Western secularists sun themselves, apparently indifferent to the self sinking of the good ship

Vatican.

The New York Times, that Vatican styled bastion of Anti Catholicism, has another must read article on the history of the Vatican's handling of clerical sexual abuse. The following is an excerpt and deals with a meeting in Rome between bishops of English speaking countries and the multitude of Vatican dicastery heads who were involve in cases of clerical sexual abuse. The most important parts about this meeting is it took place in 2000, two years before the Boston scandal and that the CDF was aware of the fact that they had jurisdiction over all cases of clerical sexual abuse since the issuance of a 1922 instruction.

Frustrations Boil Over

The visiting bishops had reached the boiling point. After flailing about for 20 years, with little guidance from Rome, as stories about pedophile priests embroiled the church in lawsuits, shame and scandal, they had flown in to Rome from Australia, Canada, England and Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland, South Africa, the United States and the West Indies.

Many came out of frustration: the Vatican had too often thwarted bishops’ attempts to oust pedophile priests in their jurisdictions. Yet they had high hopes that they would make the case for reform. Nearly every major Vatican office was represented in the gathering, held in the same Vatican hotel that was built to house cardinals electing a new pope.

“The message we wanted to get across was: if individuals are to hide behind church law and use that law to impede the ability of bishops to discipline priests, then we have to have a new way of moving forward,” said Eamonn Walsh, auxiliary bishop of Dublin, one of 17 bishops who attended from overseas. (He was one of several Irish bishops who offered the pope their resignations last year because of the abuse scandal, but his has not been accepted.)

Yet many at the meeting grew dismayed as, over four long days in early April 2000, they heard senior Vatican officials dismiss clergy sexual abuse as a problem confined to the English-speaking world, and emphasize the need to protect the rights of accused priests over ensuring the safety of children, according to interviews with 10 church officials who attended the meeting.

Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, then the head of the Congregation for the Clergy, set the tone, playing down sexual abuse as an unavoidable fact of life, and complaining that lawyers and the media were unfairly focused on it, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. What is more, he asked, is it not contradictory for people to be so outraged by sexual abuse when society also promotes sexual liberation? (At this point in time the Vatican was well aware of the fact that clerical abuse was not just a problem of Western sexual culture. They had real problems in Africa and South America which included openly married priests and other priests using convents as AIDS free brothels. The West was a problem because of it's legal code and media freedom, not it's liberal sexuality.)

Another Vatican participant even observed that many pedophile priests had Irish surnames, a remark that offended delegates from Ireland.

“Prejudices came out,” said Bishop Robinson of Australia. “There were some very silly things said at times.”

Though disappointed, the visiting bishops were not entirely surprised.

“It wasn’t that there was bad will in Rome,” Bishop Walsh said. “They just didn’t have the firsthand experience that the dioceses were having around the world — experience with the manipulative, devious ways of the perpetrators. If the perpetrator said, ‘I didn’t do it,’ they would say, ‘He wouldn’t be telling a lie, he has to be telling the truth, and he’s innocent until proven guilty.’ ” (I beg to differ. The Vatican has plenty of experience in manipulative, devious ways.")

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.

“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.”

Clarity Comes in a Letter

Even so, the meeting served as much to expose Cardinal Ratzinger’s inattention to the problem as it did to showcase his new attitude.

Archbishop Wilson said in an interview that during the session he had to call Vatican officials’ attention to long-ignored papal instructions, dating from 1922, and reissued in 1962, that gave Cardinal Ratzinger’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously known as the Holy Office, sole responsibility for deciding cases of priests accused of particularly heinous offenses: solicitation of sex during confession, homosexuality, pedophilia and bestiality.

Archbishop Wilson said he had stumbled across the old instructions as a canon law student in the early 1990s. And he eventually learned that canonists were deeply divided on whether the old instructions or the 1983 canon law — which were at odds on major points — should hold sway.
If the old instructions had prevailed, then there would be no cause for confusion among bishops across the globe: all sexual abuse cases would fall under Cardinal Ratzinger’s jurisdiction.

(The Vatican has recently insisted that Cardinal Ratzinger’s office was responsible only for cases related to priests who solicited sex in the confessional, but the 1922 instructions plainly gave his office jurisdiction over sexual abuse cases involving “youths of either sex” that did not involve violating the sacrament of confession.)

Few people in the room had any idea what Archbishop Wilson was talking about, other participants recalled. But Archbishop Wilson said he had discussed the old papal instructions with Cardinal Ratzinger’s office in the late 1990s and had been told that they indeed were the prevailing law in pedophilia cases.

***********************************************

I can't help but wonder if Cardinal Ratzinger allowed the confusion to continue for so long because he prioritized clerical sexual abuse as a much lower priority for the CDF than hunting out theologians, disciplining bishops and national bishops conferences, and advising JPII on his multiple and continuous teaching letters and encyclicals. In other words the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger was too busy building his and JPII's autocratic version of Catholicism to deal with the fact it was rotting to death from the very clerical system they were so busy shoring up. This is akin to undergoing cosmetic plastic surgery when one has terminal cancer.

I'm sure the Times will be taken to task for this latest infusion of Anti Catholicism. It's much easier to throw stones than to refute the facts. There is real rot in the Vatican, and to distract us from noticing that, we are getting another cosmetic face lift with another of Benedict's liturgical motu proprios. Another dose of Vatican reformist kool aid is not going to make the clerical abuse scandal magically disappear. It's just another sign of the same kind of power dynamic that any abuse is always about.

For a brilliant analysis of the linked John Allen report check out Bill Lyndsey's commentary. It sure is beginning to look more and more like the Vatican ship is sinking in the West.