“To saying that the Cardinal had nothing to do with it (post 63) when confronted with the fact that the Catholic church, in fact, DID let this guy lead a children’s ministry AND a youth volunteer after that AFTER being prosecuted and AFTER requesting his leave.”
See, this is how utterly ignorant you are. You slip and slide, jig and jive between the cardinal and the CDF and the “Catholic Church.”
The bishop of Oakland removed him from ministry. He did not (and could not) laicize him. Laicization would not prevent the man from volunteering in a youth ministry anyway-as a laicized priest.
All this stupid hullabaloo about the decision not to laicize him immediately is smokescreen. What needed to be done to protect children was to remove the man from ministry.
Which was done. But then a particular parish let him volunteer. The bishop’s failure was to have created a system that would catch him at this circumventing of the bishop’s previous action. Blame the bishop. But the bishop does not equal Ratzinger and Ratzinger does not equal the “Catholic Church.”
The effort to pin this on Ratzinger is specious. IT was the priest who asked to be laicized—which shows that laicization was not in this case desired as a punishment to him. He wanted to be laicized for who knows what reason.
At that time thousands of priests were asking to be laicized. Laicizing them had nothing to do with preventing them from doing wrong deeds.
The fault lies with the bishop of Oakland.
But there’s no money to be had by pillorying the bishop of Oakland. There’s no smear-gain to be had by fingering him.
They are after Ratzinger for other reasons.
Be mad at the what the bishop did and failed to do. I am.
But that has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the current smear campaign against Benedict.
Had Ratzinger agreed to laicize this priest immediately it would not have prevented him volunteering in a youth ministry.
Is that so hard to understand?
The media bandy about “defrocking” as if that somehow would have solved the problem.
They depend on your ignorance as to what laicization means for this bandying to have any effect.
And you gobble it up.
This makes no sense in the context of your other remarks. The Bishop ought to have warned all the parishes (if that is possible).