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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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27/03/2010 13:03
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This is the first article I have seen that 'dares' look at an obvious question the media have gingerly kept hands off these days, but Galeazzi finds a legitimate and quite informative approach to it.


Pedophilia in priests:
John Paul II's approach was shaped
by the Communist experience

by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from

March 26, 2010


Before Ratzinger, after Ratzinger.

In the Vatican, everyone agrees in identifying two distinct phases in the Vatican response to the pedophile scandals which for the past 15 years had devastated in periodic waves the dioceses of half the world.


[Half the world? Not quite! The United States, Australia, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Holland and the Switzerland - even throw in Italy - that's not half the world, much less the Catholic world!]

Joseph Ratzinger's approach to the problem is described in the Roman Curia as "pragmatic and intransigent".

In the former Holy Office, the future Benedict XVI designated an entire section for the dossiers on sex-offender priests, and shortly after becoming Pope, Ratzinger imposed penalties on someone who had been one of the most powerful figures in the Catholic world: Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who had been the object of multiple accusations of sexual abuses.

As a former bishop in the 'church of silence', John Paul II was far less audacious and tended automatically to see accuses of sexual abuse as an attempt to delegitimize the Catholic clergy.

In the Communist regimes of eastern Europe, where he had carried out his pastoral mission amidst the poisons of the Cold War, the accusation of pedophilia was the most efficient way to get an inconvenient priest out of the way.

Therefore, John Paul II had an objective suspicion, an invincible difficulty, in proceeding with draconian measures against priests accused of what he considered "a horrendous and abominable crime'.

Rather than intervening directly as the drastic and unequivocal Ratzingerian provisions now do, Wojtyla's line was to seek to attack the problem at the roots.

As Archbishop of Cracow, he was the first in the world to introduce attitude tests to derive a psychological and sexual profile of candidates for the seminary. In fact, he became the first in the Church to use the tools of psychoanalysis to evaluate seminarians in order to avoid eventual sexual problems once they were priests.

In Cracow, he entrusted the sensitive work to his friend, the psychiatrist Wanda Poltawska, to determine, with a clinical eye and a firm hand, who might require supplementary surveillance.

He trusted so much in this anti-abuse strategy (based on consultations on specific problem situations) that in his pontificate, it was discussed whether such a psycho-attitudinal test should be required in all seminaries around the world along the lines of the Cracow experience.

In 1999, the first attempt to introduce the test was a troubled one. Many in the Curia required further study in depth of this method. Among those who raised the most doubts was the then Archbishop of Bologna, Giacomo Biffi.

The debate continued behind closed doors, and at the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Catholic education, the debate was lively, and the Curial heads who were members of the congregation were split. The Polish cardinal Zenon Grocholewski [recently named at the time by John Paul II to head the Congregation] was all for it, but many were skeptical.

But despite his strategy of prevention, Wojtyla saw the pedophilia scandal erupt in his own homeland. On March 24, 2002, the director of the Vatican Press Office, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, announced that the Holy See had been informed about "a case involving the Archbishop of Poznan".

In the cross-hairs was Archbishop Julius Paetz, who had been an antechamber attendant for both Paul VI and John Paul II. After much resistance, the man who was not just a compatriot but a longtime friend of the Pope himself was forced to resign.

It was the most glaring example that the Wojtylian line of control did not function, and therefore, towards the end of the Wojtyla Pontificate, it was necessary to adopt special measures for the whole Church against pedophile priests.

It was decided to allow swift canonical hearings in the dioceses first, and then at the Vatican if necessary, with the added possibility for the Pope to execute an immediate but secret step to dismiss from the priesthood those found guilty of sexual abuse of minors.


The article seems unfinished. Also, Galeazzi's account does not give the specific genesis of John Paul II's Motu Proprio in April 2001 and the subsequent implementing instructions from Cardinal Ratzinger, De delicti gravioribus, both of which came out before the Paetz retirement in May 2002 and John Paul's meeting in December 2002 with US bishops on the scandals that had begun to emerge in the United States at the time.

Some useful footnotes:

It must be noted that in November 2005, the Congregation for Catholic Education adopted an "Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary"
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20051104_istruzione...
followed in June 2008 by "Guidelines for the use of psychology in the admission and formation of candidates for the priesthood".
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_20080628_orientamenti...

Regarding Archbishop Paetz, an AP report from March 28, 2002, says Paetz resigned, telling his congregation he was innocent, after the Vatican launched its own investigation into newspaper reports about accusations that he had sexually molested boys; and that John Paul II's decision on Paetz came a week after he had broken his silence on the US sex scandals.

The AP backgrounder says Paetz became the second highest-ranking prelate to resign or be removed since Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer was forced to give up all his duties in 1995 due to accusations of having molested boys.

In the United States, Bishop Anthony O'Connell resigned from the diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, after he admitted that he had abused a former seminarian in the 1970s.


Very apropos, the Times of London has launched its own campaign against the Primate of Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, with this story claiming the pressure is coming from the Vatican:


Rome puts pressure on
Catholic leader to quit

Ruth Gledhill and Jill Sherman

March 27, 2010


The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland will be pressed to quit if he refuses to resign over the growing child abuse scandal, The Times has learnt.

