Another long Lent
by GEORGE WEIGEL
April 12, 2010
On March 25, the
New York Times published a now thoroughly discredited front-page story suggesting that Joseph Ratzinger, while prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had willfully impeded sanctions against a clerical sexual abuser in Milwaukee who had preyed on the deaf children in his care.
Taking that date, and that calumny against Benedict XVI, as an arbitrary American ground zero in the latest round of assaults depicting the Catholic Church as a Rome-based global criminal conspiracy of perverts and their enablers, where do things stand, two and a half weeks into what at first seemed poised to become a scandal as devastating as the Catholic Church in America’s Long Lent of eight years ago?
It’s not 2002. During the Long Lent, the press played an important role in dragging into the light of day awful things the Church had failed to confront, or had confronted ineptly. The shame of that period still stings, as do the wounds suffered by victims. Yet
2010 is not 2002, and that is in large measure due to 2002.
Despite the ignorance and tendentiousness displayed by too many journalists and commentators in recent weeks (including Catholic commentators seeking another opportunity to revive the Revolution That Never Was — or, in the case of Patrick J. Buchanan, to revive the Golden Age That Never Was), the facts are slowly getting out, thanks in part to the unprecedented studies and audits authorized by the bishops of the United States in the wake of the Long Lent.
Reasonable people whose perceptions are not warped by the toxin of anti-Catholicism or who are not pursuing other (often financially-driven) agendas now recognize that the Church in the U.S. and Canada has bent enormous efforts towards cleaning up what Cardinal Ratzinger called in 2005 its “filth,” to the point where the Catholic Church today can be empirically shown to be the safest environment for young people and children in North America.
The paralyzing drumbeat of one ghastly new story after another that went on all during 2002 has not been repeated.
What we now have is, largely, the recycling of old material, usually provided to the press by contingent-fee attorneys whose strategic goal is to build a public “narrative” of conspiracy that will shape American courts’ decisions as to whether the Vatican and its resources can be brought within range of U.S. liability law.
The realization among serious Catholics that this is not 2002 and that things have changed dramatically since 2002, has led to a far more confident effort to fight back against misrepresentations such as those the Times perpetrated on March 25.
There is a danger here: to recognize that this is not 2002 cannot blind us to the fact that
there are wounds that remain to be healed, reforms of priestly formation that remain to be completed, bishops whose failures remain to be recognized and dealt with, new norms for the selection of bishops to be implemented, and accounts rendered as to why the Vatican, prior to Ratzinger’s taking control of the issue of clerical sexual abuse in the late 1990s, was sometimes sluggish in its response to scandalous behavior by priests and deficient leadership by bishops.
Assuming, however, that Benedict XVI has set in motion processes that will lead to all those lingering issues being forcefully addressed, a serious question can now be credibly posed:
Are those most vigorously agitating these abuse/misgovernance issues today genuinely interested in the safety of young people and children, or are they using the failures of the past to cripple the moral credibility of the Catholic Church in the present and future?
That question would have rightly struck many people as a dodge in 2002. It cannot be credibly regarded as a dodge today, because of what the Church has done since 2002 (and, indeed, since the 1990s, when the plague of abuse within the Church began to recede).
The Vatican response. During the first months of the Long Lent of 2002, John Paul II was not well-served by his Washington nunciature or by the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy.
The nunciature was not providing the papal apartment with detailed, real-time information (in April 2002, when Cardinal Bernard Law first offered his resignation, the Pope and his closest associates were at least three months behind the information-curve, and were just experiencing in April what Americans had lived through in January).
The prefect of Clergy, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, made matters worse by blowing off reporters’ questions about the scandals when presenting John Paul’s 2002 Holy Thursday letter to priests, explaining that the Pope had more important things to worry about, like Middle East peace.
Things have changed for the better since those dark days. The Holy See Press Office, not previously known for prompt or effective crisis-management in this pontificate, has quickly brought serious, credible information and commentary to bear in recent weeks as different charges have been laid against Benedict XVI.
