Where I Largely Second Lawler
[March 24]‘s front-page story in the New York Times suggests that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under the direction of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, failed to act against a Wisconsin priest who was accused of molesting scores of boys at a school for the deaf.
Is the story damaging? Yes. Should the Vatican have acted faster? Yes. Should the accused priest have been laicized? In all probability, Yes again.
Lawler’s story is here. He goes on to list several points that I would encourage you to read.
There isn’t much for me to add other than that the Milwaukee District Attorney shared the same lack of enthusiasm in investigating child abuse among priests. Yes, everything has more to do with Archbishop Weakland than with most anyone else. About the only thing positive that can be said about Archbishop Weakland was that he thought holding hands during the Our Father was a ridiculous gesture.
I think I’ve been pretty consistent. The abuse and manipulation of children is and was wrong. The desire for earthly justice is certainly laudable but metaphysically impossible to achieve. Those attacking Pope Benedict argue that laicizing a terminally ill man was necessary for justice 15 years ago in a now 45-year-old case. Such an attitude belies a trust in God’s judgment. To quote Archie Bunker in regards to handgun violence, “Would you have preferred them to be thrown off of buildings?” The priest is dead. No more would a show trial have soothed them than a ritualistic stomping on his grave do so now. His victims have grown old with the fact that he was never really punished for his crimes. We do no good pretending otherwise or pretending that we have some opiate we can give them.
And I’m sorry to say that the only conclusion I can draw now from people calling for his resignation is that they want Pope Benedict gone, and they will marshal any argument no matter how poor in order to do so. It is rank tribalism. The NY Times has shed many tears for Weakland. Many of their ilk are still upset he was pushed out the door in Milwaukee. I’m not sure they could have picked a better case to make their hypocrisy clearer.
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Yes, some want Pope Benedict XVI gone and have for a long, long time.
About 10-12 years ago, a Catholic healthcare group took over an only hospital in a small city south of Silicon Valley. There was an uproar as the hospital would no longer offer abortion services.
One critic of the takeover was quoted in the Mercury News (I’m paraphrasing, though the statement has stuck with me for all these years) “the Church is not going to change until Pope John Paul II and Cdl. Ratzinger die.”
I can’t help but think the bottom line for some comes down to abortion. I guess they assume with the next pope the Church’s stance on abortion will change.
I would tend to think these people won’t be sated until the whole sexual revolution is blessed, of which abortion is a small part.
I have not noticed any demand from the New York Times that Benedict must resign. This particular story seems to place blame at every level, not just at Benedict’s (when he was at the CDF).
As I wrote on the Commonweal blog, the unrestrained glee with which some are greeting these sad developments is really disappointing. For those very FEW, this seems to be much more about settling old scores than achieving justice for victims of sexual abuse. And you can usually tell who’s who by the use of coded language.
In the predictable rush of ultramontanists to defend Rome and of elements of the media to attack the Church, I was impressed with a third view that has been put forward.
It is the system and not persons that are the problem. Cardinal Ratzinger directing all of the various duties of the CDF as well as 300 complaints a year like this sad matter simply cannot be expected to properly handle all of these cases.
As much as Lawler puts it back on Milwaukee, a diocese has limited authority in such cases. What is needed is a decentralization of authority from Rome to the local churches. The Archdiocese on its own authority should be able to try and de-frock a priest, leaving Rome only as an appeals court.
Given the distance to Rome, language issues, the workload in centralizing all cases throughout the world in one office and other matters, it is simply not possible that justice be done in the present set-up.
I can neither hold fully responsible Archbishop Cousins, who had insufficient authority, nor Cardinal Ratzinger, who was not in a position to give the attention needed to a case like this coming each and every day.
But Roman Curial centralization is at fault and must be changed.
This video is very apropos
Kurt,
Interesting take.
Henry,
Ellul speaks some of the clearest French I have ever heard! And some very clear sense as well.
Brett
I thought the same about Ellul — his french is very understandable… even for me! And his point I think really shows a bit of the problem which is often neglected — the system we have itself really seeks to remove responsibility. No wonder things get difficult to control.
