BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries for 4/9/10.



I hope the worldwide audience of Vatican Radio is as significant as that of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe behind the Iron Curtain during the years of Communism (or the BBC in World War II, before it turned into the ideological beast that it is today)... Because even the most cursory review of the audio features aired on its main language programs (and very likely even in the languages I can't read or understand) shows a remarkable initiative to put forward the voice of the Pope and the Church against all the negativity in the secular media.

Father Lombardi, with his weekly editorials, articulates the issues well and consistently, in a way that L'Osservatore Romano has failed to do simply because its reporting on the issue has been spotty and far from systematic. Congratulations to Fr. Lombardi for trying to make the most of Vatican Radio as a great megaphone for the Church's message. If it reaches the grassroots audience it is meant to reach, Vatican Radio can be far more influential than the New York Times or AP for the people who matter.


In the debate on sexual abuse,
how does the Church stay on the right course?
Translated from
the Italian service of

April 9, 2010

The debate over sexual abuse of minors - not just by priests - proceeds amidst news and commentary of varying tenor. How does the Church navigate through these troubled waters, keeping to its sure route, and responding to the evangelical admonition, Duc in altum - sail out into the open?

Above all, by continuing to seek the truth and peace for the victims.

One of the most striking things that have recently come to light are the many interior wounds in victims, wounds that go back years, even decades, but evidently still open. Many victims do not seek economic compensation, but interior help, a resolution for their own painful personal experience. Perhaps this is soemthing we still need to truly understand.

We probably need to feel more profoundly the events that have had such a negative impact on the lives of victims, on the life of the Church, and on society itself. We might draw a lesson, on the collective level, from the hatred and violence of conflicts among groups of people, that have become difficult to overcome and bring to reconciliation.

But sexual abuses wound at a profound personal level. That is why we must commend the dioceses who have had the courage to encourage ways and means for the victims to express themselves freely and to be heard, without assuming that because the events happened a while back, they may already have had this opportunity; and to the dioceses and bishops who have shown paternal attention to the spiritual, liturgical and human needs of victims.

It may well be accepted that, as in the United States, the number of new abuse claims has gone down significantly in recent years, but the path of healing in depth is just starting for some victims, and for others, still to begin.

In the context of personal attention to the victims, the Pope has said he is ready to meet some of them, as he has dione before, involving himself directly in the healing path to which the whole Church is committed.

But this is a path that, in order to achieve the profound effects needed, should develop increasingly along the criteria of absolute respect for each individual and their search for inner peace.

Alongside attending to the victims, the Church must continue to carry out with determination and truth the correct procedures required by canon law against the offenders, and of working with civilian authorities to carry out their judicial and penal competences, according to the legal norms prevailing in different countries.

Only this way will it be possible to effectively restore a climate of justice and confidence in the Church on this issue.

There are cases when various community autorities and institutions, through inexperience or lack of preparation, have not yet drawn up the criteria or plans to act with resolve, no matter how difficult and painful the process may be.

But while civilian law will intervene with general norms, canon law must also consider the particular moral gravity of the betrayal of trust by persons given the responsibility for taking care of children, and their flagrant violation of the conduct they are supposed to uphold as witnesses to Christ.

In this sense, transparency and rigor must be urgent requirements for wise and just governance in the Church.

Looking forward, the selection and training of candidates for the priesthood, and more generally, of the personnel in Catholic educational and pastoral institutions, must be the premise for an effective prevention of possible abuses.

The requirement of reaching a healthy personal maturity, including sexual maturity, has always been a difficult challenge. It has become even more so today, even if the latest advances in psychological and medical understanding can help considerably in spiritual and moral formation.

It has been observed that the greatest incidence of abuses by priests took place in the peak years of the 'sexual revolution' from the 1960s. One must also take this into account in terms of training seminarians [i.e., their teachers may well have been influenced by the 1960s cultural revolution], and in general, the influence of secularization.

In practical terms, it has to do with rediscovering and reaffirming the sense and significance of sexuality, of chastity, and of emotional relations today - in concrete terms, not merely theoretically or in the abstract. Under-estimating this significance can be such a major source of disorder and suffering.

As the Pope noted in his letter to the Irish Catholics, priests today can respond fully to the demands of a Christian and priestly life only
if they nourish themselves at the spring of faith and friendship with Christ.

Whoever loves truth and the objective assessment of problems will know how to seek and find the information needed for a more comprehensive understanding of the problem of pedophilia and sexual abuse of minors in our day, and in various countries, acknowledging its extent and pevasiveness in all sectors of society.

This will help to understand that the Catholic Church is facing a problem that is not exclusive to her; to what degree the problem presents a particular seriousness to her and the special interventions she must make; and finally, how the experience of the Church in dealing with the probem can become useful for other institutions and sectors of society.

In this respect, it appears the media have not worked sufficiently, especially in the countries where the Church has a high profile, and therefore is more easily the target of criticism.

Documents like the recent national report on abuse of minors in the United States should be made better known to make the public understand what are the areas that require urgent social intervention and the proportions of the challenge.

In 2008 alone, the report identified 62,000 persons charged with sexual abuse of minors, of which the number of priests was so small that they were not even identified as a category.

The commitment towards the protection of minors and young people is an immense and inexhaustible field of work that goes far beyond the problem of offenses by Catholic priests. Those who have dedicated themselves to alleviating the problem with sensitivity, generosity and dedication, deserve the gratitude, respect, and encouragemant of society, particularly from civilian and Church authorities.

Their contribution is essential for calm and credibility in the work of raising and educating young people in Church institutions and elsewhere. The Pope rightly expressed his great appreciation for their work in his letter for Ireland, but obviously intended for all who make this contribution.

Finally, Pope Benedict XVI - who has been a consistent guide along the path of truth and moral rigor - deserves all the respect and support expressed in all the messages that have been reaching him from every part of the world.

He is a pastor who is capable of facing this difficult time with high rectitude and certainty, notwithstanding the criticisms and unfounded insinuations directed against him.

Without prejudice, we can say that he is a Pope who has spoken much about the Truth of God and of respect for the truth, of which he gives the most credible witness.

Let us be with him and learn from him the constancy necessary for us to grow in truth and in transparency, while keeping a wide perspective on the serious problems of the world, responding patiently to the slow drip of partial or presumed 'revelations' which seek to erode his credibility and that of other persons and institutions of the Church.

We need such patient and firm love for the truth in the Church, in the society we inhabit, in communicating and in writing, if we want to serve and not confuse our contemporaries.



Senior prelates call
for halt in attacks
by PADDY AGNEW in Rome

April 9. 2010


SENIOR Italian church figures, as well as the Pope’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, yesterday rallied to the defence of Pope Benedict XVI, currently the object of widespread international criticism for his handling of the church’s sex abuse crisis.

In response to German media accusations [I think from one publication only, Stern, then picked up the rest] that the Pope had tried to block investigations into the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, Fr Lombardi said: “It is ridiculous and paradoxical for informed people to accuse Cardinal Ratzinger of any type of cover-up.”

He added that it had been the then Cardinal Ratzinger, in his role of prefect of the Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith, who had promoted the original Vatican inquiries into Father Maciel.

Although the Vatican has yet to communicate the findings of a recent apostolic visitation into the now disgraced order, Legionary leaders recently admitted the truth of numerous allegations of sexual impropriety made against Fr Maciel.

Another senior Church figure to defend the Pope yesterday was the Archbishop of Naples, Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, who said that he was “disconcerted” by the “vehemence and inconsistency” of allegations against the pontiff.

He said: “The Pope’s letter to the Irish faithful was both moving and inflexible. In his manner of confronting this serious plague ['piaga' means 'scourge', not 'plague'] Pope Benedict has furthermore displayed not only the style but also the very essence of a magisterium, which looks on man from the viewpoint of God.”

Cardinal Severino Poletto of Turin also added his voice in support, saying: “It’s time to put a stop to this whole business . . . If negative things have happened, no one is denying it, and, in his letter to Irish Catholics, which applies to all Catholics in the world, the Pope has repeated that we feel shame for that which some consecrated people did.”

The influential Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana deplored the “bad faith” of the media in Europe and North America.

“Important international sociology studies, applied to religion, have demonstrated that among Protestant pastors, the percentage of those condemned for abuse of minors is double that of Catholic priests . . . and the frequency is 10 times higher among gym teachers and the coaches of youth sports teams.”

Meanwhile, on a day when Maltese bishops expressed their “pain and sense of penitence” for the child abuse crimes of Maltese priests, yet another front in the sex abuse crisis re-emerged.

The Catholic Church in New Zealand has confirmed that a former police commissioner is investigating five “historical” cases of clerical child abuse as head of an independent authority.

The sex abuse issue is not new in New Zealand, given that eight years ago the Church apologised for its handling of sex abuse cases, admitting to 38 of them.

The New Zealand confirmation comes a day after the Archbishop of Johannesburg, Buti Tlihagale, said that the Catholic church in Africa was “inflicted with the same scourge” of sexual abuse as the church in Europe. [For that matter, can any diocese on earth really say that it is 100% free of the problem? In the same way that no lay institution in charge of children and minors cannot say that unelss it has conducted an internal scientific survey!]


MMMM..... One can only conclude that the muck-rakers have so far not turned up anything new against Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI or any of these who have worked closely with him....


So Fr. Lombardi's editorial was the basis of the following reported as 'news' today! Did anyone really think the Pope would be unwilling to meet these victims with the right arrangements? He did so without advance notice in Washington, D.C. and in Sydney. Why wouldn't it be equally likely he could meet some in a civilly arranged meeting at the Vatican, or at the right occasion once again when he is visiting abroad?


Pope is willing to meet
sex abuse victims



VATICAN CITY, April 9 (AP) -- The Vatican spokesman says Pope Benedict XVI is willing to meet with more victims of clerical sexual abuse.

Spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi told Vatican Radio on Friday that many victims are looking not for financial compensation but for moral help.

The Pope has met with abuse victims during trips to the United States and Australia and with Canadians [some native Americans abused in Catholic institutions] in Rome.


Meanwhile, here is an item I missed from CNS from earlier this week. Too bad CNS is not picked up by other media outlets other than its subscribers - mostly diocesan newspapers and Catholic publications... But then again, sometimes it makes the same routine errors as MSM.


Vatican voices in defense of the Pope
are not orchestrated at the top
by JOHN THAVIS



VATICAN CITY, April 6 6 (CNS) -- The Roman Curia's headline-grabbing defense of Pope Benedict XVI's handling of the clerical sex abuse scandal has demonstrated that when it comes to Vatican communications, the Pope is not a micromanager.

Twice during Holy Week liturgies, the Pope was caught unawares when his aides spoke passionately about the barrage of criticism the Pontiff and other Church leaders have faced in recent weeks on the sex abuse issue.

One official compared the attacks on the Church and the Pope to "the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," while another said the Church would survive the "current petty gossip." [It is most frustrating when even the people supposed to be on 'our' side make mistakes like this: The comparison to "...anti-Semitism' was not made by the official - he was quoting a letter from a Jewish friend. And the right translation of what Cardinal Sodano said was 'the chatter of the moment'. It must be recalled that the Pope himself used the same term - 'chiacchericcio' means 'idle talk' or 'idle chatter' not necessarily gossip.]

What Pope Benedict thought of these interventions was not clear. But in both cases, the remarks had the unintended effect of upstaging his own spiritual message about the meaning of Christ's Passion and Easter. [So much for 'serious' jorunalism!]

From the outside, the Vatican's verbal rallying around the Pope was viewed as an orchestrated campaign to counter his critics. If there was orchestration, however, it wasn't directed by the Pope.

Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher of the papal household, basically has an open mike every time he steps up to preach for the Pope and the Roman Curia.

He also has a penchant for weaving in current events, so it was probably not a complete surprise when he began talking about the priestly sex abuse scandal at the Pope's Good Friday liturgy April 2. [One Good Friday, he spoke about The Da Vinci Code, and the next time, about the attempt to 'rehabilitate' Judas!]

But when, quoting a Jewish friend, he likened criticism of Church leaders to past efforts to pin "collective guilt" on Jews, he sparked an outcry heard around the world. [Mr Thavis, if he was quoting a Jewish friend how can you say "he likened etc...." Do we have a language problem here? It's exactly what the MSM was guilty of in reporting on the Pope's Regensburg lecture - attributing a quotation he cited to him personally!]

Amazingly, Pope Benedict and other Vatican officials had no inkling that Father Cantalamessa would put forward such a comparison. [Not his comparison!]

"No one at the Vatican has ever demanded to read the texts of my homilies in advance, which is something I consider a great act of trust in me and in the media," Father Cantalamessa said afterward.

As usual, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, was assigned clean-up duty. Hours after the liturgy, he issued a statement saying the Capuchin's analysis "was not the position of the Holy See."

On Easter Sunday, at the beginning of the papal Mass in St. Peter's Square, another salvo came from Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals.

In an unprecedented salutation to Pope Benedict, Cardinal Sodano extolled the pontiff as the "unfailing rock" of the church, praised the 400,000 priests who serve generously around the world and then said: "Holy Father, the people of God are with you, and they do not allow themselves to be impressed by the current petty gossip, or by the ordeals that occasionally strike the community of believers."

The Pope rose and embraced Cardinal Sodano. But in this instance, too, the Pope was not informed ahead of time about a text that soon would be making headlines.

"I can exclude that the Pope requested or saw in advance the text of Cardinal Sodano's greeting," Father Lombardi told Catholic News Service.

Whether in Rome or abroad, the Pope simply doesn't have time to personally preview the many speeches or brief greetings that are addressed to him, Father Lombardi explained.

Considering that this one came from the dean of the College of Cardinals, it was probably not subject to revisions by anyone else, either, he said.