The Pope’s own March letter to the Church in Ireland — far too quickly consigned to media oblivion — demonstrated to those with the eyes to read such documents accurately that Benedict had wrestled the Curia into understanding that a pastoral outreach to victims, the public condemnation of abusive clergy and religious, sharp criticism of malfeasant bishops, and dramatic reform actions were necessary in this and similar situations.
There are still things that the Holy See doesn’t get quite right. During Holy Week, it was hoped that the Pope would speak in his own voice, largely through the Church’s sacramental encounter with the central drama of salvation history.
Yet the two most memorable moments of Holy Week 2010 were created by secondary figures. During the solemn Good Friday liturgy at St. Peter’s, the preacher to the papal household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, inserted into his homily a commentary on the current situation in which he seemed to agree with a (Jewish) friend that
the recent assault on the Church was analogous to the horrors of historic anti-Semitism.
[Oh no! You, too, Mr. Weigel? The analogy drawn was very specific to the manner of anti-Catholic attack, not to the horror of the crimes committed: the use of stereotypes and the passage from personal responsibility to assigning collective guilt engaged in by the media today reminded the Jewish friend of the worst aspects of anti-Semitism. Who can dispute that? But if Mr. Weigel is simply quoting from what the Anglophone services said Cantalamessa said, then it goes to prove my point that inevitably the best of those on our side can end up using poisoned factoids from the media!]
Two days later, at the beginning of the papal Easter Sunday Mass, the dean of the college of cardinals, Angelo Sodano, chose the unfortunate phrase “petty gossip” to describe what was in fact a determined attack on the Church’s credibility.
[Once again, the phrase 'petty gossip' is the connotation that the Anglophone translators chose for the word 'chiacchiericcio' - which, if anyone was listening, Pope Benedict XVI himself used in his Palm Sunday homily!]
Despite these missteps, however, the truth seems to have gotten out, if slowly and incompletely: the single most influential figure in reshaping the Roman Curia’s attitude toward these scandals and the Church’s legal practice in dealing with them, was Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI.
The plaintiff’s bar cannot concede this, for to do so would be to destroy the narrative it has been selling to the world media.
Ratzinger’s enemies cannot concede this, for they have never been able to find good in him.
And European secularists cannot concede this, for in their minds the Church is, in principle, irreformably corrupt — Voltaire’s
L’infame.
But those willing to look at facts and evidence have begun to understand just how crucial a role Ratzinger played in ensuring that 2010 did not automatically become 2002 redivivus.
Nailing down that counter-narrative would be considerably aided if, in the coming weeks, a comprehensive and documented narrative of the case of a predatory Munich priest which was mishandled during Ratzinger’s tenure as archbishop there — the revelation of which was the European ground zero for the latest set of explosions — would be published.
[We're still waiting - but perhaps Abp. Marx in Munich is thinking, 'Let sleeping dogs lie' for now, since things appear to have been dormant on the German front for two weeks now, imagine that!]
It would also be helpful if the Holy See would provide a user-friendly explanation of how abusive priests are laicized, and how this process has been streamlined and accelerated, again under Ratzinger’s leadership.
[They've done that now with the CDF guide that came out today.]
There is no harm in acknowledging that, like just about everyone else, Joseph Ratzinger was on a learning curve in dealing with abusive clergy and malfeasant bishops; the point to be stressed, however, is that he learned faster, and acted more decisively on what he had learned, than just about anyone else.
Mud Sticking. The 2010 edition of Scandal Time is by no means finished. Attorneys and others will continue to release documents implying that Ratzinger “stalled” laicizations decades ago (when in fact what he was doing was following the canonical norms of the time—norms he was later instrumental in changing).
