Oremus pro pontifice nostro

in Pope Benedict 9 Comments Tags:

I have been harsh in some remarks, but I really like Benedict. I pray for him every day, and did so when he was a cardinal. In an interview years ago he said he liked to vacation in a cooler spot than Italy, but the salary of a cardinal was not enormous. I sent him a substantial gift and asked him to use it for himself – he wrote back that he couldn’t do that but that he would use it for the CDF library. I got a Christmas card from him that year, which I put out every year until I lost it. 

Both John Allen and Jason Berry (Vows of Silence – about the Legion of Christ – I funded the documentary) think that Ratzinger had a real change of heart after he started reading dossiers on abuse – and I suspect that he saw sanitized versions. When he became pope, he acted against the some of the most prominent abusers, abusers who had protectors in John Paul and probably Sodano. 

Ratzinger made a dreadful mistake in Munich and should own up to it. He should never have turned such a sensitive case over to a subordinate and not followed up on it. He should also have found some way to discipline the worst offenders, or at least the most prominent offenders, among the bishops who enabled abuse. 

He is paying for these failures now – his mistakes will be all his pontificate is remembered for. I wish he would own up to his mistakes and confess to the Church that he has not been a perfect bishop and pope – but he has tried.  And how well could any of us handled such responsibilities? An open and sincere confession would clear the air, and only his incorrigible enemies would continue attacking him. But defensiveness will provoke only more attacks and make people wonder how badly he has failed.

Leave a Comment

Shoot Foot, Insert Firmly in Mouth

in Anti-Semitism, clergy sex abuse scandal, clericalism, Narcissism 7 Comments Tags: , , ,

Is there a school at the Vatican where priests and bishops are taught how to offend everyone? 

The NYT reports that the papal preacher, the Franciscan Cantalamessa, compared criticism of the hierarchy to anti-Semitic persecution: 

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.

The remarks, on the day Christians mark the crucifixion, underscored how much the Catholic Church has felt under attack from recent news reports and criticism over how it has handled charges of child molestation against priests in the past, and sought to focus attention on the church as the central victim.

In recent weeks, Vatican officials and many bishops have angrily denounced news reports that Benedict failed to act strongly enough against pedophile priests, once as archbishop of Munich and Freising in 1980 and once as a leader of a powerful Vatican congregation in the 1990s.

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” 

Father Lombardi, the spokesman for the pope, is running for cover:

Father Lombardi said that he personally did not think that criticism of the church could be compared to anti-Semitism.

“I don’t think it’s an appropriate comparison,” he said. “That’s why the letter should be read as a letter of solidarity by a Jew.”

The chief Rabbi of Rome was astonished:

Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome, who hosted Benedict at the Rome synagogue in January on a visit that helped calm waters after a year of tensions, laughed in seeming disbelief when asked about Father Cantalamessa’s remarks.

“With a minimum of irony, I will say that today is Good Friday, when they pray that the Lord illuminate our hearts so we recognize Jesus,” Rabbi Di Segni said, referring to a prayer in a traditional Catholic liturgy calling for the conversion of the Jews. “We also pray that the Lord illuminate theirs.”

At the Holy Thursday liturgy in Baltimore, Archbishop Edwin O’Brien began well when he talked about how scoundrels had disgraced the priesthood, but warmed to his topic when he lambasted newspapers for criticizing bishops and the pope.

I see, abuse of children that wrecked their lives and drive some to suicide is parallel to criticism in the press that upsets a cleric.

As O’Brien spoke, I thought of the plagues: “and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart” – and the archbishop’s. O’Brien’s and Cantalamessa’s remarks are stunning demonstration of clerical narcissism.

Jewish leaders and sexual abuse victims are – I can’t imagine why –  taking offense:

Stephan Kramer, general-secretary of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, described the remarks as offensive and repulsive.

“So far I haven’t seen St Peter’s burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests,” he said.

“I’m without words. The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims.”

Peter Isely, spokesman for the US victim support group Snap, said the sermon had been “reckless and irresponsible”.

He said: “They’re sitting in the papal palace, they’re experiencing a little discomfort, and they’re going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?

“You cannot be serious.”

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, of the American Jewish Committee, called Father Cantalamessa’s comments “an unfortunate use of language”.

