Cardinal Ratzinger quits his job because Pope and Card. Sodano covering up for a child molester. Unthinkable.
Why, exactly? That last word covers a multitude of ground, and I’m at a loss to think of when it couldn’t be used by any number of people–Sec. Def. McNamara comes to mind immediately; to the best of my knowledge, this is the sin for which David Halberstam (among others) held him in the most contempt–who didn’t want to do something to stop what they thought was wrong. When couldn’t it be used?

“Cardinal Ratzinger quits his job because Pope and Card. Sodano
covering up for a child molester. Unthinkable.”
Why unthinkable? Why? THIS, precisely this, is the disconnect.
Somethings are worth dying for, yes? Well I submit some people — innocent children, for example — are worth more than the faith of multitides. They are worth sacrificing one’s career. And those children are certainly worth more than a corrupt Church hierarchy.
Also, I thought Catholics place their faith in Jesus. So if the Church turns out to be run by corrupt men, a true Catholic’s faith (as opposed to his or her attitude about the Church) will not be harmed.
I grew up Catholic. Nothing about the way this scandal was handled, absolutely nothing, squares with what I was taught, as a Catholic child, about sin, and judgment, and forgiveness.
If they are intelligent, believing men, everyone in the hierarchy is fearing God’s wrath and judgment now.

– it is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith –
Of course, what happens in the real world is that the truth is eventually discovered, the eight have suffered, and millions lose their faith.
And I’ve got to agree with YrName, why is it unthinkable for powerful men to resign their positions of authority and speak the plain truth to the world when they come across entrenched corruption in the hierarchy they serve?

Rod, I thought you had decided to take a break from this. But this is so emotional for you that I see now you just can’t help it. I’m taking a break from this blog for a long while. I hope you regain some perspective and return to the right spirit of this new blog.

I think you are letting Ratzinger off the hook too easily, Rod.

I’m taking a break from this blog for a long while. I hope you regain some perspective and return to the right spirit of this new blog.
And Rod needs perspective?

Well, Will, you do as you feel you must, but if you are expecting me never to utter a critical word about the scandal ever again, you are expecting too much. Good grief, man, I’ve actually written in defense of Card. Ratzinger here. If you are so tender that you can’t take anything critical written about any Catholic cardinal, even when I’m defending the actions of another Catholic cardinal, then you will not enjoy this blog.
I don’t think I’ve let Ratzinger off easy, Alicia. I would personally have loved for him to have called a press conference to announce his resignation and to have challenged JP2 to do the right thing. But what I would like to see and what is reasonable to expect of an elderly man raised in a different culture, and who is a cardinal of the Catholic Church, are two different things. I can’t imagine the idea of publicly denouncing the Pope as a protector of a molester even occurring to someone like Cardinal Ratzinger — not because Ratzinger is a bad man, but because that kind of public attack on the Pope, however much deserved, is not something that faithful Catholics of his generation could even think about. It is hard enough for faithful Catholics of our generation to conceive of it, much less someone who had given his life in service to the Church.
Again, as I see it, Ratzinger could have chosen to have gone quietly, perhaps sealing Maciel’s fate as a (false) hero of the Church, given how Sodano probably would have maneuvered one of his cronies into Ratzinger’s old slot. Or he could have carried out the Romantic gesture of resigning and humiliating Pope John Paul II by public challenging him. Or he could have done what he did, which was bide his time and wait for the right moment to strike. Maybe you can come up with a fourth course of action, but I can’t. He took the course of action that is not exactly emotionally satisfying to me, but which looks to have been the wisest.

“That line — it is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith — is very nearly the essence of the scandal right there.”
It is more than that, Mr. Dreher. It is the essence of the Catholic Church since day one.

You are wrong, Kenneth. On day one, an innocent man suffered death on the Cross. Look, obviously I have no problem with people discussing this thing critically, but come on, this is a very sensitive subject, so let’s frame our comments in ways that are likely to invite debate instead of just punching our opponents in the nose. This remark of yours was not helpful.

