Pope Benedict

Pope Benedict on the Causes of the Sexual Abuse Crisis

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, sexual abuse 15 Comments

 

In retirement Pope Benedict has written an article for a Bavarian journal for priests on the causes of the sexual abuse crisis. I largely agree, and the article is not an exhaustive catalogue, but there are still some serious omissions.

The causes that Benedict identifies are

  • A loss of a lively as opposed to an abstract belief in God.
  • The denial of the teaching authority of the Church in matters of morality
  • The sexual revolution in the 1960s
  • The sole focus on protecting rights of accused priests.

It should be noted that Benedict uses the term pedophilia. This is inaccurate, but is a widespread shorthand for the abuse of young people and I think it is clear that this is what Benedict means. True pedophilia, sexual activity with pre-pubertal children, is rare and in fact declined among Catholic priest in the United States over the past two generations.

To begin with the last cause.

Benedict writes that the Congregation for the Clergy was almost exclusively focused on protecting rights of accused priests to the point that it was almost impossible to get a conviction and a removal from the priesthood.

This is correct and is a result of the clericalism that enabled the coverup. The laity in the church were seen as existing for the sake of priests. The priest’s administration of the sacraments was seen, implicitly or explicitly, as the most important activity that pleased God. If a corrupt priest destroyed the faith of the laity, the priest was still pleasing God by offering the eucharist. I am not sure how explicitly this was articulated, but this attitude encouraged the Congregation for the Clergy to do everything possible to keep priests active in the priesthood. Bishops got the message, and rarely fought the Congregation. Cardinal Wright, despite his checkered career, was one of the few who fought the Congregation to remove an abusive priest.

Benedict says this problem was why sexual abuse cases were removed from the Congregation for the Clergy, where they logically belong, to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Abusers were destroying faith of their  victims. Benedict cites a peculiarly horrible example. One abuser before he would abuse a girl, said: “This is my body given for you.”

Clericalism definite enabled and encouraged the cover-up of abuse. Benedict does not say that it also enables the abuse by placing priests above criticism in the eyes of the laity, but I think he would probably agree to that.

Benedict also identifies as a cause the lack of a lively faith in God. God had become an abstraction in theological system and clerics lacked what John Henry Newman called a realization of faith: they did not feel that the realities of faith were in fact true, and that God was a transcendent yet present and almost unendurable reality.

The widespread questioning of moral teachings by Catholic theologians also contributed to undermining the authority of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. I think this is true. Whatever the intentions of the theologians, what many people heard was that all absolutes were gone and that they should engage in their own sexual projects, as their consciences, which they interpreted as their feelings, led them.

As a consequence, many people in the church surrendered to the sexual revolution; nothing was absolutely forbidden, including adult-child sex. The radicals of the 1960s in Germany and elsewhere propagandized for and practiced adult-child sex. Homosexual clubs formed in seminaries. A bishop when he was a seminary rector showed seminarians pornographic films. The first seminary visitation was a farce. All of this is true, and fueled sexual abuse.

But there are two omissions in Benedict’s catalog, one he will never address and one he may or may not have considered, because it concerns a deeper problem.

First: Pope John Paul II refused to deal with sexual abuse beyond a few anodyne remarks. John Paul protected abusers like Maciel and refused to listen to pleas, including from Cardinal Schoenborn, to act. Why?

Second: Sexual abuse did not begin in the sixties. The Holy Office had extensive files from the Counter-Reformation on solicitation in the confessional. St. John Calasanctius founded the Piarists and covered up a bad case of abuse in one of his schools to avoid alienating the Cherubini family which was influential at the Vatican. When the Jesuit archives were uncovered after the French revolution there were many cases of abuse in them.

In many cultures, pederasty is a widespread and accepted practice.  By pederasty I mean a sexual liaison between an older man and an adolescent or young man, the type of liaisons that Cardinal McCarrick engaged in. The classical world was full of such relationships. American soldiers who have served in the Middle East have been horrified and disgusted by the practice of man-boy relationships among Muslims, who condemn homosexuality, but do not consider themselves homosexuals when they engage in sex with boys.

The Jews condemned same-sex relationships, and one of the main Jewish objections to Hellenizing was based on the practice of youths exercising in the nude in the gymnasia. The LORD was beyond sex; He had no consort but created by His word. But human procreation participated in the divine creativity and human beings were created in the image of God. Procreation therefore was under a special divine government, and crimes against procreation, such as the sterility of Sodom, were punished by fire. Those who looked back at Sodom were turned into sterile pillar of salt, and those who had been contaminated by it, like Lot, fell into incest.

The abiding male tendency to pederasty is perhaps based upon a narcissism which sees in the young male lost vigor and wishes to identify with it. It is certainly a widespread tendency that crops up in the Church (and elsewhere) – Peter Damian wrote an extensive denunciation of such sins. Societies must cultivate a strong taboo, as strong as the incest taboo, to make this practice almost nonexistent, and clearly the Church has failed to do this. The abuse will continue, and the corruption will encourage silence about true pedophilia (the abuse of pre-pubertal children) and abuse of women and girls. Pope Francis denounces the abuse of children, but he considers sex between adults (and the age of consent has been sometimes very, very young, as low as 7) as a minor peccadillo, so I do not expect any significant reforms during his pontificate.

 

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The German Bishops and Divorce

in Germany, Pope Benedict, Pope Francis 5 Comments Tags: ,

Pope Benedict’s contra Germanos

The German Bishops have decided to put into effect a policy that Cardinal Gerhard Müller of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith does not like.