Michael Sean Winters has a good take in America: http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=2683
Benedict’s behavior was the same as almost every other bishop’s in this situation. Cover up, re-assign the pervert to new hunting grounds. No need to go to Wisconsin, it happened during his own time as archbishop of Muenchen/Freising as well. At least he didn’t do what Cardinal Brady of Ireland did – make abuse victims sign an oath of secrecy. Brady thinks this is nothing to resign over. Cardinal Law, America’s most famous disgrace, still has a prestigious gig in Rome (I was there, not a bad place to be ‘banished’ to). The firestorm has just started in Europe, sweeping country after country. There is no glee, but satisfaction that the truth is finally coming out. A small minority of priests are guilty, but the coverup by bishops was pretty much the standard modus operandi, recommended by Ratzinger’s CDF. Lawler’s own book on Boston’s filth is well done. The book Sacrilege is the most thorough, but not for the faint of stomach.
While there are certainly many bishops to blame and I have no intention of defending the likes of Cardinal Law, a former bishop of Lansing, MI who I have a great respect of presented an interesting view point. Bishop Povish pointed out that he too had no desire to excuse some of the actions in the Church, but in the 1980′s our dioceses had a priest accused of abusing a child. He consulted with a psychologist, the county prosecutor and the family of the child. They all felt the best course of action was to have this priest get treatment and then transfer him away from the state. He said he now knew that this was not the right approach, but at the time he tried to get the best advice he could and to act as responsibly as possible.
Sometimes when we judge actions taken 30 more years ago with the standards and knowledge of today we can be very critical of people who were truly trying to do their best.
I appreciate the tone and thoughtfulness of your writing here.
I do think that many are forgetting, there are many purposes served by a trial other than the punishment of the guilty. Far more important is the open determination of the truth, justice for the victim, and discouragement for anyone who feels similarly tempted. Many of us might well say the punishment is the least important of these.
Fr. James Martin did a thoughtful post about this. Now that the Huffington Post has a religious section, I guess he is on there.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-james-martin-sj/how-could-it-happen-traci_b_514965.html
Paul,
You make a good point about the Langsing case. However, in Wisconsin and Bavaria, what was done was contrary to the advice of professionals and victims.
Gerald,
While sad over the whole situtation, I was most pleased when Law left Boston. He did not resign but was run out of town on a rail by the laity. Like in Scranton recently, everyone in the diocese understood that their bishop did not resign but they had fired him — lay Catholics should remember they do have such power. It is not a canonical process, it is simply a matter of rising up. Pitchforks and torches are optional nowdays.
Cardinals hold the one office in the Catholic Church one cannot be dismissed from. The result has been some characters more gruesome than Law but it has a legitimate reason — namely to prevent a Pope from manipulating the election of his successor.
Sure, Rome is a nice place but so is St. Helena. Law was slapped down pretty hard. Archpriest of a Basilica may sound nice but it is a purely ceremonial job with no power or duties other than the obligation to fundraise for an old building in major disrepair.
Exiling Law from his native country, deposing him as archbishop and giving him no real duties other than the burden of financial responsibility for a white elephant is a reasonable place to put him.
Charles, I am in total agreement with you. When there is no transparency such as in an open hearing then fragmentation as Ellul speaks of continues. This fragmentation seems to be an inherent critical flaw which has not been properly understood, in my opinion.
The materialistic structure of the Church reminds me of the tower of Babel when confusion became the major influence that inhibited progress toward building a tower that would symbolize the greatness of that particular tribe. The tower was this particular tribe’s attempt to project that they were better than any other group of people even though they all spoke the same language. This is the class thought disorder associated with a narcissistic defense that protects the human being from the reality of being nothing in the vastness of infinity.
