Benedict

Auf Wiedershauen, Benedikt

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Benedict’s resignation should not be all that surprising. He has maintained that a pope can resign, and canon law provides for it.

Despite his reputation as a hard-line, Ratzinger expressed discomfort with the tendency to idolize the pope, culminating in the rock-start image of John Paul II. At one point Ratzinger said that the separated Eastern Churches would only have to acknowledge the papacy as it existed in the first millennium, when it was not all that important.

In their battles with secular and totalitarian states, popes put the focus on themselves as the locus of unity in the Church – ubi Petrus, ibi Eccelsia. This may have been necessary to prevent the church from being taken captive by nationalist and totalitarian governments (as has happened with a large segment of the Catholic Church in China). But such a focus distorts the papal office.

One result has been an unrealistic expectation about what a pope can or should do. The impression is that the pope can by his own will change whatever he wants in the Church, including the moral law. He could allow priests to marry, allow women to be ordain, say that contraception, abortion, and homosexual acts are not sins, etc.

Maciel told the seminarians he abused that, of course while homosexuality was wrong, the pope had given him a dispensation from that law because of his health needs.

Even when it comes to disciplinary matters, popes should not and generally do not make changes without the consensus of the church. The popes who declared the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption canvassed the world’s bishops and received many requests from priests, religious, and laity to declare the dogmas.

Even a change in a discipline such as celibacy would require the consensus of the world’s bishops over a reasonable period of time.

Benedict has done more that any pope in centuries (probably since Pius V) to end sexual abuse in the Church. He has not done enough, but he has done more than most bishops, priests, and even laity want. One reason the Vatican did not encourage bishops to discipline abusive priests is that the laity screamed whenever their favorite charismatic, narcissistic, abusive priest was disciplined. The bishops saw how the laity reacted, and so did the Vatican.

The responsibility for tolerating abusive priests is shared by segments of the church; those who tried to end it were often marginalized and rejected, because abusers are very popular- that is how they get access to children. In such matters, the papacy, the episcopacy, the clergy and laity all failed, and the children were sacrificed to a false image of the Church.

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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

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Maciel, Pope Benedict 25 Comments Tags: , , ,

 

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

in homosexuality, Pope Benedict, priesthood 19 Comments Tags: , , ,

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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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Triumph of the Will

in Vatican, Voluntarism 5 Comments Tags: , ,

In all the talk about Benedict’s comments on the use of condoms to avoid transmitting AIDS, the words use have been “ban.” “allow,” “permit,” etc, all referring to acts of the will. 

But the Pope was not making an act of the will, he is not making a law, but expressing a judgment. Moral discourse is infected with nominalism and voluntarism, which regards the moral law as an act of the will (either of God or the hierarchy) rather than a judgment, an act of reason. 

Catholics believe that the judgments of the official teachers in the Church are guided by the Holy Spirit, and are reliable, and indeed in certain cases infallible. But they are judgments, not acts of the will.  

In any case the scope of the Church’s teaching on contraception applies to married couples, no one else. As Martin Rhonheimer, a priest of Opus Dei who teaches at the Opus Dei university in Rome, explained:

The teaching of the Church is not about condoms or similar physical or chemical devices, but about marital love and the essentially marital meaning of human sexuality. It affirms that, if married people have a serious reason not to have children, they should modify their sexual behaviour by at least periodic  abstinence from sexual acts. To avoid destroying both the unitive and the procreative meaning of sexual acts and therefore the fullness of mutual self-giving, they must not prevent the sexual act from being fertile while carrying on having sex.

But what of promiscuous people, sexually active homosexuals, and prostitutes? What the Catholic Church teaches them is simply that they should not be promiscuous, but faithful to one single sexual partner; that prostitution is a behaviour which gravely violates human dignity, mainly the dignity of the woman, and therefore should not be engaged in; and that homosexuals, as all other people, are children of God and loved by him as everybody else is, but that they should live in continence like any other unmarried person.