From what I understand, the Germans bishops will allow Catholics who have divorced and remarried to receive communion without an declaration of nullity of the previous marriage. They will allow this if the Catholic is convinced that the previous marriage was in fact invalid, but its invalidity cannot be proved in a canonical court.

This could happen because the previous spouse has disappeared, or refuses to cooperate, or the process of a trial would be too emotionally painful.

Müller says allowing remarried Catholics to receive communion without a declaration of nullity would cause confusion. He is certainly right in that.

If a person leaves his spouse, and then tries to take another spouse, he commits adultery, according to the words of Jesus. But if the first union was not a true marriage, then the following marriage is a true marriage, and is not adulterous.

The Church, for good reasons, has added the requirement that an objective, outside judge examine the circumstances, on the principal that nemo judex in causa sua – no one should judge his own case.

But this legal principal has to take second place to the good of souls, and a person may be truly convinced that the previous marriage was no marriage at all, but is unable to prove it in a church court. Should he be denied the sacraments?

On the other hand, would allowing each person to decide in effect make the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage a dead letter?

I suspect that with much waffling and obscuring of issues Francis will allow the German bishops to do what they have decided to do (and in fact are doing already), all the while claiming that nothing has changed.

Hans “King” Kung has put his two cents in – which is more than his opinion is worth..

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Men Turn Away Their Faces

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict 14 Comments Tags: , , ,

Rod Dreher has a discussion How Blunt Should We Be?

He included a picture of a man falling from the World Trade Center to remind us of the horror of 9/11. I was at the Denver airport on 9/11/2010, and the airport asked from a moment of silence for all those who dies in the attack. An eerie hush fell over the airport. We need to be reminded.

Rod began my book, Sacrilege, but was unable to finish it – and this was the response of many readers. It described what exactly children experienced, and many people were unable to read it. If adults aren’t even able to read it, can you imagine what the children felt and what horrors their memories hold? And I didn’t even include the worst examples – I couldn’t bring myself to type them out.

The abuse in itself was bad enough, but many abuser deliberately involved sacrilege in the abuse. This poisoned the victims against God. In a more energetically Christian age, the abuser would have been burned at the stake. Instead they were reassigned and made Boy Scout chaplains.

The failure of bishops to respond to the sacrilege made me question their faith. I think many of them are mediocre, comfortable careerists who can say soothing words but never reflect upon the deep mysteries of life and sin and death. That is what the little old ladies of both sexes want, and they continue writing the checks to support this situation.

The Vatican was sent dossiers on abusive priests whom bishops wanted to laicize. I wonder of these dossiers were sanitized and phrased in canonical language: delict against the sixth commandment and phrases like that, rather than accurate descriptions of the crimes.

A documentary (trailer here) has been made about the abuser Lawrence Murphy:

Set to premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House Of God looks to be a chilling expose of the Catholic Church’s systematic cover up of decades of sex abuse by Rev. Lawrence Murphy (trailer video below). Murphy worked as a priest at a Catholic school for deaf boys in Wisconsin, and preyed upon hundreds of boys during his tenure there, from 1950 to 1974.

Rev. Murphy’s abuse, and the Church’s organised cover up, was written about extensively in the New York Times in 2010. As far back as the 1950s, Murphy’s victims told everyone they could think to tell about what Murphy had done to them: other priests, nuns, priests, three archbishops, two police departments and a district attorney. But the allegations were repeatedly shrugged off or not believed.

The Vatican never defrocked Murphy, even though word of his abuse travelled as far as the Vatican, and to then-future Pope Benedict. In fact, Benedict appears to be at the center of the Church’s non-action and cover ups of sexual abuse for more than a decade now. He ignored two letters sent to him in 1996, detailing Murphy’s abuse.

“From 2001 forward, every single priest sex abuse case went to [current Pope Joseph] Ratzinger. He has all the data,” says testimony in Mea Maxima Culpa’s trailer.

What did Ratzinger in fact have on his desk? Did he learn what was really going on?

Barbie Nadeau  in The Daily Beast writes:

In fact, it [the film] should be compulsory viewing for all Catholics, whether they blame or defend the church, for its clarity and insight into just who holds responsibility for decades of child abuse at the hands of clergy. Gibney does not rely on the usual broad strokes of anti-priest propaganda that has come to define this scandal. Instead, he meticulously attends to the details of the biggest cases, giving voice to the victims and even revealing the rarely heard frustration by the “good priests” who tried to stop the sins of their colleagues.

Gibney opens with scenes that any Catholic will recognize immediately: crisp white dresses of little girls making their first communion, burning candles as altar boys prepare for mass, the haze of smoke so familiar one can almost smell the incense. Then he reveals what’s going on. He uses family movies, faded pictures, and actors to paint a portrait of how innocent children were offered up like sacrificial lambs to known “devils in disguise” by unwitting parents who blindly trusted a church they believed would protect them.

The film, which has been banned from festivals in Venice and Rome, focuses heavily on the well-documented abuse at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wis., where Father Lawrence Murphy systematically molested young boys beginning nearly 50 years ago. Gibney uses both voiceover and subtitles for the victims’ stories, but he leaves the audio high to better articulate the sound of the men’s hands as they fervently sign their tales. One doesn’t need to read sign language to comprehend the pain and disgrace these men suffered.