Cardinal Sodano's remarks got more news coverage than the Pope's own words, leading some to complain that the Vatican couldn't manage to stay on-message even at Easter.

But that didn't bother Vatican officials, who said it was important to let the Pope and the world know that his Church supported him at this moment.

[I agree! It was the perfect occasion for doing so. After all, the morning Mass did not include a homily by the Pope, because he would deliver his Easter message Urbi et Orbi later - and that was not eclipsed by anything, since it had worldwide TV coverage.]

One source said the decision to add the greeting to the Pope was reached the evening before, based on a growing sense that to say nothing might leave the impression that the Pope was isolated in the face of criticism.

Critics of the Vatican's communications apparatus have long argued that not enough attention has been paid to the way comments by individual cardinals or other Vatican officials will play in the media. [I suppose because the Pope trusts that Curial officials should be responsible enough to be prudent about anything they say, even if historically, the Curia has always had a couple of loose cannons among them. The loosest one until he retired late last year was the former President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and peace, Cardinal Martino, whose recent remarks ranged from comparing Gaza to a Nazi concentration camp because of the Israeli embargo against it, which angered the Israelis, to proclaiming 'Ten Commandments' for drivers, which earned him a lot of derision in the media.]

But to date there have been no serious efforts to muzzle these officials or vet their public remarks. Indeed, for such a hierarchical organization, the Vatican has an amazing plurality of voices.


Now, here's a lady after my own heart. Give it to 'em, Sister Mary Ann!


Media decides, then reports
By Mary Ann Walsh
Director of Media Relations,
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

April 8, 2010


Generally I don't battle those buying ink by the barrel. However, recent coverage of the Catholic Church by mainstream media makes me wonder what has happened to the Fourth and Fifth Estates.

Maybe it's that cutbacks have decimated newsrooms of knowledge and experience. Maybe it's the competition inherent in a 24/7 news cycle that makes some stories too good to check. Maybe it's the current incivility it America where decency gets short shrift.

Some quarters of the media in the past few weeks seem to have a difficulty in getting stories right and fair. Fact-checkers and skeptical editors may have gone the way of dinosaurs. Some media appear to cite people for inflammability and absurdity, not knowledge. At times it seems that bias abounds, libel runs freely, and scrutiny lies by the side of the road.

Example: The Washington Post ran an opinion piece on Palm Sunday by Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, whose claim to fame in the U.S. previously was for a Saturday Night Live performance 18 years ago when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II. As the Washington Post's theologian at the start of Holy Week, she declared that "all good Catholics ... should avoid Mass."

The Web site of the same newspaper ran a vitriolic blog entry by atheist Richard Dawkins. The British scientist called the Catholic Church an "evil, corrupt organization" and a "rotten edifice" and spewed more of his anti-Catholic screed in, of all places, the On Faith section of the Washington Post-Newsweek blog.

Neither Sinead O'Connor nor Richard Dawkins, while free with their opinions, seems an expert on Catholicism. They're simply well-known. Given that editorial criterion, readers might worry that if cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer were still alive, the Post would hire him as a food critic.

MSNBC libeled the Pope in Holy Week with a Web site headline - "Pope describes touching boys: I went too far" - which has since been removed. The headline was intended to grab attention - it did - but had not a shred of substantiation in the story it headed.

Fellow media outlets, who rightly cry indignantly when they see plagiarism among their brethren, gave MSNBC a pass on the libel. MSNBC dropped the headline and apologized after the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights made noise.

A main source for many media these days seems to be plaintiffs' attorneys, who distribute old material they've "found" in the discovery process. Plaintiffs' lawyers speak of "secret" documents, more properly called "confidential," and offer their own interpretation of the materials as well as church motivation in drafting them.

Media with a frightening naiveté report on these materials as if the plaintiffs' lawyers constitute a new Oracle of Delphi. On Wednesday of Holy Week AP reported as "breaking news," a 1963 letter "obtained by the Associated Press" about pedophilia that was sent to Pope Paul VI by Father Gerald Fitzgerald, who headed a now-closed treatment center in New Mexico. What took AP so long? Father Fitzgerald's letters were reported in The New York Times a year ago.

The story didn't take hold then, but with nothing better to use to keep their story going, plaintiffs' attorneys recycled the documents and AP thought it had the scoop of the year.

There's a lot to be reported on child sexual abuse. It's a sin and a crime and more prevalent in society than anyone ever dreamed before the 21st century.

Some organizations, such as the Catholic Church in the United States, have made massive efforts to deal with it. People are learning how to spot abusers. The Catholic Church has educated more than two million people to do so. Children are learning how to protect themselves. The Catholic Church has educated more than five million children in this regard.

There are lots of stories there. But such stories take time to report and plaintiffs' attorneys make no money promoting them. And that, at least for now, isn't news.


Sister Mary Ann Walsh is a Sister of Mercy of the Americas and director of media relations for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Pope to watch TV movie on
Nazi treatment of Roman Jews



Vatican City, Apr 9, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- While resting up in Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father will be taking time today to watch a film - "Under the Roman Sky,” a movie about Hitler's treatment of the Jews in Rome and his attempt to kidnap Pope Pius XII.

As the Pope recovers from a taxing Holy Week schedule, during which he appeared for public celebrations nearly every day, he will have the opportunity to relax and take in the movie featuring the American actor James Cromwell as Pope Pius XII, who was the subject of a kidnap plot by Adolph Hitler.

The mini-series is set in the streets of Rome during the Nazi occupation. According to Italy's AGI News, the plot develops along the course of nine months, and features Jews being taken from the ghetto and a failed attempt by the Nazis to abduct the Pope.

The film, made by the Italian production company Lux Vide, also illustrates the Church's efforts to protect and save Jews during the war, the very subject that raised a considerable amount controversy after Pope Benedict declared Pius XII "Venerable" on Dec. 19, 2009.

Lux Vide has produced other biographical films on Popes John Paul II, Paul VI and John XXIII as well as many other saints and biblical figures. [NB: The Pope last watched Lux Vide's production on St. Augustine in an abridgement of the 5-part TV miniseries.]

The Holy Father will settle in for the viewing at 5:30 this afternoon in the Swiss Room of the Apostlic Palace in Castel Gandolfo.


I looked up LUXVIDE for material on the film. Hre is their online blurb.

---

Synopsis:

Sept 8, 1943. Abduct the Pope! Violate the sovereignty of the Vatican and lay hands on the man who remained the only authority on Italian territory who was not unnerved by the advance of the Allies. And here was the order from Berlin, from the Fuherer himself!

In 1943, Italy knew no peace – in the south, the Allies were moving up; in the north, the Germans cotnuned to hold out. A pitched battle in which Rome was in the crossfire. A city left to itself and the Nazis, who had made it their general headquarters in Italy.

The Pope was the only source of hope, and Hitler could not stand this. Hence, the secret plan, a real threat, of which, however, Pius XII (played by James Cromwell), has learned about. But he tenaciously rejects the idea of fleeing.

For the Roman-born Pope, his place was in Rome, and in Rome, he would stay. In order to save the city and its residents. Using all the means at his disposal: diplomacy and material resources, political influence and persuading hearts, even those who belo9nged to the enemy camp, like General Stahl, commandant of Piazza di Roma.

But despite all his efforts, Pius XII could not hinder the horror which would reach Rome itself. On October 16, 1943, the SS carried out a violent and sudden search-raid of the Jewish Ghetto in Rome. More than a thousand persons would be deported to Auschwitz, of which only 15 would come back alive.

The tragedy of the Jews became the the Pope’s own. History records that more than 10,000 Jews were saved from the Nazis in the churches and convents of Rome – unparalleled in any other city that had been occupied by the Nazis.

In the horror of those days, two young Jews – David and Miriam (played by Marco Foschi and Alessandra Mastonardi, respectively) – escape the ghetto raid and find refuge in one of the convents that the Pope had designated as a refuge. Here, their love for each other grows and presages the start of a new life.

But with the passing of months, the Nazi repression in Rome increased, and even the extra-territorial prerogatives of the Vatican were violated. And yet, when on June 4, 1944, Allied troops finally entered Rome, a crowd exulting in this liberation, poured into St. Peter’s Square and acclaimed the man who never abandoned them, Pius XII.

*****

Lux Vide based this work on documents submitted for the beatification of Pius XII regarding his relationship with the Jews. It comes in the middle of a new debate over the wartime Pope’s record, and is dramatized by new testimony about the Nazi plan to abduct him during their occupation of Rome.

But in fact, even some Nazi officials in Rome opposed barbarism – and so, under the skies of Rome, hidden but safe, the victims and their persecutors shared the heartfelt appeal of Pius XII before the ar began: “With peace, nothing is lost. But in war, everything can be lost”.

---

Rousing welcome expected
to greet Pope in Malta
By Carol Glatz



VATICAN CITY, April 9 (CNS) -- When Pope Benedict XVI lands in Malta for a two-day trip April 17 he is expected to receive the same warm and hospitable welcome as St. Paul enjoyed when the apostle and his companions washed up on the Mediterranean island 1,950 years ago.

Nearly 95 percent of the country's 443,000 people profess to be Catholic, and large crowds are expected to turn out for the trip's two major outdoor events: a Mass April 18 in Malta's biggest square in Floriana and a gathering with young people later that day at the port of Valletta overlooking the Grand Harbor.

The Pope will have turned 83 the day before he arrives, and Pope-watchers wonder if there will be an impromptu celebration waiting in his honor. The White House feted Pope Benedict with a four-layer lemon cake when his 81st birthday coincided with his visit to Washington.

According to the official schedule, the 26-hour visit will hit the essentials.

He will meet with the country's bishops and Maltese President George Abela in separate encounters. And he will meet the faithful, including young people. He will probably use those occasions to highlight how Christianity's moral and spiritual values help build a more peaceful and just society and a more fulfilling life.

While not planned as part of the trip, the sex abuse scandal is bound to be on people's minds during the Pope's visit.

Church leaders in Malta have said, "This is a moment of great humiliation for the entire Church," referring to revelations of the abuse of minors by priests and religious not only around the world, but in their own backyard.

Archbishop Paul Cremona of Malta and Bishop Mario Grech of Gozo co-signed a letter April 8 expressing the Church's "grave sorrow and repentance toward all those who have been abused."

To handle allegations of clerical sex abuse, the Church in Malta set up a response team headed by a retired judge in 1999. A second team was established later that same year to expedite the investigations.

The two bishops said everyone involved in a suspected case of abuse must come forward and also cooperate with civil authorities. Christians are called to speak the truth rather than "disguising facts or remaining silent," they said.

According to The Associated Press, Malta's response team has received 84 allegations of child abuse involving 25 priests, since it was established.

Although it was not part of the official schedule, there is always the possibility Pope Benedict might meet privately with victims as he did on trips to the United States and Australia.

But Pope Benedict's main plan in accepting the invitation to visit Malta was to make a biblical pilgrimage to the grotto where, according to tradition, the Apostle Paul chose to live during the three months he was shipwrecked on the island.

St. Paul, the republic's patron saint, will feature prominently on this journey -- the Pope's first of five scheduled foreign trips abroad this year. He is going to help commemorate the 1,950th anniversary of St. Paul's arrival, which also marks the birth of Christianity on this five-island Mediterranean nation situated between Sicily and North Africa.

The Gospel took hold and flourished, making Malta one of the most Catholic countries in the world. When Pope John Paul II visited in 1991, he said Malta's full embrace of its Christian values should inspire the rest of Europe.

Pope Benedict has also made revitalizing Europe's Christian roots a centerpiece of his papacy and he is certain to encourage the Maltese to continue to hold fast to their Christian heritage and allow Christian values to inspire culture and politics.

While there are strict provisions protecting the freedom of worship in Malta, Catholicism is the state religion. Some key civil laws reflect that tie: divorce and abortion are illegal in Malta and remain opposed by a majority of the population.

One government policy that the Church has taken issue with, however, is the problem of forced detention of many of the illegal immigrants who wash up in Malta on their way to other European countries. What to do with the thousands of immigrants who are fleeing wars, persecution or poverty is a hot political issue on the island.

All immigrants who are denied admission into Malta or who enter illegally are detained until they can be deported. Even asylum seekers and people who apply for refugee status remain in detention while their status is being determined. Detainees, which include children, may be kept for months in prison-like centers with sometimes abysmal conditions.

Archbishop Cremona has said today's immigrants and refugees should be welcomed just as St. Paul was in the first century.

In an interview earlier this year with the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, the archbishop said the Maltese demonstrated a "strong sense of openness toward someone who is 'different,' the foreigner" when they welcomed St. Paul.

The archbishop called on the Maltese to revive this attitude of acceptance and to eliminate prejudices, and treat immigrants first and foremost as people.

Decoding the accusations
against Pope Benedict
by SANDRO MAGISTER
Written specially for

Issue of April 18, 2010


A few miles outside Rome there is a village called Rignano Flaminio. For more than three years, it has been wracked by accusations of sexual abuse of children. The incidents are alleged to have taken place in a day care center, by three teachers and a television writer. After three years, the criminal investigation hasn’t ascertained any sure facts and the trial has yet to begin.

Journalists incline toward the innocence of the accused. But no newspaper today is discussing this case, the most sensational in Italy in the last decade, because the Church has nothing to do with it, and thus it doesn’t make news.

Another memorable case in Italy took place exactly 10 years ago, and this one did involve a priest, Father Giorgio Govoni of the Diocese of Modena, who was greatly loved by his parishioners but accused of child sex abuse in the context of satanic rituals.

Father Govoni died of a heart attack not long after being harangued in court by the prosecutor, who asked for a 14-year prison sentence. But he was innocent. A year later, an appeals court found that the entire web of accusations against him was false.

