Scoundrel Time(s)
by GEORGE WEIGEL
March 29, 2010
The sexual and physical abuse of children and young people is a global plague; its manifestations run the gamut from fondling by teachers to rape by uncles to kidnapping-and-sex-trafficking.
In the United States alone, there are reportedly some 39 million victims of childhood sexual abuse. Forty to sixty percent were abused by family members, including stepfathers and live-in boyfriends of a child’s mother — thus suggesting that
abused children are the principal victims of the sexual revolution, the breakdown of marriage, and the hook-up culture.
Hofstra University professor Charol Shakeshaft reports that
6-10 percent of public school students have been molested in recent years—some 290,000 between 1991 and 2000.
According to other recent studies,
2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests — a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (
six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members).
Yet in a pattern exemplifying the dog’s behavior in Proverbs 26:11, the sexual abuse story in the global media is almost entirely a Catholic story, in which the Catholic Church is portrayed as the epicenter of the sexual abuse of the young, with hints of an ecclesiastical criminal conspiracy involving sexual predators whose predations continue today.
That the vast majority of the abuse cases in the United States took place decades ago is of no consequence to this story line. For
the narrative that has been constructed is often less about the protection of the young (for whom the Catholic Church is, by any empirical measure, the safest environment for young people in America today) than it is about taking the Church down — and, eventually, out, both financially and as a credible voice in the public debate over public policy.
For if the Church is a global criminal conspiracy of sexual abusers and their protectors, then the Catholic Church has no claim to a place at the table of public moral argument.
The Church itself is in some measure responsible for this. Reprehensible patterns of clerical sexual abuse and misgovernance by the Church’s bishops came to glaring light in the U.S. in 2002; worse patterns of corruption have been recently revealed in Ireland.
Clericalism, cowardice, fideism about psychotherapy’s ability to “fix” sexual predators — all played their roles in the recycling of abusers into ministry and in the failure of bishops to come to grips with
a massive breakdown of conviction and discipline in the post-Vatican II years.
For
the Church’s sexual abuse crisis has always been that: a crisis of fidelity. Priests who live the noble promises of their ordination are not sexual abusers; bishops who take their custody of the Lord’s flock seriously protect the young, and recognize that a man’s acts can so disfigure his priesthood that he must be removed from public ministry or from the clerical state.
That the Catholic Church was slow to recognize the scandal of sexual abuse within the household of faith, and the failures of governance that led to the scandal being horribly mishandled, has been frankly admitted — by the bishops of the United States in 2002, and by Pope Benedict XVI in his recent letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland.
In recent years, though, no other similarly situated institution has been so transparent about its failures, and none has done as much to clean house. It took too long to get there, to be sure; but we are there.
These facts have not sunk in, however, for either the attentive public or the mass public. They do not fit the conventional story line. Moreover, they impede the advance of the larger agenda that some are clearly pursuing in these controversies.
For the crisis of sexual abuse and episcopal malfeasance has been seized upon by the Church’s enemies to cripple it, morally and financially, and to cripple its leaders.
That was the subtext in Boston in 2002 (where the effort was aided by Catholics who want to turn Catholicism into high-church Congregationalism, preferably with themselves in charge).
And that is what has happened in recent weeks, as a global media attack has swirled around Pope Benedict XVI, following the revelation of odious abuse cases throughout Europe.
In his native Germany,
Der Spiegel has called for the Pope’s resignation; similar cries for papal blood have been raised in Ireland,
a once-Catholic country now home to the most aggressively secularist press in Europe.
But it was the
New York Times’'s front page of March 25 that demonstrated just how low those determined to bring the Church down were prepared to go.
Rembert Weakland is the emeritus archbishop of Milwaukee, notorious for having paid hundreds of thousands of dollars
[of diocesan funds!] to satisfy the demands of his former male lover.
Jeff Anderson is a Minnesota-based attorney who has made a substantial amount of money out of sex abuse “settlements,” and who is party to ongoing litigation intended to bring the resources of the Vatican within the reach of contingency-fee lawyers in the United States.