The papal pilgrimage to Great Britain in September, which will include the beatification of John Henry Newman, is in trouble, with the clerical head of the Church of England, Dr. Rowan Williams, getting ecumenical payback by asserting that the Catholic Church has lost its credibility
[Well, if it means anything, he apologized for that later, seeing as he is a much-blackened pot himself where credibility is concerned!], and the loopier elements of the British press and commentariat suggesting that the Pope ought to be served with an arrest warrant on his arrival in the U.K.
The BBC has been particularly egregious in its skewed coverage and discussion of Munich, Milwaukee, and other cases.
[Of course! It's trying to 'protect' whatever shreds of credibility are left in its 2006 documentary which openly slandered Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI using all the tricks that MSM are now using against him in this current chapter of the preposterous but ratings buster soap opera "Bash Benedict!"]
In the face of all this, the bishops of Britain must recognize that scandal-mongering has now metastasized into a full-scale assault on Catholicism itself, and ought to devote the next four months to the most vigorous defense of the truth of Catholic faith. [COLORE]#1216[COLORE]
[Mr. Weigel forgets that two of the bishops, starting with the Archbishop of Westminster, were accused this weekend by British Woodward-and-Bernstein wannabes of coddling pedophile priests too!]
It would also be helpful if Benedict XVI would meet with British and Irish abuse victims during his time in the U.K., as he did in the United States and Australia.
[It's almost certain he will!]
As for the future of the Church in Ireland, the gravity of the situation there would seem to provide an opportunity for Rome to take dramatic action.
While the retirement of one Irish bishop, John Magee of Cloyne, was accepted in the wake of the papal letter of March 2010, it was not clear that this measure was in response to serious problems in handling abuse cases in Cloyne that had become public knowledge.
[I believe it was clear, especially to the diocesan faithful, since Magee had to step down from diocesan responsibility last year because of his involvement in two Cloyne cover-ups.]
Yet if 2010 is not to become 2002 redivivus, the Holy See must make unmistakably clear that it is serious about dealing with malfeasant bishops: that, in addition to swift action against abusive priests, the Church is prepared to take swift and decisive action against episcopal misgovernance.
This is not a matter of appeasing the media pack and its baying for blood; it is a matter of self-respect and the integrity of the Church’s institutional life.
Over the past century and a half, the Holy See has gained the freedom to choose bishops freely throughout the world Church; that has been one of the signal accomplishments of Vatican diplomacy.
To claim the right to choose bishops freely, however, carries with it the responsibility to address episcopal failure, even by the ultimate remedy of deposition in extreme cases.
Procedures for accelerating the laicization of abusive clergy have been put in place in Rome;
parallel procedures for determining when a bishop has lost the capacity to govern because of a thorough and irremediable collapse of his credibility as a leader and shepherd ought to be devised and implemented.
It is widely expected that the upcoming apostolic visitation to certain Irish dioceses will result in sweeping change in Catholic leadership in Ireland. That change ought to be effected sooner rather than later, and explicitly linked to the reforms for which Benedict called in his letter to the Irish Church.
Cynicism and irony are powerful corrosives in ecclesiastical life. Yet they cannot withstand the power of radical conversion, joyful discipleship, and courageous evangelism. In North America, in Great Britain and Ireland, in Germany and Austria and the Netherlands, indeed all over the world Church, these are the most effective counters to the current wave of Church-bashing and Catholic-baiting. [YES! That is why the crowds in St. Peter's and in Castel Gandolfo - and in Turin - are such exhilarating examples that it takes more than media malice - no matter how malignant and metastasized - to prevail on the hearts of regular folk, those with the admirable 'simple faith' that Cardinal Ratzinger always said it was the CDF's duty to protect and preserve.]
And here, at least, there is one appropriate parallel to be drawn between 2010 and 2002:
The only answer to what is at bottom a crisis of fidelity is deeper, more radical fidelity to the truth borne by the earthen vessel of the Church.
[Amen to that! AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL!
I was really hoping Weigel might address the problem of what the Pope can immediately do about erring bishops, at least those who made mistakes in connection with child abuse. Because that would give us his take on why John Paul II appeared to have 'rewarded' Cardinal Law with his Rome sinecure, instead of sending him to a monastery or a missionary post...