Some vignettes are nauseating, like one in which a victim says he was chosen by Father Murphy while watching Bambi in a dark theater. He felt Father Murphy bumping the back of his head for attention throughout the film. Years later, he realized that it was Murphy’s erection he felt against the back of his neck. Other men tell tales of how Murphy masturbated them in the confessionals, which in the school for the deaf had an opening between priest and penitent in order to facilitate visual communication through sign language. One man remembers Father Murphy telling him that ejaculation relieved him of his sins.

Gibney illustrates the acts of abuse through hazy images and shadowy figures. Flowing cassocks catch the light as a figure meant to be Murphy tiptoes through the boys’ dorm late at night to find a boy to molest while the others lay still in their beds pretending not to notice. At one stage, according to a victim’s recollections, Murphy relocated the confessional at St. John’s from the tiny cabinet to a closet. Gibney illustrates the point with a young boy kneeling in front of a character portraying the priest. But he is not asked to pray. Instead, he is to open the priest’s cassock and perform fellatio.

Murphy was not alone:

While the focus of the film is weighted heavily on Father Murphy’s sins, several other recognizable scandals are used to bolster the point that sexual abuse was not an anomaly that happened only in America. Gibney nods to the Irish church’s problems with a glance at Father Tony Walsh, an Elvis impersonator who sang with a group called All-Priests Show and was sentenced to 16 years for horrific sexual abuses, including tying a 7-year-old boy to an altar with a monk’s rope belt and sodomizing him.

Why wants to hear about such things? But our desire to protect ourselves is what abusers count on.

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Popular Religion and Reason

in Pope Benedict, Popular religion 5 Comments Tags: , ,

For centuries Catholic reformers have looked with the hairy eyeball at popular religion, which seems to them a mish-mash of sensuality and superstition. The suspicion continues. A responder over at John Allen’s blog claims that Pope Benedict is not consistent in his insistence on the connection of religion and reason:

in Benedict’s case he is not addressing the Catholic Church’s flaws in this area. To illustrate my point; scholars have now come to the conclusion that Juan Diego who saw “Our Lady of Guadalupe” is a fictional person. If he is fiction, what does that say about the entire visitation? How does the church respond? They elevate the visitation to a solemnity. I submit that this is not a “reasonable” thing to do.

By promulgating these events, the church plays with fire. To so completely disregard fact, they leave the faithful to wonder what other teachings are based in reality and what are based on devotional whims. In this case, the end does not justify the means.

Our faith, in its pure simplicity, has a beauty and a truth that gets lost in all this other “STUFF.” We need people who will follow the teachings of Jesus and not just be dazzled by hocus pocus. And lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am not referring to our ritual and our liturgy or our virtue, habit and practice. Our Catholic identity has to be based on truth or we just wind up looking unreasonable.

Attacking the reality of the apparition of Nuestra Señora de Guadeloupe is no way to connect to the Hispanics who will soon be the majority of Catholics in the United States. But it would be dishonest for the Church to proclaim an event that never happened.

I wonder who these skeptical and unnamed “scholars” are. I have always thought that the tilma is hard to explain as a painting, and it suggests strongly that something miraculous occurred.

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German Catholicism and Celibacy – A Short History

in anticlericalism, Celibacy, clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, homosexuality, Masculinity, Moral Theology, Pope Benedict, Vatican 9 Comments Tags: , ,

 Supi, celibacy is going to disappear,and you can marry me – or?

 

German Catholics have long manifested a discontent with clerical celibacy. One of Luther’s first acts was to abolish clerical celibacy; Germans currently criticize Zwangszölibat, compulsory celibacy, forced celibacy. As Cardinal Brandmüller points out, the term Zwangszölibat misrepresents the discipline; no one is forced to be celibate.

 

Now a third of German theologians have come out asking for an end to clerical celibacy (and also demanding women priests and the acceptance of gay couples and divorced and remarried couples while we’re at it).

The appeal, published in newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s Friday edition, called on the church’s leadership to stop excluding gay couples and remarried Christians.

“The Church also needs married priests and women holding positions in the clergy,” the appeal said—in clear defiance of the Vatican’s dogmas.

In Germany theologians need the Vatican’s approval to hold chairs of Catholic theology, so this situatSupim cleibacy is going to disappear,a nd oyu can marry me, or…ion is ripe for conflict.

 

Josef Ratzinger himself at one time had asked for a discussion of the possibility of married priests.

 

The background of this conflict is the tension between German (and other national) Catholicisms and ultramontane Catholicism espoused by the Vatican, and behind that at least in part are conflicting images of masculinity: the one that sees sexual expression as an almost universal, necessary, and good aspect of masculinity and the other that sees celibacy as an expression of masculine self-discipline.

 

During the Kulturkampf in German (c. 1875) the Catholic Church was attacked as feminized and perverse. This accusation stung Catholic men, and a reform group in Munich, the Krausgesellschaft,  arose which tried to show that masculinity and Catholicism were compatible. 

 

 One of the aims of this group was the end of clerical celibacy, because it kept young men with healthy drives out of the priesthood and let in perverse types such as were exposed in a series of scandals around 1900 – scandals which turned out to be baseless. Furthermore, celibacy kept these healthy young German men from reproducing, and degenerate types, many of these Catholic reformers went on to say, were reproducing, and they should be sterilized. And German priests should produce German children because the Aryan race was the purest and most important race and the Jews were polluting it and… I think you can see where this ended up.