These are only two cases among thousands, in Italy as well as in other countries, but they are enough to get an idea of how difficult it is in this field to distinguish truth from lies.

If you look at cases from the 1960s and 1970s, the difficulty grows beyond measure. This is the background against which a theologian named Father Joseph Ratzinger, later Archbishop of Munich and cardinal, later prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and finally Pope Benedict XVI, began to decode this plague of humanity and of the Church called “pedophilia,” love of children.

This is a “love” that in the second half of the 20th century became an object of worship in the fiction masterpiece “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov.

They were the years of “sexual liberation,” of primacy given to sexual instinct. A manifesto signed by French intellectuals — including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the Paris student revolutions of 1968 and today a European parliamentarian — went to the point of laying claim to pedophilia as the newest conquest. Even the victims of sexual abuse remained silent. Accusations were rare and poorly received.

The permissive contagion didn’t spare the Catholic Church, including its hierarchy. In the United States, there was a bishop who, with disarming candor, told why he lived an undisciplined life in those years.

Upon his resignation from the Diocese of Palm Beach, Fla., after admitting he had sexually abused a student while seminary rector, Bishop Anthony O’Connell said that when it happened in 1975 he felt influenced by the mentality of that time, in which “Masters and Johnson was big” and a “climate of sexual experimenting” prevailed.

Reporting his comments in The New York Times March 9, 2002, was religion reporter Laurie Goodstein, the same one who in those same pages March 25, 2010, accused Cardinal Ratzinger of a “cover-up” from 1996 to 1998 of pedophile acts committed 20 years earlier by a Milwaukee priest named Lawrence Murphy.

This article in The New York Times resounded worldwide, and is emblematic for a number of reasons.

First, and above all, because of its judgment of facts. It properly accompanied its online article with the documents upon which it was based. But those documents also provide the basis for a diametrically opposed interpretation, in which neither Cardinal Ratzinger nor the Vatican authorities end up having any blame.

Instead it was the diocese that acted badly. Not to mention the civil authorities, who at that time rejected the accusations as inconsistent — and without receiving the slightest censure today, even in the pages of the most fastidious New York Times.

Further, the article is emblematic in how it assigns roles in the drama. The “good” person is the ex-archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland. That’s not a new role for him. Forced to resign in 2002 after it came to light that he had had an affair with a theology student and paid him $450,000 in exchange for silence, Archbishop Weakland wasn’t pilloried for this in the “liberal” press; in fact, he was treated with great regard, as befit the renowned champion of a progressive Church that he was.

But there’s more. In 2009, Archbishop Weakland published a memoir called A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. Memoirs of an Archbishop. It is more than 400 pages of self-defense, in which the adversary and ultimate responsible party — even of the author’s sexual deviations — is Cardinal Ratzinger, in his inquisitorial harshness.

A reverent preface to the book bears the signature of Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, a leading exponent of the “liberal” wing of American Catholicism. And when the book was published, Goodstein wrote a favorable review May 14, 2009, for The New York Times.

All this is to note that the newspaper that carried out the strongest attack on Pope Benedict in these recent weeks is not at all “impartial.” [And hasn't been so at all in the 22 years that I have been a resident of New York City. It became so partisan during the Bush years that I stopped buying it and reading it altogether.]

It has an agenda that it does not hide. It is the same agenda of those who, from the vast inventory of pedophilia in the last half century in the world, fish only for those cases which — by date or place — can be 'bent' to implicate Pope Benedict, both as archbishop of Munich and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But paradoxically, the pedophilia cases aimed like weapons at Cardinal Ratzinger by the world’s media help one understand at least this: that the current Pope was truly the leader of a change in the Church’s way of facing this plague.

Until 2001, cases of clerical pedophilia didn’t fall under the Vatican’s purview, but to the local bishops. It was they who frequently covered them up or handled them poorly, accomplices also in the permissive climate described above.

If a bishop turned to Rome, it was only when cases dealt with an offense involving the Sacrament of Confession — grave sins reserved to the Holy See. In 1998, to cite an example of primary importance, the accusers and victims of the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial Maciel [who from their accounts, molested them or solicited them in the confessional] , denounced him to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and asked for a canonical trial.

As prefect of the Vatican congregation, Cardinal Ratzinger examined one after another of these accusations and perceived the seriousness of the problem. He learned that the bishops didn’t know how to deal with them as they should. In 2001, with full agreement from Pope John Paul II, he ordered that dioceses from that point forward to submit all cases of clerical pedophilia to the congregation. [With John paul II's motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela and Cardinal Ratzinger's implementing instructions, De graviorus delictibus].

Cardinal Ratzinger also introduced a radical simplification of the procedures. He understood that one couldn’t wait in every case for a civil sentence before starting a Church trial because of the uncertainty and time required. He encouraged investigations that would result in rapid disciplinary actions.

In the last 10 years, 60 percent of Catholic priests accused of pedophilia have been sanctioned thus by the CDF: with an order by Church authority to retire to a private life “of penance and prayer,” and in the most serious cases, stripping of the clerical state.

Once elected Pope, Benedict hit two founders of religious congregations, until then seen as untouchable, with this sort of sanction: Father Gino Burresi, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Father Maciel.

And when Ireland was revealed as tragically fertile terrain for clerical pedophilia and episcopal obscurity, Pope Benedict grabbed the rudder, tracing, for an entire national Church, a path of penitence and regeneration with his unprecedented and great March 19 pastoral letter to Irish Catholics.

Today it is against this Pope that stones are thrown. And from the same tribunal that exalts sexuality as pure instinct, free from every bond, especially if preached by the Church.


How can anyone respect a newspaper that allows its editorial policy to be dictated by a homosexual clique, according to a recent report!!! With apologies to homosexuals whose personal conduct is proper and correct, the recent [IMG]New York Times[/IMG] editorials and columns against the Church and the Pope are characterized by the strident injurious hyperbole and utter lack of taste common to fishwives, hysterical women and what one might call 'flamboyant queens'.

NOVENA FOR THE HOLY FATHER
April 11-19, 2010

A beautiful initiative by the Knights of Columbus:






Also from the KC website:


Mons. Lori is the Bishop of Westport, Connecticut.

It is Holy Week, that time out of time, when we remember the most important events of all time: Jesus’ suffering, His crucifixion, and His conquest of death.

The world, of course, is filled with distractions. In this holy season some, especially the news media, want us to focus instead on the supposed failures of our Pope, Benedict XVI.

The New York Times is again leading the attack, now accusing the Holy Father himself of being complicit in “the widening sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church.” I want to share with you my reflections about this subject.

It appears that the timing of these articles is calculated. The March 25 New York Times story suggesting that then-Cardinal Ratzinger permitted a known offender to continue in ministry for almost thirty years was based upon documents provided to it by Jeffrey Anderson, an attorney who has received over $100 million suing Catholic institutions and who is now suing the Vatican itself.

Mr. Anderson received these documents in discovery in December 2008. Why did he wait until now to hand them over to the Times? Was it to help his suit against the Vatican? Was it to coordinate with claimant groups protesting in the Vatican on the very day of the Times report?

Was it to promote legislation friendly to plaintiffs’ lawyers such as we are fighting here in Connecticut and elsewhere? Was it to sully the holiness of this week? We don’t know. We do know that Mr. Anderson controlled the timing, and the Times helped.

The truth is that there is no widening problem of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, at least not in our country. A comprehensive “Causes and Contents” study conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice showed that, by the early 90s, this problem was largely corrected because many bishops already had in place safe environment programs and zero tolerance policies.

In 2002 the U.S. bishops took additional steps to reach out to victims and to ensure the safety of children and young people by issuing their landmark Charter and Norms. For our Church serving almost 70 million American Catholics, there were six allegations of childhood sexual abuse by priests occurring in 2009. No other institution working with children gets close to this level of safe environment.

Let us now focus on the stories in the New York Times regarding Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy, the deceased Milwaukee priest who was accused of molesting young people during the 1960s and 70s when he headed a school for the hearing and sight impaired. To be sure, his heinous behavior was utterly reprehensible and destructive.

At the same time, however, the Times’ story incorrectly reports that Cardinal Ratzinger was complicit when, “instead of discipline,” Father Lawrence Murphy was “quietly moved” to the Diocese of Superior where he continued “working freely with children in parishes” for twenty-four years until he died in 1998.

The police looked into the allegations regarding Father Murphy in 1974 and apparently found insufficient evidence to take any action. Nevertheless, Murphy lost his job as head of the school for the hearing and sight impaired in 1974.

The documents the Times itself posts show that his removal was not “quiet” but that the police were informed, that there were protests and leafleteering, and that there was “disclosure and public humiliation in 1974.”

Finally, the Times states that Murphy was “never disciplined.” This simply is not so. The Times does not tell its readers that, shortly after new allegations came his way in 1993, Archbishop Weakland promptly suspended Murphy’s faculties and ordered him to cease all public ministry, all unsupervised contact with children, and all contact with persons, places, and situations giving rise to temptations.

The Times either hid the fact that Murphy was disciplined by suspension of his faculties because it did not comport with the story it wanted to tell, or because Mr. Anderson withheld the documents from the Times that detailed this discipline.

In fact, if the New York Times had bothered to check with Father Thomas Brundage, JCL, the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003, they would have been found that at the time of his death, Father Murphy was still a defendant in a Canonical trial (an internal trial conducted by the Church) in Milwaukee for the crimes of sexual abuse and solicitation within the confessional.

Thus, the New York Times either was less than forthcoming in stating that Murphy suffered no discipline, or Mr. Anderson, through selective document disclosures, played the New York Times like a fiddle.

The shameless and reckless assertions by the Times and other media outlets that then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, somehow interfered with the trial by the Church are categorically false.

Father Brundage, who was the presiding judge of the Canonical trial, says unequivocally “with regard to the role of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) in this matter, I have no reason to believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information.”

Here’s what I know about Pope Benedict XVI and sexual abuse. As detailed by John Allen of The National Catholic Reporter, when Cardinal Ratzinger became the Vatican’s “point man” on the problem in 2001, he personally reviewed hundreds of files. He then wrote the bishops of the world that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would henceforth handle all sexual abuses cases involving priests.

Under his leadership the Congregation provided bishops with crucial direction and support in canonically removing offending priests from ministry. In most circumstances, the Congregation approved direct administrative actions so that bishops could discipline and remove priests without the delays of full canonical trials.

In 2002, I assisted in writing the Charter and Norms for the Protection of Children and Young People. I was also one of the four U.S. diocesan bishops who went to Rome to secure approval of the Norms.

I personally witnessed the pivotal and positive role that Cardinal Ratzinger played in helping the American bishops to respond to the sexual abuse crisis. Thanks to Cardinal Ratzinger the United States Norms won approval from the Holy See.

Together with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Norms have helped the U.S. Bishops to bring about a true culture change in the Church:
- State of the art safe environment programs have been developed.
- Countless victims have been assisted.
- Priests who posed a danger to young people are out of ministry.
- Dioceses cooperate closely with law enforcement officials (contrary to yet another faulty op-ed piece in the New York Times).
- The Congregation also helped bishops of other countries deal with the sexual abuse crisis.

When he became Pope, Benedict XVI made resolution of the abuse problem a priority. Instead of attacking this Pope, we should be thanking him for helping the Church confront this crisis in a way that benefits victims, the Church, and society.

There is an additional problem with the New York Times report worth mentioning. It states that Father Murphy “also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims.”

This clause is the entire comment that the Times gives to the failure of the one government entity that had the greatest power to conduct an investigation and remove an alleged sexual perpetrator from being around children. The Church has no search warrants or prisons. The police do.

When government fails to manage the risk of sexual abuse, the New York Times and other media too often give government a pass.

If we really care about protecting children, then the fourth estate needs to focus its spotlight on those institutions with the greatest problems.

In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that one out of ten young people incarcerated in government-run detention facilities were sexually victimized by their guards during the single year of 2008. This represents 2,370 victims. Where was the Times report?

And the number of sexual abuse victims in public schools dwarfs the problem in juvenile detention facilities.

The Times sued our Diocese to acquire privileged documents from court files so that it could re-publish stories of long settled sexual abuse cases that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s.

Yet it ignores that since 1992 in Connecticut alone, 112 Connecticut public school teachers and coaches have lost their license to teach because of sexual contact with students; and since 2006, 19 foster parents paid by the state of Connecticut have been disciplined for sexually abusing the children in their care. Where’s the outrage and the calls for resignations?

Having the Pope and the Catholic Church bear the entire blame of childhood sexual abuse may benefit the trial lawyers and serve the agenda of their media partners, but it does nothing to protect children today.

Transferring billions from Catholic dioceses, religious orders, and their charitable and educational ministries in a time of economic crisis only creates new victims. It is time that Church-bashing give way to responsible reporting and even-handed public policy.


Finally, the KC website has the entire statement written by Cardinal Levada on March 26 in reply to the NYT article:



The full statement was promptly posted on this thread on March 26.

I spoke too soon when I said earlier that the muck-rakers seem to have come up with nothing new so far. Boy, was I wrong.... and remember that I warned the Associated Press was engaged in one-upmanship with the New York Times?

They've come out crowing with a new case now, complete with the photocopy of a 1985 letter in Latin signed by Cardinal Ratzinger,

which they are free to translate any way they want, in this case, to make it appear what they claim it is - because how many newspaper readers, after all, know enough Latin to read an official Vatican document? Meanwhile, they have already planted the poison...

---

LOS ANGELES, April 9 (AP) -The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

---

As you can see from the first two paragraphs of the story, the gloating is so palpable I can't stand to post the story here so you may check it out in TOXIC WASTE.