Benedict XVI, because it's his problem now, must also have to weigh a sort of 'statute of limitations' in the case of bishops who acted like Cardinals Law and Mahony did back in the days when covering up appeared to be SOP. Besides, unless the bishop himself committed sexual abuse, would it now be fair to sack a bishop for the very same things that bishops like Law and Mahony did scot-free?...
Common sense would say that, absent any precedent that the Holy Father might use, what should determine whether a bishop stays or goes is what his diocesan faithful think of him. As with Cardinal Brady, whose offense was fairly tame and done when he was a priest, not a bishop. Clearly, a bishop who has lost his people's trust cannot stay. Law could not stay because of that. Mahony did - and not even the fact that LA had to pay $660 million in damages to victims appears to have shaken the loyalty of his diocese.
Two weekend entries in AMERICA's group blog in support of the Pope. About this first one: 'Frustratingly poor quality' is quite an understatement! MSM has flagrantly abdicated all sense of decency, fairness and responsibility - that's not poor quality coverage nor even real coverage, when half the stories are opinion and innuendo! It's sheer malice and utter disregard of professional ethics.
The frustratingly poor quality
of press coverage
by Michael Sean Winters
April 11, 2010
The whole world now knows about Father Stephen Kiesle of Oakland, the priest who tied up young boys and molested them sexually and whose request to be defrocked came before then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
The press is swarming with assertions that, as the
Washington Post headlined its story, "Future pope balked at defrocking priest." This, we are led to believe, is the smoking gun. Raztinger signed the letter in 1985. That is HIS signature. Case closed. Here are the documents.
In talking to reporters, I raised the question: Why was this case in front of Ratzinger in the first place? It does not make sense. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was given jurisdiction over cases of the "graviora delicta" of sexual abuse only in 2001.
Before that time, it is a bit unclear who had immediate jurisdiction in Rome, although one point – which I also made to reporters – went unmentioned then and in all the reporting about the future Pope’s role in handling sex abuse cases, namely,
the local bishop has the authority to remove a priest from the clerical state. Recourse to Rome is necessary only to dispense a priest from his vow of celibacy, so that he can subsequently be married in the Church.
Perhaps, some of the confusion has to do with the translation from Latin that the original AP story procured from the chairman of the Classics Department at USC which translates "Hoc dicasterium" as "this court." I do not question the Chairman of the Classics Department’s command of Latin, but a dicastery in the Vatican is not a court, but an agency or department. The CDF did not then and does not now serve as a canonical court.
But, then it hit me: I was asking about the dog that had not barked. The documents exchanged between the diocesan officials in Oakland and the CDF do not mention "graviora delicta." The case was presented as a priest seeking laicization. As well, the documents do not paint the profound ugliness of the priest’s crimes.
The first document posted at the Times is a 1981 letter from a parish priest who worked with Kiesle. It says that Kiesle lacked "maturity and responsibility and spirituality" and says he only became a priest to please his over-bearing mother.
The second document, also from 1981 and also from a priest who worked with Kiesle, says that Kiesle’s family was opposed to his becoming a priest and claims that Kiesle was irresponsible and had trouble relating to adults.
The letter refers to "the eventual difficulty that Father Kiesle had with the law because of his relationship to young children" but there are no details.
The third document finally is explicit. In the "Votum Episcopi," the document by which the bishop demonstrates his support for Father Kiesle’s request for laicization, Bishop John Cummins notes that Kiesle had been arrested for molesting six boys, had pleaded "nolo contendere" and received a three-year suspended sentence.
Three facts jump out. First, the request for defrocking was made by Father Kiesle, not by the bishop.
Second, the priest had already been removed from active ministry, so the case did not seem urgent insofar as protecting children in the future was concerned (remember, Kiesle was only asking CDF to dispense him from his vows).