There’s another option Rod. I understand that Benedict is old and was raised in another culture. But if he has, indeed, seen first hand how self-serving Vatican corruption and blindness protected a serial predator, the minute he took office, Benedict could and should have clearly denounced the wrong-doers – Maciel, Sodano, and yes, even his predecessor. That Benedict is silent about Sodano and JP II, and refuses, even now, to fully describe Maciel’s crimes, speaks volumes.
David Clohessy, SNAP

not because Ratzinger is a bad man, but because that kind of public attack on the Pope, however much deserved, is not something that faithful Catholics of his generation could even think about.
It’s amazing to me how comfortable conservatives are admitting the contingent nature of what one can think when that’s necessary to explain the behavior of one of their own. This is the sort of thing that cuts at so many areas of cultural disagreement. Most obviously, diversity issues and their relationships to the validity of the rules made for a community. If we’re willing to admit that religion, age, and job history limit what one can think, surely we have to admit the same about gender, sexual orientation, and race.
This isn’t a very deep problem–you don’t have to prospecting for it–so there must be a conservative response that is considered sufficient. I just don’t know what it is.

I don’t drop that line simply for dramatic effect. It has been cited, almost word for word by church authorities themselves a number of times over the centuries to justify their actions, including the inquisition and witch trials.
But I’ll take a different tack to an argument which is perhaps more useful. If we are indeed saying that Ratzinger’s approach was the most productive, are we not saying that morality is essentially conditioned upon political expedience? That’s true in politics and corporate life, to be sure, but if it holds true in religion, than Christ died a rather stupid and meaningless death. He could have, after all, just bided his time and toned it down when the Romans told him to cool his rhetoric. He could have easily used his skills to buy a seat on the Sanhedrin, or even the Roman Senate.
He could have gotten a lot of good things done by playing ball. He didn’t, and neither did countless martyrs. Now, either they were all fools, or there was a principle at stake that really was that important. If the latter is true, you might expect Christ’s present day right hand men to demonstrate enough backbone to risk a title and a plush office, if not their lives, to do the right thing.

If the latter is true, you might expect Christ’s present day right hand men to demonstrate enough backbone to risk a title and a plush office, if not their lives, to do the right thing.
A hierarchical authoritarian structure exists for the benefit of … oh, nevermind …
“There was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.” – Nietzsche

Yallop’s “in Gods Name” is seeming more and more a reasonable history, and less and less, a weird conspiracy theory.
Money is the root of a lot of evil in the Vatican as far as I can see

“Do you resign in protest? Would it even be thinkable for a top curial cardinal to offer his resignation and say why? To do so would cause a global scandal: Cardinal Ratzinger quits his job because Pope and Card. Sodano covering up for a child molester. Unthinkable.”
You resign or, as David Clohesssey says, you tka eswift and decise actionwhen you are the “Decider.”
So far,neither course of aciton was done.

If we are indeed saying that Ratzinger’s approach was the most productive, are we not saying that morality is essentially conditioned upon political expedience?
No, we aren’t. What I’m saying is that the idea of publicly denouncing the Pope is something that almost certainly never occurred to Card. Ratzinger, given his background and his age. I’m not saying he considered it and decided against it; I’m saying that it almost certainly never entered his mind as a possibility. That being the case, what were the options left to him?
Just to be clear, I personally agree with David Clohessy — once Pope, Benedict ought to have been more clear and more resolute about all this. But I’m trying to understand all this as a novelist or a dramatist might, and that requires me to get inside his head, or at least attempt it. To have seen that kind of wickedness up close, and to try to process it through a mind that has been formed with particular ideas about what the Church is, and the conduct that is expected of a cardinal and a pontiff, is an incredibly challenging exercise. If it caused somebody like me, an ordinary Catholic who believed passionately in the Church, so much shock and pain that I left the Church, having lost my belief in it, how much more painful must it have been for someone like Ratzinger? I imagine — and it is only that, imagining — that he was in some sense shattered by the evil he saw pour into his office in reports from the American scandal that it forced him to do what cardinals are not used to doing: question the pope, and question just how things are run in the heart of the Church.
Or maybe not. All I’m saying is that this is the stuff of high moral and spiritual drama, and I find myself seeing Card. Ratzinger more sympathetically than I might have done, even though I freely acknowledge that he should act more decisively (though I see it as positive that we’re seeing compromised bishops resign; I wish he would pack Sodano off to a monastery somewhere). I do wonder very much how I would have reacted had I been in his position, and had been living in the bubble that Card. Ratzinger and all the cardinals have been living in for so long.