Yet these two utterly implausible — and, in any serious journalistic sense, disqualified — sources were those the Times cited in a story claiming that, as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [CDF], Joseph Ratzinger, later Benedict XVI, had prevented sanctions against Father Lawrence Murphy, a diabolical Milwaukee priest who, decades before, had abused some 200 deaf children in his pastoral care.
This was simply not true, as the legal papers from the Murphy case the Times provided on its Web site demonstrated (see here for a demolition of the Times’ case based on the documentary evidence it made available). The facts, alas, seem to be of little interest to those whose primary concern is to nail down the narrative of global Catholic criminality, centered in the Vatican.
The
Times’s descent into tabloid sourcing and innuendo was even more offensive because of recent hard news developments that underscore Pope Benedict’s determination to root out what he once described as the “filth” in the Church.
There was, for example, the Pope’s March 20 letter to the Catholic Church in Ireland, which was unsparing in its condemnation of clerical sexual offenders (“. . . you betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals”) and unprecedented in its critique of malfeasant bishops (“grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred . . . [which have] undermined your credibility and effectiveness”).
Moreover, the Pope mandated an Apostolic Visitation of Irish dioceses, seminaries, and religious congregations — a clear indication that dramatic leadership change in Ireland is coming.
In framing his letter to Ireland so vigorously, Benedict XVI succeeded in overcoming the institutional Vatican preference for the subjunctive in dealing with situations like this, and the pleas of Irish bishops that he cut them some slack, given the intense pressures they were under at home.
That the Pope rejected both curial and Irish opposition to his lowering the boom ought to have made clear that Benedict XVI is determined to deal with the problem of sexual abuse and episcopal misgovernance in the strongest terms.
But for those obsessing over whether a Pope had finally “apologized” for something (as if John Paul II had not spent a decade and a half “cleansing the Church’s historical conscience,” as he put it), these unmistakable signals were lost.
Then there was the March 25 letter from the leadership of the Legionaries of Christ to Legionary priests and seminarians and the Legion-affiliated movement, Regnum Christi.
The letter disavowed the Legion’s founder, Father Marcial Maciel, as a model for the future, in light of revelations that Maciel had deceived popes, bishops, laity, and his brother Legionaries by living a duplicitous double life that included fathering several children, sexually abusing seminarians, violating the sacrament of penance, and misappropriating funds.
It was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger who, as CDF prefect, was determined to discover the truth about Maciel; it was Pope Benedict XVI who put Maciel under virtual ecclesiastical house arrest during his last years, and who then ordered an Apostolic Visitation of the Legion of Christ that is currently being concluded: hardly the acts of a man at the center of a conspiracy of silence and cover-up.
While the Vatican has been far quicker in its recent response to irresponsible media reports and attacks, it could still do better.
A documented chronology of how the archdiocese of Munich-Freising handled the case of an abusing priest who had been brought to Munich for therapy while Ratzinger was archbishop would help buttress the flat denials, by both the Vatican and the archdiocese, that Ratzinger knowingly reassigned a known abuser to pastoral work — another charge on which the Times and others have been chewing.
More and clearer explanations of how the canonical procedures put into place at CDF several years ago have accelerated, not impeded, the Church’s disciplining of abusive clergy would also be useful.
So, of course, would elementary fairness from the global media. That seems unlikely to come from those reporters and editors at the
New York Times who have abandoned any pretence of maintaining journalistic standards.
But
it ought not be beyond the capacity of other media outlets to understand that much of the Times’s recent reporting on the Church has been gravely distorted, and to treat it accordingly.
[A consummation devoutly to be wished, but let's not hold our breath!
In fact, I can only use about 80% of the papal news items (not counting the repretitions) that turn up these days on any search list for Benedict XVI news). The extent and degree of calumniation beggars what it was after Regensburg and Williamson and the condoms - as is the depth of the prejudice and the appalling ignorance and disdain for facts. It is hard to be Christian and say, "Father forgive them..." because they know exactly what they are doing, and they are revelling, gloating, chortling, wallowing in their malice and ill will!]
