Affection and solidarity for
the Pope from all the world
Translated from
the Italian service of
April 5, 2010
From all over the world testimonials of affection and solidarity continue to come to the Holy Father for the attacks that he has been undergoing these days over the abuses on minors perpetrated by some members of the Catholic clergy. Sergio Centofanti reports:
Simple folk and men of culture, believers and non-believers. So much affection is coming these days to the Pope, the kind that the media does not report on, in contrast to their runaway defamatory campaign which, according to some commentators, is not aimed at the pedophile priests as much as it is against Benedict XVI himself - despite his decisive actions against the 'filth' within the Church.
A campaign that is even more strange and paradoxical when one reads a United States government report from 2008 on sexual abuses against minors: more than 64% are committed by parents, relatives or housemates of the victims, therefore within the family, and that in US schools, 10% of children experience sexual abuse. In this overall report on seal abuses against minors, less than 0.03% are attributed to Catholic priests.
[It is not 'strange and paradoxical' at all - it is deliberate on the part of the media, especially in the United States, almost never to provide a quantitative context for sexual abuses committed by priests, in order to leave the powerful but false impression that 1) such abuses are committed exclusively by priests; 2) that the number of abuses committed by priests is significantly elevated; and 3) that the scandal is an ongoing one - when most of the cases reported in this recent wave of the 'scandal' date back decades and hardly a single one is current!
In a very specific case, we have their constant and almost uniform reference to "cases of cover-up by Benedict XVI when he was Archbishop of Munich and as Prefect of the Vatican office in charge of investigating sex abuses", although there has been exactly one case of each that they have been able so far to point to and 'stretch' into an appearance of 'culpability'.
The objective is very clear: to portray the Catholic church as evil inthe worst way possible, by making it appear that the entire Catholic church is ridden with predatory priests tolerated by their superiors up to and including the person who is now the Pope - without ever acknowledging what the Church in general, and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, in particular, have done since 2001 to remedy the problem of the relatively few rotten apples in the clergy.]
And so, they ignore the annual reports in the USA that show a greatly reduced and steadily declining number of new complaints against priests today compared to when the problem peaked in the 1960s-1980s.]
For the American intellectual George Weigel, interviewed by the newspaper
La Stampa, the Pope is under attack because he affirms the existence of truth which 'powerful forces in the West' deny. For instance, the Church defends justice, and the first justice is the right to life, and a defense of the family founded on the matrimony between a man and a woman.
Thus, he says, there are those who see "in the failings of some Church members, an opportunity to destroy the teachings of the Church", thus excluding the Church from the public debate on crucial social issues. Not to mention the "unscrupulous lawyers who are now attempting to place the assets of the Vatican itself within reach of the courts".
In this attack, Weigel sees the involvement of Catholic sectors who are "pursing a revolution they have not been able to realize: the end of priestly celibacy, the ordination of women, and diminishing the authority of bishops".
"Christianophobia is growing", says the Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto (Italy), Mons. Bruno Forte. It is a fact, but one that is not publicized in the media, that Christians are the most persecuted religious group today - 200 million Christians in various countries of the world are victims of attack and discrimination.
In the West, the vociferous elements are indignant over so many things, big and small, often things made to appear as cause for indignation, but there has been little indignation for the Christian who was burned alive in akistan or the seven Christians crucified in theSudan, and the dozens of Christians killed through targeted assassination in Iraq and India.
The Archbishop of Trieste, Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi, underscored that it would have been good if the media gave a fraction of their attention to this as they have given to pedophile priests.
Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, says that "there has never been in the past a sequence of attacks so violent and with such proportions" against the Church, because of its opposition to "dominant ideologies which are intent on imposing a culture of death" and speaks of "very powerful lobbies such as multinational drug companies promoting abortion" and "scientific research that are against the dignity of the human being".
For Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, "to be attacked is in the nature of the Church herself" which "can and should emerge from this buffetting purified and even reinforced in the truth".
Likewise, the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, who said that "For the Pope to undergo iniquitous and false accusations is part of his being a disciple of Christ". he cites the ast Beatitude which says "Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil falsely against you because of me.".
And from a letter sent by a group of detainees in the jail of Augusta-Brucoli to Benedict XVI: "Holiness", they write, "Jesus was crucified to execute an unjust condemnation, result of an iniquitous sentence. Jesus crucified is the silent truth of Love. On the other side is violence and falsehood. Holiness, you are in teh hearts and prayers of your children in this jail".
Damian Thompson has publicized an Easter Monday editorial by his newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, that starts out with surprising words of support for Benedict XVI but leads in to criticism of Fr. Cantalamessa and Cardinal Sodano for their respective statements recently.