According to Lella:
THE 1985 LETTER WAS ABOUT THE REQUEST BY THE PRIEST HIMSELF TO LEAVE THE PRIESTHOOD AFTER HE WAS ACCUSED OF A SEXUAL OFFENSE. IN 1985, THE CDF WAS 16 YEARS AWAY FROM BEING ASSIGNED COMPETENCE OVER SEX CRIMES BY PRIESTS [AND IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH DEFROCKING PRIESTS, WHICH WAS THEPREROGATIVE OF CANONICAL TRIBUNALS IN THE VATICAN.]

AP has been busy in Canada, too, with a story about a Canadian bishop whom they identify as a 'good friend of John Paul II', whom he apparently named to a Curial position even after the Vatican had been told that the priest had a sex-offense record. I have also posted this story in TOXIC WASTE.... They have so far been unable to connect Joseph Ratzinger to this story, but they'll find a way somehow.....

And to complete their anti-Ratzinger package for the day, AP has apparently also previaled on Fr. Nulelrmann's first victim in Essen (before he came to Munich) to come public and demand that the Pope apologize to him and compensante him or some such nonsense... Also in the TOXICWASTE*LOONYBIN...


Vatican responds to
AP allegation


VATICAN CITY, April 9 (Translated from AGI) - The Vatican's deputy vice director, Fr. Ciro Benedettini, told newsmen today that the 1985 letter from Cardinal Ratzinger to the Bishop of Oakland about reducing a priest to the lay state clearly showed he advised "the need to study the case with greater attention".

Benedettini also pointed out that in 1985, administrative discipline over priests involved in sex abuse cases was entirely the responsibility of the local bishop.

"The dogged attempts by media to involve Joseph Ratzinger directly in the scandal over pedophile priests continues," he said in an initial reaction to the letter brandished by the Associated Press today from the then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the then Bishop of Oakland, Mons. Joseph Cummins.

Cummins had written the cardinal about the request of a priest accused of pedophile acts to leave the priesthood.

"What the cardinal asked was nothing more than a normal call to prudence in order to examien more clearly what the diocese was proposing," the Vatican official noted, provided that the priest was not returned to pastoral work.

But he also pointed out that sex abuse cases were not within the competence of the CDF in 1985, and that there appeared to be a confusion about relieving a priest of his pastoral responsibilities and reducing him to lay state. The first is the responsibility of the local diocese; the second has to be authorized by the Holy See [but not by the CDF].

I still wish the Vatican could have provided a full translation of the letter ASAP! After all, it has only five sentences. The initial reaction of Fr. Lombardi reported by AP in their original report, and these statements by Fr. Benedettini are not up to par.

It is still not clear to me why Bishop Cummins wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger about this case at all, since if it was about reducing the priest to a lay state, the CDF had nothing to do with that at the time. Was he merely asking his advice as a brother bishop? Even more strange, Cummins reportedly told the AP today he does not remember having written to Cardinal Ratzinger and wishes now that he had! NO, I don't think the Vatican Press Office handles this so well.


NB: Father Z has heavily fisked the AP story from Los Angeles
wdtprs.com/blog/
but surprisingly, he did not provide a translation of the letter (I actually went to his site hoping to find the translation!)... Anyway, in his fisking, Fr. Z, who worked in a Curial dicastery for some time in Rome, describes how the Vatican dealt with the matter of priests asking to be laicized in the decades that followed Vatican-II:

---

In the 60’s and 70’s hordes of priests simply leftthe ministry or, if they requested a dispensation from the obligations of the clerical state, they were often caused to wait a great deal of time – often a decade or more – with the hope that somehow they might be recovered as priests.

Clearly this case is more complicated because the priest concerned had harmed children. But back in the day, the standard operating procedure was to try to save priests from quitting. Therefore, when a petition for dispensation had been made, the Congregation followed their standard operating procedure....

In the meantime, Rome, which usually wanted sometimes many years to pass before dispensing men from the obligations of the clerical state, was following its usual procedure before putting the dispensation on the Holy Father’s desk for his signature. The Pope would ultimate have to sign it.

---

If one understands right, until the competence for canonical adjudication of sex abuse cases was given to the CDF in 2001, it did not have the competence to decide which priests should be dismissed from the clerical state for these offenses.

Yaaaaaawwwwwnnnn....

Well. It makes a good base for a Dan Brown like news story:
A sinister(!), conservative, inflexible doctrinal watchdog Cardinal - future Pope!
A letter in Latin - the language of the evil and mysterious!!!
Now, we need to get the freshly appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of LA involved!! OMG - OPUS DEI!!

And then you throw it at the feet of the average uninformed, already biased regular reader, and you manage to sell a few extra issues of whatever paper will carry the crap!
And!! You manage to be able to tell your grand children that the Vatican was compelled to issue a statement on a piece YOU wrote!

What AP reporter with only the tiniest bit of self respect could resist that scenario?


Another question is: if the clergy in LA in 1985 even understood the letter themselves - being written in that famous, impeccable Ratzingerian Latin.


I must say I'm grateful for one point in the main German broadcast station ARD - they have not really given those last AP accusations much play and have regarded them as sensationalism.
Now, if the regular German media (Stern / Spiegel/ SZ don't count) is even not picking up those pieces, it might tell you something





I wish we could yawn them away, but these are VICIOUS, BLOOD-THIRSTY AGENTS OF SATAN who will stop at nothing now... I am just now watching the AP lead reported across the bottom of my TV screen on the Fox News crawl, which means it will crawl across once every five minutes... Multiply that on TV news channels around the world... We cannot under-estimate AP's clout. What AP media subscriber in the Anglophone world can resist using an apparently JUICY story tagged with this label wherever it's carried on line?


I even have the sickening sensation that either the Times or AP or both are resevring something specially nasty for April 16 or April 19, or on both days....

TERESA

Sorry to disappoint you Cowgirl but this has twice already been the main news item on BBC World tonight, with commentary, and presented in such a way that it appears rather damning for the Pope. The letter is shown, with his signature, plus two main clauses which are thrown into the viewers eyes - "wait longer" and "for the good of the Universal Church".They imply he was stalling the 'defrocking" of the man ( showed his picture and I must say this guy is one of the ugliest and "ugh" paedophile faces of the lot up till now. Goodness gracious me.....

Apart from the BBC, Skye News, Aljazeera, and in all probability CNN have already grasped this opportunity. Never a word about "little facts" such as those pointed out by Teresa. They have already made up their minds that the Pope was part of the cover up.
Around the globe millions have seen this by now.

BBC said he is living in a bubble, sitting in Castel Gandolfo "writing his latest book" (I thought it was finished already?) while his Church is falling apart. And that he must be a very worried man tonight. (Doesn't make sense to me: living in a bubble, scribbling a book, but in the same news report he is thought to be a very worried man, but there you have it!

Fasten your seat belts, Holy Father.





It was inevitable that the vengeful vicious folks at BBC would do what they did with selected 'clauses' in the letter taken out of context... which is why I am so incensed that no one in the Vatican Press Office could sit down to write out a translation of that five-sentence letter, which even with my rudimentary Latin reading possibility, seems to express a standard response to a 'routine' inquiry. Ineed, even Father Z notes that it was probably a boilerplate letter (though I still wish, he , too, could have translated it tout de suite... In terms of 'speed' of answering, how bad can it be that the response is dated November 6 to a letter received September 11?...

TERESA

With the clerical abuse scandal:
Should I stay or should I go?
by Timothy Radcliffe, O.P.

April 10, 2010


Editor's Note:As the scandal of child sexual abuse and its cover-up swirls around the Church, some Catholics are considering their options as regards their very membership of the institution. Here a former Master of the Dominicans explains why the Church is stuck with him, whatever happens:

Fresh revelations of sexual abuse by priests in Germany and Italy have provoked a tide of anger and disgust. I have received emails from people all around Europe asking how can they possibly remain in the Church? I was even sent a form with which to renounce my membership of the Church. Why stay?

First of all, why go? Some people feel that they can no longer remain associated with an institution that is so corrupt and dangerous for children. The suffering of so many children is indeed horrific. They must be our first concern. Nothing that I will write is intended in any way to lessen our horror at the evil of sexual abuse.

But the statistics for the US, from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004, suggest that Catholic clergy do not offend more than the married clergy of other Churches.

Some surveys even give a lower level of offence for Catholic priests. They are less likely to offend than lay school teachers, and perhaps half as likely as the general population.

Celibacy does not push people to abuse children. It is simply untrue to imagine that leaving the Church for another denomination would make one’s children safer.

We must face the terrible fact that the abuse of children is widespread in every part of society. To make the Church the scapegoat would be a cover-up.

But what about the cover-up within the Church? Have not our bishops been shockingly irresponsible in moving offenders around, not reporting them to the police and so perpetuating the abuse? Yes, sometimes.

But the great majority of these cases go back to the 1960s and 1970s, when bishops often regarded sexual abuse as a sin rather than also a pathological condition, and when lawyers and psychologists often reassured them that it was safe to reassign priests after treatment.

It is unjust to project backwards an awareness of the nature and seriousness of sexual abuse which simply did not exist then. [Benedict XVI made a very good observation about this when he addressed the clergy of Warsaw in May 2006 during his visit to Poland, and I have been meaning to use the quotation! Will do now.]

It was only the rise of feminism in the late 1970s which, by shedding light on the violence of some men against women, alerted us to the terrible damage done to vulnerable children.

But what about the Vatican? Pope Benedict has taken a strong line in tackling this issue as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and since becoming Pope. Now the finger is pointed at him. It appears that some cases reported to the CDF under his watch were not dealt with. Isn’t the Pope’s credibility undermined? There are demonstrators in front of St Peter’s calling for his resignation. I am morally certain that he bears no blame here.

It is generally imagined that the Vatican is a vast and efficient organisation. In fact it is tiny. The CDF only employs 45 people, dealing with doctrinal and disciplinary issues for a Church which has 1.3 billion members, 17 per cent of the world’s population, and some 400,000 priests.

When I dealt with the CDF as Master of the Dominican Order, it was obvious that they were struggling to cope. Documents slipped through the cracks. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger lamented to me that the staff was simply too small for the job.

People are furious with the Vatican’s failure to open up its files and offer a clear explanation of what happened. Why is it so secretive? Angry and hurt Catholics feel a right to transparent government. I agree.

But we must, in justice, understand why the Vatican is so self-protective. There were more martyrs in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries combined. Bishops and priests, Religious and laity were assassinated in Western Europe, in Soviet countries, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Many Catholics still suffer imprisonment and death for their faith. Of course, the Vatican tends to stress confidentiality; this has been necessary to protect the Church from people who wish to destroy her.

So it is understandable that the Vatican reacts aggressively to demands for transparency and will read legitimate requests for openness as a form of persecution. And some people in the media do, without any doubt, wish to damage the credibility of the Church.

But we owe a debt of gratitude to the press for its insistence that the Church face its failures. If it had not been for the media, then this shameful abuse might have remained unaddressed. [Oh the Peggy Noonan argument! Yes, in the beginning, but not afterwards and tttttto this day, when the scandal became a convenient pretext to pile up on the Church at the slightest pretext!]

Confidentiality is also a consequence of the Church’s insistence on the right of everyone accused to keep their good name until they are proved to be guilty. This is very hard for our society to understand, whose media destroy people’s reputations without a thought. [But why don't people living in democracies understand this when it is the very same principle of not discussing any case that is 'sub judice' to protect the victims(s), the accused and their witnesses?]

Why go? If it is to find a safer haven, a less corrupt Church, then I think that you will be disappointed. I too long for more transparent government, more open debate, but the Church’s secrecy is understandable, and sometimes necessary. To understand is not always to condone, but necessary if we are to act justly.

Why stay? I must lay my cards on the table; even if the Church were obviously worse than other Churches, I still would not go.

I am not a Catholic because our Church is the best, or even because I like Catholicism. I do love much about my Church but there are aspects of it which I dislike. I am not a Catholic because of a consumer option for an ecclesiastical Waitrose rather than Tesco, but because I believe that it embodies something which is essential to the Christian witness to the Resurrection, visible unity. [This was the central message of the Holy Father's catechesis on Wednesday on the concrete level - that Christians have to back up their witness by the example of their lives.]

When Jesus died, his community fell apart. He had been betrayed, denied, and most of his disciples fled. It was chiefly the women who accompanied him to the end. On Easter Day, he appeared to the disciples. This was more than the physical resuscitation of a dead corpse.

In him God triumphed over all that destroys community: sin, cowardice, lies, misunderstanding, suffering and death. The Resurrection was made visible to the world in the astonishing sight of a community reborn. These cowards and deniers were gathered together again.

They were not a reputable bunch, and shamefaced at what they had done, but once again they were one. The unity of the Church is a sign that all the forces that fragment and scatter are defeated in Christ.

All Christians are one in the Body of Christ. I have deepest respect and affection for Christians from other Churches who nurture and inspire me.

But this unity in Christ needs some visible embodiment.

Christianity is not a vague spirituality but a religion of incarnation, in which the deepest truths take the physical and sometimes institutional form. Historically this unity has found its focus in Peter, the Rock in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and the shepherd of the flock in John’s gospel.

From the beginning and throughout history, Peter has often been a wobbly rock, a source of scandal, corrupt, and yet this is the one – and his successors – whose task is to hold us together so that we may witness to Christ’s defeat on Easter Day of sin’s power to divide.

And so the Church is stuck with me whatever happens. We may be embarrassed to admit that we are Catholics, but Jesus kept shameful company from the beginning.


