father. There agenda is to destroy the traditional Holy Catholic Church.
Sorry but “It happened a long time ago” and “everybody does it” are really piss poor excuses.
The point is, the current sitting Pope appears to be no different than Cardinal Law when it comes to the lax punishment and or non-removal of pedophile priests.
You can call me a bigot, liar, anti-Catholic, slanderer, etc. all you want but the RCC has a real problem on their hands and sticking their head in the sand and blaming others is not going to make it go away.
When was Vatican II wrapped up, and when would the effects have started being felt?
I respectfully disagree with you. While I acknowledge there was a serious problem in the Church and a lot of truly sick and depraved people slipped through the cracks, I know for a fact that reforms have been instituted and that people seeking religious orders are now subject to intense psychological and personality screening to ascertain their fitness for religious orders.
I myself, as a Church volunteer and Eucharistic Minister, was required to take a program called VIRTUS which is an extensive training and educational program on child sexual abuse. The Church IS in fact doing a better job of weeding out potential sexual deviants.
It’s astonishing to me how normally sane people who dismiss the rants and biased reporting of the NYT and the AP will wholeheartedly believe anything anti-Catholic published by both of those rags.
Please tell me what part of the article is false?
Isn't this what got the NY Times in trouble in the first place by getting horrendous translations and omissions of fact? I'll wait until I see all of the facts before I believe another left-wing slant of the evidence.
That’s fair.
The letter should be published as-is for review.
The idiot reporters who write this stuff seem to think that the only penalty available and the only way to deal with a priest of this sort is to “defrock” him.
He was suspended from exercising ministry. He was dealt with by the law.
“Defrocking” refers solely to an ecclesiastical status. It is the same as “laicization.” It is not and cannot be the chief means of rendering a sex offender incapable of abusing again. For that, other means are needed. In this case those means were in place. Get angry at instances in which those other steps were not taken and abusers abused again.
But that Cardinal Ratzinger was slow to laicize has nothing specific to do with covering up or enabling abuse.
The media bandy about words like “defrock” either out of ignorance or out of malice (in the latter case, assuming that because “to defrock” means “big-time punishment” to most ignorant fools reading this crap, therefore, not to defrock means not to punish at all.
This kind of sensationalism can only work among readers who are uninformed.
But in their uninformedness they, including some Freepers, do not hesitate to make moral judgments of apocalyptic dimensions.
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