Cantalamessa is by now forever endowed with a millstone round his neck - the media distortion of truth-speaking citation from a Jewish friend, much as they distorted Benedict XVI's Manuel II citation in Regensburg by attributing it to him personally. Subsequently, Thompson makes like John Allen at his most annoying:
Benedict XVI and the child abuse crisis:
the Telegraph's view
April 5, 2010
The
Daily Telegraph’s editorial verdict today on the Pope and the child abuse scandals haunting the Church makes uncomfortable reading for Catholics – and for those in the media who have lazily or maliciously attempted to place the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the centre of the cover-ups:
In his Easter address yesterday Pope Benedict XVI made no direct mention of the row that has engulfed the Catholic church over child abuse. In truth, we know what he thinks of the scandal from his pastoral letter to Irish Catholics a fortnight ago. [The first acknowledgment of obvious fact that I have seen in the MSM, who have uniformly harped in their headlines that "the Pope continues to remain silent" about the scandals!]
In a heartfelt statement of contrition, Pope Benedict spoke of “the shame and remorse that we all feel” towards the victims of abuse at the hands of Catholic priests dating back decades: “You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry…your trust has been betrayed and your dignity has been violated”.
The apology was sincere and absolutely merited by the monstrous nature of the betrayal. The Pope spoke from the heart because he has been prominent in the battle to expose abusers and those who have protected them.
It is unfortunate that the Vatican has not been able to maintain that tone. On Good Friday the Pope’s personal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, likened the criticism being levelled at the Catholic Church over child abuse to the “collective violence suffered by the Jews”. He later apologised.
Meanwhile, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, said during Easter Mass that the controversy amounted to “petty gossip”. [That is extrapolating his remarks tendentiously. He never claims anywhere that the issue of sex abuse by some priests is 'controversial' because he never speaks about child abuse in the remarks. What he called petty gossip refers to the persistent and tenuous fact-stretching by the media as a basis for relentless personal attacks on the Holy Father. The whole of his remarks was not about child abuse but about support for the Holy Father in the face of the unjust personal attacks against him. Surely anyone who can read can see that - unless they have not bothered to look at a translation of Sodano's text.]
In is perhaps understandable for the Vatican to react so defensively but it is hardly productive. [Why is it obbjectionable for the Vatican to defend itself? And who is it counterproductive for to point out the truth? Not for the Vatican!]
Closer to home, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, yesterday showed far greater sensitivity, talking of the church’s shame while “acknowledging our guilt and our need for forgiveness”.
Repairing the damage caused by the child abuse scandal will be a long process but cannot even start until the Vatican demonstrates the same determination to root out abuse – and the same penitence – as Pope Benedict himself has shown. [Obviously, Cardinal Sodano and Fr. Cantalamessa by themselves do not represent the Vatican, and in these cases, what they said was true and right even if very decidedly 'politically incorrect".]
I don’t think you can say fairer than that. My own thoughts:
1. The betrayal of the innocent by a small minority of Catholic priests and a much larger proportion of Catholic bishops and bureaucrats was truly monstrous. Pope Benedict XVI was right to acknowledge the Church’s deep shame. His predecessor should have done so.
2. Although
the Pope may not have been vigilant enough when he was Archbishop of Munich [Mr. Thompson, you really believe that????], once he was in the Vatican he was disgusted to discover the scale of the crimes of predator priests – and fought a sometime lonely battle against complacent colleagues, from whom he eventually had to wrest authority to deal with canonical aspects of these cases in 2001. After that, their prosecution was speeded up. No wonder, since the Italian monsignori who previously dealt with them had spent most of the day plotting and stuffing their faces in their favourite trattorie.
3. Benedict XVI is still not well served by the people around him.
Did no one bother to check what the papal preacher was going to say on the supremely sensitive subject of child abuse in his sermon to the Holy Father? Did no one think to suggest that, maybe, this might not be the moment to make misleading analogies with the persecution of Jews? [First, I don't think the Pontifical Preacher needs to submit his homilies to vetting by anyone. He gets to his position not as an inexperienced prelate fresh out of the seminary but by virtue of an established record of theological orthodoxy and prudence. Two, and most importantly, Thompson, like most of those who have denounced Fr. Cantalamessa, also evidently did not bother to read what Fr. Cantalamessa actually said, because anyone who does so will see immediately that there was no analogy made at all, either by Cantalamessa or by the Jewish friend he cited - between denunciations of child abuse and persecution of the Jews. The analogy to anti-Semitism was clearly with respect to the pattern of attack against the Church and the Pope. And it saddens me when someone like Damian Thompson can so easily fall into such a trap.]