Despite my (still-planned) break from this blog, I checked in on these comments . . . My exasperation has nothing to do with whether you are criticizing or defending the Catholic Church or any of its agents. It has to do with how obsessive you become on this particular topic. It seems like you’ve allowed yourself to blog about it again under the belief that if you’re doing so to explore the moral and societal implications then you have somehow cleansed yourself of the toxic emotions. But you haven’t. That much is clear. And this is not to mention that this topic just brings the worst out in people (see Kenneth’s comment). So good grief to you, man.

Rod wrote:
“Do you resign in protest? Would it even be thinkable for a top curial cardinal to offer his resignation and say why? To do so would cause a global scandal: Cardinal Ratzinger quits his job because Pope and Card. Sodano covering up for a child molester. Unthinkable. ”
But is that even remotely how the story would have gone, Rod?
It’s easy to sit here in 2010 and offer opinions on what then-Cdl. Ratzinger could or should have done in 1998 when he received the deathbed letter–the one, by the way, that the Legion claimed to have refuted by saying the doctor in the case confirmed (with direct quotes) that the man was in a comatose state for a considerable time and could not have written the letter, something they got away with because they were playing fast and loose with the identity of the doctor, I believe.
But the reality is that the allegations of the eight men were known and were being utterly denied by everybody in the Legion–which could point to earlier “attempts to discredit” Maciel which had been “refuted” back in the 1950s.
In fact, it’s probably the case that if Maciel had not fathered children the Legion would still be claiming that the abuse allegations were falsehoods designed to hurt the Legion–it is to Pope Benedict’s immense credit that he acted upon the allegations and disciplined Maciel at what really was his earliest opportunity, long before the news about Maciel’s mistresses and children came out.
So, what happens in the real world if then-Cdl. Ratzinger calls his dramatic press conference and says that he’s morally certain that Maciel is an abuser and that both Cdl. Sodano and the Pope also know this and are covering up the abuse?
Headlines might–might!–have been suitably dramatic. But then the news would come out: Maciel hasn’t been proven guilty of anything, these same sorts of allegations have been made and refuted before, the Legion insists that their founder is a living saint undergoing the persecutions of the world, etc. The news media loses interest, the status quo continues, and perhaps the eventual revelations about Maciel’s children are greeted with a yawn and a presumption that the women in question are opportunistic liars.
If I, an ordinary Catholic lay woman, were going to go on record accusing someone of covering up child abuse, for instance, I’d better be more than morally certain; I’d better have evidence. Do we somehow think that’s *less* true for a cardinal at the Vatican?

“[W]e shall tell them that we are Thy servants and rule them in Thy name.”
There’s the all-purpose rationale for every abuse of power, from spin control to genocide. The authority figure “protects” “the people,” “the faithful,” “the market,” “national security,” “equality,” “traditional values,” you name it, by suppressing information, withholding justice, going after minority groups and opinions, selecting fall guys and generally mobilizing us against them.
Beware of Thy servants.

it is to Pope Benedict’s immense credit that he acted upon the allegations and disciplined Maciel at what really was his earliest opportunity, long before the news about Maciel’s mistresses and children came out.
Wow, it turns out we really do live in the best of all possible worlds.

I, an ordinary Catholic lay woman, were going to go on record accusing someone of covering up child abuse, for instance, I’d better be more than morally certain; I’d better have evidence.
Knowledge of, or depending on the state, at the least the “reasonable cause to believe”, not material evidence, is enough to warrant mandatory reporters (also defined by state law) to report child abuse/sexual abuse. Failure to report suspected abuse can result in criminal liability nowadays.

Rod,
I would like to thank you for addressing this issue on your blog. Since I trust your voice, this is my source for updates, which I then follow up with links, etc. As you have pointed out more than once, this whole saga has made abundantly clear (once again), that one’s position on this or that issue is no indication of personal rectitude. One’s allegiance cannot be to other conservatives, whatever; it has to be to the principles themselves and to virtue, wherever it is found.