“The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of six million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault,” he said.

There is no suffering like unto a cleric’s suffering who has been upset by “unfair” criticism –  it is as bad as being herded into a gas chamber.

 

 

 

Leave a Comment

German Numbers

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany 1 Comment Tags: ,

I earlier speculated that the seemingly lesser number of victims in Germany may have been the result of prosecutions in the 1930s. It looks like David Clohessy was correct: that was an illusion. The Church just opened a counseling hot line. Der Standard reports

Am ersten Tag versuchten 4460 Anrufer durchzukommen, nur 162 hatten Erfolg.

On the first day 4460 callers tried to get through only 162 were successful.

Nor are the laity ignoring or enduring the ignominy. In Austria and Germany, one belongs legally to a Church and pays a church tax. One can officially leave the church. Officials report that compared to the same month last year, resignations from the Catholic Church have risen anywhere from 47% to 500%.

Leave a Comment

The Curses of the Oppressed

in Austria, Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, guilt 9 Comments Tags: , ,

Cardinal Schonbörn and Wir sind Kirche, the lay reform group in Austria last night held a penitential service in St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna. (from Die Presse, Der Standard, and n-tv).

3000 entered a cathedral darkened except for the candles of the victims around the altar. Cardinal Schonbörn entered clad all in black, except for his red cardinal’s cap. He sat under a crucifix of the tortured Son of God, and all his body language spoke of humility, sorrow, and acknowledgment of guilt. 

The Cursing Psalms were read: 

“I will pour forth my anger, my scorn, my hate before you. I wish upon him poison and gall, he shall be blind, starving, and lonely. God, do you not see my helplessness?” 

Heavy drum roll.  

Schönborn says nothing for this is the time for the victims to speak: One cried out 

“Night after night the memories come back, like howling dogs. I cannot cope with them.”  

Another accused his tormentor: “From him nothing shall remain, his name extinguished. Strike it out of the Book of Life.” 

Drum roll. 

It continued: 

The student in a girls’ boarding school, who with head shaved bald and in a straight jacket lay in her own excrement, who at the point of a cane held by a nun had to clean herself up. 

The far-too-premature boy, who through the love of his parents developed so well that he could study theology – and after sexual abuse by a priest mentally fell back to a four-year-old level. 

The pedophile pastor, who despite the pleas of a mother of one of his victims was after a year’s pause sent into other parishes. 

Drum roll. 

Schonbörn at last spoke 

“We acknowledge that we would not recognize the truth, that we have covered up and given false witness.” 

I have often wondered why abusers and bishops did not fear the curses of victims. God hears the cry of the oppressed and vindicates them His wrath will fall upon those who tormented children and on those who stood by and let the children be tormented. Their names will be blotted out of the book of life – don’t they fear that? Perhaps they do not fear God’s wrath because they do not believe He exists – maybe that is what Benedict meant when he said a lack of faith was the source of the abuse and the enabling of the abuse. How many abusers, how many bishops are at heart atheists? How else to explain what they did?

 

Leave a Comment

Schönborn, Ratzinger, and Groër

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Vatican 16 Comments Tags: , ,

Now that he has made a public statement, I feel I can now reveal what Cardinal Schönborn told me two years ago.

 I know him a little, and I sent him my book Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church. We met in San Diego, and I asked him what he thought of the book, especially the section on his predecessor, Cardinal Groër. I wondered whether I had understood all the German sources correctly.

Schönborn said the situation was worse than I knew.  Groër had molested almost every student he had come into contact with for decades. After Groër was accused of this abuse, John Paul II continued to receive Groër socially in the Vatican, and tens of thousands of Austrians were resigning from the Church in protest.

 Schönborn in person pleaded with John Paul to make a statement about Groër. John Paul replied that he would like to, but “they won’t let me.”

“They”? I asked Schönborn. Who are “they” who can tell the pope what to do or not to do? Schönborn said that John Paul would not explain.  I gathered from the context it must be part of the curia.
 

Schönborn has now explained:

Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, in defense of the pope, told ORF Austrian television on Sunday that Benedict wanted a full probe when former Vienna Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was removed in 1995 for alleged sexual abuse of a boy.

But other Curia officials persuaded then Pope John Paul that the media had exaggerated the case and an inquiry would only create more bad publicity.

