{"id":408,"date":"2011-01-25T15:12:16","date_gmt":"2011-01-25T21:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=408"},"modified":"2011-01-25T15:13:15","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T21:13:15","slug":"canon-law-and-sexual-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/canon-law-and-sexual-abuse-408.htm","title":{"rendered":"Canon Law and Sexual Abuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpFirst\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">Nicholas Cafardi has reviewed in <a href=\"http:\/\/commonwealmagazine.org\/loose-canons\">Commonweal <\/a>the muddled history of the canonical handling of abuse cases. He answers a few questions, but he says many more can be answered only by the Vatican, which has not learned to be transparent:<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman';\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\"><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">What we do know is that eventually a few curial officials came to understand the insufficiency of official responses to the scandal\u2014and many more couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t grasp its magnitude. Some bishops and their canonical advisers were flummoxed by the new Code; others looked the other way. The Ratzinger who in 1988 sought a speedier canonical process for handling abusive priests delayed decisions to remove them later. The same man who as a cardinal refused financial gifts from the Legion of Christ as pope allowed the order\u2019s abusive founder Fr. Marcial Maciel to fade into a life of prayer and penance. By all accounts, Ratzinger\u2019s awareness of the sexual-abuse crisis evolved over time, not always in a straight line, and often in conflict with other curial officials. <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/ncronline.org\/news\/accountability\/money-paved-way-maciels-influence-vatican\" target=\"_blank\"><strong><span style=\"color: #1b4580; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">Evidently<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/a><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\"> Cardinal Angelo Sodano, John Paul\u2019s powerful secretary of state, worked hard to frustrate<strong> <\/strong>investigations into the sexual abuse perpetrated by Maciel. We may never know whether or how Ratzinger fought to break Sodano\u2019s blockade. Likewise, it seems improbable that we will ever know the full story of Ratzinger\u2019s role in the reassignment of an abusive priest during his tenure as archbishop of Munich. The various currents of power in Rome can be overwhelming\u2014even for a pope.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"MsoNormalCxSpMiddle\"><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #333333; font-size: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;\"><span style=\"font-family: Times New Roman;\">So we have to continue to try to connect the dots. The resulting picture may in fact be less flattering to the Church (e.g., malice and corruption) than the reality (e.g., dilatoriness and incompetence) \u2013 but no one knows, and no one <span style=\"mso-spacerun: yes;\">\u00a0<\/span>may ever know.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-408\" data-postid=\"408\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-408 themify_builder themify_builder_front\">\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<!-- \/themify_builder_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nicholas Cafardi has reviewed in Commonweal the muddled history of the canonical handling of abuse cases. He answers a few questions, but he says many more can be answered only by the Vatican, which has not learned to be transparent:\u00a0 What we do know is that eventually a few curial officials came to understand the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,201,454],"tags":[471,420,354,1120,360],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clergy-sex-abuse","category-pope-benedict","category-pope-john-paul-ii","tag-cafardi","tag-canon-law","tag-ratzinger","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sodano","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}