Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

 In the movie Napoleon, Wellington has strictly forbidden his soldiers to loot on pain of death. He comes across a soldier with a chicken under his shirt. The soldier tries to come up with a convincing explanation of why there is a chicken under his shirt. Wellington turns to his aide and tells him to promote the soldier, saying, “I like someone who can defend an indefensible position.” 

Fernand Keuleneer, the attorney for Cardinal Danneels has a similar task. De Standard published the transcripts of the secretly-taped conversation between the victim of Bishop Vangheluwe and Danneels. In an article in the Belgian Catholic paper Tertio (which is available in a translation here on the America blog),  Keuleneer tries to explain and justify the Cardinal’s words.  

Keuleneer claims that Danneels was unprepared for the meeting and thought it was an attempt to achieve family recompilation. Dannels is a victim of an unjustified attack. But if everything that Danneels said is morally and legally justifiable, why is it character assassination to print Danneels’ own words?  

As Austen Ivereigh points out, Danneels was deaf to the victim’s plea for some form of justice and told the victim that it would be almost impossible to achieve and that demanding it was a form of blackmail. 

Vangheluwe was not simply an abuser and a sinner, he was an evil man. In the previous post I reported how he had ordained a convicted abuser as a deacon, an abuser who had driven his victim to suicide, despite the pleas of the victim’s mother not to ordain the abuser (who then went to work in a Catholic school). Vangheluwe insisted that the victim’s family must forgive the abuser, so that the abuser would continue having contact with children. This misuse of forgiveness, which Danneels is also guilty of, is very close to the sin against the Holy Ghost.

Because the reporting on the Vangheluwe - Danneels case is in Dutch, much of the information is difficult to access. 

One important piece of background has recently surfaced. Tom Heneghan of Reuters wrote to Austen Ivereigh at America:

 What is not said in the transcripts but was reported in the other paper running the transcripts (Het Nieuwsblad) is that the victim was moved to speak out after learning that Vangheluwe had consecrated a deacon who was a child abuser. One of his victims later committed suicide. Vangheluwe’s victim felt this might have been avoided if he had spoken out about Vangheluwe years ago. The victim cannot just accept an apology from his uncle, he feels a duty to do more, but he does not come across as vengeful. At one point early on, he even says to Danneels that if he (D) suggests a coverup is the only way, he might have to learn to live with that. But then he pulls himself together again and says Vangheluwe simply cannot stay in office if the Church is to stand for anything at all. 

Ivereigh is backing away from his attempt to soften Danneels action or rather refusal to act. Danneels was caught on tape acting like bishops usually act and will continue to act. And Danneels will suffer no consequences, nor will any future bishop who covers up sexual abuse suffer any consequences, and they know it. Until we get a true reforming pope like Pius V, the hierarchy will continue to tolerate abuse whenever they can get away with it – which is almost always. 

What Vangheluwe did to his nephew could have gotten him executed in very painful fashion in the Middle Ages – but Danneels doesn’t even want Vangheluwe to suffer any embarrassment. Such are the tender hearts of our hierarchs – for each other, not for us.

PS It appears from this article that in 1995 Vangheluwe ordained a certain Marc V as a deacon, even though Vangheluwe knew that Marc V. was a convicted child abuser (suspended sentence) and that one of Marc V.’s victims had committed suicide in 1991. The victim’s mother pleaded in vain to Vangheluwe not to ordain the man who had driven her son to suicide. Vangheluwe insisted the victim’s family must forgive Marc V.The nephew felt that his silence enabled this situation: if he had spoken out, Vangheluwe would not be a bishop and therefore he would not have been able to ordain Marc V. as a deacon.  

The attitude of the hierarchy toward child abuse can be seen in this ordination. They were willing to ordain a man who had driven his abuse victim to suicide. Perhaps, in fact, the fact that Marc V  had abused children before his ordination was a plus: another abuser in the clergy who would “understand” and not “judgmental” toward what Vangheluwe had done to his nephew.

Marc V. remained a deacon and worked in a Catholic school until Vangheluwe’s downfall caused his background to become public. Then he was “temporarily” removed.

Tom Roberts at the National Catholic Reporter reflects on the failure of the hierarchy:

Danneels was generally seen as one of the last of the Vatican II generation who knew that council intimately and supported its reforms. He would be, for lack of a better term, a liberal by many of today’s ecclesiastical measures. But it doesn’t matter. So was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and his handling of some abuse cases was notoriously callous, and in his own attempt to hide a homosexual liaison he saw fit to lift nearly a half million dollars from archdiocesan coffers without telling anyone.

By contrast, Cardinal Anthony Bevelacqua of Philadelphia was a noted conservative, one of those who could be described as leading the reversal on Vatican II reforms. The Philadelphia Grand Jury report on his role in hiding sexual predators and using the law to avoid accountability is deeply disturbing reading. So are the documents in which Cardinals Bernard Law and Edward Egan are depicted overseeing the handling of abuse cases in their respective dioceses. Both are staunch conservatives and would be considered by many as protectors of a traditionalist approach to ecclesiology and church teaching.

Wherever members of the hierarchy are on the political, theological or ecclesiological spectrums, they meet first as brothers in a unique culture of celibate men who have sworn oaths of allegiance to the papacy and who have repeatedly acted to protect the institution while shunning the plight of thousands of child victims of abusive priests.