 

Historians have been puzzled why Nazism arose in Munich; later of course the conflict between Nazism and the Catholic Church was bitter, but at the beginning Catholic reformers – and remember, these were reformers –  were espousing naturalist and racial theories in Munich. The young Heinrich Himmler was a pious Catholic university student in Munich.

 

This is not to say that the current crop of German reformers are racialists or Nazis, but the Vatican has a long memory, and suspects with justice that demands for a change in the discipline of clerical celibacy often lead to demands for radical changes in Christian doctrine. The theologians who coupled  a demand for the end to clerical celibacy with a demand for the acceptance of homosexual couples have simply strengthened the Vatican’s determination not to make any major changes in the discipline of celibacy at this time. 

(The information about the Krausgesellschaft comes from Derek Hastings’ article  “Fears of a Feminized Church: Catholicism, Clerical Celibacy, and the Crisis of Masculinity in Wilhelmine Germany.”)

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Ratzinger Asked for Discussion of Clerical Celibacy

in Celibacy, Pope Benedict 30 Comments Tags: ,

According to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, in 1970 several theologians wrote to the German Bishops asking that the requirement that all priests in the Latin Church to be celibate be discussed. Among the theologians were Karl Rahner, Walter Kasper, Karl Lehman – and Joseph Ratzinger, currently Pope Benedict XVI. This letter was quietly and discretely filed away and was recently leaked to a reform group in Regensburg.

 

They wrote that they did not desire to prejudice the decision of the Church, but that they thought that the  long-standing tradition of clerical celibacy should be reconsidered in the light of modern historical and social conditions “neuen geschichtlichen und gesellschaftlichen Situationen,” such as the ever-increasing lack of priests, “dieses akuter werdenden Priestermangels.” They also pointed to the Eastern Catholic churches, which ordain married men.

 

In particular, they wondered whether such a requirement of celibacy was prudent in the overheated sexual atmosphere of the modern world. They questioned the formation of priests. If a candidate said he had no problem with celibacy, did he really know his own desires? They also thought it important to consider  “the psychological instability of many young men in today’s sexually overwrought society,” “die psychische Labilität vieler junger Menschen in der heutigen sexuell überreizten Gesellschaft.”

 

The signers indicated that celibacy was closely connected to the priesthood, but that refusing to discuss the current discipline seemed to show more faith in the power of formal authority “an die Macht einer formalen Autorität” than in the power of the recommendation of celibacy in the Gospel “die Kraft der evangelischen Empfehlung des ehelosen Lebens  um des Himmelreiches willen.”

 

Ratzinger has changed his mind  over certain issues over the course of his lifetime – this is neither surprising nor dishonest. However, he should explain how he went from point A to point B, especially to those who are at point A.

 

Celibacy, like fidelity in marriage, is difficult for men. Male sexuality is unruly, and always ha been. However, the situation in the modern world may make celibacy almost impossible for men who are otherwise good candidates for the priesthood. The omnipresence of Internet pornography and the availability of contraception have perhaps permanent changed the sexual milieu which young men develop.

 

In his epistles Paul goes back and forth between recommending celibacy for the unmarried and widowed and thinking that, since the world is not going to end immediately, it would be better for people to marry and for the married to abstain from relations at most for a time, lest they be tempted.

 

The Eastern Churches have married clergy, and despite all Vatican protestations to the contrary the Eastern Churches are second-class members of the universal Catholic church. They are not allowed to ordain married men in countries where the Latin rite predominates. Their patriarchs rank behind cardinals and do not vote in papal elections. And there are many other such slights which indicate that the Eastern Churches are tolerated rather than treasured.

 

The pope should not change the disciple of celibacy on his own – he should consult with the bishops of the world. Even if Benedict thinks it might be a wise idea to sometimes ordain married men, he may hesitate for two reasons:

 

First, once the disciple of celibacy was abandoned, it would be almost impossible to reinstate it if it turned out that, for all its problems, celibacy indeed provided a spiritual dynamism to the clergy of the Latin Church.

 

Second, if the discipline of celibacy were abandoned, it would raise expectations of changes in other matters which are far more serious, such as the ordination of women.

 

So I suspect Benedict will do nothing and let the next pope handle the problem. The next pope will also do nothing, and so on. Perhaps the Third Vatican Council will take it up in 2300.

 

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Canon Law and Sexual Abuse

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul II 14 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Nicholas Cafardi has reviewed in Commonweal the muddled history of the canonical handling of abuse cases. He answers a few questions, but he says many more can be answered only by the Vatican, which has not learned to be transparent: 

What we do know is that eventually a few curial officials came to understand the insufficiency of official responses to the scandal—and many more couldn’t or wouldn’t grasp its magnitude. Some bishops and their canonical advisers were flummoxed by the new Code; others looked the other way. The Ratzinger who in 1988 sought a speedier canonical process for handling abusive priests delayed decisions to remove them later. The same man who as a cardinal refused financial gifts from the Legion of Christ as pope allowed the order’s abusive founder Fr. Marcial Maciel to fade into a life of prayer and penance. By all accounts, Ratzinger’s awareness of the sexual-abuse crisis evolved over time, not always in a straight line, and often in conflict with other curial officials. Evidently Cardinal Angelo Sodano, John Paul’s powerful secretary of state, worked hard to frustrate investigations into the sexual abuse perpetrated by Maciel. We may never know whether or how Ratzinger fought to break Sodano’s blockade. Likewise, it seems improbable that we will ever know the full story of Ratzinger’s role in the reassignment of an abusive priest during his tenure as archbishop of Munich. The various currents of power in Rome can be overwhelming—even for a pope.

