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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Be back in a few weeks.

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.

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.