BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

COMMUNIQUE ON THE HOLY FATHER'S
MEETING WITH MONS. WALTER MIXA
Translated from

July 1, 2010

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On July 1, 2010, the Holy Father received the emeritus Bishop of Auggsburg Walter Mixa in a private audience.

In a communique on May 4, 2010, the Pope had accepted the bishop's request to be relived of his responsibilities as pastor of the Diocese of Augsburg and as Military Ordinary (Chaplain) of Germany. This decision was confirmed at today's audience.

Bishop Mixa will retire for some time in silence, meditation and prayer, and after a period of healing and reconciliation, he will be - like other emeritus bishops - available for pastoral tasks in accordance with his successor.

Bishop Mixa unerscored that he has always sought to fulfill his episcopal ministry well and conscientiously. But in all sincerity and humnility, he also acknowledged to haev committed mistakes and errors that have caused a loss of confidence that made his resignation inevitable.

He has once again asked forgiveness for all his mistakes, but rightly, he asks that all the good he has done may not be forgotten because of his errors.

The Holy Father expressed the hope that the bishops' plea for forgiveness may fall on open ears and hearts. After a period of often disporportionate polemics, the Pope hopes for reconciliation among those concerned, a new reciprocal acceptance of one another in the spirit of the Lord's mercy and in trustful abandon to his guidance.

Above all, the Supreme Pontiff asks his brothers in the episcopal ministry to offer Bishop Mixa - more than they have in the past - their friendly closeness, their understanding, and their assistance to find the right path.

The Pope calls on all the beloved faithful in the Diocese of Augsburg to promote reciprocal communion once more and to welcome with an open heart the bishop whom he will name as successor to Mons. Mixa.

At a time of conflicts and uncertainties, the world expects of Christians a common testimony that they can offer, on the basis of their encounter with the Risen Lord, and according to which, they can help one another as they can help all of society to find the right way towards the future.

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Once again, the Holy Father has given his bishops and the world an example of Christian justice and mercy in dealing with the case of Mons. Mixa.

He makes clear that he had no choice but to accept Mixa's resignation because the bishop's actions had led to a loss of confidence by his diocesan flock. And by imposing a period of 'healing and reconciliation', he acknowledges the need for Mixa to make amends for his mistakes and errors.

Equally important, he rebukes, in effect, Mixa's fellow German bishops for their lack of Christian support for a brother bishop at a time when he was in need of it. Obviously, the Pope does not mean that they should have condoned his mistakes, but that they should have treated him fairly. (Calling a news conference to level accusations against Mixa without talking to Mixa beforehand was just the start!)

The other point implicit in this note is that once again, as in the case of Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna, Benedict XVI shows he is ready to discipline even his personal friends when they need to be disciplined for the good of the Church.

Mixa's big mistake was to have denied at first that he had practised corporal punishment when he was a priest at a children's institution, only to admit it later, when additional charges were made that he had used some church funds to buy items to add to a private collection he kept as a hobby.

However, in the one specific case of sexual abuse subsequently added to the above, the supposed victim came out and denied that Mixa had ever behaved improperly with him, and a police investigation also concluded it could not find evidence for the accusation.

After his resignation, Mixa apparently spent a few weeks at a Swiss clinic for treatment, but after he came out two weeks ago, his former subordinates in the Diocese of Augsburg accused him of having a severe problem of alcoholism that had reportedly interfered with his episcopal duties, and for which he was supposedly treated at the Swiss clinic.

Yesterday, a German Catholic news agency obtained the clinic's report of Mixa's treatment which mentioned psychological problems but not alcoholism.

The 'unfriendliness' shown by the President of the German bishops' conference (Zollitsch) and the Archbishop of Munich-Freising (Marx) towards Mixa was sanctimonious, improper and un-Christian. The open hostility shown by Mixa's former subordinates in Augsburg - even after Mixa had resigned - is even worse.

However, Mixa's case is an example to other men of the Church. By all accounts, Mixa was an outstanding bishop who was also staunchly conservative - i.e., orthodox in his Catholicism - in a nation of notoriously liberal bishops. He was also a personal friend of Benedict XVI. (Mixa said two weeks ago that after he resigned, the Pope had sent him a 'loving fraternal letter'.]

This made his penchant for controversial statements of his orthodox beliefs problematic, because the media apparently came to treat him with the same sort of ridicule as they had for Mons. Wagner of Linz for his statement about hurricane Katrina. (A ridicule that reflected inevitably on Benedict XVI, since the MSM invariably identified Mixa as 'Benedict's personal friend').

Therefore, his initial denial of beating children as punishment in the 1970s - which, as he later pointed out, was practised in Germany until it was outlawed in 1980, so there was no reason for him to deny that he too practised it - made a mockery of his own Christian witness.(He should have remembered the example of Georg Ratzinger who, without waiting to be accused of corporal punishment, openly said yes, he slapped some boys to discipline them!)

Mixa's initial lie, along with possible misuse of Church funds for his own personal use, are serious blots on his record. And it is right that he make amends for them in the way the Pope has asked him to.

The other case study for men of the Church today is that of Cardinal George Pell. A single involvement in a case of alleged sexual abuse - even if he has been cleared of wrongdoing - forced him eventually to decline his nomination as Prefect for the Congregation for Bishops.