 So we have to continue to try to connect the dots. The resulting picture may in fact be less flattering to the Church (e.g., malice and corruption) than the reality (e.g., dilatoriness and incompetence) – but no one knows, and no one  may ever know.

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John Paul and the Church of Celebrity

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, Pope John Paul 6 Comments Tags: , , ,

Sardath said in the comments: 

This is a man who survived the Nazi genocide against the Poles, out-maneuvered the Soviets, and utterly crushed liberation theology; and yet we are to believe that he had no idea what he was doing when he signed false bank documents, had no idea that bishops and priests in Latin American were giving aid and comfort to state terrorism, and had no idea what Law, Groer, and Maciel had been up to all those years?

The “santo subito” people can’t have it both ways. If JP2 really was the intellectual and spiritual titan that he pretended to be, then he must have had the capacity to know and understand what his own people were up to. If he knew and did nothing, he was an accomplice in their crimes; if he could have known but chose not to, then he was criminally negligent, which is almost as bad. Either way, they have no business putting him up for sainthood, because he doesn’t even remotely qualify.

There’s also a big problem with some of the theological positions that Ratzinger staked out on these issues while he was head of the CDF, including the claim that while the pope may not be infallible in his disciplinary decisions, those decisions are nevertheless “not without divine assistance” and therefore “call for the adherence of the faithful.” So if JP2 was not without divine assistance in the way he ran his shop, why has everything come to ruin? What sort of saint is it who holds the position of “Vicar of Christ on earth” but somehow consistently fails to avail himself of the divine assistance which, we are assured, was always available to him if he only asked for it?

And now Ratzinger is pope himself, and so is also presumably not without divine assistance in the decisions he makes–and yet he is not only rushing headlong toward a disastrous premature canonization of his predecessor, but has continued to surround himself with the same people who, we are now being told, wrecked the papacy of JP2 with their lies and corruption. We have been told that it was Ratzinger who tried and tried to clean up the corruption around JP2, but was checkmated at every turn by the evil Sodano. So what is his excuse now? He of all people must know what Sodano and the others were up to, and he of all people has the power to send them packing. Why has he not done so?

John Paul’s refusal to act was inexplicable. Benedict’s is explicable but discouraging. 

I am of course an outside observer, but even Cardinal Schönborn, who pleaded with John Paul to make a statement about Groër and to stem the resignations for the Austrian Church, was baffled by John Paul’s refusal even to say anything. 

I repeat. Cardinal Schönborn read my book Sacrilege, and he said that in the case which he was familiar, that of his predecessor Cardinal Groër, things were worse than I knew. Groër had made strongly homoerotic gestures to almost every student he had come into contact with over the years; Groër stopped short of penetration, but that was the only thing he didn’t do. 

John Paul had appointed Groër archbishop of Vienna over the objections of the Austrian episcopate, because Groër preached Fatima. Even after Groër left Vienna and the scandal was in full bloom, John Paul continued to favor him. Schönborn was in Rome for the consistory in which he was made a Cardinal. Without telling Schönborn, John Paul had invited Groër to Rome and was receiving him socially. When Schönborn was informed of this at a news conference, he uttered some undiplomatic words about the situation.  

Almost the entire Austrian episcopate, including Schönborn, the writer of the Catechism, publicly announced they were sure Groër was guilty. The numerous victims said Groër was guilty. Why didn’t John Paul believe them or at least order a thorough investigation. John Paul not only did not order an investigation of Maciel; he allowed Sodano to thwart Ratzinger’s attempt to get at the truth. 

Benedict apparently has decided that ridding the Church of abusers is enough; he thinks he does not have to change the culture among the hierarchy that allowed the abuse to go on.  

But once Benedict is gone, a new pope may not have the same priorities. He may think that sexual abuse is a minor problem compared to poverty, the conflict with Islam, secularization, and the other difficulties Christianity faces. The bishops can then return to (or continue in) their old ways in countries that do not have the vigorous tort system that the United States has. 

John Paul thought the Church could flourish with PR – and Benedict, by canonizing him, is continuing the policy. Cleaning the Augean stables of the corrupt clergy would be painful, and many of the laity would oppose it, but a church that cultivates only the appearance of holiness without the reality is preparing itself for a crisis as big as the Reformation. Or even worse, no Reformation. Just corrupt and lax mediocrity that narcissistically calls itself holiness. If men turn away from Christianity because it is too austere and other-worldly, it is one thing; but if they turn away because it falls beneath the standards of common decency and honesty, that is another.

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The Pope and Proportionalism

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Moral Theology, Pope Benedict 19 Comments Tags: , ,

In his Christmas message to the curia, Pope Benedict lamented sexual abuse and said the church must reflect on what went wrong. He, as a theologian, thought that distorted moral theology in the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the abuse. 

In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today.

John Allen tends to poo-poo this and finds experts who are dubious.

Among specialists, however, there are serious reservations as to whether proportionalism really is to blame.

First, moral theologians say that proportionalism reached its high-water mark in the 1970s and has been in retreat ever since. Focusing on it now, they say, risks fighting yesterday’s battles.