The structure of the Church seems to be the tower of Babel in that it prevents a clear vision of reality in relationship to human nothingness and infinity. The Church seems to be caught in the history of materialistic tradition which evolved to define itself as God’s special servant in a materialistic world. Without realizing it the leaders of this structure created a fragmented house of cards, that looks imposing and regal in its appearance, but is fragile in its construction due to the denial of its engineers’ admission of incompetence. It’s as though throughout the course of construction of this tower as problems arose more structures were created to cover up the symptoms of weakness in the basic foundation. The only reason this structure remains now is the Truth that the foundation is God. However, the engineers of the physical structure only get glimpses of the reality of God and continue to rely on materialistic perceptions to reinforce the fragile structure that is called the Church.
The attacks against the Church from those outside the Church, in my opinion, do not come from some evil source of hatred that intends to bring down God’s Church. These attacks reveal the powerful spiritual effect that the Church has on the entire world. So, when any sin is hidden and not publicly revealed and amended the underlying effect of that sin creates a butterfly effect that harms everyone on this planet. It is not about the small percentage of priests who have abused the innocent, it is about the power of the Church that God has built to teach the world how to love one another. Therefore, the Light which the Church reveals will be the light that affects the world within the spiritual reality of our quantum entanglement. Any frequency that is less than the luminous frequency of God’s Light emanating from the Church results in the corresponding reaction of human suffering throughout the world.
I have no problem believing that the ongoing innuendo against the Pope is part of a larger program to discredit the Catholic Church, and that the larger object of those attacks is to discredit the influence of the Church and what it represents. But attacks against the Church for articulating its own principles are one thing; the oblique attacks, striking the Church where it has in fact done wrong, are something else.
Almost everything Benedict has done since his elevation has been admirable, not least his efforts to root out the causes of child abuse within the Church and guarantee that they will not be repeated. And it is largely the admirable things that he has done that make him a target. That is why it is so distressing that the main Vatican reaction to the recent publicity has been damage control: Not the Pope’s fault–he was on the other side of town.
The innuendo over the Milwaukee case seem without any merit. The Munich business seems (from what we’ve been told) more serious. Bishop Ratzinger probably knew nothing about the transfers, even though he was copied on the memo. This is thoroughly believable, but not the appropriate response (which is, “No excuse, sir”). If a ship runs aground under the third officer’s watch while the captain is asleep in his cabin, the captain is responsible and he does not let the third officer take the fall.
Everyone, from the Pope on down, makes mistakes,and the roots of these mistakes no doubt do reach back into the structure and practices of the system. I don’t know what the appropriate response would be. I’d certainly hate to see the Pope grovel in front of the secular media. But I wonder, on top of the hectoring of the Irish bishops, if there couldn’t be some general statement to this effect: That what has happened is unacceptable, but that the phenomenon was in the past not well understood, whether within the Church or without; that until recently there has not been a proper understanding of the nature, scope, seriousness,and significance of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy (howevermuch the same thing goes on elsewhere); that certain institutional practices have contributed to the obscuring of what should have been an obvious truth (perhaps particularly, as I think the Pope indicated to the Irishmen, overzealousness in preserving the reputation of the Church and avoiding “scandal”); that numbers of persons, from the laity on up, bear a certain responsibility for the state affairs; and included among those who came up short of where they should have been is one Joseph Ratzinger.
It is critical that the Church leaders become aware of the enormous spiritual effect its clergy has on humanity. This sacrament of Holy Orders cannot be underestimated in the power it gives to affect others. This is not about the comparison of numbers in the clergy vs those in the secular. This is about the realization of spiritual power that is present in the Sacrament and how the sin of one priest far outweighs the cumulative effect of any secular institution or person.
I began collecting together a number of helpful and clear insights. Then I realized that this has been too fruitful and thoughtful of a conversation to capture the soundbites. Thank you all for such food for thought.
I was at a small conference the other week where an elder man, having heard I attend CUA, asked what I thought of the new allegations and scandal. Of course his take was simply that if they were just not celibate, this would not be a problem. (Keep in mind this was a Protestant gathering, and suffice it to say this is a general sentiment.) I retorted that the question is about accountability and isolation. As a Protestant minister I have been inundated by the warnings of social power, which all ministers have. The systemic structures which protect this power without tempering it with community and accountability must be reconceived.
Just a perspective from outside the communion.