Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

Although words are not everything, they are a beginning, especially if they reveal the heart. Perhaps we can take some hope from these words of Pope Benedict: 

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the [...]

[Read more →]

Benedict’s letter on sexual abuse, addressed to the Church in Ireland, has disappointed almost everyone.
Confession that is a requirement of repentance involves confessing the whole truth and a desire to make reparation.
Benedict makes some dubious assertions, half-truths at best. He claims that a misunderstanding of Vatican II led to a neglect of the penal [...]

[Read more →]

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 [...]

[Read more →]

The situation was similar in the U.S. Rudy Kos in Dallas thought the hierarchy would protect him as it had protected the other molesters with whom he shared rectories. 
Brendan O’Connor in The Independent: 

It is now clear that one of the functions served by the Catholic Church in Ireland was that of a club. It was [...]

[Read more →]

The late Father Richard Neuhaus of First Things was upset by my book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. He thought that there was no justification for the level of anger I felt. He preferred the detached, scholarly approach that Nicholas Cafardi took in Before Dallas: The U.S. Bishops’ Response to Clergy Sexual Abuse [...]

[Read more →]

The question of lying is a vexed one in moral theology. 
Lying is wrong. But in every situation? 
The classic modern example: the Nazis come to you and ask if you know where the hidden Jews are. You do, but you lie and save a life. 
But it is never right to do evil that good may come [...]

[Read more →]

President Clinton went to Georgetown Law. Apparently he picked up one element of Catholic doctrine and practice. 
About Lewinsky, he famously said “I did not have sex with that woman.”  But it all depends what you mean by sex. 
The Irish Times, in “Church Lied without Lying,” details the Catholic justification for and practice of such weaseliness, [...]

[Read more →]

Father Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1950s and 1960s warned American bishops and Pope John XXIII and Paul Vi about abusers. A sample of his opinions: 

In a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop, Fitzgerald said, “These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I [...]

[Read more →]