Benedict may be dressed in green, but Irish eyes aren't smiling. Does his idea "Caritas in veritate" extend to his own culpability in the Irish abuse crisis?

Irish bishops, pope begin summit on sex abuse
By John Thavis, Catholic News Service, 2/15/10

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops of Ireland began a two-day, closed-door meeting to assess responsibility in the Irish church's handling of priestly sex abuse cases and explore ways to heal the wounds left by the scandal.

Each of the 24 bishops was scheduled to speak for seven minutes, in effect giving the pope "an account of themselves" and their own actions, Bishop Joseph Duffy of Clogher told reporters on the eve of the Feb. 15-16 summit.

The pope convened the bishops in response to the continuing fallout from the scandal, following an independent report that faulted the church for its handling of 325 sex abuse claims in the Archdiocese of Dublin in the years 1975-2004.

"I would admit quite frankly what everyone else knows, and shout it from the housetops: that the church has been seriously wounded, and we're in a very serious situation, that this has done immense damage to the authority of the church," Bishop Duffy said.

"And our business is to try to repair that damage and to restore confidence, because confidence has been lost not only in the bishops, but by the bishops themselves," he said. (This is not necessarily a bad thing. Loss of confidence in shaky supports is the beginning of true spiritual evolution.)

Bishop Duffy said that "the casualty in all this has been the truth," and added: "The fullness of the truth must come out; everything must be laid on the table." (That truth is about far more than sexual abuse. It's also about the potential for real evil in the clerical system.)

"This is not just a cosmetic exercise, as some people might seem to think. It's very serious," he said.

Joining the pope and the bishops at the summit were 10 leading Vatican officials who deal with doctrine, church law, bishops, clergy, religious life and seminaries.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, set the tone of the meeting at an opening Mass Feb. 15 with the Irish and Vatican participants. He said the most difficult trials for the church were internal ones, especially, as in this case, when the church sees "some of its own men involved in particularly abominable acts." (Those abominable acts were also those engaged in by the bishops who covered up and enabled abusers.)

The cardinal said renewal can be the outcome of this trial, as long as people take responsibility for their failings. (And yet nothing will be effectively changed if the people who run the institution don't account for institutional failures.)

Cardinal Bertone compared the church to a ship in a storm, and said the prelates need to put their trust in Christ. The "more dangerous storm," he said, was "the one that touches the hearts of believers, shaking their faith." (My faith in Jesus wasn't shaken. My faith in the institutional church is another story. I don't confuse the two anymore.)

There has been widespread indignation among Irish Catholics following the revelations of the sex abuse cases and the way they were handled by the bishops. The report by an independent commission headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy concluded that bishops often protected abusers and were more interested in maintaining secrecy and protecting church assets than in helping the victims.

After Pope Benedict held a preliminary meeting with two Irish bishops in December, the Vatican said the pope shared the sense of "outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by Irish Catholics, and that he would write a special pastoral letter on the subject. (Sorry, I have difficulty buying into his shame and outrage. As head of the CDF he knew all about this long before the Murphy and Ryan reports. He did nothing except encourage and enforce the silence, secrecy, and cover ups.)

At the beginning of the Feb. 15-16 summit, the Vatican said the pope's letter would be discussed at the meeting but that there was no date set for its publication.

Bishop Duffy, who is chairman of the Irish bishops' communications commission, said a primary concern of the discussions was how the church can respond to the survivors of abuse and "the enormous injustice and cruelty they have suffered."

He said that while the question of resignation of bishops was not formally on the agenda, it could come up in the talks. Four bishops criticized in the Irish report have offered their resignation, but so far the pope has officially accepted only one of them. Bishop Martin Drennan of Galway, also criticized in the report, has rejected demands by Catholic groups for his resignation.

Asked if the bishops would try to shield the pope from details of the sex abuse cases, Bishop Duffy said the meeting "would be a complete flop if that were to happen."