“I came to think that the problem was in some way cultural,” wrote Australian Bishop Mark Coleridge of the sex abuse crisis. “But that prompted the further question of how; what was it that allowed this canker to grow in the body of the Catholic church, not just here and there but more broadly?”

Coleridge does not provide a magic answer in that pastoral letter prepared last spring for Pentecost. However, he raises a number of issues – inadequat seminary training, the church’s “culture of discretion,” seminary training that creates “a kind of institutional immaturity, “a certain church triumphalism,” and the church’s tendence to see things in the light of sin and forgiveness rather than crime and punishment – that deserve far wider discussion and examination.

He includes in that list “clericalism understood as a hierarchy of power, not service.” It is one of many influences that caused so many in the hierarchy to confront the abuse crisis in ways they now say they regret. Perhaps it ought to be at the top of the list. Danneels is merely the latest sorry example, though a current one, demonstrating that for so long the actions of many of the community’s leaders were drastically out of step with what they were preaching.

Roberts identifies clericalism as the attitude that caused bishops to protect abusers. Even more disturbing, and Benedict has touched on this in his remarks on repentance, is a distortion in Catholic attitudes and teaching on sin, repentance, punishment, and expiation. Unconditional forgiveness is preached: God forgives unconditionally, we are repeatedly told (without our repentance?) and therefore victims must unconditionally forgive their abuser and oppressors, even if the abusers and oppressors remain unrepentant and unpunished. There is something seriously wrong with this, as the first word of the message of the Gospel is “Repent,” but it needs someone more learned in doctrine and history than I am to sort out what went wrong.

Roger Vangheluwe was a priest when he began sexually abusing his five-year-old nephew. The abuse continued even after 1984, when Vangheluwe, at age 48, became bishop of Bruges. 

The boy’s family pressured the boy to remain silent to preserve the bishop’s career. The bishop gave the family money (source of money unspecified). As he grew up, the boy was filled with anger. 

 Over the years, the nephew — who still does not want his name used publicly — channeled his rage into creating art: giant screaming images in gnarled wood or a montage of a boy being crushed by a mattress. (NYT) 

In 1996 Father Rik Devillé told Cardinal Godfried Danneels about the abuse.  

… he said, the cardinal listened impatiently, glancing frequently at his watch. Weeks later, Father Devillé received a letter from the cardinal. “Stop making unfounded public accusations against the church and its functionaries if you don’t have proof,” it read. (NYT)

(Danneels now claims to have no memory of this incident) 

A niece of the now-adult nephew received a holy card from Bishop Vangheluwe for her confirmation.  It had a note about the importance of a healthy childhood. This enraged the nephew, and he decided to confront Vangheluwe and Danneels. 

In April 2010 the nephew met with Vangheluwe and Cardinal Danneels. The nephew was expecting the new archbishop Leonard to be there but he did not come.  Vangheluwe left the room. 

(The translation of the transcript is rough. I will replace it if I can find a better one)

(snip) 

Danneels: Well, I would suggest that we might be better to wait for a date next year when he would usually resign.

Nephew: No, I do not agree, and him taking glory in saying goodbye, no I cannot. The cover-up technique that you have used for so many years as you have, I’ll have to learn to live with, but eh   

(snip)Danneels: But I have no authority over Monsignor Vangheluwe.

Nephew: And who did?

Danneels: Actually, no one except the Pope.

(snip)

 

 

 

Nephew: Then perhaps you can go through and that you can arrange an appointment with the Pope and then we’ll go there. It is already 42 years that I suffer and I want no more, I can not stop, I can not, and I would not leave everything as it is.It has a very big impact in the family in everything in my relationship with my wife in everything, I’m tired of that life and that the matter remains so dominant, and I would agree to that. I have arrived at the age that I want my freedom for life.

Danneels: Actually, the first responsibility lies with him, he, rather than from his superiors.

Nephew: But if he does not want to do what has to be done …

Danneels: What do you ask of him? that he would resign?

Nephew: But he must decide, I just want to tell, that’s it. You wish me to say something that I cannot say I can not, I do not know how to proceed, or should I look for another way for me to obtain closure.

And today I had demanded that he confess openly speaks to the family, saying that he did those things. While everyone is there.

Danneels: He will do that.

Nephew: I had expected for today, we can directly do better and we’ll see, if nothing happens, then I go to the pope.

Danneels: The pope is not so easy to get though to …

(snip)

 

 

 

Danneels: I do not know if it would benefit either you or him to give a dramatic deadline.Nephew: I still think that the victim’s privacy should be respected, there should not be no names used.

Danneels: But yes, you put him in a quandary.

Nephew: I have all my life been in a difficult position, I’m not planning to have pity, I want that fight to finish, it has done for me, that I finally once again have a clean slate for myself that I do what I want to do.

I was in a Catholic school and I was brought up Catholic. I’m very upset with that institute, I also read the newspapers, so I think I have an obligation to do so. How can I get my children to believe in something with such a background that will not move on, then you just move straight into the next generation. And everything remains as it is, and that is not the intention of the church.

Danneels: No, it’s not the intention to discredit someone?

Nephew: Give me another solution, I should forgive and it is resolved.

Danneels: No, no, no.

Nephew: And he goes on as normal.