In this case, it is obviously unfair that the one case should hang over his head, as it will continue to do, even if he has been cleared, but given the nitpicking faultfinding general climate against the Church today, he could not have carried out his Curial function effectively with that fact being constantly attached to everything he says or does.

A third case, still unresolved, is that of Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh. I believe that as long as he has the support of his diocese (which he does, apparently), he has rightly resisted pressure from victims and their advocates to resign as Bishop because as a young priest, he interrogated two young victims of abuse by a Norbertine priest and asked them to sign what was then a standard statement of secrecy. Brady's bishop at the time dismissed the Norbertine back to his congregation which, unfortunately continued assigning the priest to pastoral work and reassigning him to escape prosecution for subsequent sex offenses.


Here is how the AP reports the Vatican note on Mixa - with a typically misleading headline and lead paragraph, implying that Mixa may resume work as a bishop again (even if not in Augsburg):


Pope lays out terms for accused
German bishop to resume work
By Nicole Winfield



VATICAN CITY, July 1 (AP) - The Pope on Thursday told a German bishop who resigned amid accusations of physical abuse, sexual harassment and alcoholism that he must take time for silent prayer, treatment and reconciliation if he wants to return to pastoral work.

Pope Benedict XVI laid out the terms for Bishop Walter Mixa's rehabilitation during a private audience with the 69-year-old prelate, during which Mixa again apologized for his mistakes, the Vatican said.

Benedict, for his part, "expressed the hope that his (Mixa's) request for forgiveness finds open ears and hearts" among the German faithful, the Vatican said.

Mixa's case marked an unusually public controversy that came to light at the height of the abuse scandal that rocked the Church in Germany and elsewhere in the first half of the year.

Mixa, who served as bishop of the Augsburg diocese from 2005 to 2010, offered his resignation on April 22 after accusations surfaced that he had hit children decades ago as a priest and amid allegations of financial misconduct.

The Pope accepted Mixa's resignation on May 8, but last month the bishop said members of the Augsburg diocese and two German bishops had forced him to resign against his will, and that he had written to the Pope seeking to rescind the resignation.

Fresh allegations later surfaced in the German media, including that Mixa was an alcoholic and had made sexual advances toward two priests.

Eventually Mixa apologized for his conduct and agreed to stand by the resignation.

The Vatican had said Mixa's resignation was never up for discussion [That's a gratuitous 'addition' by Winfield - it does not appear in the Vatican statement] and Benedict confirmed it definitively on Thursday. His title now is emeritus bishop of Augsburg. [But it already was, from the moment his resignation was accepted, as 'emeritus bishop' is the title of every bishop who resigns or retires!]

In a statement, the Vatican press office said Mixa will take a period of time for silent reflection and prayer — as well as treatment and reconciliation. Afterward, he will be available for undetermined pastoral work in agreement with the new Augsburg bishop, the statement said.

During the audience, Mixa said he recognized that he had made mistakes "which caused a loss of trust and made his resignation inevitable." He again asked forgiveness, but also asked that "all the good that he had done not be forgotten," the Vatican said.

Benedict urged Mixa's fellow bishops to understand and help him find the right path and for the faithful to welcome Mixa's successor.


P.S. Die Welt reports that the Holy Father has obviously rejected a petition from some priests and laymen in Augsburg not to allow Mixa to even live in the diocese after his retirement so as 'not to disturb the peace any further'. It just confirms how un-Christian Mixa's opponents have become! That appears to be the effect upon progressivist Catholics when 'conservative' Catholics gain prominence or ascendancy. But in this case, it persists even after Mixa has become effectively out of the mix!

The same news item has a long list of names that could possibly be considered to succeed Mixa in Augsburg which has 1.5 million Catholics - among them the Pope's former and current private secretaries, Mons. Josef Clemens and Georg Gaenswein.

Sueddeutsche Zeitung leads off its report on the papal audience for Mixa by underscoring the papal rebuke to other German bishops for the 'disproportionate polemics' and lack of fraternal respect to Mixa in the days before and after his resignation. The newspaper says the German bishops' conference refused to make a statement.

Which reminds me that Paolo Rodari reports of an unbelievable spin from the spokesman of Cardinal Schoenborn in Vienna who denies that Schoenborn was rebuked in any way by the Pope at their meeting last week.

It must be remembered that this amounted to a second rebuke by the Pope in as many meetings with Schoenborn. Last January 15, [S}right after meeting with the Pope, Schoenborn faxed from the Vatican a handwritten note of apology to the Bishop of Mostar- in whose diocese Medjugorje is located - apologizing for his failure to inform the Bishop personally when he visited Medjugorge on January 2 (in the company, one might add, of a full international media corps that documented his every move in Medjugorje, including his meeting with some of the 'seers' who claim to have received daily apparitions of Mary for the past 30 years. I wonder if Schoenborn asked if he could be present at the 'apparition of the day').

I imagined the Pope telling Schoenborn, "Please write that apology now. Mons Gaenswein will fax it for you!'

Also, not incidentally, soon after Schoenborn's 'pilgrimage', Benedict XVI named Cardinal Ruini to head a CDF commission of inquiry into the Medjugorje events to establish authenticity once and for all. Schoenborn, although he is a member of CDF, is not on the Commission.