While Pope Benedict voiced his revulsion at the sexual abuse scandal for the first time yesterday, it is important to understand that the genesis of his statements went back to a meeting that took place more than four years ago, not with other bishops, but with leaders of the lay review board set up to keep an eye on how the American hierarchy was complying with their own guidelines.
The National Lay Review Board, as it is known, had a rocky start, as the first head, former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating (now a Catholic advisor to John McCain) was sent packing after comparing the bishops to the Mafia–always a fast way to the bad side of the episcopacy.
A well-respected Chicago jurist, Anne Burke, was then named to lead the blue-ribbon panel of 13 lay leaders, and while she was more politic in public, she found it tough going as she tried to arrange meetings with various bishops about the issue. She got nowhere, and in frustration, Burke and other board members started calling and faxing various Vatican offices asking if they could fly over, at their own expense, to meet with them. A few offices responded, among them the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Joseph Raztinger.
In January 2004, Burke and several other board members met with Ratzinger and his aides in his offices, for a full two-and-a-half hours. They set out the scope and depth of the scandal, which Ratzinger (and other Vatican officials) said they had not known. The U.S. bishops, Burke said, weren’t giving the Vatican the full story. Ratzinger listened attentively, and at the end of the meeting stood up and promised the lay leaders he would get back to them. His time and response was something that one of the cardinal’s top aides told Burke was very unusual.
“Cardinal Ratzinger was far more open to meeting with members of the national review board than our own bishops and cardinals,” Burke later told Newsday. Burke said Ratzinger was very engaged in the topic, beyond the fact that his department was charged with dealing with most cases to determine whether a priest should be defrocked, or “laicized” in church terms. “He took in everything we had to say and answered our questions. And we pulled no punches: We told him what was going on in terms of the extent of the actual abuse by the priests and about our dismay with the U.S. church hierarchy.”
(It was also characteristic of Cardinal Ratzinger’s personal, pastoral solicitude that he wrote Burke a warm letter after her 30-year-old son was killed in a snowmobile accident the next month. “He had heard of the sad news of my son and he expressed his sorrow and condolences, and reminded us to have consolation in our faith,” Burke said. “It was a very, very beautiful note. I still have it.”)
Until then, Ratzinger had been one of the many bishops, especially at the Vatican, who defensively depicted the reports of abuse as exaggerated and overhyped creations of an American media industry that he viewed as inherently biased against the church.
After his meetings with Burke et al, he changed his tune. In delivering the Good Friday meditations in Rome a year later, he decried, in his characteristically Augustinian manner, the “filth in the church…even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]“–a clear reference to abusive priests.
He also seemed to refer to the priesthood when he said: “The soiled garments and face of your church throw us into confusion. Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again.” That echoes a comment he blurted to a fellow bishop earlier that year, when they were talking about the scandal and the Cardinal said, intensely, “It is we priests, us, we must stop this!”
Ratzinger also took steps to accelerate the process for laicizing offending clerics. In fact, there was such a glut of cases and appeals by accused priests as a result of the tough new policy that at one point the CDF, which became the chief arbiter of the cases, reportedly had a backlog of some 700 cases.
He said nothing about the issue for the first three years of his pontificate. But when he broke his silence yesterday, his words were powerful perhaps because they were so long in the making.
posted April 17, 2008 at 1:43 am
Benny said regarding paedophilia “It is we priests, us, we must stop this!” My question is; does Roman Catholicism have the answer and how do they propose to change themselves? There is not much hope as we look back over the centuries seeing popes with sexual problems.
posted April 17, 2008 at 10:00 am
Roman Catholicism does indeed have the answer, and weak Catholics can change themselves by conforming to its doctrines and disciplines that have so obviously been abused. Blaming the Church per se rejects the promise of Jesus that it would be One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic and be protected from error. The Church does not sin. Only those who reject it in any way sin. It seems unconscionable that parishioners have been forced to pay so much for the sins of the violators of its doctrines and disciplines. Human failure causes sin — not a Holy Church. Those who judge the Church wrongly will be severely judged for their actions by a just God, who alone knows what is in their hearts.
posted April 17, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Excuse me but I do not understand the comment made above regarding centuries of papal sexual problems and paedophilia. What is the connection between Renaissance popes and their mistresses and this abuse crisis in the US? Also, his name is Benedict not “Benny.” I take the latter as an attempt to show contempt. And the crisis we have been going through is predominantly one of pedarasty and not paedophilia. Homosexual priests and teenage boys made up 81% of the cases surveyed over a 52 year period (1950-2002); teenage girls made up over 10% of the others and true paedophilia cases were the remainder. Most of the total involved single accusations while a minority involved multiple abuses by a small group of really bad offenders, especially among the real paedophiles. Many are afraid to point out the obvious about the nature of this scandal.
