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I'm falling more and more behind with translating beautiful statements of support for the Pope by various bishops around the world. I will start with this one that does not need translating - and I will try to work on the rest, even if all I can do is to translate the essential part of their statements.
In defense of the Pope
by Mons. James Conley
Auxiliary Bishop of Denver (Colorado)
April 8, 2010
Over these past few weeks a flurry of stories have appeared in the media regarding clergy sexual abuse and its mishandling by Catholic bishops and even the Pope himself. Much of this information is dated.
The fact that these stories were triggered in part by an attorney with a long and lucrative financial history of litigating the Catholic community and were pressed with such enthusiasm by editors during Holy Week — and in particular on Good Friday — could hardly have been a coincidence.
Sexual abuse of children cries to heaven for justice. It violates everything that is good and holy. It mocks everything Christ said in the gospels. Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to the innocence of a little child. And for a Catholic priest to commit a crime and a sin like this is profoundly evil.
But sexual abuse is not uniquely or even predominantly a Catholic problem. It is a sickness widespread in our culture and also a global problem. Most studies indicate that in the United States as much as 60 percent of all sexual abuse of minors takes place within families.
It's certainly true that some Catholic priests perpetrated this evil on the innocent in years past. And too many Catholic bishops ignored or failed to grasp the gravity of this crime in addressing the problem. These men are gravely accountable to God for their actions.
But no other community or institution has examined itself on this painful issue as rigorously as the Catholic Church. No other group has put into place zero tolerance policies for sexual abuse and created safe environment programs like the Catholic Church in America, to the point where the Church is one of the most secure environments anywhere for children and young people.
And no person has done more to rid the Church of the evil of sexual abuse than the current successor of St. Peter, Benedict XVI. As archbishop of Munich thirty years ago, then as the Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and now as the Vicar of Christ, Pope Benedict has always been dedicated to his responsibilities of purifying the Church in this area.
I served as an official in the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops for ten years. In that capacity, I worked alongside then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who was a member of our Congregation. During my last year in Rome I served under the same good man after his election as pope. I learned from direct, first-hand experience that Benedict XVI is truly a man of God, a gift to the Church and a shepherd after the heart of the Good Shepherd.
Benedict XVI named me a bishop in April 2008. As a brother bishop to the bishop of Rome, it pains my heart and should wound the heart of all Catholics, to see the vindictive way he has been treated in the media. The editorial cartoons, the opinion pieces, the vicious attacks on his person and reputation, the disinformation and twisting of facts — all these abuses against responsible press freedom have been repugnant.
No other world religious leader, Jewish, Muslim or other, would be treated in this way. Contempt for the Catholic Church — and don't be fooled; the contempt is directed not just at Church leaders, but at ordinary believers as well — no matter how vulgar or bitter, is the last acceptable prejudice.
Why? Because the Catholic Church is one of the few remaining voices that speaks effectively against the moral confusion of our day. The Catholic faith does not and will not bless the damaging moral path some people now seem to prefer.
Let me close with the words of Benedict from his Holy Thursday Chrism Mass in Rome:
I am always struck by the passage in the Acts of the Apostles which recounts that after the Apostles had been whipped by order of the Sanhedrin, they "rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of Jesus" (Acts 5:41).
Anyone who loves is ready to suffer for the beloved and for the sake of his love, and in this way he experiences a deeper joy. The joy of the martyrs was stronger than the torments inflicted on them.
Discipleship involves suffering. But suffering does accomplish a powerfully good thing: It clarifies who is willing to suffer for Christ's Church and her mission, and who is not.
Cardinal Sepe says
'The Pope is paying the price
for the courage of truth'
Cardinal Cresencio Sepe, Archbishop of Naples has published a statement on the diocesan webstie, translated here.
The 'good news' par excellence in the whole history of the world is the Gospel that has been "announced and transmitted through the centuries, from generation to generation".
These words by the Holy Father at the General Audience on Wednesday - 'still flooded with the luminous joy of Easter' - take us back to a firm point of faith and to the necessity that tis 'good news' must always be kept alive by 'enthusiastic and courageous' witnesses.
Nothing is more essential in the life of the Church. And no news, yesterday or today, could possibly be worth as much. Nothing else, most of all, links us, yesterday as well as today, more firmly to reality, and to that 'here and now' which makes us enfranchised citizens of our time.
