I have been reading more accounts of those who were abused by priests and who then committed suicide.
“…les pauvres, les paumés, les malades, les suicidés
En qui j’ai vu Ton visage.
Eux aussi présent tous les jours.
Élève-les jusqu’à Ton épaule pour les consoler.” (Michael Lonsdale)
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 Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church, the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice.
Grace is not cheap; it costs the death of Christ, and our participation in it means that we too must die, in one way or another, and death is rarely pleasant.
Archbishop Diarmuid of Martin of Dublin said that when he read through the reports of abuse, he threw them on the floor in despair. He sees that true repentance had not occurred in the Church in Ireland.
Why am I discouraged? The most obvious reason is the drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled. There are still strong forces which would prefer that the truth did not emerge. The truth will make us free, even when that truth is uncomfortable. There are signs of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the Church of Jesus Christ in Ireland and how it was covered up. There are other signs of rejection of a sense of responsibility for what had happened. There are worrying signs that despite solid regulations and norms these are not being followed with the rigour required.
Renewal of the Church requires participation and responsible participation. I have spoken about the need for accountability regarding the scandal of sexual abuse. I am struck by the level of disassociation by people from any sense of responsibility. While people rightly question the concept of collective responsibility, this does not mean that one is not responsible for one’s personal share in the decisions of the collective structures to which one was part.
I am surprised at the manner in which Church academics and Church publicists can today calmly act as pundits on the roots of the sexual abuse scandals in the Church as if they were totally extraneous to the scandal. Where did responsibility lie for a culture of seminary institutions which produced both those who abused and those who mismanaged the abuse? Where were the pundit-publicists while a Church culture failed to recognise what was happening?
Where indeed? With the bishops and who cardinals blamed the Freemasons, the Jews, the New York Times, the tort attorneys, the psychologists, the victims – Anything to avoid the hard road of self-knowledge, repentance, and conversion.
Mothering Sunday
It is the day of all the year, of all the year the one day,
When I shall see my mother dear and bring her cheer, a-mothering on Sunday.
It is the day of all the year, of all the year the one day,
And here come I my mother dear, to bring you cheer, a-mothering on Sunday.
So I’ll put on my Sunday coat,
And in my hat a feather,
And get the lines I writ by rote,
With many a note,
That I’ve a-strung together.
And now to fetch my wheaten cake,
To fetch it from the baker,
He promised me, for Mother’s cake,
The best he’d bake
For me to fetch and take her.
Well have I known, as I went by
One hollow lane, that none day
I’d fail to find – for all they’re shy –
Where violets lie,
As I went home on Sunday.
My sister Jane is waiting-maid
Along with Squire’s lady;
And year by year her part she’s played
And home she stayed
To get the dinner ready.
For Mother’ll come to Church, you’ll see-
Of all the year it’s the day-
‘The one,’ she’ll say, ‘that’s made for me
And so it be:
It’s every Mother’s free day.
The boys will all come home from town,
Not one will miss that one day;
And every maid will bustle down
To show her gown,
A-mothering on Sunday.
It is the day of all the year,
Of all the year the one day;
And here come I, my Mother dear,
To bring you cheer,
A-mothering on Sunday.
To listen to it, go to this web site.
Credo Ut Intellegam has been suffering through the news from the German Church, and I feel largely the way he does:
Wenn mir etwas Angst macht, dann ist es die Naivität, mit der momentan die üblichen Patentrezepte als Allheilmittel ins Spiel gebracht werden: vox temporis – vox Dei, verheirateter Weltklerus, Laienmitsprache und -mitverantwortung, innerkirchliche Frauenförderung etc. Ich habe inzwischen einiges an Laiengremien gesehen, von innen und von außen, ich kenne meine Mitchristen recht gut und fürchte, sie sind genauso unheilig wie ich. Sie sind genauso egoistisch, rechthaberisch, feige, heuchlerisch, geistig rigide und glaubensmäßig frigide wie ich und wie viele der aktuellen geweihten “Machthaber”. Woher der Optimismus, Hochwürdigster Herr Erzbischof, Ihr Damen und Herren der Räte und Komitees? Ich fürchte, ich kann da nicht folgen.
