Heike, good news! That lengthy KathNet article by Bishop Mueller the other day that I have not found time to translate is finally on the site of the Diocese of Regensburg in French, English and Italian.
It really is a great general presentation of the issue that every diocese should use or adopt to their local conditions. I am posting it first on this thread for thematic continuity in presenting the major pastoral issue confronting the Pope today.
'Sexual abuse' and
its anti-Catholic instrumentalisation
by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Ludwig Müller
Bishop of Regensburg
March 11, 2010
The reprehensibility of sexual abuse
1. The sexual assault of children and young people is a disgraceful infringement of their personal dignity. From a theological perspective it is an instance of severe guilt, a sin that brings with it exclusion from the Kingdom of God (1Cor. 6, 9-10). In terms of state law the sexual abuse of adolescents is a criminal offence carrying a penalty of up to ten years’ imprisonment.
2. State and Church jurisdiction in dealing with the perpetrator and the victim are to be seen as strictly separate.
3. As a state citizen the perpetrator is subject to civil and criminal law. Hence the establishment of the facts, the penalty, the carrying out of the sentence and the surveillance of the conditions of probation are the sole responsibility of the relevant state institutions.
4. Should the perpetrators be individuals employed in the service of the Church (clerics, members of religious orders or laypeople) then the Church penalty is to be established in accordance with court guidelines and conditions as well as on the basis of expert therapeutic assessment. The Church penalty extends from the severe restriction of pastoral duties through to permanent removal from the service of the Church.
5. The victim is owed a demonstration of profound remorse on the part of the perpetrator for the physical and emotional injury caused. There is also the fulfilment of the court conditions and penalty, such as the payment of compensation or the costs of therapy.
6. If the perpetrator was employed in the service of the Church, the dioceses or the relevant Church institutions must provide an offer of pastoral and therapeutic help through committees created especially for this purpose, as well as through the facilities of the Caritas association and the Catholic Youth Welfare who provide support and guidance for the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of all groups of offenders.
Anti-Catholic campaigns
7. The SPIEGEL’s leading story “Holier-Than-Thou. The Catholic Church and Sex” has again triggered an anti-Catholic media avalanche. We are dealing here with the abuse of the sexual misdemeanours of specific individuals for political and ideological purposes.
The intention is quite simply to present the whole of the Catholic Church and its sexual morals as a “biotope” in which child abuse simply “has to” flourish.
The SPIEGEL is guilty of infringing on the human dignity (cf. also Art.1 of the German Constitution) of all Catholic priests and members of religious orders.
The attribution, in contradiction to all logic and statistical findings, of the sexual abuse of children by specific individuals to the sexual morals of the Church and to voluntary commitment to a life of celibacy in the service of the Kingdom of God (cf. Matthew 19; 1 Cor. 7) through the celibacy of all priests or monastic vows is an insult to all honest, thinking people.
8.
The endless use of anti-Catholic clichés and the revival of age-old resentments are intended to obscure the contradiction between virtual media reality and reality itself, which is always a mixture of light and shadow (legenda negra).
There is a risk that today’s “media faithful” aquire the firm opinion that it must be true if “it’s in the newspaper”.
The abuse of the freedom of the press can no longer be differentiated from a defamation licence allowing those individuals and religious communities not subscribing to the totalitarian power claims of neo-atheists and the relativist dictatorship to be robbed of their honour and dignity in an apparently legal manner.
9. In the context of the periodic media campaigns against celibacy and Catholic sexual morals, even the
Süddeutsche Zeitung cites the infamous speech by the master of sedition held in Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle in 1937.
Thousands of Catholic priests and members of religious orders were systematically degraded and criminalised as celibacy-impaired, sexually perverse subjects in front of 20,000 fanatical [Nazi] party members with the intention of exposing the Catholic clergy to public contempt.
“Collective responsibility” was the means to the end. It was not the (actual or falsely accused) perpetrator named XY who was guilty, but the whole of the priesthood to which he belonged or in fact the Catholic Church “system”.
Theological and Historical Background
10. In times of religious and cultural conflict Christians rely on the Holy Spirit as “their counsellor and teacher” (John 14, 26) to help them test the spirits that are from God.
The hatred against the Church, however, reveals the difference between the true and the false prophets in the Church. For the Holy Spirit taught the disciples and reminded them of all that Jesus had said to them: “Blessed are you when men hate you and when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man. (...) For that is how their fathers treated the prophets (...) Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.” (Luke 6, 22-26).
11. The dogmatist agnosticism towards the acknowledgement of God’s self-revelation constantly invokes (with an element of self-betrayal) “weakness”, i.e. in the face of reason limited by transcendence.
This creates an image of man restricted to an immanent, materialistic horizon. There is no place for free will, moral responsibility and personal conscience within this naturalistic fallacy. Man as no more than a plaything at the mercy of his passions and appetites that somehow have to be rendered socially acceptable with the intention of the greatest possible damage limitation.
This cynical approach makes a positive and optimistic view of human corporeality and sexuality impossible.
12. This disregards the extent of human reason which is able to see God’s eternal power and divinity in Creation itself (cf. Romans 1, 20) and which has fundamental philanthropic demands written into the conscience of every human being (cf. Romans 2,26).
Ethics based on reason are possible and universal.
