Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich -  Freising from 1977 to 1982. In 1980 there were about 1200 diocesan priests in that archdiocese.
 
In 1980 there were also about 1200 diocesan priest in the Boston archdiocese.
 
In Boston there have been about 200 priests (diocesan and religious) accused of sexual abuse.
 
Therefore it would be surprising if there [...]

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As the Cardinal Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger  let a pedophile work in his diocese. The London Times reports 
 

The Pope was drawn directly into the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal for the first time tonight as news emerged of his part in a decision to send a paedophile priest for therapy. The priest went on [...]

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When sinners repent, we are informed by the highest authority, the angels in heaven rejoice.
 
Michael Anthony Rodriguez paid a hit man to kill his wife because he was infatuated with a young woman. He was imprisoned in Texas, and with the Texas Seven escaped on Christmas Eve 2000. They killed a young police officer who [...]

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Abuse Tracker has chronicled the revelations of sexual abuse by clerics in Germany. It is a story of abuse and cover-ups all too familiar to those who have followed similar revelations in the United States and Ireland. While in quality the abuse in Germany is as bad as in English-speaking countries, in quantity it seems [...]

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Somene asked for the PDFs of the letters about the Portland, Oregon, cases. They are at BishopAccountability.org.
For the Laughlin letters, go here
and for Steigerwald letter, go here.

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On July, 8, 1988, Archbishop Levada of Portland , Oregon, wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about the case of the Rev. Thomas Laughlin.
 
Laughlin, Levada explains, was ordained in 1948 at the age of 23. Levada continues, “he began homosexual contacts with boys shortly after his [...]

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The Irish Times examined the failure of the Vatican to handle the news about the meeting with the Irish bishops. 
It also gives an explanation, all too probable, for the failure of the Vatican to cooperate with the Irish government or to admit any responsibility for clerical abuse: 
Which brings us to one of the bottom lines [...]

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What could the Pope do, as one person asked? 
Many, many things: 
He should immediately remove from the clergy all bishops who are known to be corrupt and abusers. There are about twenty, starting with Mr. Sanchez of Santa Fe (he of girlfriends A, B, C, D, E…). 
He should immediately remove from the cardinalate, and probably from [...]

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Pope Benedict will write a letter to the faithful of Ireland.

Ecclesiastical bureaucrats and professors (and Pope Benedict was both) live in a world of words, and think that saying the correct thing is equivalent to, even better than, doing the correct thing. Having said the correct words, they cannot understand why people want them to [...]

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My discussion of the Schmidt case has obvious relevance to clerical sexual abuse. The abusers may have been, in some sense of the word, “sick”; they certainly had distorted personalities. But whatever the source of their desire to have sex with minors, they were guilty when they acted on that desire. 
As Joe said, a good [...]

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Pope Benedict and the Irish bishops have issued a communiqué. 

For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image. 
 The Holy Father also pointed [...]

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One of my responders is fortunate enough to live in the parish to which Father Dwight Longenecker is attached. 
Father Longenecker in his blog on Con Men has written one of the best analyses of clerical abusers, Maciel being the most famous. 

Why do people fall for priests who turn out to be such stinkers? It’s pretty [...]

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1982

2009

Priests

882

482

Parishes

256

220

Seminarians

89

28

Catholic school students

38,531

30,212

Catholic population

506,000

476,189

Catholic marriages

4,427

2,112

 This is the table for the Cincinnati Inquirer that shows the state of the Catholic Church in 1982 when he became the archbishop of Cincinnati and as it is today when he leaves it. 
Ohio is a declining state, and the small shrinkage in parishes and number of Catholics and Catholic school [...]

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Commonweal has a discussion of the Vatican’s decision to place Pius XII and John Paul II on the path to canonization.
 
I share the concerns. Canonization is supposed to provide a role model for Catholics to follow, but how can you imitate even a good pope? For centuries almost all saints have been priests and religious, [...]

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Archbishop and Mrs. Milingo
Archbishop Milingo, after years of increasingly outrageous conduct, has been defrocked, according to Catholic Word News. 
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo—the renegade African prelate who has launched a worldwide crusade for married priests, under the influence of the Korean sect figure Sun Myung Moon—has been defrocked, the Vatican announced on December 17.
Because of Milingo’s [...]

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