“He told me, ‘the other side won’,” Schoenborn said.

This other side, from all indications, was Cardinal Sodano, the Secretary of State, or at least some influential members of that Secretariat.. Ratzinger did not report directly to the pope, but to the Secretary of State.

Kathweb reports:

Der heutige Papst habe sich in der Causa Groer (1995) energisch für eine vatikanische Untersuchungskommission eingesetzt. Diese sei aber von der “anderen Partei” im Vatikan verhindert worden, berichtete Schönborn: “Ratzinger hat mir damals traurig gesagt: Die andere Partei hat sich durchgesetzt.” 

Bei den Kommissions-Gegner habe es sich 1995 um die – im Staatssekretariat angesiedelte – “diplomatische Schiene” gehandelt. 

Ratzinger sei auch der Verantwortliche für die Errichtung des “Gerichtshofs” in der Glaubenskongregation zur Behandlung der “delicta graviora” gewesen: “Ihm vorzuwerfen, er sei ein Vertuscher, ist deshalb nicht wahr.”

Ratzinger made a mistake in his handling of the Hullermann case; from all indications, he wanted to act against other abusers but was limited by John Paul and Sodano. No doubt he feels it a terrible injustice to be criticized for others’ failures. It would be awkward for Benedict to blame others, even if they are to blame. He should set up an independent commission to investigate what really happened and to bring out the truth about who was blocking the investigations of abusers.

But of course if John Paul II failed, the next question would be. “Why on earth are you trying to canonize him as a saint?” And if Sodano is the one responsible, why is he still a cardinal?

Leave a Comment

The Decline of Males

in clergy sex abuse scandal, education, Masculinity, Women in Church 4 Comments Tags: ,

Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the great mass of males is sinking down the social scale. 

Women outnumber men in college 3:2, sometimes 2:1 in liberal arts colleges. The recession has hit men particularly hard. Obama, in part because it produces immediate results and in part because he wants to reward his supporters, has funneled stimulus money into salaries of the helping professions, such as teaching, rather than into construction, which has an almost completely male work force.  

Males are abandoning schools and are being driven out of the work force; but they had left the Church long ago. 

The revelations of sexual abuse in Europe have led to attacks on the Church as an all-male institution. But it is only odd corners of the Church that are all or even predominantly male. In Europe as in the United States, 80% of the employees of the Church are female. The congregations in both continents are predominantly female.  

In the hundreds of cases of sexual abuse I have read mothers sometimes courageously defend their children, but all too often mothers don’t want to hear the bad news: they ignored it, or punished their children for saying such things about a priest. I understand from psychiatrists who deal with father-daughter incest that the mother often knows or suspects what is going on, but does not want to confront for fear of destroying the family. 

 

I would therefore not place too much hope that the incidence of sexual abuse could be lessened by having more women in positions of authority in the Church. That might be a good idea for other reasons; but it might make the Church even less male-friendly and our society is already alienating males from its other institutions. Alienated males are fertile ground for crack-pot and dangerous political opportunists, as the history of Europe in the twentieth century demonstrates. 

Leave a Comment

Grinding the Faces of the Oppressed

in clergy sex abuse scandal, repentance, Vatican 6 Comments Tags: ,

The NYT has the story of how everyone: bishops, priests, Pope, police, failed the deaf children who were molested by Father Murphy. Some critics have asked why victims sometimes take so long to come forward. As the experience of the deaf children showed, even going directly to the police, even leafleting in front of the cathedral did no good. No one would listen to them, no one would help them. 

They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people. 

Throughout history, the poor, the disadvantaged, the weak, have suffered for the convenience of the important, the wealthy, the powerful. It has been no different in the Church or the state.  

In the 1970s, a group of former students who were in a vocational rehabilitation program in Milwaukee began telling their hearing supervisors about Father Murphy, a sequence of events reported in two articles in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2006. 

Among the supervisors was John Conway, now the deputy administrator of workers’ compensation for the State of Wisconsin. Mr. Conway, the students and others collected affidavits from 15 to 20 former students about Father Murphy’s violations. They were granted a meeting with Archbishop William E. Cousins.

“In my extreme naïveté,” said Mr. Conway in an interview on Friday, “I told them the archbishop would take care of this.”