This is just an ugly tale. You don’t know whether to cry or scream. I’ve been hard on the press from time to time, but I have to hand it to the intrepid reporters who stayed on the LC story until they had no choice but admit the facts.
(I didn’t mean to be so hard on the press the last time I posted, just a line from Monty Python running through my head).

Thanks Mr. Dreher for another thoughtful commentary. Indeed this is a tale that needs a David Halberstam or one of the muckraker journalists of old to do it justice. Could a man of Benedict’s age and background have done more? As journalist John Allen at NCR has written, for Benedict to have been more forceful and condemnatory would be to tarnish the memory of JP II, whose reputation then was stratospheric even among non-RC.
Then too, perhaps a scholar like Ratzinger knows all too well of the physical dangers Bishops of Rome have encountered over the centuries when a pontiff dared to upset powerful movers and shakers in the church. While I’m no conspiracy nut, JP the First did have that shockingly short pontificate. Did Ratzinger fear cyanide in his sherry as he listened to the music of his favorite, Mozart. Wouldn’t be the first Pope to be dispatched suddenly and conveniently.

Erin,
If I, an ordinary Catholic lay woman, were going to go on record accusing someone of covering up child abuse, for instance, I’d better be more than morally certain; I’d better have evidence. Do we somehow think that’s *less* true for a cardinal at the Vatican?
This is a stunning piece of reasoning — I really can’t see how you could possibly believe the implies answer to that last question. Of course it’s less true for a Cardinal. If a Cardinal were to resign because he were morally certain that the Pope and his juniors were engaged in illegal behaviour, then, even if he turned out to be wrong, the mere fact that he had honestly thought it were the case would be sufficent to ratchet up the level of scrutiny. This is ignoring the fact that the Cardinal, given his leadership position, has both a moral and a legal duty, at least in some places, to sound the alarm if he reasonably suspects serious criminal activity is in the offing.

Mac S–to report child abuse that involves someone who is still legally a child, sure. But I was speaking of accusing someone of covering up abuse committed by someone else–not a mandatory reporting situation, especially since the men bringing forward their story were no longer children at the time they came forward. If you were to accuse your congressman, say, of covering up the molesting of children by a member of his staff, you might have to worry about whether your accusation would be considered free speech or actionable slander.
And while mandatory reporters may be held to the “reasonable cause to believe” standard when reporting suspected abuse, we’re talking about a cardinal holding a press conference to say that he believed that two other people (Pope JPII and Cdl. Sodano) were covering up child abuse committed by Maciel that had allegedly occurred several decades previously–even though those allegations had reportedly been investigated without any damning evidence being uncovered.
One thing I see endlessly in these discussions is the absolute failure by anybody to recognize how difficult it is to prove allegations of sexual abuse when any length of time has passed–or, indeed, in the case of female rape victims, when there is no evidence of violence and the rapist swears the act was consensual. Child abusers count on this, and I’m sure Maciel was no exception–so easy to throw up one’s hands in horror at the wickedness of humanity, that such terrible crimes would be “falsely” alleged! when, of course, he was guilty all along.
But without the *proof* of the man’s monstrous depravity that surfaced along with the existence of his children we might still be arguing with Legion supporters about whether the eight men were heroic and truthful, or whether they were wicked liars just trying to destroy this great work of God called the Legion–something some of them persisted in believing *even after* Maciel was disciplined in 2006. The incontrovertible fact that Maciel had fathered children while accepting accolades for being a “living saint” was the nail in the coffin for quite a few of the rank and file LC/RC members. It didn’t, on its own, prove that he had also molested seminarians–but it made the allegations a whole lot more plausible both to those inside the Legion and to most of the observers outside of it.

I dunno, Erin. Maybe if more people stopped participating in organizations when they believed something going on was morally wrong – the aforementioned McNamarra, thousands of draftees during the Vietnam era, soldiers at Abu Gharib, WW II era Germans, the Tuskeegee syphilis project, etc., the world would be a better place.

For the record, I think this is a fair and highly plausible analysis. Thanks, Rod.