In many ways, this article is admirable, of course. But I think it ends on a less than positive note. It reminds me of a current ad on TV that annoys me, although it is well-meaning, of course. It has a series of people saying "I am not ashamed...", "I am not ashamed..', etc. And the punchline "I am not ashamed of the Gospel". Of course, they are quoting from St. Paul, but to people who do not know that, it sounds weird, as if the Gospel were something one should apologize for. Why not a more straightforward "I am proud to be Christian!"???

The hosility of the British media is well known. The combination of German / Catholic is an irresistable target for them. Fine with me!

Surely people are influenced by their propaganda - even globally. And this game will continue for a looong time. From what I've heard the Vatican is ready to announce new global guidelines for cases of sex abuse - pretty much orientated to the US version.

The only concern I have is the effect of those attacks on a very sensitive person who has been under media attack for nearly 30 years.
His seat belt is already buckled!
What I've noticed here is a true and possibly healthy divide.
Cradle, luke warm Catholis here - true, steadfast Catholics there.
Our Churches are as full as before - some are even fuller!
Slowly, but surely, solidarity movements are taking more shape!


We need to keep our heads straight and not let ourselves be victims of their game. They are trying to achive exatly that. A victimised, confused, helpless, fearful Catholic population, boardering on paranoia.

I don't believe they will pull the Pope out of his 'bubble'! And they're quite furious at the fact that he hasn't responded to their game. The less he plays along, the more furious they will be.
He will do his thing and teach; and he will respond to them between the lines, and they won't understand.
And frankly, I don't give a da** if they do!!!




I have always felt through all this that the overwhelming manjority of Catholics - regular folk around the world - are not at all shaken in their faith or their respect and affection for the Holy Father by these media campaigns. Nor by paranoia ,unless they live in the countries where Christians are persecuted or barely tolerated - and that paranoia has nothing to do with the media campaign obviously.

It is those who are accustomed to articulating their views who are more likely to feel paranoid, but I like to think it is more a question of indignation - as we Benaddicts feel - rather than paranoia.

As for Papino, he turns 83 next week - and a more beautiful and bouncy 83 I never saw than at the last GA! I was thinking about this yesterday when Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, who will be 90 soon, announced he will be retiring from the US Supreme Court at the end of this current session. He looks and moves and think excellently for a 90-year-old, though of course, Joseph Ratzinger has a clear advantage on all counts. And my thoughts invariably go to Leo XIII who was Pope till he was 93....

In any case, our beloved Papino, Vicar of Christ on earth, has resources and graces that normal mortals do not have - including the affection and prayers of the truly faithful - so I do not doubt he will go on being his serene and joyous self, an exemplary witness to Christ, and loving father to everyone, even those who wish him harm.

I bet all his detractors foam at the mouth even more, with sulphurous steam hissing out of their ears and nostrils, and their devil's horns growing, every time they see the faithful gather in St. Peter's or in Castel Gandolfo and are even more enthusiastic than ever for him! That's the best revenge....

TERESA

Saturday, April 10

ST. MADDALENA DI CANOSSA (Italy, 1774-1835),Founder, Daughters of Charity and Sons of Charity
She was a descendant of Countess Matilda of Canossa, who in the late 12th century, famously brought together Pope Gregory VII
and the German King Henry IV at her castle in central Italy. Maddalena herself was born in Verona and joined the Carmelites when
she was 15. But she left them later because she thought she could carry her apostolate for the poor better if she had no restrictions.
The rich noblewoman worked to help the poor and the sick, as well as delinquent and abandoned girls. Soon, she started taking girls
into her home, then she opened a school to provide them with practical education and religious training. She left her palatial home in
1808 to dedicate herself completely to her apostolate. This led her to found the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity dedicated
especially to the educational and spiritual needs of women. She established her congregation in several cities in Italy, and then
started the Congregation of the Sons of Charity. Eventually, the Canossians dedicated themselves to missionary activity, celebrating
150 years of missionary work this year. Today, some 5,000 Canossian religious are found all over the world carrying on their founder's
mission. Mother Maddalena was canonized in 1988.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/041010.shtml


OR today.

Illustrations: Lamentation over Christ, Da Pavia, 16th-cent., Palazzo Abatelli, Palermo; and pop art based on the record cover of the Beatles' 'Abbey Road'.

Page 1 features a tribute to the leadership of Benedict XVI in 'showing the light of Christ' to the world, written by the
Archbishop of Perugia, Mons. Gualtiero Bassetti, who is a vice president of the Italian bishops' conference. The other
religious story on Page 1 is on the opening today of the Exposition of the Holy Shroud of Turin. International news:
Russia and China said to be open to cooperating in the international effort to top Iran's nuclear program; Israeli
skepticism over the prospects of re-starting dialog with the Palestinians; and World Bank study showing that 50,000
out of 639,000 babies born in 30 countries of sub-Saharan Africa in 2009 died of war-related causes. And the Beatles
are on Page 1 to mark the 40th anniversary of their break-up as a group, with two articles inside devoted to the
event, no less! [I will be a Beatles addict forever, but when the OR juxtaposes Abbey Road to the Deposition of Christ on its front page,
then it is just one more indication to me of something seriously weird in the editorial judgments being made there! Besides, I don't think
even Variety, the daily entertainment paper, even remembers that the Beatles broke up today 40 years ago.]


No events scheduled for the Holy Father today.

The Vatican today released the program for the Holy Father's visit to Cyprus in June.

---

APOSTOLIC TRIP OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO CYPRUS

and the Presentation of the 'Instrumentum Laboris' for the

SPECIAL ASSEMBLY FOR THE MIDDLE EAST OF THE BISHOPS' SYNOD

June 4-6, 2010

P R O G R A M


Friday, June 4

ROME

09.30 Depart from Leonardo Da Vinci international airport for Paphos.

PAHPOS

14.00 Arrival at Paphos international airport
WELCOME CEREMONY
- Address by the Holy Father

15.15 Arrive at the Church of Agia Kiriaki Chrysopolitissa in Paphos

15.30 ECUMENICAL CELEBRATION in the archeological area of the Church.
- Address by the Holy Father

Presumably, the Holy Father leaves Paphos for Nicosia after this event.


Saturday, June 5

NICOSIA

09.15 COURTESY VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT OF CYPRUS, Presidential Palace

09.45 MEETING WITH CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES AND THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS
Gardens of the Presidential Palace
- Address by the Holy Father

10.45 MEETING WITH THE CATHOLIC COMMUNITY OF CYPRUS
Sports field of St. Mark elementary School
- Address by the Holy Father

12.15 COURTESY VISIT TO HIS BEATITUDE CHRYSOSTOMOS II, Archbishop of Cyprus
Orthodox Archbishopric of Nicosia
- Address by the Holy Father

13.30 LUNCH WITH HIS BEATITUDE CHRYSOSTOMOS II and the Catholic and Orthodox delegations
Orthodox Archbishopric of Nicosia

17.30 HOLY MASS with the priests, religious, deacons, catechists and representatives of ecclesial movements
Latin Parish Church of the Holy Cross
- Homily


Sunday, June 6

09.30 HOLY MASS with the presentation of the Instrumentum Laboris
for the October 2010 Special Synodal Assembly for the Middle East,
Elefteria Sports Palace
- Homily
ANGELUS PRAYER
- Remarks by the Holy Father

13.00 Lunch with the Patriarchs and Bishops of the Special Council for the Middle East,
and with His Beatitude Chrysostomos II and members of the papal entourage
Apostolic Nunciature in Nicosia

16.00 Farewell from the Nunciature

16.30 VISIT TO THE MARONITE CATHEDRAL OF CYPRUS.
- Greeting by the Holy Father


LARNACA

17.45 DEPARTURE CEREMONY, Larnaka international airport
- Address by the Holy Father

18.15 Depart Larnaca for Rome


ROME

20.45 Arrival at Ciampino airport.

NB: Cyprus is one hour ahead of Rome time.

---

The one day I failed to check out Ignatius Insight - and it turns out that the estimable Father Fessio immediately came out with an article to clear up the AP's obvious misunderstanding - and consequent misrepresentation - of the 1985 letter from Cardinal Ratzinger. It clears up the substance of the letter, laying the approproate context for it, and educates us laymen about the Church's concept of the priesthood as something just as indissoluble as marriage....

Now, how one can get Fr. Fessio's explanation out into the media mainstream is another challenge altogether - and I am not sure it is doable! It just goes to show that once again, AP was sizzling with uncontainable excitement (and gloating) over a 'great scoop' that it simply failed to consult anyone who knew anything at all about canonical proceedings to tell them exactly what the letter meant!




April 9, 2010


Editor's Note: The following piece was written by Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder and editor of Ignatius Press, in response to the breaking story about a 1985 letter written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Bishop John S. Cummins of Oakland.


The so-called "stalled pedophile case", blame for which has been laid at the feet of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, had nothing to do with pedophilia and everything to do with strengthening marriage and the priesthood.

Here's what was happening in 1981 when Bishop Cummins of Oakland first wrote the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith asking that a priest from his diocese of Oakland, be dispensed from his promise of celibacy.

Well first, what was not happening. The letter came a week before Cardinal Ratzinger had even assumed his duties as Prefect of that congregation. This is a very important office of the Roman Curia. It handles a variety of cases worldwide, mostly having to do with defending and promoting doctrinal integrity in the Church. There's a lot of work to do, and it takes time for someone to become fully engaged in its activities.

But much more pertinently here: By 1980 the effects of the sexual revolution on marriage and the priesthood had been devastating. In 1965 there had been 59 marriage annulments granted by Rome to American couples. By 2002, there were over 50,000 annulments per year in the U.S. alone. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of priests were asking for dispensation from their promise of celibacy in order to be able to marry.

The Catholic Church holds the marriage vows to be indissoluble. Even an annulment, contrary to a widespread misconception, does not dissolve those vows. It is a declaration that because of some impediment, there never was a valid marriage in the first place.

Priestly ordination is also "indissoluble", in the sense that a validly ordained priest never ceases to be a priest.

And here's the rub. It was literally scandalous in the Church that priests, who had been prepared for eight to ten years for their ordination (which would be permanent, irreversible) and their promise of celibacy (which also has the character of a solemn promise before God), were, in the 1970s, being so easily dispensed from their promise of celibacy.

Married Catholics said to themselves: If a priest, who is so well prepared for his commitment, can so easily be dispensed from it so that he can marry, why can't we be dispensed from our commitment so that we can remarry?

When John Paul II was elevated to the papacy in the Fall of 1978, he immediately changed the policy on priestly dispensations. I don't have the exact dates and numbers at hand, but I remember at the time that many of us were amazed that the hundreds of dispensations per year (and it may have been thousands) under John Paul II's predecessor, Paul VI, suddenly were reduced to almost zero. It was almost impossible to get a dispensation in 1980.

What was John Paul's intent? To restore the integrity of the priesthood and of marriage. These commitments are permanent. A priest may be removed from ministry, but he will not be given a dispensation to marry.

Priests are to be made to take their commitments with utmost seriousness. They will be an example to married couples to take theirs seriously also. When a priest makes a promise of celibacy, it's forever; when a couple make vows of marriage, it's forever.

This is the decisive context of Cardinal Ratzinger's letter to Bishop Cummins.

It is not a smoking gun. It did not mean that Ratzinger was not taking the priest's sins seriously. (He called the accusations "very serious" [gravis momenti].) It meant that he, following the policy of John Paul II, was taking the priesthood and its commitments very seriously.

And again, this entire affair had nothing to do with preventing further abuse by this priest. That had already been done, or should have been done, by the local bishop.

A final, minor but significant point of translation. The translation being used by the media of an important part of Ratzinger's letter is: "your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible". This has been rightly interpreted by some to mean that Ratzinger was saying that the bishop should keep a watchful eye on the priest. The original Latin makes that even clearer: "paterna...cura sequi" which means "to follow with paternal care". We get the word "persecute" from the Latin "per-sequi". "Sequi" is much stronger then "provide".

There is a completely mistaken first premise underlying all this criticism.The premise is that "defrocking" has anything to do with protecting victims and preventing further abuse.

First, the media needs to know that according to Catholic teaching, Holy Orders is a sacrament which leaves an "indelible mark"; in layman's terms, once ordained a priest, a man is always a priest.

The reason the word "dispensation" is used in the correspondence is that that is what happens technically: the priest is dispensed from his obligation of celibacy. In a sense, this works in the opposite direction from protection: a restraint is being removed.

Further, as if to prove this point, the priest in question continued to abuse children after he was "defrocked" and had married. QED.

Secondly, nothing at all prevents a bishop from: removing a priest from all ministry; removing his faculties; reporting him to civil authorities. There is no need even to inform Rome about this. The only way (until 2001 or in cases of abuse of Confession) that it need get to Rome is if the priest appeals the bishop's actions.

Thirdly, why was the CDF involved anyway? That was not the congregation that handles abuse cases, except where abuse of Confession has played a role. I believe the CDF was involved in cases of dispensation from celibacy. (Though you would think that should be under the Congregation for Priests.)

But, again, dispensation has nothing to do with preventing further abuse. It may appease the sense of justice on the part of victims. But at the same time, It normally takes eight to ten years to become a priest. It's not a club one joins. It is a very serious thing to dispense a priest from celibacy, and there needs to be a careful process to protect innocent priests.

Fourthly, there are definitely cased of priests who have been falsely accused. Especially the American media ought to be sensitive to the principle that a man is innocent until proven guilty. Civil law requires that to be done in a court of law. A bishop can, and in many cases, should take action against a priest before there is any canonical trial.

Finally, let's compare this to the difference between a criminal and a civil trial. Criminal trials can be expedited, but even then in all but the most grievous cases, a criminal defendant is a free man until convicted. In the case of priests, the "punishment" of removal from ministry can be applied immediately by a bishop even before there is any canonical trial, which is like a civil trial. How long do civil trials take in this country. I know of trials that have dragged out for more than seven years.