(snip)
Meine Hoffnung setze ich nicht mehr auf die Strukturen, die “Verfestigungen und Verkrustungen” von heute (Schick) noch auf die Strukturen von morgen, gleich wie liquide und flexibel sie sein mögen. Meine Hoffnung ist Jesus Christus; meine Hoffnung sind die Gottesmutter und die unabsehbare Schar der Heiligen, in denen die Liebe GOttes aufscheint; meine Hoffnung ist die erbarmende Gnade, wie sie mir Unwürdigem im Wort des Wortes, in den Sakramenten entgegentritt, und zwar egal, wie unwürdig der Mund und die Hände des Spenders sind.
If anything causes me anxiety, then it is naïveté that comes into play with the current patent medicines as cure-alls: vox temporis – vox Dei, married secular clergy, lay dialogue and co-responsibility, promotion of women within the church, etc. I have in the meantime seen some on committees, seen, from within and from without — I know my fellow Christians all too well and fear that they are just as unholy as I am. They are just as egoistic, bossy, lazy, hypocritical, spiritually rigid and coldly mediocre in faith as I am and many of the current ordained Powers-That-Be are. Whence the optimism, Most Honorable Archbishop, ladies and gentlemen of counsels and committees? I am afraid that I can’t follow you there.
I do not put my hope in structures, neither in the “bastions and fossilized structures” of today nor in the structures of tomorrow, no matter how fluid and flexible they might be. My hope is Jesus Christ, my hope is the Mother of God and the incalculable crowd of saints, through whom the love of God shines. My hope is in merciful grace, which encounters me, all unworthy, in the word of the Word, in the sacraments, and no matter how unworthy the mouth and the hand of the ministers be.
On the general principle that Malt does more than Milton can, I also recommend his blog “A Song for the Day of German Beer.”
In 2000 I organized a trip to Germany for my sons’ scout troop. I had attended conferences in Eichstätt for several years and knew the area, so we spent most of our time there.
Ever since Anglo-Saxon missionaries came to convert their pagan brethren, the prince-bishops of Eichstätt have enjoyed a long run of good taste and great wealth, and the city shows it. Almost everything except the medieval cathedral was destroyed by the Swedish army in the Thirty Years War, but the prince-bishops rebuilt their city in a small-scale, Italianate, baroque style. It is a jewel, and even our adolescent boys were impressed by the extraordinary beauty of the town and countryside. Bishop Walter Mixa gave us a tour of his palace and his private chapel one afternoon. We were some of the few Americans who ever visited Eichstätt; we were also the troop of the Baltimore Cathedral, the cathedral of Cardinal Keeler, who at that time was well-connected to Pope John Paul, because Keeler was very important in Catholic-Jewish relations.
After the trip we asked the scouts what they liked best about Eichstätt. It was not the castles, or the beer machines, or the city festival. They said that for the first time in their lives (they had all grown up in Baltimore) they felt completely safe.
They may have been safe, but not all the boys of Eichstätt were.
Mixa has always been disliked by the progressive wing of the German Church. He has made some strong statements about abortion (statements with which I agree) but he had also come down harshly on violators of canon law and church policies. One of his priests, Bernhard Kroll, was asked to preach at a Protestant church during an official ecumenical day. That was allowed, and the priest did it, and was so moved by the atmosphere that he received communion. Intercommunion is not allowed, for many good reasons, and Mixa should have called in the priest for a talk to explain that that he should not anticipate reunion, but patiently for all the problems to be straightened out. Instead Mixa came down on him like a ton of bricks.
Benedict liked Mixa’s approach. In making his first appointment to a German see, Benedict moved Mixa from Eichstätt to Augsburg, with its 1,500,000 Catholics. Bishop of Eichstätt, military bishop (which involved an odd incident with a briefcase full of money), Bishop of Augsburg: Mixa was on the way up.