posted April 17, 2008 at 12:25 pm
It’s important to take to mind what the Pope said as well. Is it the Catholic Church’s fault that this happened? Perhaps that would be the case if abuse were limited to just the Church. But look at any sector in life and there is abuse there as well, including protestant churches, schools, boy scouts, politics, Hollywood, etc. Clearly this is a human problem that seems to have accelerated during and after the sexual revolution. But no one has the courage to say the truth. The sexual revolution ultimately lead us to this point, and only if we take some steps to reaffirm the dignity of the human person and the reservation of sex for marriage will we ever be truly healed of this problem in society.
posted April 28, 2008 at 8:38 am
It is instructive that Ann Burke’s presentation to then Cardinal Ratzinger was the first comprehensive review of the sexual abuse scandal of the US Church that he had gotten to date. It points to the half of the scandal other than the actual abuse by clergy: the bishops who prevaricate, obfuscate, and minmize what has gone on on their respective watches. It took a laywoman to bust through the fog and lay it out clearly. The systemic problem of mendacious and mediocre men appointed to lead as bishops is still with us and growing. I conitune to be a appalled by this outome of Roman centralization that has spawned careerism which in turn has created the conditions that allowed rampant violations of celebacy and sexual abuse to flourish. (And we haven’t even gotten to the reported -by National Catholic Reporter- rapes and prostituting of nuns by bishops and priests in Africa yet.) No one could ever have imagined this scenario; it is beyond anything laid at our feet by anti-Catholic bigots.
posted April 28, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I am partially pleased with Benedict’s reaction to the clergy sexual abuse scandal. Although he spoke with concern and warmth, I have as yet to see any true ACTION in the direction of ending this horror. I do not intend to be disrespectful of him, I would just like to see the deeds that back his faith, the action that backs his charity. Otherwise, the faith is ineffective, and the charity is an empty gong. I would beg the Pope, since it seems as if he is the only one who can do something about this, to TAKE ACTION.
posted April 28, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The pope’s words and gestures during his recent USA visit were most impressive and a long time coming as well. They were also significant but initial steps in a process that needs to advance much further; it should have moved in this direction several years ago.
Many of us wait to see what actions will now back up the strong rhetoric and meeting with victims. Cardinal Law at Santa Maria Maggiore is a very large sore thumb sticking out from his honored Roman palazzo. Bishops like John McCormick, Roger Mahoney, William Murphy, to name a few, and others are still reigning. Other bishops who reassigned and coddled the most egregious of offending priests have retired with dignity without a whiff of censure. His # 2 man and successor at the Congregation for Doctrine and Faith, American Cardinal Wm Levada, dismayed many of us in his post visit remarks. He said he didn’t find any offending prelates still in place. This doesn’t bode well for hopes of change.
Like Watergate, it’s the cover-up. This is the 800 pound gorilla that the Vatican and the Bishops’Conference assiduously, consistently, creatively and systematically ignore. Does Benedict have the stomach to go there? Failure to take up the issue of the cover-up has cost the institution their credibility in my eyes. I am not alone. It will take a lot more than triumphal pomp, fiery rhetoric and gestures to win back my trust.
Wil Benedict look at this issue in its worldwide scope? Is this Augustinian, eloquent in naming the sins of this scandal, able to examine sexuality and celibacy through lenses of psychology, jurisprudence, sociology as well? Strong condemnatory language focused on individuals’ sins is a starter, but it falls short of diagnosing an institution that has for centuries covered its sexuality with myth and denial. It still does and many of us like Benedict know too much already.
The institutional Church preaches a firm message of sexual morality straight from the Bible. It should. Unlike Jesus Himself, the Church’s message on sex in the past and often today is packaged in harsh, black and white language, slathered with mortal sin and threats of damnation; everything from teenage compulsive masturbation to the wildest of orgies. On the other hand in dealing with the sins of those on the inside it consistently turned a blind eye, overlooked, ignored and exonerated behavior that was severely pathological as well as sinful.
Does Benedict understand that the anger generated by the abuse crisis stems from people recently hit in the face with the realization of this double standard? The bishops certainly do not. Some of the angriest and most militant critics of the Church right now were once among its most loyal and unquestioning subjects.
So we wait in hope to see. I doubt I will see the root change that needs to happen. I will rejoice if I do. If I do not I remain loyal to the Bride of Christ but critical of many of Her bridesmaids.
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