But if they ignore this teaching, and are at risk from HIV, should they use condoms to prevent infection? The moral norm condemning contraception as intrinsically evil does not apply to these cases. Nor can there be church teaching about this; it would be simply nonsensical to establish moral norms for intrinsically immoral types of behaviour. Should the Church teach that a rapist must never use a condom because otherwise he would additionally to the sin of rape fail to respect mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violate the Sixth Commandment? Of course not.

Whatever one thinks of the magisterium’s judgment on contraception, it simply does not apply to sex outside of marriage.

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Vatican Corruption

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, Vatican 23 Comments Tags: , , ,

John Paul II and Paul VI did not listen to the cries of violated children. Why?

I have a few sources with Vatican connections and have received fairly reliable second-hand information, and my guess at the scenario is this. 

John Paul, for reasons he refused to explain even to a cardinal who questioned him, would not act against abusers. John Paul was a lousy judge of character. His priest–“friends” in the Krakow chancery were all in the pay of the Communist secret police, and gave them detailed information about the precise location of Wojtyla’s bed, which medicines he took, who his pharmacist was, etc. The priests were supplying information potential assassins in return for permission to study aboard for career advancement. When this was finally discovered after the fall of communism, John Paul’s secretary kept it from him –  why disturb an old man, he explained. 

The only explanation John Paul gave for his refusal to act against prominent abusers is that “they” wouldn’t let him act – a nameless they, but in the context, the curia. There are persistent stories that the Vatican offcials recieved gifts, such as $100,000 mass stipends, from Maciel, and priests who belonged to the Legion and to the congregation founded by fake stigmatist Gino Burresi worked for Sodano, protecting their corrupt bosses 

Ratzinger was an academic; I presume his first contact with the case of a sexually abusive priest was in Munich; he did not handle the Hullermann case well- he simply turned it over to a subordinate and did not check up on it. When he became head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger, as John Allen explains, got only a few abuse cases, mostly involving solicitation in the confessional. The others went to other dicasteries, which mishandled them. 

Ratzinger was determined to crack down, and therefore took over all the cases in 2002. He was horrified by what he read, but was limited in what he could do by John Paul and especially by Sodano. He was determined to end the abuse if he became pope, and has done a lot, although not enough, especially in regard to bishops. 

But the full truth has not come out, and secrecy lets the cancer spread. There have been worse situations. As the book Fallen Order demonstrates from contemporary documents, a 17th century pope appointed a man he knew was a sexual abuser to head the Piarists – which then collapsed as the members who were sincere Christians rebelled against the papal attempt to make them a pedophile organization. 

Secrecy may bring about worse disasters. Probably 7-10% of priests have had sexual contact with minors; maybe a smaller percentage of bishops, but still a substantial number of bishops are abusers. Have cardinals abused minors? Suppose one of them becomes pope? The papacy survived the pornocracy of the 9th century and the corruption of the Renaissance, but the internet would flash the news around the word if a pope was accused of abuse. Could the effectiveness of the papacy survive that? 

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Vindicating the Victims

in Catholic Church, clergy sex abuse scandal, Pope Benedict, repentance, Responsibility, Vatican, Voluntarism 10 Comments Tags: , ,

 We are witnessing a cruel irony of history: Joseph Ratzinger, one of the few ecclesiastics to evidence genuine horror at the sexual abuse of children by priests and the one pope since perhaps Pius V to act against corruption in the Church, is receiving a massive international attack for his failures in handling abuse cases. 

It is not entirely undeserved. Ratzinger worked within the system and accepted how it handled sexual abusers: treatment and secrecy, and no regard for the victims. He seems to have come to a genuine awakening and determined to change the Church once he became pope, and he did immediately act against abusers, such as Maciel, whom John Paul had protected. 

But Ratzinger too had failed to protect children, chiefly through negligence. At the very least, he did not monitor Peter Hullermann, he did not forbid Hullermann to work in a parish, he did not read the memo (perhaps) that Hullermann has been assigned to parish work within days of arriving in Munich for therapy for the “disease” of pedophilia. 

