BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Another vicious, inaccurate,
and contradictory New York Times
attack on Pope Benedict
By Phil Lawler

July 02, 2010


Today’s New York Times, with another front-page attack on Pope Benedict XVI, erases any possible doubt that America’s most influential newspaper has declared an editorial jihad against this pontificate.

Abandoning any sense of editorial balance, journalistic integrity, or even elementary logic, the Times looses a 4,000-word barrage against the Pope: an indictment that is not supported even by the content of this appalling story. Apparently the editors are relying on sheer volume of words, and repetition of ugly details, to substitute for logical argumentation.

The thrust of the argument presented by the Times is that prior to his election as Pontiff, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not take decisive action to punish priests who abused children. Despite its exhaustive length, the story does not present a single new case to support that argument.

The authors claim, at several points in their presentation, that as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal Ratzinger had the authority to take action. But then, again and again, they quote knowledgeable Church officials saying precisely the opposite.

The confusion over lines of authority at the Vatican was so acute, the Times reports, that in the year 2000 a group of bishops met in Rome to present their concerns. [I believe it was John Paul II who convoked the American cardinals to discuss the issue.]

That meeting led eventually to the change in policy announced by Pope John Paul II the following year, giving the CDF sole authority over disciplinary action against priests involved in sexual abuse.

By general consensus the 2001 policy represented an important step forward in the Vatican’s handling of the problem, and it was Cardinal Ratzinger who pressed for that policy change. How does that sequence of events justify criticism of the future Pope? It doesn’t. But the facts do not deter the Times.

The Times writers show their bias with their flippant observation that when he might have been fighting sexual abuse, during the 1980s and 1990s Cardinal Ratzinger was more prominent in his pursuit of doctrinal orthodoxy.

[What a stupid statement by the Times! That was his principal job as CDF Prefect. What is there in the phrase 'doctrine of the faith' that says or even implies that the congregation is also to be the Church's sex behavior police/tribunal for priests????

The implication of giving Cardinal Ratzinger this added - and really extraneous - responsibility was that John Paul II realized local bishops weren't doing their job at policing their priests and looking out for their victims. Turning this over to the Congregation for the Clergy might have made more sense, but the local bishops would be loath to report to Clergy; while the Congregation for Bishops does its 'investigative' work on candidates for bishop through the Secretariat of State and its apostiolic nuncios, so it is not exactly equipped for the job.

Let's imagine John Paul surveying the prospects in 2000. Clergy was out, Bishops was out - perhaps even the men in charge of these congregations at the time, Castrillon Hoyos and Re, militated against them because they were old guard defenders of the status quo. That left Cardinal Ratzinger, who was not only personally committed to upholding the holiness of priesthood, but also had the nucleus of an appropriate investigative staff with international experience in seeking out documentation and witness statements regarding possible unorthodox teachings by priests.]

But then, while until 2001 it was not clear which Vatican office was primarily responsible for sexual abuse, it was clear that the CDF was responsible for doctrinal orthodoxy. Cardinal Ratzinger’s primary focus was on his primary job.

After laying out the general argument against the Vatican’s inaction —and implying that Cardinal Ratzinger was responsible for that inaction, disregarding the ample evidence that other prelates stalled his efforts — the Times makes the simply astonishing argument that local diocesan bishops were more effective in their handling of sex-abuse problems. That argument is merely wrong; it is comically absurd.
[Worse than that! It's ignoring objective fact: They weren't 'handling' the problem at all! hey wer sweeping it under the rug.]

During the 1980s and 1990s, as some bishops were complaining about the confusion at the Vatican, bishops in the US and Ireland, Germany and Austria, Canada and Italy were systematically covering up evidence of sexual abuse, and transferring predator-priests to new parish assignments to hide them from scrutiny. The revelations of the past decade have shown a gross dereliction of duty on the part of diocesan bishops. Indeed the ugly track record has shown that a number of diocesan bishops were themselves abusing children during those years.

So how does the Times have the temerity to suggest that the diocesan bishops needed to educate the Vatican on the proper handling of this issue? The lead witness for the Times story is Bishop Geoffrey Robinson: a former auxiliary of the Sydney, Australia archdiocese, who was hustled into premature retirement in 2004 at the age of 66 because his professed desire to change the teachings of the Catholic Church put him so clearly at odds with his fellow Australian bishops and with Catholic orthodoxy.

This obscure Australian bishop, the main source of support for the absurd argument advanced by the Times, is the author of a book on Christianity that has been described as advancing “the most radical changes since Martin Luther started the 16th-century Reformation.”