He said they were surprised to find the room packed with people, including several nuns and teachers from the school, two priests who said they were representing the apostolic delegate in Chicago, and Father Murphy himself.

Arthur Budzinski and Gary Smith, two more victims of Father Murphy, said in an interview last week that they remember seeing Archbishop Cousins yell, and Father Murphy staring at the floor. The deaf men and their advocates were told that Father Murphy, the school’s director and top fund-raiser, was too valuable to be let go, so he would be given only administrative duties.

They were outraged. They distributed “Wanted” posters with Father Murphy’s face outside the cathedral in Milwaukee. They went to the police departments in Milwaukee, where they were told it was not the correct jurisdiction, and in St. Francis, where the school was located, Mr. Conway said. They also went to the office of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney of Milwaukee County, and spoke with his assistant, William Gardner.

“A criminal priest was an oxymoron to them,” Mr. Conway said. “They said they’ll refer it to the archdiocese.”

Murphy was Important, he was a fund raiser, the Archbishop was Important, the District Attorney was Important – the deaf children were not Important – they could be ignored. 

The final vindication of the oppressed will come someday, at the end of history, but even now God or History gives signs that the oppressed poor are not forever forgotten, that their cries to Heaven for vengeance will be heard, that their vindication will come.

Leave a Comment

Vatican Corruption

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, Vatican 23 Comments Tags: , , ,

John Paul II and Paul VI did not listen to the cries of violated children. Why?

I have a few sources with Vatican connections and have received fairly reliable second-hand information, and my guess at the scenario is this. 

John Paul, for reasons he refused to explain even to a cardinal who questioned him, would not act against abusers. John Paul was a lousy judge of character. His priest–“friends” in the Krakow chancery were all in the pay of the Communist secret police, and gave them detailed information about the precise location of Wojtyla’s bed, which medicines he took, who his pharmacist was, etc. The priests were supplying information potential assassins in return for permission to study aboard for career advancement. When this was finally discovered after the fall of communism, John Paul’s secretary kept it from him –  why disturb an old man, he explained. 

The only explanation John Paul gave for his refusal to act against prominent abusers is that “they” wouldn’t let him act – a nameless they, but in the context, the curia. There are persistent stories that the Vatican offcials recieved gifts, such as $100,000 mass stipends, from Maciel, and priests who belonged to the Legion and to the congregation founded by fake stigmatist Gino Burresi worked for Sodano, protecting their corrupt bosses 

Ratzinger was an academic; I presume his first contact with the case of a sexually abusive priest was in Munich; he did not handle the Hullermann case well- he simply turned it over to a subordinate and did not check up on it. When he became head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger, as John Allen explains, got only a few abuse cases, mostly involving solicitation in the confessional. The others went to other dicasteries, which mishandled them. 

Ratzinger was determined to crack down, and therefore took over all the cases in 2002. He was horrified by what he read, but was limited in what he could do by John Paul and especially by Sodano. He was determined to end the abuse if he became pope, and has done a lot, although not enough, especially in regard to bishops. 

But the full truth has not come out, and secrecy lets the cancer spread. There have been worse situations. As the book Fallen Order demonstrates from contemporary documents, a 17th century pope appointed a man he knew was a sexual abuser to head the Piarists – which then collapsed as the members who were sincere Christians rebelled against the papal attempt to make them a pedophile organization. 

Secrecy may bring about worse disasters. Probably 7-10% of priests have had sexual contact with minors; maybe a smaller percentage of bishops, but still a substantial number of bishops are abusers. Have cardinals abused minors? Suppose one of them becomes pope? The papacy survived the pornocracy of the 9th century and the corruption of the Renaissance, but the internet would flash the news around the word if a pope was accused of abuse. Could the effectiveness of the papacy survive that? 

Leave a Comment

Vindicating the Victims

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, repentance, Responsibility, Vatican, Voluntarism 10 Comments Tags: , ,

 We are witnessing a cruel irony of history: Joseph Ratzinger, one of the few ecclesiastics to evidence genuine horror at the sexual abuse of children by priests and the one pope since perhaps Pius V to act against corruption in the Church, is receiving a massive international attack for his failures in handling abuse cases. 