"It's meant to be frank and open, and if it's not either of those it will not have succeeded," he said.

Bishop Duffy added that he was convinced that Pope Benedict was already aware of the gravity and complexity of the sex abuse cases.

"It's my information that the pope is very well clued in on this whole issue, that even before he became pope, he had access to the documentation, that he knew exactly what was in the documentation, and that he wasn't living in a fool's paradise," he said. (It is becoming more and more apparent that he wanted us to think he was living in a 'fools paradise'. Or was it he wanted us to continue to live blindly in his 'fool's paradise'?)

At a Mass for the Irish bishops in St. Patrick's Church in Rome Feb. 14, Bishop Colm O'Reilly of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise said the prelates were especially aware this year of the Lenten call to confession and repentance.

"It is a time for undoing, insofar as this is possible, the damage our sins have done, for what is done and what we have failed to do. It is a time for a new beginning," he said in a homily.

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This is a very dangerous time for the Vatican. The anger over the sexual abuse issue is one that transcends the typical political divides with in the Church. People may not agree on what the causes for the scandal are, but they do agree the bishops mishandles the whole thing, and they did it for pure self interest.

If this meeting generates nothing more than the generic apologies of the past, maintains the hierarchy operated from misguided care for the simple faithful, or out of innocence as to the nature of the issues, the Vatican will find it has made a major and fundamental error. This isn't about individual rogue priests. It's about a fear filled Roman Catholic hierarchy acting in concert to cover up criminal acts and effectively engage in a Vatican inspired criminal conspiracy. And this international criminal conspiracy was the fruit of the policies of the Ratzinger led CDF.

I sincerely hope Archbishop Martin and other Irish Bishops have the courage to tell 'truth to power'. If they don't, there will be little hope left for the Irish church and it will be the first in a long line of falling dominoes.

Forget the new Mass translations, or the LCWR investigations. The Irish abuse scandal is the biggest indicator as to whether or not the Vatican is willing to entertain it's own culpability in the state of global Catholicism. If the men of the Vatican fail to clean up their act and admit they engaged in and demanded a systemic cover up of sexual abuse, they will have forfeited their right to speak with moral authority on any issue. Cappa magnas will not cover up the fact the Emperor has no clothes.

Here's another statement from a Vatican official I found on today's NCR. I guess I found this disturbing because I like Cardinal Turkson. But, it also indicated a total callousness on the part of a celibate male when it comes to women's issues and his personal understanding of child birth and child raising. It's taken from an interview done by John Allen and referenced Europes immigration fears.

Can the church help calm those fears?

The church can calm fears only if people listen. The church has been calling for a change in attitudes and lifestyles for a long time. Look, Europe can't have its cake and eat it too. You can't have a population that's unwilling to bring forth children, because you want to be comfortable and have your vacation and so on, and at the same time worry about someone else taking over. Unless we're able to produce kids in a lab, the only way to do it is through this human body, but there are many people today who don't want to put up with the inconvenience of nine months of pregnancy and so on. Qadafi supposedly once said that they don't need terrorists and suicide bombers anymore to overcome Europe, they'll do it with the womb of the Arab woman.

This statement shows an appalling lack of understanding of what it takes to raise children in today's western culture. It isn't about vacations. It's about far far more than that. For Cardinal Turkson to equate a woman's unwillingness to submit to the 'inconvenience of nine months of pregnancy' as the sole reason for the European demographic trend demonstrates his stunning lack of respect for the reality of a woman's reproductive biology and zero understanding of the kind of life long commitment a child actually represents.

He is right to equate his personal take on pregnancy and children with Qadafi's. Women are just uteruses whose mission in life is to pop out enough children to maintain male culture. This is the exact same thinking seen in the sexual abuse crisis. The relevance of children and women is directly dependent on their effect on whatever male culture happens to dominate. Outside of that neither women or children are worthy of real respect. With that kind of thinking, neither are most of today's bishops.