His work has drawn an extraordinary caution from the Australian episcopal conference, which warned that Robinson was at odds with Catholic teaching on “among other things, the nature of Tradition, the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the infallibility of the Councils and the Pope, the authority of the Creeds, the nature of the ministerial priesthood and central elements of the Church’s moral teaching."

Bishop Robinson is so extreme in his theological views that Cardinal Roger Mahony (who is not ordinarily known as a stickler for orthodoxy) barred him from speaking in the Los Angeles archdiocese in 2008. This, again, is the authority on which the Times hangs its argument against the Vatican.

And even the Times story itself, a mess of contradictions, acknowledges:

Bishops had a variety of disciplinary tools at their disposal — including the power to remove accused priests from contact with children and to suspend them from ministry altogether — that they could use without the Vatican’s direct approval.

It is not clear, then, why the Vatican bears the bulk of the responsibility for the sex-abuse scandal. Still less clear is why the main focus of that responsibility should be Pope Benedict. On that score, too, the Times blatantly contradicts its own argument.

Buried in the Times story — on the 3rd page in the print edition, in the 46th paragraph of the article — is a report on one Vatican official who stood out at that 2000 meeting in Rome, calling for more effective action on sexual abuse.

An exception to the prevailing attitude, several participants recalled, was Cardinal Ratzinger. He attended the sessions only intermittently and seldom spoke up. But in his only extended remarks, he made clear that he saw things differently from others in the Curia.

That testimony is seconded by a more reliable prelate, Archbishop Philip Wilson of Adelaide:

“The speech he gave was an analysis of the situation, the horrible nature of the crime, and that it had to be responded to promptly,” recalled Archbishop Wilson of Australia, who was at the meeting in 2000. “I felt, this guy gets it, he’s understanding the situation we’re facing. At long last, we’ll be able to move forward.”

The Times story, despite its flagrant bias and distortion, actually contains the evidence to dismiss the complaint. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done before the truth comes out: that even a decade ago the future Pope Benedict was the solution, not part of the problem.


[The new 'wannabe hatchet-job' from the Times is, in fact, a Pandora's box of everything that's wrong with journalism today. There's a general breakdown and disregard of journalistic professionalism in the Times as in most MSM. Blatant personal bias is given the status of 'news'. Writers and editors are so smug about their 'moral superiority' over the objects of their vituperation that they can't even be bothered to read back their stories for logic, coherence and consistency - at least within the defined context of the bias and agenda that the story is supposed to push. But then if they did that, they might be led to check out facts, God forbid - no one does that anymore! Not among these so-called journalists.

But sensible readers do. Perhaps the greatest insult that the MSM does to its readers is to assume that they will not check facts. In Internet times, there is no excuse for failing to check facts. But judging from the inaccuracies that daily punctuate their news reports, the MSM writers apparently don't.

And people like Goodstein and Halbfinger apparently think they are well on their way to be the next Woodward and Bernstein - who will bring down a Pope, no less - despite the laziness, shoddiness, dishonesty and general unreliability of their work!


Then there's a commentary like the one below which I find problematic for reasons indicated in my 'annotations'. My iinitial objection is to the adjective 'tendentious' in the headline. It's much too weak to describe the shameelessly outright bias and malice of the writers, who, fortunately, were too blinded by their bias to mind their logic and end up contradicting their own hypothesis by some of the very things they cite!


How do you spell tendentious?
by R.R.Reno

Friday, July 2, 2010

A long article in today’s New York Times reports on some of the Vatican’s early responses to the sex-abuse crisis. The facts in the story, such as they are, appear good to know. But what the article tries to draw from it all . . .

In fact, of Pope Benedict’s career as Cardinal Ratzinger, reporters Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger announce the strong conclusion: “The future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction.”

And how do they get there? Something along these lines:

Implied verdict #1: The irresponsible cardinal was thinking about theology when he should have been meeting with canon lawyers 24/7 to perfect procedures for prosecuting abusers.

Evidence for verdict #1: Although the sex abuse scandal made big news with revelations in Boston in 2002, there were plenty of early warning signs. And what was then Cardinal Ratzinger doing with his time? Not sorting out the legal procedures for dealing with disciplining accused sex abusers, but instead formulating theological reasons for rejecting the doctrinal distortions of liberation theology. Or, as Goodstein and Halbfinger mockingly report, examining the credibility of claims about apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

Implied verdict #2: Ratzinger culpably hindered the efforts by bishops to deal with the sex abuse scandal — and did so out of an obviously irrelevant concern about ecclesiology. [On this point, Reno misses the fact the writers' ignorance about the kind of liberation theology that the CDF opposes - and that doctrinal orthodoxy is the primary concern of the CDF, its very raison d'etre. Its responsibility since 2001 for investigating sex offenses by priests is actually an assignment extraneous to its real task.]