And what more evidence do we need that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, one of the useless old guard, should be put out to pasture in a very obscure country diocese? [While I myself have always had many misgivings about Cardinal Sodano - princiapally his widely accepted championing of Fr. Maciel (it differs from John Paul II having done the same thing only because he is not John Paul II, but being John Paul II did not make his apparent protection of Fr. Maciel correct, either) - what he said before Easter Sunday Mass was not just admirable and unexceptionable, but necessary. Besides, he is clearly retired but he can't be 'put out to pasture' entirely because he is rightfully dean of the College of Cardinals.]
4. As the
Telegraph says, it’s time for
the Vatican to show the same “determination to root out abuse” that Benedict has manifested.
For that to happen, the Pope must act ruthlessly, not least against Vatican officials.
In the matter of coddling pedophile priests and their bishop protectors, I do not think Point #4 applies to 'the Vatican' any more:
- The competence for canonical handling of sex abuses by priests has been in the hands of the CDF since 2001. Does anyone think that Benedict XVI has any less influence on the CDF now because he is no longer its Prefect?
- In the matter of bishops named since he became Pope, by all accounts, he has been much more proactive and personally involved in choosing them than his predecessor, although the burden for preliminary screening of candidates for bishop still lies with the Apostoic Nuncios (read Secretariat of State) and the Congregation for Bishops.
- And general overview of the world's 400,000 priests has been the responsibility of Cardinal Claudio Hummes, one of the darlings of the liberal media before Benedict XVI called him to the Vatican. Surely, no one has accused him of covering up for pedophile priests - if only because the great majority of pedophile cases date back to the second half of the 20th century. Besides, the administrative responsibility for priests rests with and has always been with the diocesan bishop, not the Vatican.
So exactly which Vatican officials should the Pope move against now on the matter of pedophile priests? In this case, Thompson is shooting from the hip, with no specific targets. In this, he shares an all-too-common tendency with the garden-variety MSM.]
I fell very much behind posting the statements of bishops who came out in support of Pope Benedict XVI in the past week, but at least let me post two which were in English.
'The strongest ally we had
was Cardinal Ratzinger...'
by Cardinal Sean O'Malley
Archbishop of Boston
April 2, 2010
the media reports on the situation of the Church in Europe and on the Holy Father have been very disturbing to all faithful Catholics. We are saddened by much of the news and also saddened knowing that victims of sexual abuse in our own community are, in a sense, re-victimized every time this issue comes to the fore.
Since being named Bishop of Fall River in 1992 and subsequently as Bishop of Palm Beach and Archbishop of Boston, I have had the painful but privileged opportunity to meet with hundreds of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their loved ones.
During the course of Pope Benedict’s visit to the United States in 2008, at a meeting with survivors from the Archdiocese of Boston, I presented the Holy Father a book inscribed with the first names of 1500 children who had been sexually abused by clergy and shared that the names marked with a gold cross were children who had died under tragic circumstances. The Holy Father was visibly moved as he read the names.
There is much confusion and misinformation about the Holy Father’s historic role in dealing with the problem of sexual abuse of children by clergy.
What is very clear to me — and I think to all who are fair-minded — is that Cardinal Ratzinger and later Pope Benedict has been dedicated to eradicating sexual abuse in the Church and trying to rectify the mistakes of the past.
Until the sexual abuse crisis really became part of the consciousness of the Church in Europe, there were many who were unsympathetic to our efforts in the U.S. to deal with the problem in a transparent way and assure that our Catholic schools, parishes and agencies would be safe for children.
During this period of at least a decade, the strongest ally we had in this effort was Cardinal Ratzinger. As head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he allowed us to move forward with the Essential Norms which became local Church law in the U.S. and facilitated the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
The Norms allowed for mandated reporting to civil authorities and embraced a zero-tolerance policy for abusers. In addition, the Charter called for abuse prevention training that has been attended by literally millions of Catholics. It also requires yearly public audits to ensure that dioceses are in compliance with these requirements.
During this Holy Season I urge all of our Catholics to pray for the survivors and all who have been impacted by the tragedy of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy. I also hold in my prayers and ask us all to pray for those persons for whom this crisis has been an obstacle to the continued practice of their faith.
Let us pray, too, for our Holy Father, that God will grant him the light and wisdom he needs to guide the Church. And during this Year for Priests, let us pray for our priests, who labor quietly everyday doing the good works of the Lord.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/04/2010 17:23]