Third, the response from and punishment by the civil authorities were not as severe as the crime warranted. As we now know, very few people understood the nature of pedophilia, otherwise civil authorities would not have imposed a three- or five-year statute of limitations, and the penalties for what amounted to rape would have been more severe. It turns out that the emotional scars of sex abuse are worse than physical scars of physical abuse, not least because they are often unseen.
[Winters fails to note, very importantly, that in 1981, Cardinal Ratzinger was not the CDF Prefect. He did not assume that position until February 1982, so the 1981 letters were addressed to his predecessor, Cardinal Seper.... But that has been the problem with all this post-facto 'dcoumentation', which lend themselves to date fudging by the dishoneest reporters, so that all dates blur together, and they can safely blame everything on Cardinal Ratzinger because they know very few will bother to check the documentation they so 'generously' provide online!]
One other part of Cummins’s letter to Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have escaped the attention of the assembled press corps. The bishop notes that the trial generated "a great deal of publicity surrounding his conduct." The bishop says that all the local papers covered the story.
So, the idea that Cardinal Ratzinger subsequently dragged his feet to avoid publicity is an odd charge, one that the documents do not support. When Cardinal Ratzinger replied that the "good of the universal Church" should be considered in adjudicating the case, he was evidently not trying to prevent adverse publicity. That publicity had already occurred.
[Plus, the context of that phrase, in laicization requests, is John Paul's rationale for tightening up on dispensing priests from their vows - the wholesale departure of priests was certainly bad for the universal Church, and he wanted priests to have time to reconsider their request, according to the background information from Fr. Fessio.]
What, then, was Ratzinger’s concern? Why did he not simply grant Father Kiesle’s request for laicization and be done with it? As noted above,
the extraordinary nature of Father Kiesle’s crimes is not at all clear from the correspondence, which uses euphemisms to describe what amounted to child rape. The weak punishment by the civil authorities certainly would not indicate the outrages this priest perpetrated.
[Winters appears to have missed the important point here: Since this was before 2001, the CDF was not dealing with laicization as a penalty, but a request for dispensation from the priesthood, over which the CDF did have jurisdiction at the time.]
Additionally, the initiative is coming from the priest, not from the bishop, as one might expect in a case of this sort.
Another factor explaining Ratzinger’s invocation of the "good of the universal Church" was a change of policy going on at the Vatican in the early 1980s. [Not another factor - it was the main factor, always bearing in mind that Cardinal Ratzinger's response - a form letter, as many analysts now hypothesize -
In the years after the Council, many priests asked to be laicized. George Weigel, in his biography of Pope John Paul II, writes: "Pope Paul VI had granted more than 32,000 requests from priests who had asked to be released from their vows and returned to lay status – the greatest exodus from the priesthood since the Reformation. Soon after his election, John Paul had stopped the routine granting of these ‘decrees of laicization.’"
John Paul was especially concerned about younger priests seeking to be defrocked, and very few such requests were granted to priests under the age of 40. It is telling that Father Kiesle’s request for laicization was granted as soon as he did turn 40.
What had Pope John Paul, and Cardinal Ratzinger, worried was that the sacramental character of priestly ordination was being obscured by the ease with which priests were being dispensed from their vows. Catholics do not see the priesthood as a career choice, to be set aside if something better comes along.
When a man is ordained, the Church believes that God affects an ineffaceable and permanent change upon the ordinand, just as the Church believes that bread and wine are truly changed into the Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. Even a priest who is laicized retains the power to say Mass and absolve from sins in confession, even though the Church strips him of the authority to do so.
Had the Oakland case been presented as an instance of "graviora delicta" I do not doubt that the laicization would have been faster. Had the bishop or other officials in Oakland made clear the heinous nature of the crimes, I do not doubt Cardinal Ratzinger would have responded differently.
I also do not doubt that even the mention of the civil trial involving charges of molestation should have caused Cardinal Ratzinger to find out more about the case - oops, that is precisely what he did and for which he now stands accused of dragging his feet.