Second, Redemptorist moral theologian Fr. Brian Johnstone of the Catholic University of America said in the wake of the pope’s 2008 remarks that he’s not aware of any serious Catholic moralist who ever invoked the theory to justify the sexual exploitation of minors.

Johnstone, an Australian who over the years has been critical of proportionalism, said he’s “totally unconvinced” of any connection between proportionalism and the abuse crisis.

Third, statistical studies of the crisis may not support a link to a defective moral theory.

Margaret Smith, data analyst for a John Jay study of the “causes and context” of the sexual abuse crisis commissioned by the U.S. bishops, likewise said in 2008 that research found incidents of sexual abuse as far back as 1950, the very beginning of the time frame the bishops asked them to consider (1950-2000). Those earlier acts of abuse probably cannot be explained by proportionalism.

Smith added that changing attitudes towards authority in the ’60s and ’70s, as well as a growing individualism in the broader culture, may well have played a role in the crisis – and that, she said, was perhaps the point Benedict “was reaching for” in 2008. Nonetheless, Smith said, her hunch is that when all the data is in, proportionalism will not loom large.

“This is behavior much more deeply embedded in the personality of individuals than a particular theory of moral action,” Smith said. “I think the analysis of causes will have more to do with things like preparation for living a life of celibate chastity, and how to understand and deal with intimacy.”

While the specific theory of proportionalism may not have been the main culprit, there were plenty of influential theologians around who contributed the climate of sexual laxity, especially about homosexual behavior.

The reports of true pedophilia (small children, under 10 or so) were a small portion of the abuse committed by priests and in fact declined slowly after 1950.

Terrible abuse has long occurred in the Church, but at least in the US there is a big spike in the reports of abuse of boys 12-18, abuse that occurred in the 1960s and 1970. Abusers showed older boys books by theologians who said that homosexual sex could be ok.

The Rev Anthony Kosnick in the Catholic Theological Society of America book, Human Sexuality: New Direction in American Catholic Thought (1977) concluded that

“at this time the behavioral sciences have not identified any sexual expression that can be empirically demonstrated to be of itself, in a culture-free way, detrimental to full human existence.”

Any sexual expression – any.

 

 

Of course society is not as enlightened as Catholic theologians, and it criminalizes certain behaviors, so Kosnick advised that until society realizes that there is no sexual expression that is in itself harmful,

“enlightened and well-integrated individuals might well free themselves of conflict by simply reflecting on the relativity of their society’s sexual ethic and proceed discreetly with their sexual project.”

 

And so several thousand Catholic priests proceeded with their sexual project.

Of course unenlightened parents would sometimes object.

 

 

Rev. Andre Guindon, who is still held up as a progressive theologian, had taught in The Sexual Language, a book that the abuser Rudy Kos used in his seminary, that

“the most recent studies tend to disprove that lasting hurt comes from pedophiliac contact itself. Rather, the trauma comes from the familial panic which is the usual response to the incident.”

The children are hurt not by sexual contacts with priests, but by parents who make a fuss about it – so taught a leading theologian, and such seemed to be the attitude of the bishops.

Perhaps some of Benedict’s suspicions are justified

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Light of the World: Benedict on Maciel

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As bad as the sexual abuse in the Church has been, the official misjudgment about Maciel is even more serious. Benedict called Maciel “a false prophet” (p. 39) and such he was.

 

But this psychopathic incestuous child molester and thief not only fooled tens of thousands of Catholics, he deceived the pope. Pope John Paul II called this false prophet “an efficacious  to youth.” But Maciel did not deceive everyone. Jason Berry was right in his judgment; John Paul wrong.

 

Therefore the pope’s discernment of a religious founder and the movement he sets in motion is not reliable. In fact, it is worth nothing. Catholics must rely on their private judgment as to whether a religious figure is doing the work of the Holy Spirit or an evil spirit.

 

When the False Prophet comes at the end of the world, will he too deceive the pope and receive approbation from the Vatican? It is a chilling thought to those who take seriously the sayings in the New Testament about the end of the world.

 

 

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

 

For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect.

And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.

 

And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.

And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

 

 

 

 

 

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Light of the World: Benedict on Homosexuality and the Priesthood

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The Jesuit of the Future

Benedict sees homosexuality as incompatible with the priesthood, for two reasons, First, the Latin priesthood is celibate and celibacy does not have the same meaning for a homosexual and a heterosexual and second because the homosexual has a distorted view of the relationship of men and women.

Homosexuality is incompatible with the priestly vocation. Otherwise, celibacy would lose its meaning as a renunciation. It would be extremely dangerous if celibacy became a sort of pretext for bringing people into the priesthood who don’t want to get married anyway. For, in the end, their attitude toward man and woman is somehow distorted, off center and, in any case, is not within the direction of creation of which we have spoke. (p. 152)

I think Benedict is both overstating his case and underestimating the real situation.

As to the first: It seems to me that a homosexual can take a vow of celibacy, just as a poor person can take a vow of poverty. Obviously a rich person who renounces his possession does something different from a poor person who renounces possessions he does not have, but I do not see why a poor person cannot take a vow of poverty or a homosexual a vow of celibacy.

Some homosexuals may have a distorted view of male-female relationships (as do many heterosexuals), but I do not know if that is universal. If a homosexual has a sincere desire to be chaste and has a normal masculine personality, I do not see why he would not make a good priest. If homosexuals were in the priesthood in about the same proportion as the general population (2-3%) I doubt that there would be any problem.

Benedict is concerned about having the priesthood viewed as a gay profession.

