BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

I originally started posting this last night, but after all the fisking I did of it, I lost the post to one of those maddening episodes where my 'fat finger' inadvertently struck who knows what and exited me from the window. But as you will see from the content of the article, it is not something one can let go without vehement commentary! Beware, even if it starts off with the most unexceptionable sentiments!

George Carey (born 1935) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991-2002. According to Wikipedia, his time as archbishop saw the Church of England allow the ordination of women priests and a rising debate over attitudes to homosexuality at the Lambeth Conference of 1998. So you can see where he's coming from (and there's much worse). He was made Baron Carey of Clifton after he retired in 2002, as is customary for retired Anglican hierarchs. Apparently, he blogs for NEWS OF THE WORLD, a Sunday British tabloid so notorious for its purple journalism that it has been nicknamed 'News of the Screws'. But probably, Lord Carey does not mind because with a circulation of 2.9 million, it is the UK's largest newspaper by far and the world's second largest English newspaper (you'd be surprised that #1 is the Times of India, with a daily circulation of 3.2 million)....



'I enthusiastically welcome
Benedict XVI but...'
By Lord Carey
Emeritus Archbishop of Canterbury


Like many others, I will be among those enthusiastically welcoming Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Britain next month.

But I cannot deny there is vicious intolerance in the air. Unfortunately, a minority have been making noises which go beyond reasonable criticism to hate-filled bigotry.

The world’s most famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, has declared the Pontiff head of the world’s "second most evil religion", while writer Claire Rayner describes the Pope’s views as "so disgusting, so repellent, and so hugely damaging to the rest of us, that the only thing to do is to get rid of him."

There have been rumours, too, of plans to arrest him while he is in Britain and countless groups are attempting to mount protests.

The hysterical overreaction of so many people who claim to be rational freethinkers reveals anti-Catholic bigotry from the 16th century is still alive and well 500 years on.

And today it is allied to a strident and shrill secularism which seeks to banish religion from public life altogether.

The same intolerance is behind much- publicised cases of banning crosses, marginalising the celebration of Christmas and the sacking of Christian civil servants who won’t bow the knee to the gods of equality and diversity.

So how should the vast majority of Britons view the visit of His Holiness, Pope Benedict?

Well, let’s acknowledge the positive, to begin with. The Catholic Church is a massive force for good in the world.

I have seen for myself, in many travels in the developing nations, the leadership displayed by the Roman Catholic Church in tackling Aids and poverty, and in providing education and opportunities to children. Even here, its contribution to our country is immense.

However, with sadness I have to say that there has been an increasing defensiveness in the Vatican to the cry of many Catholics for further reform following the Second Vatican Council.

Take for example, the issue of clerical abuse of children and the chilling cover-ups which have emerged. To a lesser extent other churches are guilty of the same offences. And the same goes for secular institutions too.

Few organisations are without sin as far as the abuse of children is concerned. But it is the scale of these offences in the Roman Catholic Church that is the truly scandalous matter. We are talking about thousands of cases in the States, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Austria and beyond. People ask if the Roman Catholic Church can be trusted with their children.

[This is completely sanctimonious. Lord Carey is no moron, and surely he knows that he is exaggerating - and that like almost all of the MSM, and even Catholic writers, who write about this issue, he fails to provide a context that shows the problem in its true scale.

The 2002 John Jay College study of this problem in the United States covering the period 1950-2002 found that a total of 4,392 diocesan priests, deacons and religious were identified to have been accused of sexual offenses against minors in that period. The figure represents 4% of the total clerical community in the US in the first decade of the 21st century (around 110,000). 75% of the alleged incidents took place between 1960-1984, that is to say, during the period of sexual and moral laissez-faire among priests that came with Vatican-II and the 1960s counterculture. Almost all the 5,392 accused priests were investigated by the police, but only 384 (9.1% of those accused)ended up being charged in court, and 252 were convicted. The convictions therefore amounted to 252 out of 110,000 - or 0.23% (one-fourth of 1%) of the US clerical community.

If we assume the US as the worst-case scenario - because it is the largest of all the churches that have had 'massive scandals' over pedophile priests, and because its criminal justice system is rather efficient even if imperfect - and extrapolate those figures to the worldwide total of about 415,000 secular and regular priests today, then 4% of them would mean that about 16,600 priests worldwide may have been accused (even if not with the police as in the US) of child abuse, and clearly a painstaking summation of abuse reports from the major countries implicated will turn up nowhere near 16,000, of which potentially, only less than 1% are guilty, which at the more 'generous' estimate of 1% instead of 0.23%, would mean 4,150 priests, or one-fourth of that at the actual conviction rate, just over a thousand, in a community of 415,000!

That is context, and that is scale, Lord Carey. So hold off with the Schadenfreude!]