If Ratzinger took part in "stall[ing]" a "pedophile case", the worst one can say is that he wanted care taken in a canonical trial. And, let's not forget, this wasn't "punishment" at all from the priest's point of view. He had "asked" to be dispensed.



The American lawyer that the Secretariat of State hired two years ago to look to the Vatican interests in the various suits filed in the United States also gave a statement on the latetr but it is nowhere as unequivocal nor as informative as Father Fessio's explanation. And I don't think AP will use it at all, because the following story online comes from Reuters.

The Italian service of Vatican Radio has also reported on it - but not the English service so far, although it already carries an item about the Holy Father's condolences for the terrible plane crach that took the lives of the President of Poland, his wife and a large number of senior Polish officials earler today.

Let me post the Reuters story first, as I still have to translate the RV item... And have no illusions! Reuters isn't doing the Vatican any favor, since it perpetrates the AP story's wrong assumptions and obviously makes no effort to find out anything on its own!


Pope did not impede
defrocking of priest
By Silvia Aloisi



VATICAN CITY,April 10 (Reuters) – The Vatican Saturday defended Pope Benedict from accusations that, in a previous post as a high Vatican official, he tried to impede the defrocking of a California priest who had sexually abused children.

In a statement, a Vatican lawyer accused the media of a "rush to judgment."

In a 1985 letter, typed in Latin and translated for The Associated Press, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger told the bishop of Oakland he needed more time "to consider the good of the Universal Church" as he reviewed a request to remove the priest. [That is a typical trick of mixing up phrases from the letter with the Reuters writer's own interpretation of it!]

California-based Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena said he could not confirm the authenticity of the letter but indicated that it appeared to be "a form letter typically sent out initially with respect to laicization cases," when men ask to leave the priesthood. [Father Z was right to supsect it was probably a boilerplate letter - a form letter in which the specifics of the particular case are filled in!]

The letter surfaced as the Vatican fights accusations that the Pope mishandled cases of abuse when he was a bishop in Germany and a Vatican official before his election in 2005.

Lena "denied that the letter reflected then-Cardinal Ratzinger resisting pleas from the bishop to defrock the priest," the statement said.

"There may be some overstep and rush to judgment going on here," Lena said.

"During the entire course of the proceeding the priest remained under the control, authority and care of the local bishop who was responsible to make sure he did no harm, as the canon (Church) law provides. The abuse case wasn't transferred to the Vatican at all," he said.

Ratzinger wrote in the letter that arguments to remove the priest were of "grave significance" but also worried about what "granting the dispensation can provoke with the community of Christ's faithful, particularly regarding the young age of the petitioner." [Exhibit 2!]

According to The Associated Press, which first reported the story Friday, the Rev. Stephen Miller Kiesle was 38 at the time and had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a church rectory.

According to a letter from the Diocese of Oakland to Ratzinger in 1981, Kiesle had asked to leave the active ministry and the diocese asked Ratzinger to agree that he be "relieved of all the obligations of the priesthood, including celibacy." [AP's maliciously tendentious interpretation is that Cardinal Ratzinger rejected this request! As most of us have ;earned from various news reports since this monstrous 'scandal' grew a new head, the local bishop has the primary as well as full responsibility of disciplining an erring priest up to and including relieving him of all priestly functions - which Fr. Fessio confirms.

Paradoxically, that is exactly what the media has been faulting Cardinals Law and Mahony, and all those misbehaving Irish bishops for - that they failed to exercise this authority of discipline on abusive priests! And as Father Fessio has just made clear, the only thing the bishop cannot do is to reduce a priest to lay state even if the priest asks for this - such a dispensation is the prerogative of the Pope alone. ]

The Oakland case;
Rebutting the new charges
Translated from
the Italian service of

April 10, 2010

The drip-drip of 'news' and accusations against the Pope continues in the matter of sex abuses by priests. The latest is from the Associated Press which has built a story on a 1985 letter signed by Cardinal Ratzinger regarding Stephen Kiesle, then a priest in the Diocese of Oakland, who was convicted of molesting children. Sergio Centofanti has the report:

The Holy See attorney in the United States, Jeffrey Lena, has unequivocally rejected the new accusations by the media.

First of all, he said he is unable to confirm the authenticity of the letter, which concerns the reduction to lay state of Fr. Kiesle, about which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was starting to verify the bases for said reduction.

Lena points out that in 1985, the competence over cases of sexual abuse was with the local bishop, not with the CDF which was not given such responsibility until 16 years later, in 2001.

But he said that the letter did not express a rejection of Mons. Cummins's request for Fr. Kiesle to be laicized as the priest himself had requested. [The letter did ask for more time for the case to be studied, even granting that it involved 'serious circumstances'. In the next sentence, the letter notes 'the priest's young age'. He was 38 at the time, and this clause in the letter only makes sense if we remember what Fr. Fessio said - that 40 is the minimum age at which the Vatican allows formal dispensation from the priesthood.]

In the letter cited by the AP, Cardinal Ratzinger advised the bishop to 'take maximum paternal care' of the erring priest. Lena said this meant, in standard Church terminology, that "the priest was left to the authority and oversight of the bishop who should assure that he would commit no further offenses".

Lena adds that in fact, Kiesle was laicized two years later - "within a short time by the standards of that era". [More importantly, as Fr. Fessio explains it, it couldn't be done earlier as Kiesle had to turn 40 first. Which does not and should not preclude all other forms of appropriate discipline if the priest has committed a crime or canonical violation.]

Also, Lena points out, "during the interim, the priest committed no other crimes".


Lena's statement is weak and lame, compared to the clarity and specificity of Fessio's explanation. Even if Lena is a hotshot canon lawyer, he is still a layman - he should have consulted a priest conversant with the dispensation process.

Even more important, Fr. Lombardi made s tactical mistake by initially dismissing the letter, followed by a second mistake in Fr. Benedettini's obviously inadequate attempt at explaining the letter away. Advantage, AP!


Thanks to Lella's blog

for pointing to an article in la Stampa today which substantially replciaes the AP story on the Kiesle case but towards the end, it has this unlikely information, which I would consider truly 'news'.

And again, this would not sound so significant to us - or it would have raised more question - if Father Fessio had not previously given us the background for how the Vatican dealt with laicizing priests after the Paul VI years.

---

Guess who has spoken up
to defend Cardinal Ratzinger
in the Kiesle case!
Excerpted and translated from


Hypothesizing an explanation of Cardinal Ratzinger's letter was Father Thomas Reese, former editor of the weekly Jesuit magazine America, noa theologian at the Woodstock Center in New York:

"When John Paul II became Pope, he gave an order to stop the laicization of young priests that Paul VI had allowed in great numbers, and therefore Ratzinger was simply carrying out orders".

---

[It would have made more sense if La Stampa had given a context to that bare statemen,t to say that the minimum age of laicization was set at 40, and Kiesle was only 38 at the time of Ratzinger's letter. Two years later, when he turned 40 he was laicized.

And frankly, I am disappointed, to say the least, that no one in the Vatican has come out to come out with the perfectly logical explanation given by Father Fessio, nor for that matter, have any of the reliably pro-Ratzinger Vaticanistas - not Tornielli nor Rodari nor Accattoli. If one of them wrote about it, there's a chance the international news agencies may pick it up and at least mention it...]


NB: I just found out that AP did not have an exclusive on the Kiesle case after all, as it crowed all day yesterday. Vulture lawyer Jeffrey Anderson provided the New York Times with exactly the same documents, and lead hatchetwoman Laurie Goodstein wrote the story for Page 1 of the Times today. I've posted it for reference in the TOXICWASTE&LOONYBIN.

Holy Father's condolence
for Poland's tragedy



VATICAN CITY, April 10 (RV) - Pope Benedict XVI today sent a telegram to Bronisław Komorowski, the Speaker of the Polish Parliament, expressing his sorrow over the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and all the victims of today’s plane crash in Russia.

The Holy Father offered his sincerest condolences and assured the families of those who perished of his spiritual closeness.

The accident occurred as Polish military and civilian leaders travelled to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of
thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. All 96 on board were killed.



Pope Benedict with President Kaczynski and his wife Maria when they visited the Vatican on May 18, 2009.



Pope offers condolences and prayers
for Polish people in plane tragedy


Vatican City, Apr 10, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy Father expressed his sorrow over the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and those accompanying him on a flight to Russia on Saturday morning.

Pope Benedict remembered all of those who died and implored "a special blessing to the people of Poland from God omnipotent."

President Kaczynski, his wife, top members of the Polish government, army and several Church authorities were on the plane that went down just seconds from landing at the airport of Smolensk, Russia. The aircraft apparently clipped some trees with a wing as it made its way through heavy fog. Reports vary on the number of people on the plane, but counts run from 89 to 132 people, none of whom survived.

The delegation was headed to the small village of Katyn, a few kilometers from Smolensk, in a landmark visit to observe the 70th anniversary of the execution of more than 20,000 Polish officers during World War II.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his telegram to the acting President of the Polish Parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, that it was with "profound sorrow" that he learned of the deaths of those who were on their way to Katyn.

He remembered the President, the exiled ex-president of the Republic Ryszard Kaczorowski, Army chaplain and Bishop Tadeusz Plozki, Orthodox Archbishop Miron Chodakowski and Evangelical military pastor Adam Pilsch by name.

He entrusted all of the victims of the crash "to the goodness of merciful God" and prayed, "May He take them into his glory."

To the families of the dead and to all Poles he sent his "sincere condolences" and assured his them of spiritual closeness.

"In this difficult moment," he closed, "I implore for all the people of Poland a special blessing of God omnipotent."

Thanks Teresa for Fr Fessio's piece.
Here is a short, but sweet, summary from Phil Lawler in Catholic Culture.org, a useful organisation that sends me regular emails.

I won't post the entire piece. Still too frightened regarding copy right stuff from my days as university employee!
______________________________________________________

Journalists abandon standards to attack the Pope.

We're off and running once again, with another completely phony story that purports to implicate Pope Benedict XVI in the protection of abusive priests.


The "exclusive" story released by AP yesterday, which has been dutifully passed along now by scores of major media outlets, would never have seen the light of day if normal journalistic standards had been in place. Careful editors should have asked a series of probing questions, and in every case the answer to those questions would have shown that the story had no "legs."
First to repeat the bare-bones version of the story: in November 1985, then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed a letter deferring a decision on the laicization of Father Stephen Kiesle, a California priest who had been accused of molesting boys.

Now the key questions:

• Was Cardinal Ratzinger responding to the complaints of priestly pedophilia? No. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the future Pontiff headed, did not have jurisdiction for pedophile priests until 2001. The cardinal was weighing a request for laicization of Kiesle.

• Had Oakland's Bishop John Cummins sought to laicize Kiesle as punishment for his misconduct? No. Kiesle himself asked to be released from the priesthood. The bishop supported the wayward priest's application.

• Was the request for laicization denied? No. Eventually, in 1987, the Vatican approved Kiesle's dismissal from the priesthood.

• Did Kiesle abuse children again before he was laicized? To the best of our knowledge, No. The next complaints against him arose in 2002: 15 years after he was dismissed from the priesthood.

• Did Cardinal Ratzinger's reluctance to make a quick decision mean that Kiesle remained in active ministry? No. Bishop Cummins had the authority to suspend the predator-priest, and in fact he had placed him on an extended leave of absence long before the application for laicization was entered.

• Would quicker laicization have protected children in California? No. Cardinal Ratzinger did not have the power to put Kiesle behind bars. If Kiesle had been defrocked in 1985 instead of 1987, he would have remained at large, thanks to a light sentence from the California courts. As things stood, he remained at large. He was not engaged in parish ministry and had no special access to children.

• Did the Vatican cover up evidence of Kiesle's predatory behavior? No. The civil courts of California destroyed that evidence after the priest completed a sentence of probation-- before the case ever reached Rome.

So to review: This was not a case in which a bishop wanted to discipline his priest and the Vatican official demurred. This was not a case in which a priest remained active in ministry, and the Vatican did nothing to protect the children under his pastoral care. This was not a case in which the Vatican covered up evidence of a priest's misconduct. This was a case in which a priest asked to be released from his vows, and the Vatican-- which had been flooded by such requests throughout the 1970s -- wanted to consider all such cases carefully. In short, if you're looking for evidence of a sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, this case is irrelevant.

We Americans know what a sex-abuse crisis looks like. The scandal erupts when evidence emerges that bishops have protected abusive priests, kept them active in parish assignments, covered up evidence of the charges against them, and lied to their people. There is no such evidence in this or any other case involving Pope Benedict XVI.

Competent reporters, when dealing with a story that involves special expertise, seek information from experts in that field. Capable journalists following this story should have sought out canon lawyers to explain the 1985 document-- not merely relied on the highly biased testimony of civil lawyers who have lodged multiple suits against the Church. If they had understood the case, objective reporters would have recognized that they had no story. But in this case, reporters for the major media outlets are far from objective.

The rest here. I hope the link will "work". If not, the essence of Lawler's defence has been given already.

All the best! - Crotchet (the person who is every passing day feeling more like a "quaver" [eight note in music].... Question: When will all this end????}. Don't worry. If the old Calvinists are right: God rules. Even if we do not always understand why we cannot see it around us.





WOW-WOOOOOOW-WONDERFUL! AND MANY THANKS FOR SHARING .... I must confess I don't always check Phil Lawler as I should. From now on, I will, every time a canon law question comes up. I hope he communicates with the Vatican lawyer Jeffrey Lena. If he had sent him this yesterday TOUT DE SUITE, Lena could have given an effective SQUELCH of all those Pope-eating blood-scuking bedbugs of the MSM!