An antidote for all the sulfurous toxins from Hell that are being discharged these days into the air of Western civilization are the remarks delivered yesterday by Archbishop Timothy Dolan in defense of the Pope. Here is the full text:
Left photo: Mons. Dolan received the pallium from the Pope, June 2009; right, Dolan delivering his remarks from the cathedra of St. patrick's yesterday.
REMARKS BY MONS. TIMOTHY DOLAN
ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK
St. Patrick's Cathedral
Palm Sunday, 2010
Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, made the following remarks at the conclusion of Palm Sunday Mass in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on Sunday, March 28, 2010.
May I ask your patience a couple of minutes longer in what has already been a lengthy — yet hopefully uplifting — Sunday Mass?
The somberness of Holy Week is intensified for Catholics this year.
The recent tidal wave of headlines about abuse of minors by some few priests, this time in Ireland, Germany, and a re-run of an old story from Wisconsin, has knocked us to our knees once again.
Anytime this horror, vicious sin, and nauseating crime is reported, as it needs to be, victims and their families are wounded again, the vast majority of faithful priests bow their heads in shame anew, and sincere Catholics experience another dose of shock, sorrow, and even anger.
What deepens the sadness now is the unrelenting insinuations against the Holy Father himself, as certain sources seem frenzied to implicate the man who, perhaps more than anyone else has been the leader in purification, reform, and renewal that the Church so needs.
Sunday Mass is hardly the place to document the inaccuracy, bias, and hyperbole of such aspersions.
But, Sunday Mass is indeed the time for Catholics to pray for “ . . . Benedict our Pope.”
And Palm Sunday Mass is sure a fitting place for us to express our love and solidarity for our earthly shepherd now suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob, and scourging at the pillar, as did Jesus.
No one has been more vigorous in cleansing the Church of the effects of this sickening sin than the man we now call Pope Benedict XVI.
The dramatic progress that the Catholic Church in the United States has made — documented again just last week by the report made by independent forensic auditors — could never have happened without the insistence and support of the very man now being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo.
Does the Church and her Pastor, Pope Benedict XVI, need intense scrutiny and just criticism for tragic horrors long past?
Yes! He himself has asked for it, encouraging complete honesty, at the same time expressing contrition, and urging a thorough cleansing.
All we ask is that it be fair, and that the Catholic Church not be singled-out for a horror that has cursed every culture, religion, organization, institution, school, agency, and family in the world.
Sorry to bring this up … but, then again, the Eucharist is the Sunday meal of the spiritual family we call the Church. At Sunday dinner we share both joys and sorrows. The father of our family, Il Papa, needs our love, support, and prayers.
Is it too much to hope that all bishops and parish priests around the world would take the same initiative at some point these days and show their communion with the Vicar of Christ in a concrete way?
AP reported this in a surprisingly straightforward manner - as a real news report, not as a pretext for opinion-mongering.
Archbishop defends Pope
against sex abuse furor
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Archbishop Timothy Dolan was greeted with applause after finishing Palm Sunday Mass by defending Pope Benedict XVI against suggestions he aided cover-ups of reports of child abuse.
The standing-room-only crowd at St. Patrick's Cathedral applauded for 20 seconds after Dolan read a statement calling the Pope the "leader in purification, reform and renewal that the church so very much needs."
[The report then quotes liberally from the archbishop's remarks.]
Outside the cathedral Sunday, worshippers emerging from the service with palm fronds were largely supportive of Dolan's remarks.
"I thought it was very well put," said Inga Yungwirth, of Hagerstown, Md. "It doesn't shake my faith."
Earlier, several protesters had gathered outside the Gothic-style cathedral, which sits on Fifth Avenue opposite Rockefeller Center.
"Honk if Pope should resign," said one sign, which attracted only an occasional toot from drivers.