Between kenneth quoting “That line — it is better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith — is very nearly the essence of the scandal right there,” inspiring him to observe that “It is more than that, Mr. Dreher. It is the essence of the Catholic Church since day one,” and our gracious host’s reply “You are wrong, Kenneth. On day one, an innocent man suffered death on the Cross,” lies an interesting question as to what exactly constitutes “the Roman Catholic Church.”
IF it is true that this is the One True Church established by Christ and his Apostles, then it is unthinkable that the purity and honesty of even one ordained priest, let alone a Prince of the Church, should be questioned.
That assumption does indeed lie at the heart of the sexual abuse scandals.
If the church can err, then the whole edifice of divine authority tumbles to the ground.
Christianity is not a unified, unbroken institution. The development of gentile Christianity, which eventually broke away from, and even turned on, its original Jewish core, emerged from a bubbling cauldron of competing syncretisms influenced by dozens of cultures. Many claims of continuity are ex post facto rationalizations, not unlike that patent forgery, The Donation of Constantine.
That doesn’t mean that the Roman Catholic Church has served no good purpose, or can serve no good purpose, or that millions of devout adherents are “indeed to be pitied” (in the words of Paul, or have been living a lie. Nor does it mean, as many of the more rabid critics would have it, that obviously there is no God.
What underlies the terrible hesitation to come clean and admit error is precisely that it undermines the claim to infallibility, not just the specific pronunciation made by the Vatican in the 19th century, but the less precise assumptions going back to the middle ages. What the church cannot face, as yet, is that it represents a triumph of certain doctrines over others, heresies all of them (in the original sense of party or faction), and its authority derives from (a) Constantine’s sordid deal with bishops craving worldly power and position, (b) the absence of Roman imperial authority in Rome after Odoacer’s invasion of Italy, (c) the tattered remnants of the Imperial Purple assumed by the Pontiffs (a title once held in pagan times by Julius Caesar).
An innocent man suffered death on the cross, but that was not Day One of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the inspiration for a polyglot pattern of religious veneration which I believe has a critically important kernel of truth buried deep within layers of human invention. No institution represents that man, or his Father, with any precision.

My first instinct was to think that you were too easy on Card. Ratzinger (CR) but I am reconsidering. Assuming good motives on the part of CR (an assumption I will struggle to make), I can definitely see the tragic elements of his dilemma. Let me pose a question: What do you think CR would/should have done had Card. Sodano been named Pope? Another question: Do you think JPII should be beatified?

“What I’m saying is that the idea of publicly denouncing the Pope is something that almost certainly never occurred to Card. Ratzinger, given his background and his age.”
This is why my parents raised us to never give any authority our complete allegiance. Nobody has to be that loyal – they choose to be, and paint themselves into such corners. And then they expect to be forgiven for what they did because they made themselves into pawns who couldn’t consider doing otherwise .. .what do we have brains for, if we hand them over to somebody else to use for us?

Cirdan, do you think that laws against slander etc. simply don’t apply when a person holds a high enough office?
You wrote: “If a Cardinal were to resign because he were morally certain that the Pope and his juniors were engaged in illegal behaviour, then, even if he turned out to be wrong, the mere fact that he had honestly thought it were the case would be sufficent to ratchet up the level of scrutiny.” Or the mere fact that he turned out to be *wrong* would be reason to shut down and dismiss any future investigations as motivated by the same sort of sloppy thinking.
And if the “ratcheting up” of the level of scrutiny showed that there were no wrongdoing? What then? Sighs of relief all round, and back to business as usual–never mind the grave harm done to the innocent individuals accused of serious criminal wrongdoing or illegal behavior?
I highly doubt that the then-Cdl. Ratzinger thought JPII was involved in actual illegal behavior, anyway. Continuing to let an old sinner pull the wool over one’s eyes may be foolish, and show extremely bad character judgment, but last I heard it wasn’t against the law to display either. And there was no proof–there was Maciel’s attitude of the persecuted saint, reinforced by his Legion and his money–and there were the allegations of eight men, one of whom (if I’ve got this right)recanted, and one of whom left only a deathbed message which was disputed.
Ignore that all you want–like I said, that’s the most common thread through all of these discussions. But it was a materially important reality. I think that explains then-Cdl. Ratzinger’s attitude as described here: the Legion was powerful and respected, and without more evidence than a deathbed confession which was already being undermined by the Legion there simply wasn’t enough to go on.
And I’m sorry that there wasn’t. Truly. But unless you really *want* people in authority to go on witch hunts and toss people to the wolves regardless of guilt or innocence, you have to accept what was, for so long, the reality of the situation.