And don't worry, whether we feel we are eighth note, sixteenth note, or mere 'grace note', together the faithful of the world sing ALLELUIA to the Lord and BENEDICTUS to his Vicar on earth.

Thanks, Mags, for everything....

TERESA

A SECOND NOVENA
FOR OUR HOLY FATHER





Offer the Spiritual Bouquet too!


www.institute-christ-king.org/bouquet/




And consider this Psalm that Jeff Miller, aka Curt Jester, points to:

AP's Italian affiliate APCOM has surprisingly come up with the right take on the 'exclusive' that its parent organization shot like a lightning bolt of 'gospel truth' around the world yesterday! It's not as informative as Father Fessio or Phil Lawler, but the fact thart they filed it at all is remarkable.


Kiesle case: Ratzinger was simply
following instructions laid down
by John Paul II against
indiscriminate laicization



ROME, April 10 (Translated from Apcom) - Joseph Ratzinger was restrained by rules established by John Paul II with regard to laicization of the clergy ,at the time when he was asked for a decision on the case of Fr. Stephen Kiesle, an Oakland Priest, in 1985.

A sentence in the 1985 letter of Cardinal Ratzinger released yesterday by the Associated Press makes an implicit refence to the practice followed by the Vatican at the time regarding laicization.

To the Bishop of Oakland, who at the request of the priest, urged his laicization, the cardinal stated that this could result in 'damage' to the community of the faithful, "particularly in view of the young age of the priest". Kiesle was born in 1947, and was 38 at the time of the letter.

In 1978, shortly after being elected Pope, John Paul II instructed the Curia not to accept, in general, any requests for laicization from priests younger than 40. Exceptions were allowed only if, for instance, the requsting priest already had children.

The practice, which is still in force, was decided by John Paul II because the years after Vatican II and the 1968 cultural revolution led to thousands of priests and seminarians abandoning their vocation.
Under Paul VI, thousands were given dispensation.

The hemorrhaging in vocations was a concern to the new Pope, who therefore decided to tighten the conditions for laicization.

In 1983, Cardinal Ratzinger supported the request for Kiesle's laicization with the appropriate Vatican authorities, but he was rejected. [The problem here is that Apcom does not attribute this 'fact' to any source. What authorities, for instance? Even Fr. Fessio did not mention which Vatican agency was/is actually responsible for deciding these voluntary laicizations (as opposed to those meted out as canonical punishment). Statements like this should be sourced, because what Cardinal Ratzinger did in 1983 is not mentioned in the original AP story.]

Thus, in 1985, Cardinal Ratxzinger wrote to the Bishop of Oakland, John Cummins, to state that more time was needed to study the case.


Nonetheless, parent AP is unrepentant and must editorialize even wehn reporting a fairly straightforward piece of news:

After centuries of secrecy,
Vatican office shows new
transparency with online guide
By NICOLE WINFIELD


The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith _ the office once known more chillingly as the Inquisition _ has long epitomized the secrecy and mystery of the Vatican, with responsibility for banning books and meting out punishments as severe as excommunication and burning at the stake.

Now, as the office's handling of child-molesting priests comes increasingly under fire, the Vatican is starting to open up.

On Monday, it will post on its Web site a concise guide for the layman on how the Congregation handles sex abuse allegations.

Also Friday, the Vatican said that Pope Benedict XVI would meet with more abuse victims and that transparency in dealing with abuse allegations is an "urgent requirement" for the Church - a sharp turnabout in Rome's previously defensive response to the scandal. [Where's the turnabout? That has been in all of Benedict XVI's statements on the sex abuse issue!!!]

The laymen's guide, a copy of which was obtained Friday by The Associated Press, doesn't contain any information that isn't available to the public through a trip to a specialized religious library or a Vatican bookstore.

But it puts various sources of complicated canonical procedures together in a concise, easy-to-read, one-page guide, without cumbersome canon law citations and Latin phrases.

The Church's internal justice system for dealing with abuse allegations has come under attack because of claims by victims that their accusations were long ignored by bishops more concerned about protecting the church and by the Congregation, which was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger from 1981 until he was elected pope in 2005. [But was not given jurisdiction over the cases till 2001. So by conveniently omitting that qualification, he is conflated with all the other bishops who ignored the problem when it was under their sole responsibility! I never thought before this 'scandal' broke loose like the Black Death gone berserk that I would live to 'damn' to hell every lying, conniving, mentally dishonest reporter in practically every line they wrote!]

Jose Barba Martin of Mexico tried for years to have his accusations against the founder of the Legionaries of Christ heard by the Congregation. In the end, it took eight years for Rome to discipline the Rev. Marcial Maciel.
"They went through the motions of the law, but they didn't treat us with respect for the law," Barba told the AP from Mexico City.

In the end Barba's abuser was sentenced in 2006 to live a life of reserved prayer; Maciel died in 2008 before the Legionaries admitted that he had fathered at least one child and molested young seminarians.

[One must go bnack and check Mons. Scicluna's accounts of the CDF investigations into Maciel to test the veracity of these statements by Barba].

According to Vatican norms, issued in 2001 and summarized in the new guide, a bishop must investigate every allegation of sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric. If the accusation has a semblance of truth, the case is referred to the Congregation, which decides how to proceed.

The Congregation's disciplinary department, which weighs each case, is composed of 10 people: Monsignor Charles Scicluna, who is the promoter of justice, or chief prosecutor; the bureau chief; seven priests; and a lay lawyer, though other officials from other Vatican offices are brought in for specific cases.

They can decide to authorize the diocese to pursue either a judicial or an administrative trial, both of which can condemn a priest to a number of penalties, including defrocking, or what the Church calls being reduced to the lay state. [???? I can recall 3 or 4 defrocking cases in the past 12 months for sexual abuses that I posted in this Forum. and in each case the wording of the report was that the Pope had defrocked the priest, not a local tribunal.]

Victims can also seek damages. Or the Congregation can conduct a trial on its own, although that is rare.

If the evidence is overwhelming, the Congregation can refer the case directly to the Pope, who can issue a decree dismissing the priest from the priesthood altogether.

Scicluna has said that since 2001, some 3,000 cases concerning accusations of abuse dating back 50 years have been referred to the Congregation.

A full canonical trial has taken place in 20 percent of the cases; 60 percent of the time there has been no trial, primarily because the priest was old and was instead disciplined by other means, such as restricting where he could celebrate Mass and sending him to pray.

In 10 percent of the cases, the Pope has dismissed the priest from the priesthood; in the remaining 10 percent of the cases, the priest himself has asked to be laicized.

The norms themselves are full of fascinating details particular to the Church: Judges who mete out justice must be priests "of mature age," must hold doctorates in canon law, and must be "outstanding in good morals."

If the Congregation authorizes the diocese to conduct a canonical trial, three to five judges sit in judgment.

The trial is conducted according to the continental system, in which judges weigh the evidence but do the investigating too, as opposed to the American justice system, an adversarial process where facts are evaluated by a jury of peers.

The confidentiality provisions in canonical proceedings are offensive to some in the U.S. But their purpose is to ensure the integrity of the proceedings and not to hide information from civil authorities, said Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S. attorney.

"The problem is that people from one legal culture misinterpret how another legal culture operates," he said. "These misunderstandings unfortunately infect much of the debate raging over the meaning of canonical provisions."

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who has been the main expert witness for victims in hundreds of lawsuits against priests and diocese in the U.S. and elsewhere, said canonical trials can be an effective way to mete out justice - if they are held.

The problem is that they have rarely been held, said Doyle, who in the course of testifying in lawsuits has reviewed documentation from 190 of the 195 Catholic dioceses in the United States and reviewed more than 1,500 priest personnel files.

"Almost all the cases - where bishops received allegations that a priest sexually abused, raped or molested a child - the bishops' procedure was simply to confront the priest, transfer him to another assignment, and in a few cases they send them to counseling centers," Doyle said.

Doyle said the secrecy surrounding the proceedings is excessive in requiring the victims to take an oath of secrecy once the trial begins.

[Doyle is, of course, speaking of cases broguht to light in the 1990s and eaarly 2000s that go back decades! There have been no recent cases in the USA because the Church in the USA did institute a system of protection, vigilance and education that appears to be working very well.]

"The justification for secrecy is usually given to protect the reputations of everyone involved - which is legitimate - and the need to conduct the trial as unencumbered by outside influences," Doyle said. "But the common law system is evidence you can have some transparency." [BUT CANON LAW IS NOT COMMON LAW!]

The Congregation traces its origins to the Congregation for the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, the commission created in 1542 that functioned as a tribunal to root out heresy, punish crimes against the faith and name Inquisitors for the church.

One of its more famous victims was Giordano Bruno, burned in Rome in 1600 after being tried for heresy.

The Congregation today is housed in a grand palazzo on St. Peter's Square, where two Swiss Guards stand at attention. The Vatican declined to let the AP inside for this article.

[And what is the relevance of the preceding three paragraphs to the issue of sexual abuse? Nothing, except the writer's malicious intent to associate the CDF with the worst connotations in the public mind about the Inquisition, and therefore insinuate that with such antecedents, it must be evil! Picture Giordano burned at the stake!

These sanctimonious moralizers of the media really do not see how absurd and ironic it is that they moralize to the Church when the liberal secular ideology they espouse is totally AMORAL - and that the trial-by-publicity such as they have reserved for their enemies like Pope Benedict XVI is the modern-day equivalent of the worst instances of the Spanish Inquisition!]

The Rev. Davide Cito, a canon lawyer at Rome's Pontifical Holy Cross University, has participated in cases before the Congregation's tribunal and been awed by both the history of the institution and tragedy of the crimes that are decided there.

"The first thing anyone who deals with these cases feels is respect _ respect for the victim and respect for the priest," he told the AP.
[Of course! In any civilized proceeding, there has to be mutual respect, even if the accused may end up being found guilty. In the Church, you give the guilty person his due and appropriate punishment, not simply punishment but DOING PENANCE, which implies making sincere amends to the victim(s) if possible and mending his own life to be worthy of Christ once again.]

Dear Lord, how I detest dishonest journalists! I can't even say "Forgive them for they know what they do" because they do know what they are doing, and they are being deliberately evil in the guise of 'doing good'!

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and
the meaning of sacrament
Editorial
by KENNETH BAKER, S.J.

Issue of April 2010

In October 2008 I covered the Roman Synod of Bishops for HPR. My report and summary of the synod appeared in the February 2009 issue.

At a special press conference during the synod it was announced that the German publishing company, Herder, would print the collected works of Benedict XVI (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) in sixteen volumes. We were shown Volume 11, which contains his liturgical writings, as the first one to appear.

The publisher said that it was the express wish of the Pope that his writings on the liturgy should appear first. That gives us hint of how important the Pope considers the liturgy to be. He also said that they would publish two volumes a year until the series is complete.

I am pleased to tell you that Ignatius Press will make these works of the Pope available in an English translation. Since I studied theology for four years at Innsbruck, Austria, where the classes were in both Latin and German, I am familiar with the language and have translated a few books into English.

So I have been asked by Ignatius Press to help with the translation of this series. That should keep me busy for several years since it will take Herder at least eight years to publish the whole set and more years than that to translate all of it.

The first article I translated from Volume 11 is a talk Ratzinger gave in 1979. The English title is “On the Concept of Sacrament.” I have to admit that his German is difficult. The article is eighteen pages in length and on each page I encountered two or three phrases or clauses that were hard to translate—to find the English equivalent that makes sense.

In addition to being interested in liturgy, the Pope is also very concerned about the proper understanding and interpretation of the Bible. In the article he makes a close connection between Scripture and sacraments.

The article centers on the idea of “mystery” —“musterion” in Greek. The Latin translation in the Vulgate of “mystery” is sacrament (sacramentum).

One of the main points he makes in the article is that Christ is God’s mystery in history — he is the visibility of God himself. He also says that the sacraments as mystery are signs pointing to Christ, since he is the fulfillment of all of God’s promises to Israel and to mankind.

Since everything in the Bible, both the Old Testament and the New Testament, points to Christ, and sacraments are signs or symbols that point to Christ, Ratzinger concludes that the words of the Bible and also the events recorded there are sacraments — they are mysteries and types of Christ.

So he says that mystery, types and sacraments all basically mean the same thing. This offers us a challenging way to reflect on the meaning of the sacraments.

The present definition we have of sacraments — visible signs of invisible grace instituted by Christ to confer his grace — was developed by the scholastic theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

They came to see that only seven of the symbolic rites of the Church qualify as sacraments of Christ in accord with that definition. Other rites, like holy water, the Sign of the Cross, and so forth, were seen as established by the Church and were called “sacramentals.”

Another key point the Pope makes in his talk is that we must re-learn from the early Church not only how to read Scripture by looking to the past to see how the words were used in biblical times, but we must also learn how to read it looking forward to the future, since it is all ordered to Christ. It is a matter of reading Scripture as both promise and fulfillment. He says that sacraments, in their full reality, refer to past, present and future.

All of that and more are contained in the concept of sacrament. Signs and symbols, which are what sacraments are, are basic to human understanding and communication. According to Ratzinger, Christianity adds a new dimension to them, since they all refer to Christ in one way or another.

I never thought I would ever use anything from the ultra-left ueber-liberal online bastion called the Huffington Post since I never even bother to check it out. But this one, spotted by a follower of Lella's blog, surprised me, especially considering its author. Mr. Dershowitz is one of the best-known lawyers in the United States and a best-selling author, as well, who is also Jewish and unabashedly ultra-liberal. The article is, therefore, not entirely free of liberal stereotypes about the Church and about pedophilia.