The Congregation for Education issued a decision a few years ago to the effect that homosexual candidates cannot become priests because their sexual orientation estranges them from the proper sense of paternity, for the intrinsic nature of priestly being. The selection of candidates to the priesthood must therefore be very careful. The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality. (pp. 152-153)

But Benedict is deceiving himself if he thinks that the Vatican’s directives to exclude homosexuals from the seminary are being observed. The Dominicans ordained a leading gay activist. In Quebec a male prostitute was ordained. The Jesuit novices of the Western province had a drag party and put it on the internet. Seminary rectors, such as Father Donald Cozzens, who are in the best position to know, say that half or more than half of seminarians are homosexual. A Los Angeles Times poll indicated that young priests are both more orthodox and more gay than the older generation – and the two groups overlap (the data are all in my book Sacrilege).

David Berger is a Thomist who moved in conservative Catholic circles and came out of the closet in March. He claimed, and I think with much truth, that the liturgically conservative Catholicism that Benedict is encouraging is especially attractive to gays (not only to gays, I hasten to add). The scandal of the ultra-conservative seminary of St. Polten in Austria is symptomatic.

If Benedict thinks that anyone is paying any attention to Vatican directives about not ordaining homosexuals, he is sadly mistaken. There is perhaps more discretion now – no more photos of novices in drag on the Internet, but the reality remains unchanged. The priesthood in many parts of Europe and America has become a heavily gay profession. The chief effect will be to encourage the heterosexual male tendency to stay away from involvement in the church, and especially to keep their sons away from contact with gay clergy.

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Light of the World – The Williamson Affair

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Archbishop Lefebvre was unhappy with the Second Vatican Council and with the way the Church was going. He established the Society of Saint Pius X, which had some success (600,000 members, 500 priests) and became increasingly alienated from Rome. One cannot have sacraments without bishops, so to assure that the Society would have a line of bishops to consecrate priests, Lefebvre consecrated bishops without the permission of the pope. This entailed automatic excommunication for both Lefebvre and for the bishops he had consecrated. 

A similar situation exists in China. Chinese bishops have consecrated bishops chosen by the Communist government without first getting permission of the pope. These bishops also are excommunicated. (p. 22) 

But “when such a bishop professes his acknowledgment both of the primacy in general and also that of the currently reigning pope in particular, his excommunication is revoked, because there is no more reason for it.” (p. 22) 

The Vatican is trying to regularize the situation in China and unify the two factions of the Church – those who acknowledge the primacy of the pope and those who by their action have rejected it. 

The bishops in the Society of Saint Pius X were not excommunicate because of their views on Vatican II but because of their action in the irregular consecration. Once they acknowledged the primacy, they “had to be absolved form excommunication.” 

When the Vatican revoked the excommunications of four bishops in the Society of Pius X, it soon discovered that one of them, Williamson, was a Holocaust denier. He in fact had never been a member of the Catholic Church, but had gone straight from Anglicanism to the Society of Saint Pius X (this is another complication which Benedict did not address – how do you lift the excommunication of someone who was never a member of the Church?). 

It would have taken about three minutes on Google to discover Williamson’s bizarre views, but Benedict admitted “none of us went on the Internet to find out what sort of person we were dealing with.” (p. 121) 

Napoleon said that one should never ascribe to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence. 

This failure let the tabloid press have a field day: “Nazi Pope Welcomes Holocaust Denier.” etc. Yes, quite unfair, as Benedict complained, but incompetence has consequences. 

However, Benedict says that if he know about Williamson’s views he would have handled the matter differently, “the first step would have been to separate the Williamson case form the others.” (p. 121) 

This calls for follow up questions. Why would Benedict have handled it differently? How would he have handled it?  He said that excommunication “had” to be lifted once the bishops acknowledged the primacy. Where in canon law does it say the bishop’s views can be taken into consideration in deciding whether to lift an excommunication? 

Williamson was not accused of heresy, but of holding an erroneous opinion about an historical event (no doubt from the worst of motives – but some people can’t believe the Holocaust happened because they can’t believe that human beings would do such terrible things). 

Are some views so irrational as to be beyond the pale? Which ones?  — Holocaust denial, Flat Worlder, Extra Terrestrial Abduction, or the belief that the the 2001 attacks in the U.S were carried out by U.S. and Israeli intelligence (a significant part of German population believes this). How about the Central American cardinal who thought the media stories on sexual abuse were a Jewish plot? 

Seewald should have asked follow-up questions, but on this issue, as on many others, he did not really ask hard questions.

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Light of the World – Benedict’s World View

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Pope Benedict’s interview with Seewald, Light of the World, reveals a lot about how the pope thinks. I will comment separately on the issues he raises. 

Joseph Ratzinger grew in a devout Catholic family in Nazi Germany. During his adult life he saw most of the Eurasian landmass under communist dictatorships that sought to marginalize or destroy religion and that inflicted unimaginable cruelties on innocent people. He lived through and saw “the whole power of evil that came to a head in the major dictatorships of the twentieth century – and that in another way is still at work today.” (p. 165) 

That other way is the “the danger that reason – so-called Western reason – claims that it as now really recognized what is right and thus makes a claim that is inimical to freedom…no one should be forces to live according to the ‘new religion’ as though it alone were definitive and obligatory for all mankind.” (p. 53) 

This new religion “pretends to be generally valid because it is reasonable, indeed, because it is reason itself, which knows all and, therefore, defines the frame of reference that is now supposed to apply to everyone.” (p. 52) 

Benedict here is referring to the Western attitude that abortion, gay marriage, and the manipulation human life through biotechnology – as in Brave New World – is self-evidently reasonable and all opposition to it must be eliminated to at least rendered ineffectual. 