In March 2010 Walter Mixa was accused of beating children in the Kindersheim at Schrobenhausen, where Mixa was a pastor from 1975 to 1996. He admitted he may have slapped miscreants a few times, but that is not how one of his victims remembers it. The boy was the youngest of eleven children of negligent parents: they ran in the streets all night. The state removed the children and placed them in institutions. The boy ended up at St. Joseph’s Kindersheim in Schrobenhausen. He admitted he was a difficult child, a bed-wetter and sleep-walker. The nuns spanked him with their shoes, they sent him to bed without dinner and locked him in a windowless room. They threatened him with Satan and hellfire, and after 1975 with the pastor, Walter Mixa.
Mixa habe sie an den Ohren in die Klausur gezogen, sagt er, immer einzeln, und dann wurde die Tür geschlossen. Der Junge habe auf die Knie fallen müssen, ein reuiger Sünder, und dann krempelte der Pfarrer die Ärmel hoch. Er habe mit der bloßen Hand, aber auch mit dem Stock geschlagen.
(snip)
Die Schläge, die Einsamkeit, die ständige Angst. An den Sonntagen musste er nach dem Gottesdienst in seiner Festtagskleidung stundenlang im Besucherraum des Heimes auf seine Eltern warten, die nicht kamen. Anschließend sagten ihm die Schwestern: Siehst du, dein Vater ist ein Taugenichts.
Es klingt alles wie aus einem Dickens-Roman, aber es spielt in den siebziger und achtziger Jahren, in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Es ist kaum zu glauben.
The hand of Walter Mixa
Mixa pulled them by the ear into the cloister, he said, ever alone, and then the door was shut. The boy had to fall on his knees, a penitent sinner, and then the pastor pulled up his sleeve. Mixa hit him with his hand and also with a stick. .
(snip)
The beatings, the loneliness, the continuous anxiety. On Sundays after mass he had to wait in the visitors’ room of the Home for hours dressed in his Sunday best, wait for his parents, who never came. Afterwards the sisters told him: See, your father is a good-for-nothing.
It sounds like something out of a Dickens’ novel, but it happened in the 1970s and 1980, in the Federal Republic of German. It is hard to believe
There were also allegations that Mixa had used money that belonged to the Kindersheim for unusual purchases:
The irregularities in the foundation’s books include € 7,500 Euros for various valuable items and € 20,000 to equip a chapel. Mixa purchased a forged Piranesi engraving from a forger in Rome for over € 20,000 (actual value: € 2,000) and a late-Gothic crucifix with two renaissance angels for € 30,250. He purchased a tanning couch for € 3,000 Euros and his own bishop’s ring – a “farewell gift” to the departing priest in 1996 – for € 19,000 without approval from the parish council. He additionally ordered wine for € 2,600 and three cork screws at nearly € 100 each.
Furthermore, Mixa was known to drink with boys until the boys became intoxicated. He also liked to invite the young seminarians in Eichstätt to share his private sauna with him (he did not show us that room! – and, to the surprise of Americans, even public hotel saunas in Germany are used by all in the nude). In certain circles Mixa had the nickname of “Monsi” (from Monsignor).
A former altar boy, now a doctor, knew Mixa, and described him as the consummate careerist and narcissist:
“Der Mann hat eine narzisstische Persönlichkeitsstörung”, sagt der Arzt. “Der ist schon damals den ganzen Tag mit Soutane und diesem Hütchen rumgelaufen. Der wollte schon als Stadtpfarrer Bischof sein. Es musste immer pompös sein und volkstümlich. Die Mischung kommt bei vielen gut an. Der hatte ein gutes soziales Gedächtnis. Wie geht’s dem Fuß? Was machen die Kinder? Er merkte sich jeden Namen. Und auch die Ministrantenfahrten waren ja immer sehr ausgelassen. Wir waren regelrecht mit Wein abgefüllt. Ich war zum ersten Mal in meinem Leben richtig betrunken, als ich mit Mixa unterwegs war. Und dann am Lagerfeuer hat er uns erzählt, dass Selbstbefriedigung millionenfacher Mord sei. Diese Mischung aus Verklemmtheit und Ausgelassenheit fand ich unerträglich, aber er hat damit jede Menge Leute begeistert. Ich glaube, es gab nirgendwo so viele Ministranten, die später Priester geworden sind, wie unter Mixa. Das kam natürlich in Rom gut an.”