Rod,
There are more options than just resigning. A man can do his job and stand up for justice despite the consequences (as Ap Romero did).
I think Cdl Ratzinger should have proceeded with the trial on the basis of the 8 sworn testimonies in 1998. He seems to me he had the full canonical power to do so.
If they wanted to sack him, let them try. I rather suspect he would have won and justice would have been done.
God Bless

“IF it is true that this is the One True Church established by Christ and his Apostles, then it is unthinkable that the purity and honesty of even one ordained priest, let alone a Prince of the Church, should be questioned.”
No it isn’t. The belief is that the Holy Spirit protects the church from proclaiming error under certain circumstances. This does not guarantee against crappy governance in carrying out the great commission.
“That assumption does indeed lie at the heart of the sexual abuse scandals. If the church can err, then the whole edifice of divine authority tumbles to the ground.”
No–what happens is that the people who came to love and trust Father so and so, who were taught the faith by him: they logically question whether what came from him was all a lie. They question where it came from when he was in fact a criminal, a horrible sinner, and a shell of a man. That’s where the faith is shaken. Of course, this kind of thing can happen in many contexts, religious or otherwise. Having someone you trust betray you, others, and/or themselves is a part of the risk we take of living full lives.
None of this should be taken–in case there are any hasty and rash readers out there–to mean that I support the propagation of the Noble Lie. It may be that not every detail needs to be flashed on the billboards, but civil and church justice must be affected.

That Benedict is silent about Sodano and JP II, and refuses, even now, to fully describe Maciel’s crimes, speaks volumes.
What does the silence say? That Ratzinger thought discretion was the better part of valor?
The first bishops either sold Christ, denied Him, or slept through His hour of torment and then hid in His hour of need. Compared to that, being discreet doesn’t seem so bad.

I agree with Chris. Once you have a position such as Ratzinger had with the CDF, you can stand up for justice if you are a just man. And you don’t have to call a press conference and denounce your boss. And you don’t have to set out to undo your boss. You can merely do your job. Ratzinger could have pursued the case in 1998. If JPII tells him to cut it out, he can tell JPII he sees it differently. If JPII wants to fire him, let him try. JPII will realize that Ratzinger’s up there a little too high to be dismissed. JPII realizes he has met his match. JPII has to either kill him or change the construct. The just man pursues the case, and JPII changes his ways because he knows he’s the bad one in this equation and at this point he’s going to be exposed whether he kills the just man or not. Justice could have been done.

I have no idea what I would do if I had been in the same position as then Cardinal Ratzinger =- I like to think I would have stood on the side of those who had suffered at the hands of Maciel – who seems a monstrous man. I like to think I would have done the moral thing – refuse to be part of a continuing cover up and expose this for what it was – something evil and corrupt and utterly sinful. I don’t know if I would have had the courage. But I think that speaking out would have been the truly Christ like thing to do.
Of course it is fine that ultimately when he became Pope he went after Maciel. But it does seem to me that any institution needs people who do have the courage to risk their position and speak to what is right. Of course they may be ignored. But it is only through such courage that institutions can be swept clean of the rot.
What is done is done – but I’d say – it is a tragedy that so many failed to do what was the right thing regarding Maciel.

I think the best thing to come out of all this is the utter evil of John Paul the Second. Benedict is a fundamentally good man. He may even be a holy man, if such a thing exists. He is not a man equipped by nature to do what people think he should have done.
Faced with the situation he probably did the best that he could conceive of doing. Was that enough for his critics, no. But it is unlikely that he would have done any different simply because the world he inhabited would not have let him even think of another course.

Excellent article which clearly shows how much still remains covered up.
HOLDING CLERGY AND CHURCH LEADERS ACCOUNTABLE BEFORE THE LAW
Professor Marci Hamilton and Sister Maureen Paul Turlish on NPR’s Radio Times on WHYY in Philadelphia, April 12, 2010
http://whyy.org/cms/radiotimes/2010/04/12/holding-clergy-and-church-leaders-legally-accountable-for-child-abuse/
Sister Maureen Paul Turlish
Victims’ Advocate
New Castle, Delaware
maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com
____________________
SUPPORT THE REMOVAL OF ALL STATES’ SOLs IN REGARD TO THE SEXUAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN AND INCLUDE WINDOW LEGISLATION FOR PAST OFFENSES.