Danneels: You could also say he will resign next year anyway, and that for example, he says, look, I no longer go on television and such. With those things, and you come to a year.

Nephew: No, I want it placed in your hands and then you decide.

Danneels: You can grab us and blackmail, hey, and say look, you have to do something.

Nephew: What?

Danneels: You can blackmail and say, look if you do not say …

Nephew: Why should I want to blackmail? I’m not going to blackmail.

Danneels: Well, if you for example say they do nothing, and you bring it to public notice …

(snip)

 

 

 

Nephew:

We were forced to be married by him, for everything, the children were baptized by him, how can I explain to them? I now have my oldest son who asked yesterday: Look, what happened with me. They do not yet know what happened? That is still true, that cannot continue, and waiting for everything to retutn to the same situation- that’s still no solution?Danneels: Ah! We can also, as I said, ask forgiveness and give forgiveness, which is also a possibility.

Nephew:

That’s not possible for me, I do not believe anymore, as you do in these things, no, it is not possible.

That’s not possible for me, I do not believe anymore, as you do in these things, no, it is not possible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nephew: If I cause an accident, drunk, I will also be punished.Danneels: A punishment sentences. You have penalties that are public and private penalties, that’s a big difference huh. Your name gets out, pulled through the mud …

Nephew: My name?

Danneels: His name.

Nephew: He has ensured that my whole life is pulled through the mud. From 5 to 18 years old. Can you imagine?

 

 

After this failed meeting a friend of the nephew e-mailed all the bishops of Belgium and revealed the abuse. The nephew very wisely secretly taped this meeting. He released the transcript after the Belgian bishops claimed that he was trying to blackmail them. 

Vangheluwe publicly admitted the abuse and resigned: 

 ”When I was still just a priest, and for a certain period at the beginning of my episcopate, I sexually abused a minor from my immediate environment,” 

Danneels successor, Leonard, said this about the resignation of the confessed incestuous child abuser: 

that Vangheluwe was known as a “great brother and dynamic bishop” who was highly appreciated within the Belgian Church 

Several things come through in this transcript: Cardinal Danneels, a hero of the progressive wing of the Church, is as much a clericalist as the most hidebound Italian cardinal. His sole concern is protecting the career and reputation of a bishop. The pain of the victim, a mere layman, is invisible to Danneels, whose only concern is with a fellow cleric. 

Danneels disclaims all responsibility – only the pope can do anything – but of course it is very difficult to arrange a meeting with the pope. 

Vangheluwe is unrepentant. He has never asked for forgiveness. He nephew correctly states that the only way to obtain forgiveness is for Vangheluwe to take responsibility for what he has done, and Vangheluwe has refused to do that his whole life. 

The nephew is a classic example of the Stockholm syndrome. He let his abuser witness his marriage and baptize his children. The hierarchy has perfected the technique of cultivating the Stockholm syndrome among victims of clerical abuse. 

Danneels tries to manipulate the nephew but claiming that the nephew is blackmailing Danneels by saying he will go public unless V resigns. Danneels tells the victim that he - the victim - should ask for forgiveness. The misuse of demands to forgive to protect clerical malefactors will weigh heavy on the scales at the Day of Judgment. 

Belgian law states that the victim of sexual abuse has ten years after he reaches 18 to report the abuse. Since the nephew was under pressure from his family to keep quiet, he did not report in that time period and  Vangheluwe cannot be criminally prosecuted. 

The police raid that seized documents form Danneels residence was pronounced illegal and the documents cannot be used in prosecutions.

No cleric in Belgium will be inconvenienced by an earthly court of law. The hierarchy are no doubt congratulating themselves on their cleverness in manipulating the situation. We shall see whether they can manipulate the Great Assizes.

In April 2010, eight years after Boston exploded with the news about pedophile cover-ups, Cardinal Danneels, the great progressive hero in the Church, continued the policy of hushing things up. Reuters reports:

The former head of Belgium’s Catholic Church suggested to a sexual abuse victim it would be better to delay a public statement on the case until the bishop involved resigned in 2011, a Church spokesman said on Saturday.

Jurgen Mettepenningen confirmed transcripts in Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper of a meeting Roman Catholic Cardinal Godfried Danneels held with Bishop Roger Vangheluwe and a sexual abuse victim of the bishop in April 2010.

“It is true this meeting and conversation took place, and that the transcript is correct,” Mettepenningen told Reuters.

Danneels’s spokesman Toon Osaer told Reuters the cardinal had not covered up anything and had openly spoken about the April 2010 meeting following Vangheluwe’s resignation two weeks after the conversation took place.

In the transcripts, published in De Standaard on Saturday, Danneels suggested the victim should make no public statement about the abuse until Vangheluwe retired the following year.

“It might be better to wait for a date in the next year, when he is due to resign,” Danneels told the victim, according to the transcripts.

He told the victim he believed a public announcement would not serve the interests of the victim or the bishop, the transcripts said.

“I don’t know if there will be much to gain from making a lot of noise about this, neither for you nor for him.”

Vangheluwe resigned after admitting having abused the victim for a number of years, both as a priest and a bishop.

You Tube has given show-off adolescent males further motivation to engage in spectacularly self-destructive behavior. Teenagers have filmed themselves wearing a protective suit in a bathtub full of fireworks and throwing a flaming basketball soaked in gasoline – with predictable third-degree burns as the result.