Nor in the correspondence I have read in other cases did Ratzinger, the son of a policeman, ever suggest that the police be contacted, or that victims be cared for. 

He was disgusted by the behavior of the abusers, but he did not show much awareness of the harm that was being done to the victims.  

Criminal justice is necessary to vindicate the victim. The criminal, especially the sexual abuser, had by his actions shown he regards his victim as sub-human, as a mere object for his use. When the community punishes the criminal, it vindicates the victim, demonstrating that it regards the victim as a person whose worth is recognized. This is true of the penal sanctions of the state and of the Church. 

Commentators on the Commonweal blog defended Ratzinger’s decision not to laicize the abuser Murphy at the end of his life – why Murphy was no longer a threat to children, and to laicize him before his death would have been “vindictive.” Yes, precisely, it would have vindicated the victims, as criminal prosecution would have done. 

Ratzinger was simply following policies of the pontificates of John Paul and probably John XXIII; but if he were to point this out, he would be asked the question – Why then are you canonizing these men as saints? 

Underlying Ratzinger’s failure was of course clericalism and a desire to preserve the image of the priesthood. But even deeper than that is a voluntaristic tendency in Western morality that he himself has noticed and criticized. God forbids certain actions not arbitrarily (as the voluntarists says), but because the actions harm the goodness and beauty of the creatures whom He made and loves. 

Therefore God forbids sexual abuse because it harms both the abuser and the victim. Even if the abuser repents (and which ones ever have?) the harm to the victim remains, and can never really be undone. It must be atoned for – but atonement, expiation, has vanished from the Catholic mind, and has even been explicitly rejected by the head of the German bishops’ conference. Of course, because otherwise the bishops and the pope would have much to atone for, and atonement is humiliating and painful, and bishops and popes do not like to be humiliated.

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Nemesis Approaches

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Germany, Vatican 2 Comments Tags: ,

The tragedy of sexual abuse is unrolling in Germany like a Greek drama, and Nemesis is in the wings awaiting her cue.

The Austrian dramatist Felix Mitterer wrote a two-man drama “Die Beichte” (“The Confession’) which recently opened in Regensburg, although it was scheduled over twelve months ago. The timing is eerie. NBC reports:

The play tells the story of an orphaned choir boy who was abused by his priest, and later, as an adult, abuses his own child. In order to protect his son from the same destiny, the main character is determined to kill himself and his boy. But first, he confronts the priest, his former guardian and tormentor, in a confession that culminates in a disturbing dispute between the two men.

The choir of the cathedral of Regensburg is the Domspatzen, and Pope Benedict’s brother was director of the choir beginning in 1964. He claims to have known nothing of cases of sexual abuse of choir boys, cases that occured in the late 1950s and resulted in convictions.

The audience in Regensburg has been stunned by the play:

Both actors said the audience’s reaction to the play is quite different from any other productions they have performed in before: On most nights, there is very little or no applause at the final curtain, which leaves them facing an auditorium full of dismayed viewers.

The actor who plays the priest is the 60-year-old Mika Greza, who revealed

“I know what we are performing here and what we are talking about in this play. I have experienced it myself,”

He declined to elaborate to NBC, but a German paper, Die Mittelbayerische Zeitung, has more information: he was abused when he was a choir boy (1958-1965) in the Regensburg Domspatzen.

I hear the footsteps of Nemesis.

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Scicluna on Maciel

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Maciel, Vatican 11 Comments Tags: , , ,

In his interview, Msgr. Scicluna, who was the Vatican investigator in the Maciel case, refers directly but not by name to Maciel. Spanish-language newspapers have picked this up, but the English-language press may have missed it: 

Only with the 2001 “Motu Proprio” did the crime of paedophilia again become our exclusive remit. From that moment Cardinal Ratzinger displayed great wisdom and firmness in handling those cases, also demonstrating great courage in facing some of the most difficult and thorny cases, “sine acceptione personarum”. Therefore, to accuse the current Pontiff of a cover-up is, I repeat, false and calumnious. 