Vatican immunity to lawsuit for its evil acts is the root cause of these problems. The Holy See is not a country – it is a religion and its special privileges that even now enable it scoff at abuse victims and launder money should be revoked.

Speculating about the past is all well and good. In this instance, however, we stand a better than average chance of finding out much more information about the Legion and its activities.
Already we have information that protection money was paid to high officials in the Vatican, and that these officials apparently acted to protect the Legion and its founder from any serious inquiry.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/articles/a0000798.shtml
“The report implicated the Vatican’s former Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Cardinal Stanislaw Dzwisz, Pope John Paul II’s secretary, and Cardinal Eduardo Somalo, the prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies for Apostolic Life, who were allegedly the Legion’s strongest supporters.
When the consultor Cardinals at the Congregation for Religious were wary of approving the Legion’s Constitution – which included private vows which prevented Legionaries from criticising their superiors and fostered a culture of spying and secrecy – Fr Maciel reportedly approached Pope John Paul II through Mgr Dziwisz and the document was signed two weeks later.
The article claims that both Cardinal Sodano and Cardinal Somalo, who subsequently headed the curial office in charge of religious life, were given large sums of money by the Legion.”
Pope Benedict, having refused to accept this tainted money, stands in a unique position to take the next step in cleaning up the mess left in the wake of the Legion’s collapse. Will he approach those officials who have been shown to have taken money from the Legion and pressure them to resign from their official duties? Will he encourage them to “retire” from active ministry and spend the remainder of their lives reflecting on how their actions protected and enabled a monster?
Once again we have a situation not unlike that with Cardinal Law. Will Pope Benedict make the same mistake that his predecessor did?

I think that Cardinal Ratzinger should have simply done his job as suggested above. That he did not tells us that what he believes in is the Vatican culture—Christian care for the innocent was not “prudent” in his perspective. What was this prudence for? Not the good of the victims and not the good of the People of God; seemingly for the good of Ratzinger and his ilk. He is indefensible. He should resign along with all of the Maciel cronies in the college of Cardinals as well as those who protected and reassigned perpetrators like Bernard Law. What will be discovered is that the Church won’t come done, merely the parasites who have been living off of it will.

Sorry:correction to the last sentence: the Church won’t come down, merely the parasites who have been living off of it will.

But unless you really *want* people in authority to go on witch hunts and toss people to the wolves regardless of guilt or innocence, you have to accept what was, for so long, the reality of the situation.
Call me cynical but I truly believe that if this was a secular organization or a sect not to one’s liking the reality of the situation would be of less importance. It can be seen in the media every day – accusations, or hints of scandal with little proof ruin careers, break up families and are the latest outrage and PROOF of how RIGHT X is and how WRONG Y is…if it works in one’s favor to spin it that way.
Seeing fellow Catholics shrug their shoulders and murmur “what could have been done” is the most disturbing part of this onion.

Erin,
You wrote: “If a Cardinal were to resign because he were morally certain that the Pope and his juniors were engaged in illegal behaviour, then, even if he turned out to be wrong, the mere fact that he had honestly thought it were the case would be sufficent to ratchet up the level of scrutiny.” Or the mere fact that he turned out to be *wrong* would be reason to shut down and dismiss any future investigations as motivated by the same sort of sloppy thinking.
And if the “ratcheting up” of the level of scrutiny showed that there were no wrongdoing? What then? Sighs of relief all round, and back to business as usual–never mind the grave harm done to the innocent individuals accused of serious criminal wrongdoing or illegal behavior?
The common ground is the assumption that Cardinal Ratzinger was morally certain that JP II and Sodano were covering up for a child molester. If you’re morally certain that this is going on, and you’re part of the leadership of the Church, then you’ve an obligation — certainly a moral obligation, and, in some places, a legal one too — to either make it right or leave the Church and report your suspicions, lest you become complicit in the sin by silence (and possibly buy legal consequences). I’m guessing that he refused to leave because he thought he could make it right. That seems the only defence available.
Your view is that it was OK for him not to report what he believed to be a crime because if he got it wrong, all further investigation would be shut down. It’s hard to believe that anyone can believe this. You’re a conservative, right? So here’s a conservative parallel: suppose Biden resigned, because he had become convinced that Obama didn’t satisfy the requirements of citizenship. Then, suppose that the specific details which had motivated his resignation were found to be false. Would conservatives rest content with that? Nope — there would be the most intense scrutiny of all the evidence regardless. If Ratzinger had resigned, then, even if he had been proved wrong in the specific details of this charge, there would have been the most intense scrutiny of the Church’s record on this matter. If you accept that Ratzinger was morally certain that JPII and Sodano were covering up systematic child abuse, there is no way you can defend or excuse his failure to resign on the ground that if he had resigned and been proved wrong then no further investigations would have happened — it’s simply not a remotely plausible consequence of his being proved wrong.