It is not entirely undeserved. Ratzinger worked within the system and accepted how it handled sexual abusers: treatment and secrecy, and no regard for the victims. He seems to have come to a genuine awakening and determined to change the Church once he became pope, and he did immediately act against abusers, such as Maciel, whom John Paul had protected. 

But Ratzinger too had failed to protect children, chiefly through negligence. At the very least, he did not monitor Peter Hullermann, he did not forbid Hullermann to work in a parish, he did not read the memo (perhaps) that Hullermann has been assigned to parish work within days of arriving in Munich for therapy for the “disease” of pedophilia. 

Nor in the correspondence I have read in other cases did Ratzinger, the son of a policeman, ever suggest that the police be contacted, or that victims be cared for. 

He was disgusted by the behavior of the abusers, but he did not show much awareness of the harm that was being done to the victims.  

Criminal justice is necessary to vindicate the victim. The criminal, especially the sexual abuser, had by his actions shown he regards his victim as sub-human, as a mere object for his use. When the community punishes the criminal, it vindicates the victim, demonstrating that it regards the victim as a person whose worth is recognized. This is true of the penal sanctions of the state and of the Church. 

Commentators on the Commonweal blog defended Ratzinger’s decision not to laicize the abuser Murphy at the end of his life – why Murphy was no longer a threat to children, and to laicize him before his death would have been “vindictive.” Yes, precisely, it would have vindicated the victims, as criminal prosecution would have done. 

Ratzinger was simply following policies of the pontificates of John Paul and probably John XXIII; but if he were to point this out, he would be asked the question – Why then are you canonizing these men as saints? 

Underlying Ratzinger’s failure was of course clericalism and a desire to preserve the image of the priesthood. But even deeper than that is a voluntaristic tendency in Western morality that he himself has noticed and criticized. God forbids certain actions not arbitrarily (as the voluntarists says), but because the actions harm the goodness and beauty of the creatures whom He made and loves. 

Therefore God forbids sexual abuse because it harms both the abuser and the victim. Even if the abuser repents (and which ones ever have?) the harm to the victim remains, and can never really be undone. It must be atoned for – but atonement, expiation, has vanished from the Catholic mind, and has even been explicitly rejected by the head of the German bishops’ conference. Of course, because otherwise the bishops and the pope would have much to atone for, and atonement is humiliating and painful, and bishops and popes do not like to be humiliated.

Leave a Comment

Nemesis Approaches

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, Vatican 2 Comments Tags: ,

The tragedy of sexual abuse is unrolling in Germany like a Greek drama, and Nemesis is in the wings awaiting her cue.

The Austrian dramatist Felix Mitterer wrote a two-man drama “Die Beichte” (“The Confession’) which recently opened in Regensburg, although it was scheduled over twelve months ago. The timing is eerie. NBC reports:

The play tells the story of an orphaned choir boy who was abused by his priest, and later, as an adult, abuses his own child. In order to protect his son from the same destiny, the main character is determined to kill himself and his boy. But first, he confronts the priest, his former guardian and tormentor, in a confession that culminates in a disturbing dispute between the two men.

The choir of the cathedral of Regensburg is the Domspatzen, and Pope Benedict’s brother was director of the choir beginning in 1964. He claims to have known nothing of cases of sexual abuse of choir boys, cases that occured in the late 1950s and resulted in convictions.

The audience in Regensburg has been stunned by the play:

Both actors said the audience’s reaction to the play is quite different from any other productions they have performed in before: On most nights, there is very little or no applause at the final curtain, which leaves them facing an auditorium full of dismayed viewers.

The actor who plays the priest is the 60-year-old Mika Greza, who revealed

“I know what we are performing here and what we are talking about in this play. I have experienced it myself,”

He declined to elaborate to NBC, but a German paper, Die Mittelbayerische Zeitung, has more information: he was abused when he was a choir boy (1958-1965) in the Regensburg Domspatzen.

I hear the footsteps of Nemesis.

Leave a Comment

The Inscrutable East

in Celibacy, clericalism, Greek Catholic Churches 2 Comments

Kiev

The New York Times has discovered the existence of an Eastern Catholic Church with a married clergy. Today’s issue contains a good article on Father Yuriy Volevetskiy and his six children.