“The man [Mixa] has a narcissistic personality disorder,” said the doctor. “He was always going around the whole day with cassock and this little hat. As soon as he became pastor he wanted to be bishop. He always had to be grandiose and folksy. A lot of people liked this mixture. He has a good social memory. “How is it with the foot? What are the children doing?” He remembered every name. And the altar boy outings were always boisterous. We regularly got sloshed with wine. For the first time in my life I was really drunk when I was out with Mixa. And then by the campfire he told us that masturbation is million-fold murder. I found this mixture of inhibition and boisterousness unbearable, but with it he inspired a lot of people. I believe that nowhere were there so many altar boys who later became priests as under Mixa. Naturally that went over well in Rome.”
When Mixa proffered his resignation immediately after the March 2010 accusation that he had beaten children, I suspected that something else would surface. After all, he could have said (perhaps truthfully) that the boys were headed for deep trouble, and better to punish them harshly than let them drift into a life of drugs and crime.
Altogether not a flattering portrait of a conservative bishop: man with an ambitious, self-centered, controlling personality, with a taste for luxury and alcohol and a penchant for misusing orphans’ money. Therefore it was not a surprise when the German police revealed that the Church hierarchy had informed them that someone in Eichstätt had accused Mixa of sexual abuse. The Vatican had known about the accusations since mid-April. On May 8 the Pope accepted Mixa’s resignation.
Mixa is in Switzerland at a clinic for alcoholism.
One poll reports that 25% of German Catholics are planning to resign officially from the Church – taking with them the 8% of their income tax that goes to the Catholic Church in Germany, and thence to the Vatican.
UPDATE: MAY 13 2010
The Frankfurter Allgemeine reports that the States Attorney in Ingolstadt after a preliminary investigation has determined that Bishop Mixa is no longer under suspicion of sexual abuse of a minor.
Der vormalige Augsburger Bischof Mixa steht anscheinend nicht länger im Verdacht, sich an Minderjährigen sexuell vergangen zu haben. Nach Informationen der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung ist die Staatsanwaltschaft Ingolstadt im Begriff, entsprechende Vorermittlungen einzustellen.
But there remain the allegations of his physical abuse of children in the Kinderheim and of his misuse of money that belonged to the foundation.
Also. the report that the Vatican received contained allegations about his relations with prospective priests (seminarians?), relations that may have been immoral if not illegal.
In den Reihen der Justiz wie in der Kirche waren die Vorhaltungen gegen Mixa unter anderem deswegen nicht abgetan worden, weil es in den Bistümern Augsburg und Eichstätt Geistliche gibt, denen sich Stadtpfarrer Mixa unsittlich genähert haben soll. Entsprechende Aussagen der damals noch angehenden Priester befinden sich in dem Dossier, das Papst Benedikt XVI. vorlag, als er über den Rücktritt Mixas entschied.
The two-week hiatus in posting blogs and comments was caused by my trip to the Southwest. While there I found a Navajo guide who took me into Canyon de Chelly.
First of all, never tell a Navajo guide you are up to a challenging hike. The only time I have ever come close to puking from fear is when we were crawling up a rock dome above a 500-foot precipice in 70 mile-an-hour winds.
The weather was variable. The first day, hot and sunny. The second day, warm and 40 to 70 mph winds. The third day, snow showers. Perhaps for that reason, I think we were the only hikers in the whole canyon. Other tourists came in my truck along the canyon floor instead of climbing in and out. They didn’t get the full experience or accumulate several ounces of red dust (it took three baths to get rid of it) and about 50 cactus spines. We hikers suffer for our art, but it is worth it.
I am no expert on the Navajos or their religion, but I have read a number of books and have observed Navajos’ off-hand comments. They recognize the existence of spirits, the Ye’i, which seem to be much like the Hopi kachinas, who are messengers and bringers of blessings. But the Navajo also seem to be monotheists, and constantly refer to the Creator and His intentions for our lives and our world.