Personally, I do not think that the hierarchy fully comprehend the gravity of the problem. Nor how difficult this is making the Catholic Church’s mission in the developed world. [Yeah, fine, if you persist in making it appear that Benedict XVI and the Church he leads are so dense and insensitive that they do not see that at all!]

The recent gaffe when they revised church law, putting the ordination of women in the same category of ‘crimes’ under church law as clerical sex abuse, reveals a Church with an odd set of priorities. [That such a comment should come from an ex Archbishop of Canterbury is outrageous, because someone like him should understand that the CDF norms had to do with canonical crimes against faith, the sacraments and morals - and surely, women's ordination, which Carey champions, is, at the very least, a canonical crime against the sacrament of Holy Orders.]

Disturbingly, no open debate is possible or allowed on the issue of clerical celibacy and its link to abuse. [Carey ignores that not a few books have been written by both Catholic and secular authors showing that there is no statistical basis for associating pedophilia and priestly celibacy, which is consistent with the obvious intuition that the pedophile priests would be pedophiles even if they had not been priests and had free access and choice of sexual activities! There may be some books that take the contrary notion, but only on the basis of anecdotal and empirical grounds that have no statistical power, a technical term that measures the probability that comparison of statistical data proves a cause and effect relationship. Scientifically, such statistical significance is required before you can claim cause and effect. In medicine and epidemiology, this is a matter dealt with daily, with respect to every finding that is advanced. That is not to say that an association - which is not at all cause-and-effect - may not be found between priestly celibacy and pedophilia, but the association would not be surprising.]

Earlier this year the great Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Kueng, who in 1979 was stripped of his licence to teach Catholic theology, cited celibacy as a cause of the Church’s uptight attitude to sex. He may be wrong, though I share this view — but much more Vatican openness is needed. [OK, now we know where else Carey is coming from! After all, Kueng has been far more 'evangelical Anglican' than Catholic in his views. A man after Carey's heart! If in his judgment, Kueng is a 'great Roman Catholic theologian', what does that imply about what he thinks of Benedict XVI's theology?]

At the very least, clerical celibacy has drastically reduced the pool of potential priests in Western Europe, in turn magnifying the problem of priestly abusers. [No, it does not. Not until decades from now when that 'reduced pool' are priests themselves, and who knows how they will behave in this respect?]

It has to be said that the Roman Catholic Church in this country has led the way in responding to clerical abuse with child protection measures. Let’s hope the Pope listens carefully to expertise here. [Excuse me! Who in the Vatican was responsible for urging bishops in the early part of the decade to tighten their protection of children especially against abusive priests????]

The danger of next month’s visit is that calls for a greater openness and engagement between the Roman Catholic Church and the world will be lost amid protests. In turn, these will reinforce the Vatican’s defensiveness. [What defensiveness? I dare Lord Carey to cite a single statement by Benedict XVI that was ever 'defensive' in this respect! Has Carey forgotten Cardinal Ratzinger's much-publicized meditations and prayers for Good Friday in 2005 - which included a stinging denunciation of 'filth' within the Church and the need for sinful priests to recall their vocation as representatives of Christ? All his subsequent statements as Pope have been proactive in exhorting self-purification in the Church, not just when the 'sex abuse scandals' erupted anew this year!]

But I hope for a different outcome. A new openness, a candid recognition from the Holy Father that other Christian churches are equally blessed by God[That echoes Carey's broadside against Cardinal Ratzinger for DOMINUS IESUS in 2000 - which, coming from the leader of a church that broke off from Rome 500 years ago, is ludicrous because he and other equally offended Protestants are thereby berating the Catholic Church for being Catholic! Hey, you are the break-offs, not the main tree of Christianity] - and an acknowledgement that the priesthood of the Catholic Church has failed so many children. [Has Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI not acknowledged that enough and constantly in the past decade???? These pedophilia-obsessed detractors of the Church have become like the professional Jewish anti-Christians who choose to view the Church from that sliver of reality ruled by their particular monomania. For people like Carey and the Hitchkinses, the Church will always be nothing but a pedophile-ridden institution, and for such types as the militant leaders of the Anti-Defamation League and ultra-orthodox rabbis, nothing but a Jew-hating institution.]

So you are welcome, Pope Benedict, to Britain — a land truly blessed by the Christian message in which the Catholic church has played and continues to play a part.

I believe you are here as a friend. Not an enemy. But if we want to change the world the Catholic Church must start with itself. [Dear Lord, can anyone be more sanctimonious and condescending???? Why would he even think the Pope could come as an enemy! And hHow about the disarray in an Anglican Church whose leadership - harking back to Carey's own administration - has simply given in to liberal tendencies that violate the teachings of Christ? The Pope does not want to change the world - he wants each individual, especially if Christian, to change himself in accordance with what Jesus expects. ]