In Spanish island resorts the sport of balconing has become popular.. It involves climbing from balcony to balcony in a hotel or diving from a balcony into a pool. Death sometime results.

The Spanish newspaper ABC reports that the profile of a balconer 

es el de un turista joven, normalmente varón, menor de 30 años (próximo a los 25) y habitualmente de nacionalidad británica, que está pasando una semana de vacaciones en las Islas.

 

That he is a young tourist, usually male, less than 30 years old (on the average 25) and usually of British nationality, who is passing a week’s vacation in the Islands. 

And (surprise!) drugs and alcohol are involved. 

ABC, a conservative Catholic paper, finds such behavior inexplicable and disturbing. But it is mad at Catalonia for banning bullfighting. Getting into a ring with an enraged bull or running before bulls in the streets of Pamplona are fine Spanish traditions.

The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes: 

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of “the massive entry in recent decades of girls and young women into a role once reserved exclusively to males.” 

This predominance of girls was predictable (anyway I predicted it in my book The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity). Western Christianity has for a long time been regarded as unmasculine. It has been difficult to keep men, especially young men, connected to a church which seems to want to lessen their masculinity.

If an activity is obviously and mistakably masculine (such as soldiering), opening it to women does not make it a part of the feminine sphere. But if a sphere is already regarded as feminine (and Western Christianity is), opening an activity within it to women will make that activity a feminine activity.

The 60-40 split in altar servers mirrors the female-male split in Catholic church attendance. As boys are busy establishing their masculinity at that age, I suspect that the proportion of boy altar servers will decline further.

In many mainline Protestant churches, including the Evangelical church in Germany, women are already the majority of seminarians, and the clergy is being converted into a feminine occupation, like nursing. There are male nurses, but they are rare, and someday we willl have to say male minister, as we now say male nurse.

To further increase men’s suspicions about Christianity, in some denominations, such as the Episcopal, the remaining men are often homosexual. The heterosexual, male minister will be a rara avis in the not too distant future in the more liberal denominations.

My eldest son is marrying Yerina Hajno, a young Albanian woman who was his sister’s roommate at Wellesley. So we are all off to her hometown, Saranda, for an Albanian Orthodox wedding  at the monastery in which she was baptized.

Be back in a few weeks.

At one point in my peregrinations, I drove from Bozeman to Kalispell. The radio stations offered three choices: Country and Western, Christian, and Christian Country and Western. I listened to each as long as I could stand it: Rollin in my Sweet Baby’s Arms (when does the mail train come back?), Yes We’ll Gather by the River, and Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life. There was also a translation of In Himmel Gibt’s Kein Bier: In Heaven There is No Beer, which seems to have been a fusion piece. 

The Catholic churches in Montana towns are largely afflicted with the musical schlock that has become mainstream Catholic fare. I dislike it, because trivial, sentimental, and narcissistic music is inappropriate for the Divine Liturgy and also tends to keep men away. But at one church I was reminded that such schlock coexists with profound Christianity: the prayer of the faithful was for those suffering fatal diseases, for those afflicted by war, for those who have no one to pray for them, for the forgotten dead. 

Every day I think of my ancestors and descendants, going back to Adam and forward to the end of the world, and I pray that none of them may be lost. Some Christians (like Augustine) seem to want to view salvation as restricted to a small group of the Elect; I know from Scripture that God loves all that He has made and I have hope in His mysterious plans, although no human eye can penetrate them.

I have returned from three weeks of hiking in Glacier National Park and Yellowstone. 

The National Parks are a tool of natural selection, or at least a good locale to win the Darwin Award (given to those whose stupid actions remove them from the gene pool). Despite all the signs warning that all animals in the park are WILD and DANGEROUS and DO NOT APPROACH THEM, many tourists, brought up on Walt Disney, insist in getting as close to the fauna as they can. We saw several people trying to get as close as possible to an elk with a magnificent rack, who could have tossed them in a second. One tourist was gored by a bison when he got too close. Everyone wanted to get close to a bear; two nights ago a grizzly attacked three sleeping campers, killing one and mauling two. Parents sent children to play on slippery rocks above three hundred foot waterfalls. The fatality rate is surprisingly low, although I suspect that guardian angels have to go out for a stiff drink after watching over people in the park. As the saying goes, God watches over children, drunks, and the United States of America – and tourists in the national parks. 

Speaking of drinks, I went to a tapas place in Bozeman, Montana, which had sidewalk tables. While waiting for the server to come out, I read the local papers articles on medical marijuana. Montana legalized medical marijuana about five years ago. At first a few hundred patients, almost all elderly with chronic diseases, signed up. Over 95% of doctors would have nothing to do with marijuana. Then someone got the idea for cannabis caravans.  Vans with doctors and marijuana travelled the state seeing patients. Doctors spent an average of six minutes seeing a patient before prescribing marijuana. There was an epidemic of back pain among twenty year olds, a pain which could be treated only by marijuana. Now there are over twenty thousand users of medical marijuana. Spoilsports have just shut down the cannabis caravans. 

The waiter came out and I ordered my tapas and a glass of wine. The water regretfully replied,” I am sorry, but Montana has an open container law and we any serve wine at the sidewalk café.”