The religion is a religion of healing, both bodily and spiritual. Evil is being out of harmony, out of the Creator’s plan of beauty for the world. This beauty must be restored by a Sing, which involves dances, songs, and the sand paintings which are the portal through which the Ye’i enter our world.
All their prayers end with the equivalent of Amen, Hózhó náhásdlíí.
In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty.
Hózhó náhásdlíí
As I said in the previous post, justice must be satisfied. Some Catholics believe that charity does away with justice, that it is wrong to punish sinners and criminals. John Zmirak examines this idea at Inside Catholic in the context of Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos’ 2001 letter praising a bishop for not turning over to the police a priest who raped children.
There’s something else going on. As Dorothy Sayers once observed of Goethe’s Faust, “He is much better served by exploiting our virtues than by appealing to our lower passions.” Some of the worst crimes in European history were committed by men devoted to Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. These values, as John Paul wrote in Memory and Identity, are secular forms of the theological virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity. Why should it surprise us that the Father of Lies can mislead men into misreading even these? I’ve written here before of the toxic trap that Mother Angelica calls Misguided Compassion. What if we are nowadays facing, even among the most sincere Catholics, distortions of the theological virtues — Blind Faith, False Hope, and Bankrupt Charity? While the genuine articles are infused directly by God, such counterfeits are cobbled together out of one-sided theology and our sentiments.
There’s one sure test for determining whether an action really lives up to the theological virtue we hope we’re practicing. It’s simple: Does this action violate any natural virtues along the way?
(snip)
Coming back to Cardinal Castrillón: When he held the paternal bond between a bishop and his priest as more sacred than the right of the community to punish sex abusers, was he upholding the bond of Charity that ought to unite those who head the Church to its members? It must have seemed so at the time. Such sins smell and look like lilies. But they flank a coffin.
Lying dead and stiff inside that box is natural Justice, an attribute of God as much as His Mercy. Simple Justice is what each of us owes the other in an unconditional debt. We cannot violate that Justice in pursuit of Faith, Hope, or Charity. When we contemplate any action that stokes in us the sentiment that we’re being “more radically Christian” and really “living the gospel” by going beyond “merely natural” virtues, every alarm bell in our conscience should start going off. We can no more attain theological virtues by violating the natural ones than we can build the dome on a cathedral by pulling steel from its foundations.
We cannot practice Charity toward the poor through confiscation from the rich; only if something is owed the poor in simple Justice should the state make sure they get it (as Pope Leo XIII taught in Rerum Novarum). At the height of the high Middle Ages, the Church never furthered the salvation of souls by confiscating non-Christian children, baptizing them, and rearing them in the Faith. At age 18 I wondered why not, till a wise priest explained to me that the natural rights of pagan parents could not be torn away in such a “higher cause.” Likewise, the natural rights of parents, and the state that represents them, to defend their children from rape cannot be sacrificed on the altar of priestly solidarity, compassion for “troubled brother priests,” or the need to avoid bad publicity for the Church.
God is the author of both nature and grace; nature has its rights and those rights are not superseded or violated by grace. As Zmirak points out, if grace is all that matters, we should be kidnapping the children of pagan (and Jewish) parents and baptizing them.
The Church has not always respected the rights of nature. In 1858 Pius IX forcibly took from his Jewish parents their six-year-old son, Edgardo Mortaro, who had been secretly baptized by a Catholic servant. Augustine was willing to use the power of the Roman state to force Donatists into the Catholic Church. It was for their own good, for outside of the visible, judicial bounds of the Catholic Church, Augustine believed there was no salvation. But God respects our freedom to love Him or not to love Him, and the Church should imitate God in His respect for nature.
Julián Carrón, the president of Communion and Liberation, in a letter to La Republica, has written the most profound reflection on sexual abuse in the Church I have seen so far.
None of us has ever been as dismayed as we are in front of the heart-wrenching story of child abuse. Our dismay arises from our inability to respond to the demand for justice which springs from the bottom of our hearts.
The request to assume responsibility, the acknowledgement of the evil committed, the reprimand for the mistakes made in the handling of the affair – all of this seems to us to be totally inadequate as we face this sea of evil. Nothing seems to be enough. And so we can understand the frustrated reactions that have been coming forth at this time.
