I was girding myself to do a difficult translation of a very significant article coming out in tomorrow's issue of the OR, but thank God I did a search first if it had already been reported even in abbreviated form in English. Because sure enough, John Allen has an instant piece on it, having been given an English translation of the texts by Fr. Lombardi. So read on, to begin with and for now, while I check whether all the points in the OR article have been properly reported. I doubt this is a story that the New York Times or AP will pick up because it is soooooo not according to their script!
Allen's title is "Vatican offers ‘smoking gun’ to defend Pope’s record on sex abuse" - which is an editorial conclusion, not a statement of the objective facts. Of course, it could be he is bending over backwards for the benefit of his bosses at NCRep, or it may be his own special brand of malice masquerading as 'objectivity'... So I am replacing it with something that is more faithful to what it is about...
Ratzinger pressed for canon law changes in 1988
that would facilitate punishing miscreant priests
by John L Allen Jr
Dec. 01, 2010
Amid ongoing debate over Pope Benedict XVI’s role in the sexual abuse crisis, the Vatican today
claimed [Claimed??? The whole point is the existence of documentary proof!] that a newly unearthed piece of correspondence shows that as far back as 1988, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pressed Rome to adopt “swifter and more simplified procedures” for punishing priests guilty of “grave and scandalous” conduct.
The conduct Ratzinger had in mind, the Vatican implied, included the sexual abuse of minors.
Ratzinger's recommendation was not adopted at the time, a senior Vatican official said, because of stalled debates over the penal section of the church’s Code of Canon Law. Yet Ratzinger kept at it, the official asserted, and today his suggested reforms have largely become binding Church law.
The revelation came in an essay authored by Spanish Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, the number two official at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, which was published today in slightly abbreviated form by the Vatican newspaper
L’Osservatore Romano, and is scheduled for full publication tomorrow in the semi-official journal
La Civiltà Cattolica.
Such high-profile play suggests that the Vatican regards Ratzinger’s 1988 letter as a sort of positive “smoking gun,” demonstrating that the future Pope grasped the seriousness of the sex abuse crisis far earlier than previously believed. [And what is wrong with that? What a cheap, gratuitous and completely unwarranted dig! By the way, there was more than one letter from Cardinal Ratzinger. In fact, the title of the OR art5icle is "Cardinal Ratzinger on the revision of the canonical penal system in three previously unpublished letters from 1988".]
English language versions of the essays were given to NCR by the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi.
Arrieta wrote that the Council for Legislative Texts has been working on a revision to the penal section of the Code of Canon Law since 2007, at the request of Benedict XVI.
In the course of research, Arrieta wrote, a February 1998 letter from then-Cardinal Ratzinger came to light. The letter was addressed to another Cardinal, José Rosalío Castillo Lara, who at the time was in charge of the Vatican office which eventually became the Council for Legislative Texts.
In the letter, Ratzinger argues that in practice, changes to the Code of Canon Law adopted in 1983 meant that bishops around the world “are likely to experience considerable difficulty” in imposing penalties on priests who commit grave crimes.
Ratzinger does not specifically cite the sexual abuse of minors, but Arrieta implies it was understood.
For “the good of the faithful,” Ratzinger writes, Castillo should consider adopting “a more rapid and simplified penal process.”
By way of background, Arrieta explains that the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law was intended to implement in concrete legal terms the theological vision of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
When it came to the penal section of the law, Arrieta wrote, the accent was on subsidiarity and decentralization, meaning that
responsibility for imposing punishment fell largely on local bishops and religious superiors.
Moreover, Arrieta wrote, the new code contained strong due process measures to protect the rights of the accused – so much so, he said, that in hindsight, they did not always “allow the collective interest to be effectively safeguarded.”
Though Arrieta does not spell it out, one key reason that bishops around the world typically did not try to formally laicize abuser priests during the 1980s and 1990s was because the legal procedures for doing so were perceived as lengthy, cumbersome, and uncertain.
It was against that backdrop, Arrieta suggests, that Ratzinger wrote the 1988 letter.
At the time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was responsible for handling petitions for dispensation from the obligations of priesthood. Ratzinger expressed frustration to Castillo that Church law at the time considered such a step a “grace” granted to the priest, as opposed to a penalty.
Arrieta reports that Castillo wrote back to say that changing the penal section of the law would not only “endanger the fundamental right of defense,” but it might encourage bishops to rely on “pastoral” rather than judicial solutions.