The Times is also correct in that the attitude of the Vatican is more of toleration of the Eastern (or Greek Catholic) churches rather than an acknowledgment of their equal status.

At the insistence of the Irish-American bishops, the Vatican would not allow Eastern Catholic Churches in the United States to have married clergy, a prohibition which may still be in effect, although the Eastern Churches have started to ignore it.

I have heard stories that in the 1950s Eastern Catholic children were not allowed to receive communion in Latin churches, and just a few years ago the Baltimore Archdiocese claimed that a school stared by a Eastern Catholic parish was not a Catholic school because it was not under the jurisdiction of the Latin archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Eastern Catholics, as the Times stated, are only about 2% of the entire Catholic church, and the general Latin attitude to them does not bode well for good relations with Orthodoxy.

The Greek Catholic priests wisely shied away from any discussion of celibacy, especially in relation to the sexual abuse scandals in the Church.

All in all, I do not think that celibacy is the source of the abuse. Male sexuality and pathological narcissism are the sources of the abuse, and human irresponsibility, male and female, is the source of the toleration of abuse. Anglican and Episcopal churches have seen sexual abuse committed by married priests, and have tolerated it just as Catholic bishops have.

Celibacy brings problems, but so does a married clergy, as any married Protestant pastor can explain. The wife must be a good example, and the teenagers must not be rebellious (hah!). And then what do you with divorced priests or priests who have done something wrong but their families must also suffer any penalties the bishop imposes?

Leave a Comment

A Papal Disappointment

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Ireland, repentance, Responsibility, Vatican 7 Comments Tags: , ,

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 aspects of the code of canon law. This may have happened, but what explains the toleration of abuse before Vatican II? From the American cases I have read the usual response of a bishop before Vatican II was to pawn an abusive priest off on an unsuspecting bishop, who was then stuck with him

The sexual liberation of the 1960s seems to have led to an increase of abuse cases; but this may be an illusion of reporting. Victims in older cases may have died and the files of abusive priests were generally destroyed on the death of the abuser. And terrible abuse occurred before the 1960s, and later abuser were trained in pre-1960s seminaries.

Benedict acknowledges the failures of the bishops – but proposes no consequences for them. Cardinal Law remains a cardinal and serves on important dicasteries – all of these at the pleasure of the pope.

And Benedict totally ignores any Vatican responsibility in the toleration of abuse.

At the very least, it was clear that the bureaucratic requirements of sending as case to the Vatican were daunting to many bishops. The Vatican returned cases so that every i would be dotted and every t crossed. Bishops got the clear impression that the Vatican did not want to see these cases. Was the impression mistaken?

Cases were also surrounded by pontifical secrecy. That is, anyone who revealed any aspect of the trial would be excommunicated. The Vatican now claims this was not intended to prevent church authorities from reporting abuse to state agencies. But it certainly had that effect. Again, American (and other) bishops and chancery officials got the impression that the Vatican did not want them to make abuse cases public. Was this impression inadvertent and mistaken? I do not think so. The Vatican’s desire to maintain a bella figura is well know, and I have not seen one scrap of evidence that bishops were ever asked if they had fulfilled their legal duty (in some states) to report abuse. In fact, Msgr. Scicluna’s recent remarks make it clear that the Vatican does not want bishops to report abusive priests to state authorities unless the bishops are legally required to do so.

The Code of Canon Law also has no consideration for victims. This was a lack, and I have seen no attempts to correct it.

In the most generous interpretation, the Vatican inadvertently contributed to the toleration of sexual abuse. Benedict should have acknowledged at least that, but he did not do so. Either he is maintaining a willful blindness about the Vatican’s own responsibility in tolerating abuse, or he fears that acknowledging responsibility would open up the Vatican to lawsuits.

There has been no full confession; therefore there is no true repentance.

Leave a Comment

If the Freemasons Come, Can the Jews Be Far Behind?

in Anti-Semitism, clergy sex abuse scandal, Freemasonry, Germany 8 Comments Tags:

The inimitable Bishop Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg has opened his episcopal mouth and put a red-slippered foot into it. His attitude to sexual abuse and his general humaneness can be studied by looking at my case study of an abuser in his diocese:  Peter Kramer. 