'Thou shalt not stereotype'
by ALAN DERSHOWITZ

April 9, 2010

Having criticized particular Catholic cardinals for blaming everything -- including the Church's sex scandal -- on "the Jews," let me now come to the defense of the Pope and of the Church itself on this issue.

To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse.

The first tradition involves confidentiality, particularly not exclusively the confidentiality of the priest with regard to the penitent. But there is also a wider spread tradition of confidentiality within the Church hierarchy itself.

Second, there is the tradition of forgiveness. Those of us outside the Church often think, perhaps, that the Church goes too far in forgiving. I was shocked when the previous Pope immediately forgave the man who tried to assassinate him. But this episode and other demonstrate that the tradition of forgiveness is all too real.

Third, there is the tradition of the Church regarding itself as a state. The Holy See is a sovereign state. The Catholic Church is not big on the separation of church and state, as are various Protestant denominations. [In this respect, The Catholic Church, like Orthodox Judaism, believes that matters affecting the faithful should generally be dealt within the Church, without recourse to secular authorities.

[Two misconceptions in this premise. One the Church is not identical to the Vatican nor vice-versa. The Vatican represents the Church's institutional headquarters, as it were, the human administration that exercises a federal overview on its 3,000-something autonomous dioceses. And Mr. Dershowitz overlooks that the very idea of separation of Church and state is a cncept that originated with Jesus himself - "Render unto Caesar..."]

Fourth, the Vatican prides itself on moving slowly and in seeing the time frame of life quite differently than the quick pace at which secular societies respond to the crisis of the day.

Fifth, the Catholic Church has long had a tradition of internal due process. Canon Law provides for scrupulous methods of proof. The concept of the "devil's advocate" derives from the Church's effort to be certain that every "t" is crossed and every "i" is dotted, even when it comes to selecting saints. [Thank you, Mr. Dershowitz, for showing your lawyerly appreciation of this.]

None of these explanations completely justifies the long inaction of the Church in coming to grips with a serious problem. But they do help to explain how good people could have allowed bad things to happen for so long a period of time.

Nor is the Catholic Church the only institution that has faced problems of sexual abuse. Every hierarchical body, especially but not exclusively religious ones, has faced similar problems, though perhaps on not so large a scale. [That is a liberal stereotype bandied about thoughtlessly, as if there were no statistics that consistently and unfailingly show that priests constitute an almost negligible minority of pedophile offenders. It is the relentless media focus on them that makes it appear - deliberately - that the problem is 'on so large a scale' as Dershowitz sees it.]

The problem of hierarchical sex abuse has only recently emerged from the shadows. Singling out the Catholic Church and stereotyping all priests is simply wrong.

Pope Benedict, both before he became Pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue. He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims. He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization. He has not tried, as other members of the Vatican hierarchy have, to publicly blame the problem on "the Jews," "the media," and others.

It is obvious that despite Pope Benedict's good efforts, more must be done, and not only by the Catholic Church but by all institutions that have experienced hierarchical sexual exploitation.

They must create structures that assure prompt reporting, a zero-tolerance policy, and quick action, so long as these processes are consistent with due process and fairness, not only to alleged victims but to the accused as well.

It's easy to forget, in the face of real victims with real complaints, that there have also been false accusations as well. Processes must be put in place that distinguish true complaints from false ones. [And that, if applied and when applied, is what Church regulations and canon law seek to do scrupulously.]

Most importantly, this tragedy should not be used as an excuse to attack a large and revered institution that does much good throughout the world.

Blame must be placed with precision and praise should be given with precision as well. The eleventh Commandment, thou shalt not stereotype, must never be forgotten.


Thank you, Mr. Dershowitz. I hope some of the truths that you point out touches the mind of some of the Huffington Post's captive audience who are slaves to secular ideology and its worst and most persistent stereotypes about Catholicism and Catholics.

There is a wonderful article in La Stampa today which recounts the personal experience of Gianni Gennari, an ex-priest who has been writing regularly for Avvenire as columnist and editorialist for several years. He was one of those priests who had to wait - impatiently - for the Vatican to act on his request to be dispensed from the clerical state under John Paul II, as Kiesle and his bishop in Oakland did... It turns out that the Wojtyla rule about prudence in granting dispensations was even more drastic than Fr. Fessio described it to be. Unfortunately, the AP will never pick up a story like this...


Ex-priest tells how
'Cardinal Ratzinger intervened
to hasten dispensation for me'
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from

April 11, 2010

It wasn't an isolated case that the pedophile priest Stephen Kiesle was not immediately laicized as he requested in the 1980s. The unwritten rule introduced in the Vatican by John Paul II (who was convinced that Paul VI had granted dispensations too easily to so many priests) was that all such requests must first be rejected.

In practice, it did not make a difference whether the request was because the priest wanted to get married or for other reasons. The Vatican response was always, in effect, to postpone an answer indefinitely.

In hindsight, of course, this is alarming, because to delay a decision on a convicted pedophile, as Kiesle was when he requested dispensation, was to expose the Church and society to the repetition of a crime.

An illustration of the practice at the time is the story of the theologian Gianni Gennari, longtime columnist of Avvenire, the Italian bishops' newspaper. He was a priest in the diocese of Rome when he asked to be released from the priesthood in order to get married.

He did not get an answer and 18 months after he first sent his request, he was advised by then Vicar for Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, to go directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Where the bureaucracy simply shit the door in his face.

Gennari then decided to write Cardinal Ratzinger himself:
"I turn to you to express my dismay," he wrote on February 3, 1984. "I am a priest and a son of God. I have learned that your office told Cardinal Poletti that my request lacked 'the humble willingness' that the new norms consider indispensable in order to evaluate my request.

"I write you not as to an impersonal bureaucracy. I have waited and I continue to await a sign of response from Your eminence. Whether it is positive or negative is secondary. Nor is this a question of notarizing documents and stamping it with an official seal. I write to you from one son of God to another , as one who awaits a clear answer".

To the surprise of everybody, even in the Curia, Cardinal Ratzinger personally obtained John Paul II's intervention in order to change the routine No answer to a surprising Yes.

The Cardinal first replied formally to Gennari about "your letter which I read attentively." He goes on: "As I have had occasion to explain to you in a telephone conversation, the delay in taking a decision on your request for dispensation from your priestly functions, has to do with the procedure followed in this dicastery which needs to examine the petitions, often on several levels". [This is almost the exact formulation used in the letter about Kiesle.]

The fact that an exceptional intervention was necessary from Cardinal Ratzinger in this matter confirms that when Karol Wojtyla became Pope, all such requests for dispensation were blocked, in effect.

In his letter, Cardinal Ratzinger makes a personal commitment to Gennari which he then carries out. "The dicastery respects the order in which the requests are received in order to avoid any unjust favoritism. But I think I would not be wrong to tell you that your petition may be acted on around Easter."

He asks Gennari for "patience during this additional waiting" and apparently intervened with the Pope - because three days after Easter in 1984, Gennari received his dispensation.

Gennari now says, "The bureaucracy was dominated by a mentality that set aside all requests into a 'warming oven', not to be seen, free from personal considerations".

He thinks that "The letter in Latin about Kiesle was a bureaucratic response merely signed by Ratzinger. The letter to me, in Italian and personal, is a sign of Ratzinger's honest and clarificatory action in my behalf, for which I will always be grateful".





One of the questions I earlier had about which Vatican office has the responsibility for granting dispensations from the priesthood is answered by a 2007 document that Lella found online on the site of the Dehonians (Priests of the Sacred Heart, an order founded by the French priest Leon Dehon, whose beatification is pending because of his apparent record of anti-Semitism).
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wgsyIiTUy30J:www.dehon.it/scj_dehon/cuore/segretari/docum/19_siebenaler.doc+dispensa+celibato+40+anni+et%C3%A0&cd=1&hl=it&ct=clnk&gl=it
The document by the order's Procurator-General summarizes how the order is obliged to deal with various Vatican offices.

About the competence for dispensations it says this:

---

From 1965 to 1990, requests for dispensation were dealt with by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; from 1991 to 2005, by the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of Sacraments; and from 2006, by the Congregation for the Clergy.

During these 40 years, we presented a total of 306 requests - 296 were answered positively; 4 were denied (3 are ex-brothers of ours who no longer wanted the dispensation); another 4 were asked to complete their documentation according to the new norms of 1980, fialed to do so, and have not been heard from; one was shelved because he simply stopped all contact with us. Finally, one case was postponed for decision until 2009, when the applicant will turn 40. [Which is what happened with Kielse.] Obviously, there are so many other ex-SCJ priests at large who never asked for this dispensation.

---

He notes later that both the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Congregation for the Clergy continued to be guided by "the procedural norms indicated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on October 14, 1980".

Obviously, there were written instructions regarding dispensation that were already in place by the time Cardinal Ratzinger came to the CDF in February 1982.

I looked it up on the CDF pages in the Vatican site, but although it is listed under the category 'Documenti di Materia sacramentale' -

---

Lettera ai Vescovi e Superiori Generali riguardante la dispensa dal celibato sacerdotale (Litterae circulares omnibus locorum Ordinariis et Moderatoribus generalibus religionum clericaliumde dispensatione a sacerdotali coelibatu), 14 ottobre 1980
AAS 72 (1980) 1132-1135; DOCUMENTA 40
Communicationes 8 (1981) 21-26; DocCath 77 (1980) 1177-1178 [Gall.]; EV 7, 550-561; LE 4800; Dokumenty, I, 40

---

the document itself is not online.

If laymen like Lella and myself, who do not do this for a living, can try to find out primary information that can give the proper background and context to events that are being reported, I don't see why any respectable journalist does not do so habitually as a duty to the profession and to their readers!





Thanks to Beatrice

who asked on her site for someone competent to translate the letter signed by Cardinal Ratzinger on the Kiesle case, and was provided one by Yves D. who also appended a glossary of the Latin words used in the letter with their meanings in French! Here is a translation of his French into English....

---

Having received your letter of September 13 on the subject of the request for dispensation from his priestly duties by the Rev. Stephen Miller Kiesle of said diocese, it is my duty to communicate to you the following:

This dicastery, even if it judges that the reasons given for the requested dispensation are of great importance in this case, is nonetheless of the opinion that it is necessary to consider together what is good for the universal Church and what the petitioner wishes. That is why one cannot ignore the damage which authorizing such a dispensation could provoke among the community of the faithful, particularly if one takes into account the petitioner's young age.

Consequently, this Congregation must place cases like this under more attentive examination, which will necessarily require more time.

Meanwhile, Your Excellency must not omit to provide the petitioner with the paternal care that you are capable of, explaining to him clearly the reason for the dicastery's action, and that in going forward, you will always keep in mind what is good for all.

I take the occasion to express to you my heartfelt esteem. I remain...

---

Looking at this unbiased translation, my humble opinion is that Vatican attorney Jeffrey Lena was right to specify only that it was signed by Cardinal Ratzinger.

As Father Z first hypothesized, and especially in the light of what we know about the Kiesle case, it reads like a form letter - with the date of the request and the priest's name filled in - one that would have been given to Cardinal Ratzinger to sign by a CDF bureaucrat placed in charge of answering requests for dispensations. Requests that we now know from Galeazzi's article were routinely blocked or delayed in accordance with John Paul II's wishes against indiscriminate gratnting of dispensations.

Being one of the many routine letters the Prefect signed regarding dispensations, it is unlikely that the original requests by the bishop and the priest were attached to it, nor even a note saying the priest in question was a convicted pedophile. If this information had been made available at the time the cardinal signed the letter, does anyone doubt that he would not have sent the standard form letter but something with more direct reference to the priest's individual case.

If Cardinal Ratzinger went out of his way as he did to expedite a dispensation for Gennari, who requested it in order to be able to marry, it is unlikely he would not have paid the same personal attention to Kiesle's case if he had personal knowledge of the bckground to the case.

It is unfortunate that the Vatican did not immediately provide its own translation of such a short letter, but also understandable in this way: One might surmise the initial reaction by, say, Fr. Lombardi, or even lawyer Lena - "Oh my God, this letter - even if it was a form letter - could be interpreted to mean Cardinal Ratzinger deliberately delayed granting a dispensation to Kiesle!"

DUH! Did they think no one would be capable of providing an unbiased translation sooner or later? Their first reaction should have been to ask, say Archbishop Amato, who was CDF secretary for a long time, or even the present secretary, Mons. Ladaria, to look into how the CDF routinely answered requests for dispensation in 1985 - and if it was clear that a form letter was used, then that would have been their best way out - provided they gave the necessary context to it, as Father Fessio did.

Of course, it would have meant exposing the hitherto little-known fact that John Paul II deliberately wanted the dispensations halted or slowed down, and probably no one at the Vatican wanted to have to be the one to do that in public - especially since John Paul's decision was a reaction to Paul VI's liberal granting of dispensations! It would have meant a somehwat negative reflection on the two previous Popes, on top of the negative reflection of the bare letter by itself on the current Pope.

This is an issue altogether separate from the pedophilia issue, but once again, it illustrates how Benedict XVI is the scapegoat for questionable Vatican practices that were established before he had anything to do with the Curia, and in the case of the 1980 norms for dispensation, a papal prerogative he could not personally overrule as CDF head even if he wanted to.

Of course, we can then ask why did he not work so that the norms be changed when it had to do with priests who were known or convicted sex offenders. Perhaps because the Kiesle case was a singular exception since most requests for dispensation were by priests simply wanting to marry - and we can be sure that even John Paul II himself never thought about requests for dispensation by convicted sex-offender priests. It was probably for the same reason that the cardinal did not concern himself personally with the files of the petitioner priests, as years later, he would with the files of priests accused of sex offenses.