(snip) 

In sixty percent of cases there has been no trial, above all because of the advanced age of the accused, but administrative and disciplinary provisions have been issued against them, such as the obligation not to celebrate Mass with the faithful, not to hear confession, and to live a retired life of prayer. It must be made absolutely clear that in these cases, some of which are particularly sensational and have caught the attention of the media, no absolution has taken place. It’s true that there has been no formal condemnation, but if a person is obliged to a life of silence and prayer, then there must be a reason… 

This is what Benedict did: he did not try Maciel, but obliged him to lead a retired life of prayer and penance. 

Benedict had reversed John Paul’s policy of protecting and encouraging Maciel, and feels it somewhat unjust that he, Benedict, is now being criticized. But he should explain how Maciel managed to escape for decades, who Maciel’s protectors were, how John Paul could have made such an egregious mistake. Until Benedict is completely honest and open about the failure of the Church, his own integrity will be questioned.

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Defenders of Benedict

in clergy sex abuse scandal, Vatican 6 Comments Tags: , ,

Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop of Munich –  Freising from 1977 to 1982. In 1980 there were about 1200 diocesan priests in that archdiocese.

 

In 1980 there were also about 1200 diocesan priest in the Boston archdiocese.

 

In Boston there have been about 200 priests (diocesan and religious) accused of sexual abuse.

 

Therefore it would be surprising if there had been no abuse in the Munich archdiocese during Ratzinger’s tenure, or that no case of former abuse came to light during his tenure. 

 

If that is true, it shows a radical difference between the behavior of priests in Boston and in Munich.

 

Msgr. Scicluna defended Benedict in an interview. Sciculna was the investigator who gathered evidence about Maciel, evidence that convinced Benedict that Maciel was guilty.

 

Scicluna is correct that Benedict has acted far more aggressively against sexual abusers than any recent pope, and that it is almost unfair that he is bearing the brunt of the criticism. Scicluna does not say it, but John Paul’s failures were egregious.

 

However even Scicluna reveals failures in the Vatican. 

Between 1975 and 1985 I do not believe that any cases of paedophilia committed by priests were brought to the attention of our Congregation. Moreover, following the promulgation of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, there was a period of uncertainty as to which of the “delicta graviora” were reserved to the competency of this dicastery. Only with the 2001 “Motu Proprio” did the crime of paedophilia again become our exclusive remit. From that moment Cardinal Ratzinger displayed great wisdom and firmness in handling those cases, also demonstrating great courage in facing some of the most difficult and thorny cases, “sine acceptione personarum”. Therefore, to accuse the current Pontiff of a cover-up is, I repeat, false and calumnious. 

It took 18 years to clarify the status of the cases of sexual abusers? I have correspondence between American bishops and Ratzinger during those years. Who was responsible for the delay? I suspect John Paul, and that should be taken into account in the process for his canonization.

 

Scicluna (and presumably Benedict) clearly does not want bishops to report crimes to the police.

Q: A recurring accusation made against the ecclesiastical hierarchy is that of not reporting to the civil authorities when crimes of paedophilia come to their attention.

A: In some English-speaking countries, but also in France, if bishops become aware of crimes committed by their priests outside the sacramental seal of Confession, they are obliged to report them to the judicial authorities. This is an onerous duty because the bishops are forced to make a gesture comparable to that of a father denouncing his own son. Nonetheless, our guidance in these cases is to respect the law.

Q: And what about countries where bishops do not have this legal obligation?

A: In these cases we do not force bishops to denounce their own priests, but encourage them to contact the victims and invite them to denounce the priests by whom they have been abused. Furthermore, we invite the bishops to give all spiritual – and not only spiritual – assistance to those victims. In a recent case concerning a priest condemned by a civil tribunal in Italy, it was precisely this Congregation that suggested to the plaintiffs, who had turned to us for a canonical trial, that they involve the civil authorities in the interests of victims and to avoid other crimes.