Evidence for verdict #2: In the United States, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has taken the most forceful position in disciplining sex abusers. As cardinal, however, Ratzinger spoke against the pretension of national bishop conferences, saying that they have “no theological basis” and “do not belong to the structure of the church.” Individual bishops, Ratzinger argued, function as the legitimate ecclesial authority in relation to Rome, not national conferences. [An argument that is non sequitur. Cardinal Ratzinger's opposition to bishops' conferences far antedated the sex abuse 'scandals' - and apart from their lack of theological basis or historical precedent, it is because they have constituted themselves into 'mini-Vatican's in the worst sense, and have been used as a cover for bishops to shirk their individual responsibility in cases that need accountability.]

Implied verdict #3: Ratzinger was part of a cabal of leaders in Rome who blocked reform — and did so out of a tender, irrational, and irresponsible regard for legalistic protections of accused clergy.

Evidence for verdict #3: It turns out the Roman authorities tend to assume innocence rather than guilt, giving the benefit of doubt to accused priests. The 1983 code of canon law established a five-year statute of limitations for accusations against clergy. (John Paul II subsequently extended it to ten years after the victim’s eighteenth birthday.) Moreover, the Vatican resisted efforts to substitute administrative judgment for a full ecclesiastical trial for defrocking clerics accused of sexual abuse.

Implied verdict #4: Ratzinger should have known about his jurisdictional authority — and this in spite of the fact that, as Goodstein and Halbfinger report, pretty much everybody in Rome was unaware of obscure instructions on the point.

Evidence for verdict #4: Way back in 1922, papal instructions invested the Holy Office (Ratzinger’s domain as cardinal, retitled the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after Vatican II) with authority to deal directly with sexual abuse cases involving priests. This instruction was acknowledged by Ratzinger only in 2001. [But the instructions involving the CDF in 1962 and its predecessor office in 1922 had to do specifically with the use of the confessional to solicit sex or in the commission of sexual offenses - and this specific case came under the CDF's jurisdiction because it comes under its disciplinary function for misuse of the sacraments, in this case, of Confession. It's part of the general ignoracne about these old statutes that everyone refers to but appear never to have really read.]

Implied verdict #5: His head was in the theological clouds. Anybody with a scintilla of true Christian leadership would have remade himself as a canon lawyer as soon as he hears the news of the first sex-abuse scandal.

Evidence for verdict #5: A meeting was held in 2000, to address bureaucratic and canonical changes, but Ratzinger attended only intermittently and didn’t say much...

I could go on, but it would be tedious. It’s almost always tedious to refute tendentious reporting.

In any event the article ends up refuting itself, because the various bishops closely involved in the Vatican’s admittedly inadequate responses to the sexual-abuse crisis uniformly praise Ratzinger.

Australia’s Archbishop Wilson is typical. After the 2000 meeting, he reported: “I felt, this guy gets it, he’s understanding the situation we’re facing. At long last, we’ll be able to move forward.”

Move forward. Sigh. The Catholic Church rarely hurries, so the moving forward accomplished after 2000 has often turned out to be slow, cumbersome, and tone deaf. There is much, much, to criticize, and there are important questions to ask.

Why did (and do) some Church officials retreat into clichés, interpreting critical reporting of the sexual abuse scandals as part of a larger secular attack on the Church? [Because the so-called 'critical' reporting is exclusively destructive and blatantly disporportionate, and because they do constitute a secular attack on the Church. One would have to be xteremely dense, naive or self-deluding to deny that!]

Has the Church wrongly presumed the innocence of accused priests in its canonical procedures? [How can 'presumption of innocence till proven guilty' be wrong? It is a required condition for any trial in a rule of law.] Or is our current frenzy over sexual abuse distorting our larger sense of justice?

Do we want the Vatican to be a more efficient bureaucratic machine, clearer in its procedures and more aggressive in its use of authority? Or is the relatively cumbersome reality of Vatican authority a source of a desirable ecclesiastical pluralism and liberty?

Do we want Church leaders expert in canon law or learned in theology? Do we want efficient bureaucrats who know about all the obscure rules and instructions, or inspired men of faith?

[Why does it have to be one or the other? As Vittorio Messori often points out, the Catholic Church has a logic of synthesis - 'and-and' rather than 'either-or' - resulting hopefully in the Golden Mean.]

Unfortunately, the mandarins at the New York Times seem incapable of entertaining these sorts of questions. They are more interested in a hatchet job for which, in truth, they couldn’t find enough timber on which to chop away.