I also suspect that this case, which stands astride the promulgation of the new Code of Canon Law in 1983, may have been impeded because the canonical officials in Oakland and in Rome were still becoming acquainted with its provisions.
It is the job of religion reporters to not only report on information but to provide the context for interpreting that information. The documents in the Oakland case raise certain obvious questions that the press ignores or fails to perceive – I do not know which is worse.
I do not "blame" the media for the sex abuse crisis and I do blame the Vatican for doing such a horrendous job of answering the current questions and for seeing themselves as the victim.
Nonetheless, I believe the press corps is guilty of shoddy reporting. The documents in the Oakland case are no "smoking gun" but they are presented as such. The feeding frenzy among the press corps has taken hold and
everybody wants to be Woodward and Bernstein. Shame on them.
[What I've been saying lately....]
I suppose one negative fallout from all these 'Eureka-I-found-the smoking-gun' stories, is that even the best-intentioned Catholic writers (and some ranking prelates too), who literally have to glean facts catch-as-catch-can, often miss important data or get them wrong, so their defense comes out flawed. As this piece by Winters. But unexceptionable persons like Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Dolan come to mind who both cited erroneous press interpretations as fact in formulating their recent interventions in favor of the Pope.
The best and most cogent presentations - with the most accurate information - on the Kiesle case so far are from Father Fessio, Phil Lawler and Lori Pieper. Everyone else appears to be missing the whole elephant, just touching some of its parts.
This later entry by Austin Ivereigh, former press officer for Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor when he was Archbishop of Westminster, goes for the philosophy behind this mestastizing media pathology! Ivereigh is also one of a group of Catholic professional journalists named to handle 'public relations' before and during the Holy Father's visit to the UK.
Abuse coverage reveals
scapegoat mechanism
By Austen Ivereigh
April 12, 2010
The misinterpretation and misreporting of the 1985 Ratzinger letter in the Kiesle case -- my points in a BBC TV interview over the weekend are similar to those in Michael Winter's excellent analysis -- indicate not just poor quality coverage but something altogether nastier.
It was the great theorist René Girard who has shown us that the ancient human scapegoat mechanism -- when angry mobs formed to stone those on whom the tensions of the community had been projected -- is just as alive today as in primitive societies.
As he writes in
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, the modern scandal excites
...a feverish desire to differentiate between the guilty and the innocent, to allot responsibilities, to unmask the guilty secret without fear or favour and to distribute punishment.
The person who is scandalised wants to bring the affair out into the open; he has a burning desire to see the scandal in the clear light of day and pillory the guilty party ….
Scandal always calls for demystification, and demystification, far from putting an end to scandal, propagates and universalises it … There must be scandal to demystify and the demystification reinforces the scandal it claims to combat.
The scapegoat mechanism comes into play when tensions -- often buried and unconscious -- accumulate, when those involved must ‘let off steam’ or the social fabric will burst.
The energy of indignation and anger is fuelled, over this issue, by the fact that sexual abuse of minors is extremely common in families -- 70 per cent of victims have suffered at the hands of a relative -- yet almost never talked about, let alone dealt with.
The Church has become a surrogate victim, unconsciously identified as the cause of the tension which society feels but cannot identify.
This is not a way of deflecting from the Church's real failures on this issue, which the media's relentless coverage has forced the Church to face. Nor is it a way of deflecting from some of the unique characteristics behind those failures in the Church -- not least, clericalism, past and present.
But
the coverage has now moved into a new, irrational phase. The media have merged with the mob. They are not standing outside the crowd, coolly examining the facts. They are standing in locus vulgi.
Take the way that
The Times -- which in the UK has led the way in promoting hysteria and distortion in this issue -- reports that the taliban atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens are planning to "arrest" Pope Benedict when he comes to the UK.