 

Now he has decided the Freemasons are to blame for all the bad news about the Church. From the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

Bishop Gerhard Müller of Regensburg in an Italian newspaper has sharply attacked the Federal Minister of Justice Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. He told the newspaper La Stampa that “Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenbeg belongs to a type of Freemasonic organization that portays pedophilia as normal, that should be decriminalized. Therefore she can’t criticize us. Also she has lied, in that she has defamed us. For neither has the Vatican nor the German Church given instructions to keep clerics away from normal justice.”  

Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger belongs to the agnostic-oriented Humanistic Union, which, speaking of defaming, has demanded a retraction from Bishop Müller. The court cases should be interesting.  

 

As to the Jews: John Allen reported in 2002: 

Since the beginning of the sex abuse crisis in the United States, I have often been asked how Rome sees the situation. My shorthand answer has been that while Vatican officials are certainly horrified by the abuse of children, as well as by the failure of some bishops to prevent that abuse, most also regard the avalanche of public criticism of the Church as exaggerated.

     Fueling the attacks, they believe, is an anti-Catholic American press, a legal industry hungry to tap the deep pockets of the Catholic Church, and dissidents within the Church of both left and right grinding their axes. 

     This is still a good summary of conventional wisdom. But there is also a darker theory about the origins of the anti-Church temper in the American press currently making the rounds. It’s something that so far only one prelate has dared to say out loud, and even then obliquely. Yet I have heard it come up repeatedly in private conversation, enough to convince me that it is fairly widely held. 

     I should add that I am not talking about reactionaries who see a plot behind any criticism of the church, but about views expressed by several intelligent, cultured Catholic leaders of both left and right.

     To put the point more bluntly than these men ever would, in part they blame the Jews.

     The point was hinted at in the now-infamous May 2002 interview in the Italian Catholic publication 30 Giorni, where Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga compared media “persecution” of Cardinal Bernard Law and the U.S. Church with the ancient Roman emperors and 20th century dictators such as Hitler and Stalin. 

     Rodriguez argued that it’s no coincidence the sex abuse scandal broke just as the world seemed to be focusing on Palestinian suffering. 

     “It certainly makes me think that in a moment in which all the attention of the mass media was focused on the Middle East, all the many injustices done against the Palestinian people, the print media and the TV in the United States became obsessed with sexual scandals that happened 40 years ago, 30 years ago,” Rodriguez said. 

     “Why? I think it’s also for these motives: What is the church that has received Arafat the most times, and has most often confirmed the necessity of the creation of a Palestinian state? What is the church that does not accept that Jerusalem should be the indivisible capital of the State of Israel, but that it should be the capital of the three great monotheistic religions?”

     In recent weeks I’ve had similar conversations with church officials in and around Rome, including Europeans, Latin Americans, and Africans, and I have been struck by how often this theme comes up once tape recorders are turned off. Just last week I was sitting in the Rome office of a leading Catholic educator and intellectual, an Italian who is widely respected as a moderate voice in theological debate.

     “Don’t you think,” he asked me, “that the disproportionate Jewish influence in the American media is part of the story?”

     In part, the hypothesis reflects the pro-Palestinian slant of much European public opinion, which has long vilified America’s “Jewish lobby.” In part, it reflects the strained Catholic/Jewish relationship in the wake of the beatification of Pius IX, the acrimonious debate over Pius XII and his alleged “silence” during the Holocaust, and the collapse of a Jewish-Catholic scholarly commission empanelled by the Vatican to investigate its World War II archives. In such an atmosphere, it’s easy for some around the Vatican to imagine that influential Jews in the American press might want to wound the church.

     Yet one cannot avoid the impression that at a deep, pre-conscious level, some degree of anti-Semitism is also at work. It’s the antique suspicion that whenever a Christian is dealt a low blow, in the background must lurk a Jew. 

     That such notions still swim in our ecclesiastical bloodstream should give us pause.  

I wondered if one fed Müller a few glasses of schnapps, what he would say about his deepest suspicions.

Leave a Comment

Ratzinger and Hullermann

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, Responsibility, Vatican 8 Comments Tags: , ,

Ratzinger’s action or inaction led to a child being molested.

 

Sometimes before 1980 the Rev. Peter Hullermann plied a boy with alcohol and then molested him. The parents went to the diocese, who told them not to go to the police, that the case would be handled inside the Church, and that Hullermann would never work with children again (Number 3 Lie after The check is in the mail and I will love you in the morning).