We know very well that under the spotlight, certainly powerful but too often misleading, of today's news, the portrayal of the Church these days has almost hidden its true face. More so in the days between the Passion and the determinative event of Redemtpion, when mankind once more recalls the 'truth that transforms'.
Nothing seems to be as it was, but precisely by virtue of that truth that was incarnated and became a sign of contradiction in the world, we must continue to jeep alive and to make more fruitful that message of love that caused him to be nailed by hatred to the Cross.
That message, that truth, has not ceased to be actual - it is the reason the Church lives and works in the world - as a sacrament of salvation, but also a a social body fully situated in the concrete reality within which man lives and can productively invest his abilities into serving the common good.
By opening wide the doors to salvation, the Cross nonetheless has not completely smoothed over the difficulties of the journey that mankind faces, but gives him the the free choice between good and evil. The nails of hatred have remained with us, ready to be used anew.
In the same way, nothing is as it was, from sacrifice to sacrifice, from persecution to persecution. And yet the wood of the Cross continues to be ever green.
Basically, this is really the other face of the 'good news' par excellence, the Gospel that, in order to be propagated and made known, requires, today as yesterday, 'enthusiastic and courageous witnesses'.
From that moment, five years ago, when he introduced himself to the world as 'a humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord', the universal Church found in Pope Benedict its most enthiusastic and courageous witness - the theologian who never tires in singing of 'Christian joy', the man of God who has been perennially acnhored to 'the courage of truth'.
The entire christian experience is, in esence, a story of uniterrupted witness to Christ, starting from the Apostles who, as St. Mark reminds us, "went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs" (Mk 16,20).
Citing that passage from Mark, Pope Benedict reiterated that
The experience of the Apostles and even ours is that of every disciple who becomes an 'annunciator'. Even we, in fact, are sure that the Lord, today as yesterday, works together with his witnesses.
This is a fact that we can recognize every time we see the seeds of true and lasting peace sprout, wherever the commitment and the example of Christians and men of good will are inspired by respect for justice, patient dialog, confident esteem of others, disinterest, personal and communitarian sacrifice."
But, he adds: "Unfortunately, we also see in the world so much suffering, violence and incomprehension".
Incomprehension is lpart of the constitutive history of the
Church. Today, it touches the Church of Benedict XVI, and in its most doggedly persistent and ungenerous forms, the Pope himself.
The origin of the scandal is well known, and it is certainly odious as the sin - sexual abuse of minors - that has disfigured the consecrated persons who made a mockery of their vocation.
To feed this scandal, the media daily cite figures and statistics that show the scourge is as vast as the sad geography of the places stained by these horrors. [COLORE]#1216FF[COLORE][I object to the term 'vast' - it feeds the wrong impression that the media already give, in never citing other figures to put the numbers involving priest offenses in perspective; and even in the figures they cite, they only mention the 'more than 300' cases in Germany, none about Austria, Holland or Switzereland, where the figures have not reached dozens yet.]
But to keep count of such aberrations is almost reductive, because even one case is too much and should arouse alarm, indignation and condemnation.
The Pope's letter to the Irish Church and faithful was both moving and inflexible. In his condemnation of this most serious scourge, Pope Benedict has revealed not just the style but also the essence itself of a Magisterium that looks at man from God's perspective.
His Pontificate is increasingly one of raising the bar, looking upward. Those who think that life is just an immense plain, without toughs or peaks, also lose the ability to look ahead.
Benedict XVI is a Pope with a profundity that has perhaps been lost by contemporary man, even robbed from him, in the purely horizontal dimension of the 'fluid society' of our day.
The 'courage of truth' can hardly be found in such an environment. And perhaps one is not far wrong to point out to this element to explain attacks that are as senseless as they are ungenerous and unmotivated, attack strategies that are not occasional and are well-targeted.
The vehemence and inconsistency of these accusations are disconcerting. Especially in their target: To question the limpid conduct of Papa Ratzinger is in itself a very serious matter.
But his serenity continues to be a luminous example for everyone. Pope Benedict is the first to know that the 'courage of truth' demands, in times like these, a testimony that cannot be without a price.
He is paying that price - with great generosity - for all of us. And for his Church. To be with him, at this time, means to be truly united and close to the Church of Christ, as it journeys, without pause and without fear, into its third millennium.
+Cresencio Cardinal Sepe
Archbishop of Naples
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/04/2010 11:15] |