 Montana has an appealing ornery streak. In the gift shop at the hotel I found “Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Montana History.” My favorite in Jacob Thorkelson, a nudist pro-Nazi congressman. This author of this book was inspired by “The Bedside Book of Bastards” which would make an excellent Christmas present. 

Returning to the parks: 

I hiked up to Iceberg Lake in suitably arctic conditions: cold and very, very windy. I could see why the Blackfeet Indians regarded it as a sacred place.

I battled my way back to the hotel, and came into the central hall. 

Around the fireplace and on the hearth families were sitting, chatting, or playing cards and board games. The fire burned brightly and in the corner a violist played sweet, sad waltzes of the West. I went into the gift shop, and the first thing that caught my eye was a t-shirt. On it was a picture of a young man standing on a ledge looking out at the glory of the Rockies, and overprinted were the words: On Earth As It Is In Heaven.” America, like other countries, has its particular sweetness. 

In the Canadian section of the park we hiked to the Carthew pass. No photographs can capture the view, but this gives an idea:

On one side of the ridge were four glacial lakes and a dozen waterfalls cascading from snow covered mountains. On the other side one looked for a hundred miles over the Great Plains. As a gazed at this (and ate my lunch) a young women walked by and remarked to me, “I feel I’ve stepped into heaven.” My sentiments exactly.

The New Yorker has a long piece on the complicated world of art forgeries, “The Mark of a Masterpiece.”  In it the author, David Grann observes,

When a forgery is exposed, people in the art world generally have the same reaction: how could anyone have been fooled by something so obviously phony, so artless? Few connoisseurs still think that Han van Meegeren’s paintings look at all like Vermeers, or even have any artistic value. Gorgers usually succeed not because they are so talented but, rather, because they provide, at a moment in time, exactly what others desperately want to see. Conjurers as much as copyists, they fulfill a wish or a fantasy. And so the inconsistencies – crooked signatures, uncharacteristic brushstrokes – are ignored or explained away. 

The art world parallels the religious world. What were people, including the pope, so desperate to see that they were taken in by such a transparent phony at Maciel?

Der Spiegel recaps the events in Belgium. Cardinal Danneels can’t imagine why anyone thinks he didn’t act properly in handling allegations of sexual abuse. But 

A few days after the police raids in Mechelen, a dozen men gathered on the steps of the cathedral in Brussels. Ten years ago, on Jan. 25, 2000, they said, they along with eight other men told Archbishop Danneels how they had been abused by Belgian clergymen. Danneels had turned them away. He couldn’t know, he said at the time, whether they were telling the truth or if it was pure fantasy. Then he urged them to keep quiet about it because their prattle would damage the Catholic Church. 

Danneels was no better, maybe worse, than other bishops. He is a leading “progressive” in the Church,  and his fans hoped he would be the new John XXIV, further modernizing eh Church and making it fit better with the modern European ethos. 

Der Spiegel tries to fit the disagreements about how to handle sexual abuse into a liberal-conservative conflict: 

This has led to a power struggle between liberal and conservative forces in the Vatican. The conservatives in the church state see the zero-tolerance policy of US bishops as a means of curtailing the rights of accused priests. By contrast, liberal spirits are pushing to rapidly investigate and refer cases to secular authorities. 

This liberal-conservative dichotomy is inadequate for an understanding of what is going on. A better framework would be seeing on one side those who want to maintain the reputation and privileges of the clergy (let us name them the clericalists) and on the other side those who want a purification of the clergy and of the Church. 

Some of those who want a purification, like Cardinal Schönborn, are closer to Catholic Reformers like Pope Pius V (another Dominican), Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Charles Borromeo. They do not want to conform the Church to the world, but cleanse it of the rottenness that is a barrier to the preaching of the Gospel and the cultivation of a life of holiness.

Catholic Church Conservation has the English translation of an article on the legal liability of

Cardinal Danneels: 

What is the situation of Danneels in criminal law? Can he be prosecuted? And when would that be? How can he defend himself? All at a glance:

 

* If Danneels was aware of a crime he had not reported to the court. Only officials have an obligation to report and even for them there is no penalty if they do not.

 

* Danneels has - in religious terms - a secret of confession. That means he can never disclose a confession even with the consent of the penitent, even after his death. He cannot even say whether there has been something confessed. Pope John Paul II said that again solemnly on April 30, 2001 in the motu proprio “Sacramentorum Sanctitatis tutela” with regard to the Sixth Commandment! The question whether a simple confession of sexual abuse by a priest to his bishop is considered a confession may arise. Some church lawyers say yes, others not because the sacramental rite was not fully respected. Danneels can rely on the secret of confession, but he will not have much success, because the confession secret is not recognized in common law.

 

* Danneels can rely on professional secrecy not to provide information about sexual abuse. This is partly broader, part narrower than the secret of confession . The Cardinal learning confidential information through his office is covered by this secret. That confidentiality is broader than the secret of confession because the information can be not only about perpetrators, but can be from everywhere. It is also limited because the secrecy is not absolute: the court can determine whether certain elements within the secrecy and in emergency can be lifted. This can be for example in the case of sexual abuse of minors. In such a case, Danneels can forego professional secrecy and give the facts reported to the court, but he does not have to.