Back from its weekend break. CNS has this useful wrap-up story of the past two days:
Vatican steps up defense of Pope
on sex abuse decisions
By John Thavis
VATICAN CITY, March 29 (CNS) -- The Vatican and other Church officials have amplified their defense of Pope Benedict XVI and his decisions regarding priestly sex abuse, and rejected accusations of a continued cover-up of such crimes.
After a series of reports in the
New York Times and other media criticizing the Pope for alleged "inaction" on sex abuse cases, Vatican authorities emphasized that it was the Pope who, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, pushed for harsher measures against abusers and made it easier for the Church to defrock them.
On March 27, the Vatican newspaper,
L'Osservatore Romano, ran the full texts of two landmark documents that in 2001 placed the sexual abuse of minors by priests among the most grave sins, and established that allegations be handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Ratzinger.
The same day, the newspaper ran a front-page commentary by British Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster that had appeared in the
Times of London, expressing shame over priestly sex abuse but strongly defending the pPpe's efforts to curb it.
"What of the role of Pope Benedict? When he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he led important changes made in church law: the inclusion in canon law of Internet offenses against children, the extension of child abuse offenses to include the sexual abuse of all under 18, the case by case waiving of the statute of limitations and the establishment of a fast-track dismissal from the clerical state for offenders," Archbishop Nichols wrote.
"He is not an idle observer. His actions speak as well as his words," he said.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the recent media focus on the sex abuse cases and the way they were dealt with by the hierarchy comes as no surprise.
"The nature of the question is such as to attract the attention of the media, and the way in which the church deals with it is crucial for her moral credibility," he said in a commentary on Vatican Radio.
But Father Lombardi pointed to the "many positive signals" that indicate the Church has understood the problem and addressed it. For example, he said, a recent report showed that the number of reported sex abuse cases declined between 33 and 36 percent in U.S. dioceses and religious institutes between 2008 and 2009.
"It must be recognized that the decisive measures currently being implemented are proving effective: the Church in the United States is on the right road to renewal," he said.
"This, we feel, is an important piece of news in the context of recent media attacks, which have undoubtedly proved harmful," the spokesman said.
Father Lombardi said impartial observers would recognize that the Pope and the CDF are continuing to guide bishops and help them "combat and root out the blight of abuse wherever it appears." The Pope's strongly worded letter to Irish Catholics earlier this month demonstrated his commitment to "healing, renewal and reparation" in the Church, he said.
German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's top ecumenical official, said the Pope's letter to Irish Catholics was "courageous." It indicated that the Church was on an "irreversible" path toward greater transparency and severity in dealing with sex abuse by priests, the cardinal told the newspaper
Corriere della Sera March 27.
Pope Benedict has never tried to protect abusers, and the criticism aimed at him is really an attack on the church itself, Cardinal Kasper said.
"He was the first who, even as a cardinal, felt the need for new and stricter rules, which didn't exist before. That some newspapers are now using terrible cases to attack the pope head-on is something that goes beyond every limit of justice and fairness," he said.
Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, mentioned the sex abuse scandal in his weekly Lenten meditation. In his sermon to the Pope and Roman Curia officials March 26, Father Cantalamessa said the Church and its members are called to purify themselves and, if there is humility, then "the Church will end up more resplendent than ever from this war."
"The media's tenacity -- and we have seen it in other cases -- in the long run will bring about the opposite effect that they had hoped for," he added.
Addressing the Pope specifically, Father Cantalamessa reminded him that God told Jeremiah that before his detractors he would make him "a solid wall of brass. Though they fight against you, they shall not prevail. For I am with you to deliver and rescue you."
French bishops, assembled at their annual spring meeting, sent a "message of support" to Pope Benedict, saying they were with him "in the difficult period our church is going through."
Italian Archbishop Giuseppe Betori of Florence told Vatican Radio March 26 that the media was manipulating information in order to falsely accuse the Pope of inaction on sex abuse.
He said he had dealt directly with the doctrinal congregation under Cardinal Ratzinger on abuse allegations, and found that the congregation demonstrated "the maximum attention and the maximum severity."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/03/2010 20:32]