The interviewer does not bring up, nor does Scicluna address, the issue of bishops who have tolerated and enabled abusers. That, even more than the abuse, is the source of the crisis.

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Benedict and the Anglican Use

in Anglicans, Celibacy, Vatican 3 Comments Tags: ,

The Pope’s decision to allow the setting up of an ordinariate for Anglicans who wish to become Catholic is a generous experiment. It would not be a separate “church” like the Eastern Churches, which are self-governing churches of apostolic origin in communion with Rome. As far as I kow, no pope has ever claimed the ability to establish a “church” is this sense. 

The structure that the pope is contemplating is more like that of the military ordinariate. The bishop is appointed by the pope, and has spiritual authority over military personnel and their families. The ordinariate has its own priests and seminarians and manages its own affairs. 

The difference with the Anglicans’ is that they would have their own liturgical books, approved by Rome, and many of the clergy will initially be married. It is unclear (and perhaps Rome has not decided) whether married men will continue to be ordained for this ordinariate. 

There are already formerly-Anglican priests who converted and now function as Catholic priests. And of course Eastern Catholic churches have a married clergy, and have begun ordaining married men not just in their home territories but also in North America. If a married Catholic in the Western Church feels he has a vocation to the priesthood, all he has to do is transfer to an Eastern Church, enculturate in  that church, and ask that Church to test his call for a vocation. I have not noticed any mass movement in that direction. 

I doubt that the new Anglican ordinariate will have any significant effect in North America. I devoutly wish that there were such an Anglican-use church in the places I live. The standard of music in Catholic churches ranges from the mediocre to the truly abominable, and the translations grate on the ear of anyone who has studied English literature.

The long-term significance of the move is that it may provide a model for reintegrating Protestant Churches within the Catholic Church. It may also be a test as to whether it is worthwhile modifying the discipline of clerical celibacy in the West. From my limited contacts in higher ecclesiastical circles (my name is poison to most bishops) I sense that there is a willingness even among the most orthodox to reconsider the discipline of clerical celibacy. 

But a married clergy is hardly a panacea to the problems of sexual abuse and shortage of clergy, and brings with it a whole raft of problems. I have spoken to wives of ministers, and I have seen the toll that their husband’s ministry takes on them and their children.  

However, whatever happens, Benedict’s gesture is generous, and I hope it bears much fruit.

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The Vatican, Pope Benedict, and Sexual Abuse

in clergy sex abuse scandal, sexual abuse 6 Comments Tags: , , , , ,

I have been mulling over the comments that Benedict has made about sexual abuse. His public acknowledgment of the evil of abuse, his acknowledgment that it was badly handled, and his meeting with victims were far more that John Paul II could bring himself to do. When one cardinal begged John Paul to make a public statement, he replied that he would like to, but “they wouldn’t let me.” The “they” in question are no doubt the Vatican bureaucrats who protected abusers for decades.

 

When Ratzinger became pope, he soon disciplined two prominent abusers, Maciel and Gino Burresi, both of whom had been protected by Vatican officials.  As I have read the correspondence of bishops and chancery officials from the past 50 years, it has become clear that even when a bishop wanted to laicize an abusive priest, he knew that the Vatican would place almost insurmountable obstacles in his way.  Perhaps this is why Benedict has not disciplined the bishops who enabled abusers: he knows that the American bishops were simply following the clear signals that they were getting from the Vatican. 

Why the Vatican was giving such signals is another question. John Allen thinks that it was simply the Italian desire to maintain a bella figura, to look good in public. Richard Sipe and Fr. Tom Doyle think that the Church is as corrupt now as it was just before the Reformation. Many clerics, including those at the highest levels, are unchaste, and have sexual secrets that do not want exposed. I think that in a segment of the clergy the practice of pederasty has been accepted from ancient times. The Romans, they claim, learned it from the Etruscans and Greeks. The clergy continued the practice. When Justinian made pederasty a capital crime, he immediately executed two bishops as an example to the rest. In the Middle Ages St. Peter Damian described the corruption of the clergy in the Book of Gomorrah.

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