In fact, as Dawkins spells out on his website, they are mounting a legal challenge aimed at whipping up public opinion against the papal visit. Rather than report this as a publicity gimmick, or at least point out how dubious are the legal arguments,
The Times reports this as if it is a perfectly sensible response to established facts, and even enlists a semi-Catholic columnist to agree with the idea.
The mechanism of scandal exerts a fascination which increases in line with the tension.
The accusations pile up; facts cease to be sacred; the distinction between truth and hearsay blurs. There is carte blanche to demonise the scapegoat, whose guilt is largely irrelevant to the performance of the mechanism.
When it is not in thrall to the mimetic contagion, journalism is one of the best means of exposing the irrationality of the scapegoat mechanism, because it relies on facts and evidence. But when journalism jettisons its responsibility to detachment, it becomes an agent of the hysteria.
Normally journalists are wary of being used by lawyers who have an obvious vested interest in advancing a certain narrative. Yet many media have been supplied with documents -- such as the 1985 Ratzinger letter in the Kiesle case -- by lawyers bringing class actions against the Church on behalf of abuse victims.
The interpretations which the lawyers are keen to put on them are precisely those which the media then uncritically adopt. When the scapegoat mechanism is in play, contradictions between agendas vanish. The crowd becomes "one".
Yesterday two colleagues -- Jack Valero of Catholic Voices and Clifford Longley, columnist with
The Tablet -- took part in a BBC TV debate on whether the Pope should resign. The very absurdity of the question and the way they were heckled and disbelieved as they coolly laid out the facts showed that the mechanism was in play.
The crowd had made up its mind and anything -- including the Protestant prejudice that the papacy was "unbiblical" -- was uncritically accepted.
Afterwards, a representative of the Protest the Pope coalition accosted Jack and told him he had no right to be defending the Pope in public. Defend the scapegoat when the crowd is of one mind and you'll pay the price.
It is sad to see Ruth Gledhill, Times religious correspondent, pander to the same feeding-frenzy culture of her newspaper when she posts on her website "the full text of a letter sent to the Pope in 1963 from a leader in the field of treatment of paedophile priests, warning that they were incorrigibly recidivist."
She adds, breathlessly: "So much for repeated claims that the nature of the disorder was not understood until recently."
This is grotesque. The Church's explanation is not that paedophilia was not understood but that it was understood by the psychological profession as treatable. In fact the letter she quotes -- from the Superior General of the Servants of the Holy Paraclete -- does not remotely show what she claims it shows, but captures very well the confusion around how to deal with abusive priests at the time. The key paragraph --
The corrective remedies to be applied and their effectiveness will obviously depend upon the good will and character of the individual. Problems that arise from abnormal, homosexual tendencies are going to call for, not only spiritual, but understanding psychiatric counselling.
Personally I am not sanguine of the return of priests to active duty who have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young. However, the needs of the Church must be taken into consideration and activation of priests who have seemingly recovered in this field may be considered but is only recommended where careful guidance and supervision is possible. Where there is indication of incorrigibility, because of the tremendous scandal given, I would most earnestly recommend total laicization.
-- is hardly proposing a "zero tolerance" policy to the man who would later be Pope. It is, in fact, an interesting letter which tells us much. What a shame Ruth didn't analyse it properly.
[Gledhill never does anything properly if it suits her purpose to be improper. Which, in her coverage of the Church, is most of the time.]
It takes courage to stand out from a scapegoating crowd. That courage -- to deal in facts and perspective in a time of hysteria -- is a journalistic virtue sadly absent from the current reporting of clerical sex abuse.
Conformism at any cost, the herd mentality - those are characteristics of the secular society which Benedict XVI has often decried, as he urges Catholics, especially the young, to have the courage to buck the trend, to go against the current!
Neither trait is compatible with courage. On the contrary, they serve political correctness, which I've always found a euphemism for pusillanimity.
Running with the rampaging herd is also a rather paradoxical attribute in a 'me' society that supposedly celebrates the glory of 'individuality'. It's another one of those blinders that secular liberals are totally unaware they are wearing!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/04/2010 18:16]