This has all served the purpose of making us stand face to face with our demand for justice, acknowledging that it is limitless, bottomless – as deep as the wound itself. Since it is infinite, it can never be satisfied. So the dissatisfaction, impatience and even the disillusionment of the victims are understandable, even after all the injuries and mistakes have been admitted: nothing can satisfy their thirst for justice. It’s like entering into an endless struggle. From this point of view, the ones who committed the abuse are paradoxically facing a challenge similar to that of the victims: nothing can repair the damage that has been done. This in no way means that their responsibility can be lifted, and much less the verdict that justice may impose upon them; it would not be enough even if they were to serve the maximum sentence.
(snip)
It is the Pope who, paradoxically, in his disarming boldness, has not fallen prey to reducing justice to any sort of human measure. To begin with, he admitted without hesitation the gravity of the evil committed by priests and religious, urged them to accept their responsibility for it, and condemned the way certain bishops in their fear of scandal have handled the affair, expressing his deep dismay over what had happened and taking steps to ensure that it not happen again. But then, he expressed his full awareness that this is not enough to respond to the demand that there be justice for the harm inflicted: “I know that nothing can undo the wrong you have endured. Your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated.” Likewise, even if the perpetrators serve their sentences, repent, and do penance, it will never be enough to repair the damage they did to the victims and to themselves.
Benedict XVI’s recognition of the true nature of our need, of our struggle, is the only way to save our full demand for justice; it is the only way to take it seriously, to take it fully into consideration. “The demand for justice is a need that is proper to man, proper to a person. Without the possibility of something beyond, of an answer that lies beyond the existential modalities that we can experience, justice is impossible… If the hypothesis of a ‘beyond’ were eliminated, that demand would be unnaturally suffocated” (Father Giussani). So how did the Pope save this demand? By calling on the only one who can save it, someone who makes the beyond present in the here and now, namely, Christ, the Mystery made flesh. “Jesus Christ … was Himself a victim of injustice and sin. Like you, He still bears the wounds of His own unjust suffering. He understands the depths of your pain and its enduring effect upon your lives and your relationships, including your relationship with the Church.” Calling on Christ is not a way to seek a hiding place to run off to in the face of the demand for justice: it is the only way to bring justice about.
If the universe is irrational, life is meaningless. A universe without justice is irrational. But how can wrongs ever be righted, how can justice ever be fulfilled. Sexual abuse brings into focus the evil in ever wrong action: the good creation has been damaged, and can never be repaired, because the past cannot be changed.
When a person who has done wrong (and all are sinners) faces this, he knows that the wrong he has done in his life is irreparable. No matter what he does, he can never meet the demands of justice. Justice can never be satisfied, and a universe without justice is irrational and meaningless, and life is not worth living.
Unless justice can be satisfied, life is meaningless. But man can never satisfy justice, he cannot restore life to the murdered, innocence to the defiled. Only an uncreated power not bounded by space or time can do that, and can do it in a way that we can only dimly begin to understand.
Christ bears the wounds of his unjust suffering for all eternity, but now they are glorified. What does that mean for us, for the human sinners and the human victims? – eye has not seen not ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what it means, but the faith that it means something, that somehow in the end God will vindicate all victims, that He will right all wrongs, that He will wipe away the tears from every eye, is the faith of a Church that now sees but in a glass darkly.
On Saturday, April 24 at 1:00 PM, Dario Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos, the former President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclésia Dei, will celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form at the High Altar of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. The stated occasion is the fifth anniversary of the election of His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI.
The French website Golias published a letter that Castrillón Hoyos had sent to Bishop Pican, who had been jailed for his failure to report an abuser-priest.
La lettre du prélat colombien intervient juste après la condamnation de Mgr Pican à trois mois de prison avec sursis pour avoir « protégé » un prêtre pédophile de son diocèse, l’abbé Bissey condamné lui-même à 18 ans de prison.