 

* Can Danneels be prosecuted for gross negligence because he may not have reported sexual abuse to the court? That is only if he has not given “appropriate assistance” to someone who is in immediate and imminent danger. For example, the victim (or another victim of the same perpetrator) may be in immediate risk of sexually abused by a priest who has confessed. In this case, the cardinal should offer “appropriate assistance” . This can be a complaint to the court, but not necessarily so. If Danneels offered appropriate help in such a case, there is no gross negligence. Also: prosecution for gross negligence in respect of acts that have lapsed, or for cases where there is no immediate danger, it is not possible. The likelihood of prosecution for gross negligence of Danneels is very small.

 

* Have Cardinal Danneels then and Archbishop Leonard now - as the boss of their priests - civil liability for harm to victims harmed by sexual abuse by their priests? Under current law no- because the bishop-priest relationship in employment law is not an employer-employee relationship and thus there is no civil liability. This was confirmed on September 25, 1998 in the Case of Van der Lijn, the pedophile priest of Saint-Gilles.

 

* Cardinal Danneels as any citizen can be questioned. He may, from the first trial - according to the Salduz ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg - be assisted by his lawyer. He was. Moreover the College of Procurators General recommends that this first interview is videoed. Danneels is heard as a witness, not as a suspect.The case file is run against strangers. If Danneels is under suspicion, he may discover the full case against him. As a witness he cannot. That gives the examining magistrate and his investigators a certain advantage. 

It is almost impossible to have a civil or criminal case against Danneels.

Contradictory reports are coming out of the Belgian press. Someone leaked to the press that a confidential Detroux file was hidden in the Danneels’ residence. Church spokesmen claim it was a cd rom sent to to Belgian bishops, journalists, and many others – which, if was confidential, is rather odd, but then the whole Detroux case was more than a little odd.

If the Detroux cd rom found in Danneels possession is meaningless, why did the police leak the information and why is the press so excited about it? It may simply be journalistic excess, or it may be a way of attracting attention to the Danneels case. Anything connected with the Detroux case is guaranteed to get the public’s attention, because Detroux’s sources of money were never revealed

Marc Dutroux

Cardinal Godfried Daneels

When they searched retired Cardinal Danneels’ residence, Belgian police discovered confidential court records on the Dutroux murder-pedophile case. Church officials claim to be completely unaware of the existence of such files.The files contain hundreds of pictures of the corpses of the murdered girls and of the cells in which they were kept. It is hard to imagine why Cardinal Danneels had such files all, and in particular why he kept them in his home.

The Marc Dutroux case was one of the most explosive criminal cases in post-war Europe. It reads like the script from a horror movie.

Allegations, never totally answered, circulated that the pedophilia ring extended very high indeed in Belgian society, and that the Belgian government stymied the investigation  to protect higher-ups.

Wikepedia summarizes the case:

Born in Ixelles, Belgium on November 6, 1956, Dutroux was the oldest of five children. His parents, both teachers, emigrated to the Belgian Congo, but returned to Belgium when Dutroux was four. They separated in 1971 and Dutroux stayed with his mother. He worked briefly as a gigolo, serving men. He married at the age of 19 and fathered two children; the marriage ended in divorce in 1983. By then he already had an affair with Michelle Martin. They would eventually have three children together, and married in 1989 while both were in prison. They divorced in 2003, also while in prison.

 

An unemployed electrician, Dutroux had a long criminal history involving car theft, muggings and drug dealing.

 

In February 1986, Dutroux and Martin were arrested for abducting and raping five young girls. In April 1989, he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison. Martin received a sentence of five years. Showing good behaviour in prison, Dutroux was released on parole in April 1992, having served only three years. On releasing him, the parole board received a letter written by Dutroux’s own mother to the prison director, and she stressed concern that he was keeping young girls in his house.

 

Following his release, Dutroux was able to convince a psychiatrist that he was disabled, resulting in a government pension. He also received sleeping pills and sedatives, which he would later use on the abducted girls.

 

Dutroux’s criminal career, involving the trade of stolen cars to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, drug dealing and also violent crimes such as mugging, gained him enough money to live in relative comfort in Charleroi, a city that had at the time high unemployment. He owned seven small houses, most of them vacant, and used three of them for the torture of the girls he kidnapped. He lived mainly in his house in Marcinelle near Charleroi (Hainaut), where he constructed a concealed dungeon in the basement. Hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf, the cell was 2.15 metres (7 ft) long, less than 1 metre (3 ft) wide and 1.64 metres (5 ft) high.

 

Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo (both aged eight) were kidnapped together from Grâce-Hollogne on June 24, 1995, probably by Dutroux, and imprisoned in Dutroux’s cellar. Dutroux repeatedly sexually abused the girls and produced pornographic videos.

 

On August 22, 1995 Dutroux kidnapped 17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks who were on a camping trip in Ostend. He was probably assisted by his accomplice Michel Lelièvre, who was paid with drugs. Since the dungeon already contained Lejeune and Russo, Dutroux chained the girls to a bed in a room of his house. His wife was aware of all these activities. Dutroux killed the two girls several weeks later by drugging them and burying them alive at one of his properties in Jumet.

 

In late 1995, Dutroux was arrested by police for involvement in a stolen luxury car racket. He was held in custody for three months between December 6, 1995 and March 20, 1996. During this period, Lejeune and Russo starved to death in the dungeon.