Nothing less than Cardinal Sean Brady’s resignation will diminish fury at the highest levels in Rome over his role in paedophile priest cover-ups.
[They are projecting! The fury is from Irish criics of the Pope which includes most of the Irish media - and by extension, the UK media.]

The Northern Ireland Assembly prepared last night to order an official investigation into child abuse in the Province after details emerged of more attacks on children by members of the clergy. [What new reports??? If there were, the news agencies would have trumpeted them to the world already!]

Dr Brady is spending the days before Easter considering his position as Archbishop of Armagh. Although there is no canonical procedure to remove him, if he refuses to go voluntarily pressure from the Holy See will make his departure inevitable. [Projecting, projecting! Perhaps they think that if they say it often enough, it will happen.]

“Ireland needs a fresh start,” a source in Rome said. “By clinging on, he is putting his own interests before the Church’s.” [I bet the 'source in Rome' is someone like Richard Owen, perhaps, the Times's Vatican correspondent.]

The inquiry would be similar to that which uncovered a shocking litany of historic crimes in the Republic of Ireland last year. An official investigation is expected to cost up to £40 million and take no longer than five years. [The inquiry would be into abuses committed in the Diocese of Armagh, not into Cardinal Brady's past 'transgression', details of which are fully known.]

“It’s difficult to see anything other than a significant inquiry being held,” a senior government source said. “There was an acknowledgement that there’s a need to act with expediency.”

By announcing an apostolic visitation to the Irish Church in a letter last week, Pope Benedict XVI effectively placed it in receivership.

Dr Brady’s exit, after the resignations of two other bishops, would set in train a Catholic reformation in the country. Other bishops are also expected to go after the influential Tablet journal called for the forced retirement of nearly all as the mood in Ireland reaches “zero tolerance”. [How influential is the Tablet really, since it merely preaches to its readymade ultraliberal choir?]

Dr Brady apologised last week for his role in a Church tribunal on allegations made by a 14-year-old boy against Brendan Smyth, a priest whose case brought down the Irish Government in 1994. The victim was sworn to secrecy after the proceedings.

But the view in Rome is that this has not gone far enough and there has been no popular groundswell of support for Dr Brady in Ireland.

[I think it is logical to think that, given the clearcut nature of what Fr. Sean Brady did in 1975, the best indicator of whether he should resign or not is what his own diocese thinks about him.

To reiterate his case: In 1975, he interrogated two victims for his bishop, who then proceeded to relieve the accused priest, a Norbertine religious, of his duties in the diocese, and sent him back to his order, which has the primary responsibility to discipline him; the diocese has no authority over religious orders. Brady also asked the boys to sign a document that they would not speak about the case to anyone. And he did not report to the police. In 1975, that was SOP in dioceses throughout the world.

If Brady is to be made answerable for that today, then so should all the priests and bishops who had anything to do with the 40,000 cases of child abuse in Ireland that were never reported to the police in the past. But since he is Primate of Ireland, if his own diocese rejects him, then he himself would know it is time to go. By all accounts, Brady is a genuninely holy man. The Vatican will not need to push him.]


The scandal spread closer to home for the Pope yesterday as, in Italy, a group of victims appeared on television to allege that two dozen priests in Verona had abused children at a school for the deaf for decades.

The Holy See attempted to blame the media for whipping up a storm against the Pope as efforts intensified in London and Rome to prevent Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain in September being derailed by the scandals.

Whitehall officials made clear yesterday that the visit, which is being co-ordinated by a cross-government committee, would go ahead as planned and had a valuable purpose.

“Child abuse is an abhorrent crime,” one official said. But he insisted that the reasons for the visit — to consider ways of tackling poverty, climate change and other global issues— were still valid. [Excuse me! This is primarily an apostolic visit, for Peter to 'confirm his brothers in the faith', which just happens also to be a state visit. Secular concerns do not trump the primary mission of the Pope.]

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales are not expected to be caught up in the present wave of revelations because of action taken by the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, to clean up the Church a decade ago.

Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor appointed Lord Nolan to investigate the problem and, as a result of his report in 2001 and another subsequent inquiry, the Catholic Church in England and Wales has one of the strongest safeguarding procedures for children in the world.

A senior lay Catholic, Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity College, Oxford, and former British Ambassador to Italy, said that the actions taken by the bishops of England and Wales to safeguard children should have been taken in Ireland years ago.

“It would have lanced the boil a good deal earlier,” he said. “What is happening in Ireland is very sad and very damaging for Cardinal Brady. His position has been made pretty untenable.” [We'll see!]

The most likely successor to Cardinal Brady is the highly regarded Bishop Noel Treanor of Down and Connor, the youngest serving bishop in Ireland.


NB: Please note I have posted a translation of Benedict XVI's dialogue with young people at the pre-WYD youth rally in St. Peter's Square Thursday night, in the earlier post on this page that carries photo montages of the event.

It's another precious example of the Holy Father's brilliant extemporaneous catechizing - his use of St. Paul's metaphor likening the path to holiness to an Olympian's course was particularly effective, I thought, to bring home to young people the message of renunciation and why it is always necessary in life
.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2010 17:00]
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