On lira avec stupéfaction que dans sa missive le cardinal Castrillon Hoyos « félicite » l’évêque français « de n’avoir pas dénoncé un prêtre à l’administration civile ». Et le responsable au Vatican de poursuivre : « Je me réjouis d’avoir un confrère dans l’épiscopat qui, aux yeux de l’histoire et de tous les autres évêques du monde, aura préféré la prison plutôt que de dénoncer son fils-prêtre ».
Plus loin dans son texte, le cardinal Castrillon Hoyos appuiera et fondera la position de Mgr Pican sur un passage de Saint Paul. Il lui écrit en effet : « Nous nous rappelons à votre égard du mot de Saint Paul : »Dans tout le Prétoire et partout ailleurs, mes chaînes ont acquis, dans le Christ, une vraie notoriété, et la plupart des frères, enhardis du fait même de ces chaînes, redoublent d’une belle audace à proclamer sans crainte la Parole (Phil1,13-14)”.
Et, en guise de conclusion, le cardinal du Vatican de signaler à l’évêque français que la « Congrégation » vaticane du Clergé « transmettra copie » de cette missive « à toutes les conférences d’évêques » de l’Eglise catholique « pour encourager les frères de l’épiscopat dans ce domaine si délicat ».
Castrillón Hoyos “congratulates” Pican for not having reported the abuser to the police, and says that he is going to send a copy of this letter “to all the conferences of bishops to encourage the brothers of the episcopate in this delicate matter.”
We now know in part why bishops did not report pedophiles to the police.
I hope that Castillón Hoyos gets a warm welcome in Washington.
On March 15, I asked If the Freemasons Come, Can the Jews Be Far Behind?
The answer is by about a month. The Guardian reports:
A furious transatlantic row has erupted over quotes that were attributed to a retired Italian bishop, which suggested that Jews were behind the current criticism of the Catholic church’s record on tackling clerical sex abuse.
A website quoted Giacomo Babini, the emeritus bishop of Grosseto, as saying he believed a “Zionist attack” was behind the criticism, considering how “powerful and refined” the criticism is.
The comments, which have been denied by the bishop, follow a series of statements from Catholic churchmen alleging the existence of plots to weaken the church and Pope Benedict XVI.
Allegedly speaking to the Catholic website Pontifex, Babini, 81, was quoted as saying: “They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers.”
Babini is denying ever having said this, so we shall see whether the website Pontifex can prove he in fact did say this – but I would not be surprised if Babini said what a lot of other bishops are thinking.
The current contretemps over Benedict is a symptom that the role of the pope has grown too large.
One can accept all the dogmatic formulations about the papacy and still think that its role has become hypertrophied in the modern church.
The popes sought protections from their real enemies (Freemasonic, Nazi, Communist) by making the pope a symbol of Catholic identity. I remember in the 1950s learning the song :
Long live the pope,
His praises sound
Again and yet again.
His rule is over space and time,
His throne the hearts of men.
All Hail, the Shepherd King of Rome,
Our theme of loving song.
May all the earth his glory sing
And heaven the strain prolong.
A bit excessive.
John Paul used his theatrical skills and his ability to work the media to call attention to the Gospel, but he also called attention to himself.
The modern papacy has centralized the administration of the Church. Until recently, the pope appointed only a minority of bishops. Governments had a huge role, and the representative of the Empire had a veto power over papal elections. The selection of bishops was taken out of the hands of the laity (who were often no longer Catholic) and clericalized. But with the centralization came the responsibility to oversee the episcopate, and in this the Vatican has failed. But bishops are unlikely to criticize, much less discipline, their fellow bishops, remembering the proverb about glass houses. So no one is maintaining standards, and the law of entropy sets in, as the Church loses zeal and is reduced to a creaking bureaucratic machine.
The era of change after Vatican II has paradoxically made the papacy even more important: what changes are within the pale of Catholicism and which are not, which lines of change are fruitful and which are dead ends. Before, various human cultural traditions bound Catholics together, but those traditions vanished overnight. Now who can say what is Catholic and what is not? The logical place to look to for an answer is Rome.