 

Two months after his release, Dutroux, with help from Lelièvre, kidnapped 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne who was on her way to school on May 28, 1996. She was imprisoned in the dungeon. On August 9, 1996, the two men kidnapped 14-year-old Laetitia Delhez when she was walking home at night from a public swimming pool. But an eyewitness identified part of a license plate which matched a vehicle registered to Dutroux. He, his wife and Lelièvre were all arrested on August 13, 1996. An initial search of his houses proved inconclusive. But two days later, Dutroux and Lelièvre both made confessions. Dutroux led the police to the basement dungeon where Dardenne and Delhez were found alive on August 15, 1996. In an interview conducted several years later, Dardenne revealed that Dutroux had told her that she had been kidnapped by a gang but her parents did not want to pay the ransom and the gang was planning to kill her. Dutroux said he saved her, and that he wasn’t one of gang she should fear. He let her write letters to her family, which he read but never posted.

On August 17, 1996 Dutroux led police to another of his houses in Sars-la-Buissière (Hainaut). The bodies of Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo as well as another accomplice Bernard Weinstein were found in the garden. An autopsy found that the two girls had died from starvation. Dutroux said he had crushed Weinstein’s testicles until he gave him money, he then drugged him and buried him alive. Later Dutroux told the police where to find the bodies of An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks. They were located on September 3, 1996 in Jumet (Hainaut), buried under a shack next to a house owned by Dutroux. Weinstein had lived in that house for three years.

 

During the several police, several hundred commercial adult pornographic along with a large amount of home-made sex films that Dutroux had made with his wife Michelle Martin were recovered from his properties. 

This spectacular failure of the Belgian criminal justice system may not have been caused by sheer incompetence: at least that was the opinion of the original judge in the case: 

Authorities were criticised for various aspects of the case. Perhaps most notably, police searched Dutroux’s house on December 13, 1995 and again six days later in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but they were not found. Since the search was unrelated to kidnapping charges, police searching the house had no dogs or specialised equipment that may have discovered the girls’ presence, and they failed to notice the significance of the freshly plastered and painted wall that concealed the dungeon, in an otherwise decrepit and dirty basement. While in the basement, officers heard children’s cries, which they decided had come from the street outside. The lead officer in the search was Rene Michaux (now deceased) who is widely believed in Belgium to have been part of a cover up by the authorities.

Several incidents suggested that Dutroux’s intentions were not properly followed-up. Dutroux had offered money to a police informer for providing girls, and told him that he was constructing a cell in his basement. His mother also wrote a second letter to police, claiming that he held girls captive in his houses.

There was widespread anger and frustration among Belgians due to police errors and the general slowness of the investigation. This anger culminated when the popular investigative judge in charge of the case was dismissed after having participated in a fund-raising dinner by the girls’ parents. His dismissal resulted in a massive protest march (the “White March“) of 300,000 people on the capital, Brussels, in October 1996, two months after Dutroux’s arrest, in which demands were made for reforms of Belgium’s police and justice system.

On the witness stand, Jean-Marc Connerotte, the original judge of the case, broke down in tears when he described “the bullet-proof vehicles and armed guards needed to protect him against the shadowy figures determined to stop the full truth coming out. Never before in Belgium has an investigating judge at the service of the king been subjected to such pressure. We were told by police that [murder] contracts had been taken out against the magistrates.” Connerotte testified that the investigation was seriously hampered by protection of suspects by people in the government. “Rarely has so much energy been spent opposing an inquiry,” he said. He believed that the Mafia had taken control of the case.

A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998, which concluded that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions of police and justice system, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence. 

The Young Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Der Spiegel is often accused of being anti-clerical. The Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Germany has given anti-clericals a vast amount of material to work with. But Der Spiegel is also willing to tell the truth about corruption in the liberal icons of society, in this case the revolutionaries of 1968 and their sexual abuse of children — of course abuse motivated by the purest ideological motives.

The 68ers wanted to get rid of all inhibition and repression, including the repression of sexual contact between adults and children. Sexual liberation was at the top of the agenda of the young revolutionaries who, in 1967, began turning society upside down. The control of sexual desire was seen as an instrument of domination, which bourgeois society used to uphold its power. Everything that the innovators perceived as wrong and harmful has its origins in this concept: man’s aggression, greed and desire to own things, as well as his willingness to submit to authority. The student radicals believed that only those who liberated themselves from sexual repression could be truly free.

To them, it seemed obvious that liberation should begin at an early age.

All bourgeois repression and prejudice had to be overcome:

“At the core of the movement of 1968, there was in fact a lack of respect for the necessary boundaries between children and adults. The extent to which this endangerment led to abuse cases is unclear,” Wolfgang Kraushaar, a political scientist and chronicler of the movement, writes in retrospect.

A lack of respect for boundaries is putting it mildly. One could also say that the boundaries were violently torn open.

In 1970 a kindergarten put leftist sexual enlightenment into practice.

The educators’ notes indicate that they placed a very strong emphasis on sex education. Almost every day, the students played games that involved taking off their clothes, reading porno magazines together and pantomiming intercourse.