It is hard to tell about this. We talk about this a lot on these blogs but at the Vatican at the time it was only one of many issues and fish to fry. It this was not high enough on the priority list in the 1990′s, well, so be it. Is it high enough on the priority list of other institutions today? I suspect if we ask 100 people what there main concerns for the country and society are, sexual abuse of minors will probably come out about number 12 or so.
And it is becoming more of a common understanding just how adept sexual abusers of minors are at bamboozelling people around them. It is almost part of there make-up.
I like the movie “The Flock” with Richard Gere that illustrates this point. I know, it is only a movie, but I think there are some factoids here.

I don’t often speak up in defense of John Paul II, but I think Charles Cosimano goes a little beyond what is either factually sustainable or humanly possible when he asserts “the utter evil of John Paul the Second” or that “Benedict is a fundamentally good man.”
John Paul II had his merits, including efforts to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis, and returning Jewish children to their family and faith community, even if well-meaning Polish Roman Catholics providing them refuge had had them baptized. He offered some cogent critiques of capitalism, even though he came from a background which rendered him hostile to socialism. He made efforts for what almost any humane person would recognize as justice — too many to catalog.
He was not infallible, and I would not describe him as “The Great,” nor as a saint. He did choose to remain quiet on abuse of church authority, when he could have taken more initiative. Benedict is showing some positive initiatives I would not have expected at the time he was chosen. (Although adherents of his denomination refer to choosing a Bishop of Rome as being guided by the Holy Spirit, there seems to always be some terribly human politicking going on every time). But I still adhere to what I told Roman Catholic friends who were sharply disappointed by the elevation of Cardinal Ratzinger: as a Protestant, all I have to say about it is “Thank God for the Reformation.”
Human beings are imperfect. We fall short of the glory of God. Those who are invested with the title Bishop of Rome are no exception. But they can do some good, even a great deal of good. Few are purely evil, and it would be difficult to say that any were “fundamentally good,” in an exceptional sense, although most of us like to think that of ourselves, our friends, those we admire.
P.S. It takes forever for pages from this particular site to finish loading, delaying any kind of posting. What’s up?

“Mr. Barba said that in a later phone conversation with Ms. Wegan, she told him it was better for eight innocent men to suffer than for millions to lose their faith.”
I can understand the logic of those words entirely – but I don’t quite agree; almost, but not quite.
It’s too much like saying that because Jesus is the Word of God Incarnate, and because God is more important than man, the humanity of Jesus is not terribly important. But that would be a lop-sided Christology – His Humanity can’t be sacrificed to His Deity; and neither can the human members of the Church be sacrificed to its Divine mission & vocation. If they were, that would make the Church into a kind of monster, devouring its own children.
Those words are almost entirely true – but not quite: because the Church is supposed to further the presence of the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom of God is a kingdom of righteousness. But to allow people to be treated unrighteously for the good of the Kingdom, is to promote unrighteousness that righteousness may flourish; it amounts to doing evil that good may come. The idea is a moral enormity, made all the worse by being so nearly true. Faith that requires others to be treated unrighteously if it is itself to survive, is built on very sandy foundations. The idea sacrifices the values of the Good News, so that the Church which exists in order to spread the Good News may survive – which is senseless.