But Benedict also sees the danger of a “dictatorship of relativism”: “a large proportion of contemporary philosophies, in fact, consist of saying that man is not capable if truth,” in which case, “the opinion of the majority would be the only criterion that counted.” (pp. 50-51). 

These two views of the modern world seem on the surface to be incompatible: does the Western world now think it has attained truly scientific truth, as the Nazis thought they had attained scientific racial truth and the Communists thought they had attained scientific economic truth? Or does the Western world dismiss truth claims and decide everything by power – the decision of the majority? 

Benedict is right that both attitudes are at work in the modern world. When a Christian tries to argue the truth claims of theism or of Christianity, the modern response is “What is truth?” “That is simply your opinion,” etc.  But when Christianity to act on or merely teach Christian views on homosexuality, they are disciplined and prosecuted because the modern world thinks that such things are so patently false that the person who holds them must be motivated solely by hate. 

If I were Seewald, I would have asked Benedict to explain how these contradictory tendencies can both be at work in the modern world to the detriment of Christianity.

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Benedict and Spanish Laicism

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I finished my Camino on October 31, met my wife, and we stayed in Santiago until November 4, just before the arrival of the Pope. We went to Madrid for a few days and observed, among other things, the controversy started by the remarks that Benedict made to reporters on his plane: 

“In Spain, a strong, aggressive laicity, an anti-clericalism, a secularization has been born as we experienced in the 1930’s,” Benedict said. 

Along the Camino I had seen the memorials to the priests and religious murdered by the Republican side in 1936-1939 – and also the memorials to the leftists murdered by the Nationalist forces. With the wayside crosses, such memorials put the aches and pains I was feeling into a proper perspective.

 

At the Prado we saw Goya’s overwhelming paintings of the violence and repression in Madrid during the battle between the Spanish people and the French forces in 1808. At the Queen Sofia museum we saw an exhibition about the Spanish Civil War – of which Picasso’s “Guernica” was the centerpiece. The Republican propaganda showed the Catholic clergy as murderous allies of the Nazi-dominated fascists. We saw the newsreels of the battle of Madrid, newsreels of the children killed by bombs and artillery.

 

On Saturday we attended mass at the Augustinian church – the  mass of the martyrs of the order, murdered in Spain 1936-1939. We were given cards with their pictures, and the relics were in the church. The priest pointed to the martyrs during his sermon, as he spoke too of the Catholics murdered during the All Saints day mass in Iraq. 

 

Those who know Spain far better than I do say that conditions have changed so much that another civil war is impossible – I hope they are right. But the memories of the war are bitter on both the Catholic and laicist sides.

 

Franco was ruthless in his conduct of the war as a matter of policy and was not magnanimous in victory. The Republican side let mobs massacre soldiers and clergy and suppressed all Catholic activity. It was hardly surprising that Catholics turned to Franco to save them from being slaughtered, but they turned a blind eye to Franco’s slaughter of  Republicans who had done nothing criminal.

 

Are the Pope’s comments justified? I do not know enough about Spanish life to know whether the consumerist secularism of today’s Spain is as dangerous as the murderous “Laicismo” of the 1930s. Catholics and laicists have learned to live together in Spain, but they still do not like or respect each other.

 

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In the Beginning Are Words

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Although words are not everything, they are a beginning, especially if they reveal the heart. Perhaps we can take some hope from these words of Pope Benedict: 

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church, the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. 

Grace is not cheap; it costs the death of Christ, and our participation in it means that we too must die, in one way or another, and death is rarely pleasant.

 

Archbishop Diarmuid of Martin of Dublin said that when he read through the reports of abuse, he threw them on the floor in despair. He sees that true repentance had not occurred in the Church in Ireland. 

Why am I discouraged?  The most obvious reason is the drip-by-drip never-ending revelation about child sexual abuse and the disastrous way it was handled.   There are still strong forces which would prefer that the truth did not emerge.  The truth will make us free, even when that truth is uncomfortable.  There are signs of subconscious denial on the part of many about the extent of the abuse which occurred within the Church of Jesus Christ in Ireland and how it was covered up.  There are other signs of rejection of a sense of responsibility for what had happened.  There are worrying signs that despite solid regulations and norms these are not being followed with the rigour required.

 

Renewal of the Church requires participation and responsible participation.  I have spoken about the need for accountability regarding the scandal of sexual abuse.  I am struck by the level of disassociation by people from any sense of responsibility.  While people rightly question the concept of collective responsibility, this does not mean that one is not responsible for one’s personal share in the decisions of the collective structures to which one was part.

 

I am surprised at the manner in which Church academics and Church publicists can today calmly act as pundits on the roots of the sexual abuse scandals in the Church as if they were totally extraneous to the scandal.  Where did responsibility lie for a culture of seminary institutions which produced both those who abused and those who mismanaged the abuse?  Where were the pundit-publicists while a Church culture failed to recognise what was happening?  

Where indeed? With the bishops and who cardinals blamed the Freemasons, the Jews, the New York Times, the tort attorneys, the psychologists, the victims – Anything to avoid the hard road of self-knowledge, repentance, and conversion.

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