According to the records, a “sex exercise” was conducted on Dec. 11 and a “fucking hour” on Jan. 14. An entry made on Nov. 26 reads: “In general, by lying there we repeatedly provoked, openly or in a hidden way, sexual innuendoes, which were then expressed in pantomimes, which Kurt and Rita performed together on the low table (as a stage) in front of us.”

Nor was this a fringe institution, but was sponsored and staffed by a university:

On April 7, 1970, the Berlin state parliament discussed the Rote Freiheit after-school center. As it turned out, the Psychology Institute at the Free University of Berlin was behind the center. In fact, the institute had established the facility and provided the educators who worked there.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit was a teacher during this time and described his sexual experiences with children.

In his 1975 autobiographical book “Der grosse Basar” (”The Great Bazaar”), Green Party politician Daniel Cohn-Bendit describes his experiences as a teacher in a Frankfurt Kinderladen. When the children entrusted to his care opened his fly and began stroking his penis, he writes, “I was usually quite taken aback. My reactions varied, depending on the circumstances.”

Danny the Red liked both little boys and little girls. He wrote:

«Mon flirt permanent avec tous les gosses prenait vite des formes d’érotisme. Je sentais vraiment que les petites filles, à 5 ans, avaient déjà appris comment m’emmener en bateau, me draguer [the lttle 5-year-old girls had already learned how to hit on me]. C’est incroyable. La plupart du temps, j’étais désarmé.» (L’Express)

In 1982 he continued enthusing about adult-child eroticism:

“At nine in the morning, I join my eight little toddlers between the ages of 16 months and 2 years. I wash their butts, I tickle them, they tickle me and we cuddle. … You know, a child’s sexuality is a fantastic thing. You have to be honest and sincere. With the very young kids, it isn’t the same as it is with the four-to-six-year-olds. When a little, five-year-old girl starts undressing, it’s great, because it’s a game. It’s an incredibly erotic game.”

The Leftists say it was all for the good of the children, unlike the nasty sexual activity that went on in the Catholic Church:

Does what happened in a number of the Kinderladen qualify as abuse? According to the criteria to which Catholic priests have been subjected, it clearly does, says Alexander Schuller, the sociologist. “Objectively speaking, it was abuse, but subjectively it wasn’t,” says author Dannenberg. As outlandish as it seems in retrospect, the parents apparently had the welfare of the children in mind, not their own. For the adherents to the new movement, the child did not serve as a sex object to provide the adults with a means of satisfying their sexual urges. This differentiates politically motivated abuse from pedophilia.

That of course is what pedophiles and pederasts say: it is for the good of the children.

Adult-child sex became part of the platform of the Green Party

At its convention in Lüdenscheid in 1985, the Greens’ state organization in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia argued that “nonviolent sexuality” between children and adults should generally be allowed, without any age restrictions. “Consensual sexual relations between adults and children must be decriminalized,” the “Children and Youth” task force of the Green Party in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg wrote in a position paper at about the same time.

Leftist newspapers celebrated pedophilia liberation.

During this time, no other newspaper offered pedophiles quite as much a forum as the alternative, left-leaning Tageszeitung, which shows how socially acceptable this violation of taboos had become in the leftist community. In several series, including one titled “I Love Boys,” and in lengthy interviews, men were given the opportunity to describe how beautiful and liberating sex with preadolescent boys supposedly was. “There was a great deal of uncertainty as to how far people could go,” says Gitti Hentschel, the co-founder and, from 1979 to 1985, editor of Tageszeitung. Those who, like Hentschel, were openly opposed to promoting pedophilia were described as “prudish” — as opposed to freedom of expression. “There is no such thing as censorship in the Tageszeitung,” was the response.

Now the Leftists claim that anyone who brings this part of their history up is an anti-Leftist tool of the reactionaries (sounds familiar?).

“Such accusations are also part of an attempt to denounce social progress,” sexologist and 1968 veteran Gunter Schmidt wrote in the Frankfurter Rundschau. “On the whole, the social changes that are associated with the number 1968 were more likely to have led to the prevention of abuse.”

This is a very mild way of recalling the past. It is certainly not shared by everyone who was part of the leftist educational experiments of the day.

There were, as in the Catholic Church, a few brave, honest incorrupt people on the Left who were horrified by this sexualization of children.

One of the few leaders of the left who staunchly opposed the pedophile movement early on was social scientist Günter Amendt. “There is no equitable sexuality between children and adults,” Amendt said, expressing his outrage over the movement. Alice Schwarzer, the founder of the political women’s magazine Emma, also spoke out against the downplaying of sex with children and defined it as what it really was: outright abuse.

Amendt recalls how he was disparaged as a reactionary in flyers and articles. “There was an outright campaign against Alice and me at the time,” he says. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that this horrific episode came to an end. In 1994, the Pedos appeared in Tageszeitung for the last time, and even that publication recognized that intercourse with little boys was no different than with little girls, who, thanks to the women’s movement, have long been deemed worthy of protection.

They were, like Tom Doyle in the Catholic Church, ostracized.

Although Der Spiegel has given extensive coverage to clerical failings, it also keeps raising the uncomfortable question: Why is it so bad if priests have sex with minors and OK if Roman Polanski and Daniel Cohn-Bendit have sex with minors? Is the fuss about child molestation in the Church simply a cover for anti-clericalism or anti-Christianity? Shouldn’t sauce for the clerical goose also be sauce for the artistic and political ganders?