 

In 1980 the diocese of Essen sent Hullermann to Munich for treatment. Ratzinger, as archbishop, allowed him to live in a rectory. This is Ratzinger’s last involvement with the case that the Vatican admits.

 

The vicar general, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber, on his own authority allowed Hullermann to work in the parish.  The Hullermann molested another child, apparently very soon after he came to Munich, possibly while Ratzinger was still archbishop of Munich. In 1986 Hullermann was convicted of this molestation, but was returned to parish work in Garching, where he remained until 2008, working with the youth of the parish.

 

In 2008 he was transferred to a pilgrimage church in Bad Tölz, where least until a few days ago he was an active priest.

 

The Vatican has been attacking the media for reporting the facts, but has not denied the facts.

 

Why did Ratzinger turn the case over to Gruber and not follow up on it to learn what had happened? The Vatican says that Ratzinger was busy, with 1,200 priest in his archdiocese. Too busy to protect children? Alas, that has been the problem all along. And even in the United States (and Boston had 1,200 priests) bishops at least followed abuse cases and made the decisions (generally bad ones) and did not simply hand the cases over to subordinates. Why did Ratzinger, after he went to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and started handling these abuse cases, after he became pope, never trouble to find out what had happened to Hullermann?

 

An honorable man, a man of integrity, accepts responisility for the bad things that his lack of diligence allowed to happen. Is the Pope a man of integrity who will publicly admit his failure, or will he try to evade responsibility and blame the messengers for reporting his failure?

Leave a Comment

The Identity of Father “H”

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, Vatican 5 Comments Tags: ,

 For some reason I do not understand, German newspapers will not print the names of convicted  criminals. However, the Italian press is more like the American. 

The abuser identified only as Father “H” in the German press has been identified as Peter Hullermann by La Stampa. He is still a priest in Bad Tölz in Germany. 

He was first in Munich, then in Garching, and after 2008 in Bad Tölz. 

Remember: Hullermann was sent to Munich for treatment; the vicar general under Ratzinger, Gruber, put Hullermann in a parish, where he abused again, and was convicted, He was returnedto parish work and remained an active priest until this week. 

«L’hanno spostato qua e là e lui ha continuato a comportarsi come prima», lamenta al telefono Wilfried F. È lui la vittima degli abusi che ha dato il via all’intera vicenda. Negli Anni 70, di ritorno da un’escursione, il parroco, allora ancora a Essen, gli diede degli alcolici, lo rinchiuse nella sua camera, lo spogliò e lo costrinse a fare sesso orale. Quando lo venne a sapere, spiega Wilfried F., la Chiesa preferì regolare la questione al proprio interno, senza far intervenire la magistratura. A lui, allora undicenne, assicurarono: «Quel prete non lavorerà più con i bambini». Invece, poco dopo, Hullermann fu trasferito a Monaco e, in seguito a una decisione presa non da Ratzinger ma dall’allora vicario generale Gerhard Gruber, si vide riassegnati incarichi pastorali. Di lì a qualche anno fu nuovamente accusato di pedofilia. Non tutti, tuttavia, lo ricordano con astio. Anzi. Quando lasciò la comunità di Garching, nel 2008, ci furono applausi a scena aperta e a qualcuno scapparono persino delle lacrime. Un rappresentante dei chierichetti sostenne persino che «Hullermann è riuscito a creare una chiesa giovane e a trasmettere in modo duraturo il suo amore per la liturgia alle giovani generazioni». 

In Essen in the 1970s, after plying a boy with liquor, Hullermann has oral sex with him. The church found out, put preferred to handle it internally rather than go to the police. But the victim was assured that the priest would never again work with children.” Hullermann was transferred to Munich with Ratzinger’s permission, and was supposed to receive treatment. The vicar general Gerhard Gruber, supposedly without Ratzinger’s knowledge, put Hullermann in a parish, There he again abused a child.  

When Hullermann left Garching in 2008, there was a scene of applause and tears. Hullermann had taken such an interest in the youth of the parish.

Peter Hullermann is at the left

 

 

Leave a Comment
«< 53 54 55 56 57 >»