With all eyes on Rome, the slightest failure of a pope will be noticed and magnified. Human beings have always had trouble with the virtue of chastity, and do not like to be reminded of its requirements. When a sinner discovers that he is being admonished to take the mote out of his eye by authorities who have an enormous beam in theirs, he is inclined to rebel. We have been warned about those who bind heavy burdens and lay them on men but do not lift a finger to lift them themselves, however we are also warned to listen to them because they sit in the chair of Moses. But this is not a happy or stable situation, and not conducive to building up the Church in the love and friendship which are its essence.
I wonder what all the pain in the Church will lead to. Will the news cycle move on, and the public be distracted by one of the manifold disasters that are always occurring? Or will the outcry, both from individuals and governments, at last force Pope Benedict to make some essential reforms: extending zero tolerance to the universal church, and holding at least a few bishops accountable? Or a new Reformation?
I doubt that Catholics, however dissatisfied they are with the Church, will want to set up a new, reformed Catholic Church. The vast mass of the laity, 99% or more, would not want to go to the trouble of setting up a new Church, and governments are mostly no longer in the business of state churches.
I also doubt that Benedict will make the needed reforms. If has not made them already, he will not make them now, especially when the Vatican and hierarchy are full of toadies telling him everything he does is perfect and his critics are all anti-Christian.
The news cycle will move on, the Church in Europe will be weakened, but it is already dying, and for the most part the everyday life of the Church will go on, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of those who have kept themselves informed – but they are powerless to change anything.
I read this as grace for our family Easter dinner, and for some reason it made a big impression on my now-adult children, perhaps because they have lived long enough to have people they love die, and therefore to realize what it means that Jesus has conquered death.
Christ is Risen!
If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let him enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.
If anyone is a wise servant, let him, rejoicing, enter into the joy of his Lord.
If anyone has wearied himself in fasting, let him now receive his recompense.
If anyone has labored from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward.
If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let him keep the feast.
If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; for he shall suffer no loss.
If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near without hesitation.
If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let him not fear on account of his delay.
For the Master is gracious and receives the last, even as the first;
he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.
He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one he gives,
and to the other he is gracious.
He both honors the work and praises the intention.
Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.
O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!
O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!
You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!
The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you!
The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!
Let all partake of the feast of faith.
Let all receive the riches of goodness.
Let no one lament his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn his transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.
He that was taken by death has annihilated it!
He descended into hades and took hades captive!
He embittered it when it tasted his flesh!
And anticipating this Isaiah exclaimed,
“Hades was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions.”
It was embittered, for it was abolished! It was embittered, for it was mocked!
It was embittered, for it was purged!
It was embittered, for it was despoiled!
It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!
It took a body and, face to face, met God!
It took earth and encountered heaven!
It took what it saw but crumbled before what it had not seen!
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the First-fruits of them that slept.
To him be glory and might unto ages of ages. Amen.
Here are wife’s favorite Rembrandts.
The passage it illustrates is
But Mary stood w But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Saying this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. ] Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Mary Magdalene went and said to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
Jesus is shown as a gardener, with a big gardener’s hat and a spade.
Man was created in a garden, and fell in a garden and was driven from the garden. Christ was in agony in a garden, and died in a garden, and was buried in a garden and rose in a garden.
And now He is the gardener of the new creation.
Whispers in the Loggia reports:
Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, Archbishop of Baltimore, issued the following statement in response to Father Raniero Cantalamessa’s Good Friday comments (fulltext) at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome:Father Cantalamessa’s words on Good Friday, somehow linking the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal with anti-Semitism, were unfortunate and reprehensible. They pose harm to Catholic-Jewish relations in Baltimore and around the world and I personally denounce them.Rightly upset and embarrassed as we are by the scandal we are enduring as Catholics, as frustrated as we are by the sometimes unfair coverage in certain elements of the press, nothing justifies this insensitive, harmful and regrettable comparison.On behalf of the Catholic Church in Baltimore, I offer apologies to our friends in the Jewish community, to victims of clergy sexual abuse, and to anyone offended by Father Cantalamessa’s personal views.
I wonder whether anyone has pointed out to O’Brien that his Holy Thursday paralleling of the pain of sex abuse victims and his pain at seeing press criticisms of the hierarchy was about as offensive as Cantalamessa’s remarks. Perhaps I shall.