Arrieta says that just a month later, in June 1998, Pope John Paul II issued a new constitution for the Roman Curia,
Pastor Bonus, which gave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responsibility for “more serious offenses against morals.”
Arrieta implies that Ratzinger prompted that move, and wrote that “it is quite unlikely a choice of this kind ... would have been implemented if the overall system had been working well.”
Arrieta concedes that the reform was imperfect, since it was never clear exactly what these “serious offenses against morals” were, or the circumstances under which bishops were obliged to turn them over to Rome. That gap was not filled until 2001, with another document from John Paul II titled
Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela.
Arrieta notes that after that document appeared, Ratzinger pressed for “special faculties” from John Paul II, essentially exceptions to his own rules, allowing abusers to be removed from the priesthood without a Church trial in especially serious cases.
Finally, Arrieta points to one additional sign of Ratzinger’s concern: His role in 1997 as a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the Vatican department that oversees mission territories.
According to Arrieta, Ratzinger backed granting the congregation “special faculties” to handle crimes by priests administratively rather than through formal canonical procedures, reflecting the “scarcity of resources of every kind” in many parts of the developing world.
In sum, Arrieta wrote, the “decisive action” of the former Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in attempting to streamline the Church’s penal procedures, at least in part as a response to the scandal of sex abuse by priests, is “one of the ‘constant elements’ that have characterized his Roman years from the very first.”
For now, here is a translation of Cardinal Ratzinger's first letter to Cardinal Castillo and the latter's reply, because other correspondence and Curial branches are involved before Cardinal Ratzinger's next letter. (Translation is more difficult for me when it involves technical matters - of law, in this case - because I first have to make sure I really understand what is being said!]
The point is that Cardinal Ratzinger was aware from personal knowledge that bishops were not exercising their judicial authority with regard to priests accused of serious offenses even if found guilty - the very same failure of administrative will by bishops that he cites in LOTW, quoting Archbishop Martin of Dublin who said that this failure to apply existing provisions of canon law became prevalent in Ireland since the 1960s out of a mistaken idea of 'pastoral loving'.
February 18, 1998
Eminence, this Dicastery, in examining the petitions for dispensation from priestly responsibilities, comes across cases of priests who, during the exercise of their ministry, are found guilty of grave and scandalous behaviors, for which the appropriate procedure according to the Code of Canon Law is the application of certain penalties, not excluding reduction to the lay state.
Such provisions, in the judgment of this Dicastery, should, in certain cases, for the good of the faithful, precede the eventual concession of the dispensation from the priesthood which, by its nature, is configured as a 'grace' in favor of the requester.
But given the complexity of the procedures provided for in the Codex, it is foreseeable that some bishops will meet not a few difficulties in carrying them out.
Therefore, I would be grateful to Your Most REverend Eminence if you couldlet me know your valuable opinion on the eventual possibility of providing, in certain cases, a more rapid and simplified procedure.
The answer came back within three weeks:
I understand the concern of Your Eminence over the fact that the bishops concerned have not exercised their judicial powers to adequately punish such crimes, in order to protect the common good of the faithful.
However, the problem does not seem to be the juridical procedure but the responsible exercise of the function of government.
In the current Code the crimes which can lead to the loss of the priestly state are clearly defined: They are configured to Canons
1364 1, 1367, 1370, 1387, 1394 and 1395.
At the same time, the procedure has been simplified compared to the previous norm of the 1917 Code, thus making it faster and more streamlined, so as to encourage bishops in the exercise of their authority by granting the necessary justice to the guilty and applying the prescribed sanctions.
To seek to further simplify the judicial procedure for inflicting or declaring sanctions as serious as dismissal from the clerical state, or to change the actual norm of 1342-2 which prohibits proceeding in these cases with an extra-judicial administrative decree (cfr can, 1720), does not seem convenient.
In fact, on the one hand, one would imperil the fundamental right of defense - in cases that concern the status of the accused; while on the other hand, it would favor the tendency - probably for lack of due knowledge or respect for the law - to an equivocal governance that is so-called 'pastoral', but which is basically not pastoral because it leads to neglecting the due exercise of authority, with resulting damage to the common good of the faithful.
Even in other difficult periods in the life of the Church, of confused consciences and relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline, pasotrs have not failed to exercise their judicial authority in order to protect the supreme good of salus animarum [the salvation of souls]. Apparently not in the period from the 1960s 0n (i.e., post Vatican II, post 1968 'anything goes' mentality)!
12/2/10
Sandro Magister comments on the letters in his blog today. I will translate later.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/12/2010 18:48]