We ought to remain optimistic despite all the talk of the weakness of reason: “For the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8, 26), even the weak reason of the neo-atheists and the will of the hedonists. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8, 32) applies to them too.
Human sexuality from the holistic
perspective of Christian anthropology
13. The reduction of sexual appetite to a material, mechanical act contradicts the holistic view of Man as a personal unity comprising body, soul and spirit and his incorporation within the community for which he assumes responsibility. With the help of the Holy Spirit all human beings are themselves able to make the conscious decision freely in favour of personal love.
14. Catholic sexual morals are characterised by a holistic image of mankind. Mankind was created by God as man and woman and personal love is therefore the determining element in the community of body and life between marriage partners.
Founded in the order of creation, marriage between a man and a woman participates as a marriage among Christians in the sacramental unity of Christ and the Church which it also symbolizes. It is the origin of the family as the community of father and mother with their sons and daughters.
15.
Renunciation of marriage and a life of sexual abstinence are possible and livable when based on free choice and when this celibate way of life is adopted for the cause of service to the Kingdom of God as a charismatic calling. Jesus himself provides the explanation of this: “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given.... The ones who can accept this should accept it” (Matthew 19,11ff).
Mueller says priestly celibacy
isn't root cause for sex abuses
Adapted and translated from
March 11, 2010
Bishop Mueller was one of the speakers at the opening day today of the International Theological Convention on the priesthood at the Pontifical Lateran University.
He spoke on 'The priest in today's culture'.
[The full text of his lecture is on the annussacerdotalis.org site but only in German.]
Answering journalists' questions later, told them it was 'stupid' to hypothesize that priestly celibacy is the root cause of pedophilia in priests, and that therefore, there was no reason for the Church to reconsider celibacy for priests.
He also underscored that any priest shown to have been guilty of sexual abuse of minors cannot continue to be priests, namely, to carry out the priest's role as 'representative of Christ".
Convention participants will meet Benedict XVI Friday at the Apostolic Palace.
An extensive report from Reuters leads off with a very pertinent point made by Bishop Mueller that one can only wish all bishops everywhere kept in mind. They want to exerise authority? This is one of the most crucial areas that they can and should exercise maximum authority but have not usually done so:
We don't need the Pope
to fix abuse, Bishop Mueller says
by Antonio Denti and Gabriele Pileri
VATICAN CITY, March 11 (Reuters) - A German Catholic bishop said on Thursday the media had exaggerated a child abuse scandal in his diocese and there was no need to involve the Pope.
A day before a meeting between Pope Benedict and the head of the German Bishops Conference in the Vatican, Bishop Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg said the Church would offer counselling to victims of priestly abuse but most of these cases were old.
"A lot of this is a great fuss made by mass media and we have other problems in Germany at the moment," Mueller told journalists at the Vatican. "Besides, there is no need to act because those are cases in the past."
"We can't turn back the clock but our main task is to offer justice to the victims from that time."
Reports last month of over 100 cases of abuse at Jesuit schools sparked outrage in Gemany. They have been followed by accusations of beating and paedophilia at three Catholic schools in Bavaria, including one linked to the prestigious Regensburg choir run by the Pope's brother from 1964-1994.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, due for annual talks with the Pope on Friday, has admitted German bishops initially under-estimated the problem. They have since vowed to cooperate with investigators and urged those responsible to come forward.
"The Holy Father does not need to be called for help because we as the Church and we as the German bishops are perfectly capable of dealing with this situation," Mueller said.
[That's the spirit!]
With allegations of abuse multiplying in Austria and the Netherlands, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi acknowledged this week the "gravity of the crisis the Church is undergoing".
The allegations follow years of damaging scandals in Ireland and the United States. The U.S. Church has paid some $2 billion in settlements since 1992, bankrupting some dioceses, while Irish victims have called for 1 billion euros ($1.36 billion) in compensation.
The Murphy report commissioned by the Irish government found that the Church concealed abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004. On Monday, Germany's justice minister accused the Vatican of covering up the scandals there.
Regensburg, where the Pope taught theology at the university from 1969 to 1977, said on Wednesday it had appointed a lawyer to investigate abuse cases from the 1950s and 1960s.
Mueller defended the Pope's brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, who has acknowledged he slapped pupils in the face to discipline them but has denied any knowledge of sexual abuse.
"A smack used as a punishment has nothing to do with sexual abuse. These were educational methods used all over Europe," Mueller said. "For us, sexually abusing children is a serious sin and it is a crime."
In Austria, however, accusations of clerical abuse continue to grow. Former pupils of the Kremsmuenster Abbey told media that three of their Benedictine monk teachers committed sexual abuse on children and beat them during the 1980s.
More alleged cases of abuse were reported in two other regions from former students at religious institutions.
Helpline services in the Salzburg province, where an arch-abbot resigned on Monday after confessing to abusing a boy 40 years ago, said they were planning to increase their capacity to cope with an influx of calls.
The scandal has stirred a debate within the Church about sexual ethics. An opinion article in the Vatican newspaper
L'Osservatore Romano suggested a greater female presence in the Church hierarchy might have helped remove the "veil of masculine secrecy" that concealed priestly abuse.
Vienna Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn has also called for the Church to openly discuss taboo issues such as celibacy, priestly training and more liberal social attitudes to sex.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/03/2010 18:26]