The Pope's Apology. Does it go far enough?

[vison]

Then you are really rather proving my point. You have a vision of 'conservatism' which, I would venture, consists of callousness and greed, and a view of 'Christian charity' which involves subcontracting it to Caesar

Do not tell me what I think, solictr. Do not explain my "vision" of anything to me.

Since I am not a Catholic, nor, indeed, a Christian of any sort, my view of this sordid mess is that of an outsider. Nonetheless, I am as free as anyone to "interpret" what Jesus is said to have said. And, like millions of others, I tend to believe that Jesus would be horrified and scandalized to see what has become of his teachings. But that's impossible: because if Jesus is indeed a god, then he already sees it. And, if he isn't, then it doesn't make any difference whatsoever.

Not only does my view of Jesus vary from yours, my idea of conservatism varies wildly from yours. And guess what? This isn't a political thread and that's the end of that.

[solicitr]

- Would find it defensible if the atheists handled the sexual abuse cases through their internal procedures, rather than reporting to public authorities.

Is anyone arguing that, for any group? Otherwise a good list, but this item's stuffed with straw.

- Where atheist leaders of the organization refused to cooperate with public authorities, would be sympathetic to the argument that the public authorities simply hadn’t contacted the right leaders of the organization (and indeed, had contacted the wrong leaders as a political stunt, to shame the IAA).

Hmmmmm. You make that sound like a game of Simon Says, rather than the Irish case you're clearly referring to, where the protocol in question is universal and widely known; I would suggest "refused to cooperate" is loaded language.

Stated as you have, I doubt anyone would support such a position.

[solicitr]

[deleted]

[nerdanel]

- Would find it defensible if the atheists handled the sexual abuse cases through their internal procedures, rather than reporting to public authorities.

Is anyone arguing that, for any group? Otherwise a good list, but this item's stuffed with straw.

soli --

My closest friend is Catholic, and I spent four hours arguing this point with him last weekend. His argument, as best as I can recreate it, is that norms concerning the reporting of sexual abuse by authority figures to secular authorities have changed drastically over the past 100-120 years, and may not have been as well-developed in (say) the 1970s as they are now. At the time, he suggested, abuse victims may have felt more comfortable raising the abuse issue internally within the Church, rather than going to secular authorities. Similarly, he contended that Church authorities may have viewed the appropriate course of action (according to then-prevailing societal norms for dealing with sexual abuse) as being to discipline the relevant people internally. He also proffered various hypotheticals - what if an abuse victim sought out a pastor, asking the pastor to hold the abuse in strictest confidence and not go to the uathorities? What if an abuse victim confided in a deacon, but the abuser was a bishop over which the deacon had no power?

Although my friend agreed with me that "the ideal" would be for the Church to state unequivocally that going forward, it would promptly report abuse to the secular authorities, he was much more ... patient than me about the idea that it might take the Church time to reach that point of view. However, he disputed my view that Church authorities acting according to the norms of the 1970s and 1980s were equally at fault for not reporting the abuse of which they were aware to public authorities, whether or not the matter was handled internally.

So, I hadn't proffered that example as a strawman, but rather in response to a lengthy conversation I had with a bona fide, lifelong Catholic. I hope that clarifies things.

As for the Irish case, I concede I don't fully understand the protocols to which you are referring, and I will need to do more reading before commenting further. I should thus probably have excluded that example.

(both edits are for grammar)

[vison]

Do not tell me what I think, solictr. Do not explain my "vision" of anything to me.

Oh, the irony.

The word "irony" is a mistake. It does not apply in this circumstance.

I do not attempt to put words in your mouth, nor to pretend I can read thoughts in your mind. I am not explaining your views: I merely have the effrontery to disagree with you.

I am very reluctant to complain but I will if you persist.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

solicitr and vison, please desist in your counter-productive argument about politics. You are both to blame, so it isn't going to do any good for either of you to complain about the other one.

[vison]

This issue strikes home to me in a personal way. About 30 years ago my widowed aunt Ann was the head matron at an Indian residential school in Lillooet, BC. This school was run by the Anglican church.

My parents stopped to visit her a few times and met the man who was headmaster there. My dad loathed the guy on sight. Dad seldom said a hard word about anyone, but, man, he took an instant dislike to Richard. At the time we put it down to the fact that Richard was a toffee-nosed snob; he said he was sent out from England to run the school "properly". I met him once or twice and I shared my Dad's dislike. He seemed to think he was far too good to associate with the likes of us and, of course, he had an ill-concealed racist contempt of the students in his charge.
Then, sort of out of nowhere, my aunt announced that she and Richard were getting married. She told us this at my parents' 40th wedding anniversary party and I remember vividly that she said, "Of course there's to be no sex. Just companionship." This was in 1983.

They got married at the school and then, almost right away, Richard announced that they were moving to Australia, where he was to run a residential school for Australian aboriginals. They moved and 2 days after they arrived at the school, Richard dropped dead of a heart attack. My poor aunt had a terrible time of it, but was soon back in Canada and lived out the rest of her life.

Around then began the sad flood of Indian people coming forward to tell of the abuse they had suffered for decades at these residential schools. Anglican, United Church, Catholic -- it made no difference which church ran them, the horror was everywhere and thousands of lives were marked by the pain. One of the worst places of all was the Anglican school in Lilooet. Several teachers were charged and prosecuted, and in the background - had to be in the background, since he was safely dead - was Richard’s name. He was famously the worst of all. It turned out he had been sent out from England because he was accused of abusing boys there. He landed up in Ontario first, then in BC. And then, once again he was moved, this time to Australia, the church protecting its own. His marriage to my aunt was simply a kind of last ditch attempt to fend off any idea that he was “queer” or messing about with yet another group of boys. He married her on the advice of the then bishop, who said he could thus make a “fresh start” as a married man in Australia.

My aunt knew. She knew exactly what he was and what he was doing, he and his fellow pedophiles. She married him for her own miserable reasons. Like many Canadians, she had a racist view of the First Nations people and it was almost as if, it really was almost as if it was okay for these beastly men to abuse these kids because they were “just Indians”. She was just glad Richard had died before the scandal broke.

Not all the children were sexually abused, but there weren’t many who escaped emotional and physical abuses of all kinds. It was the government’s intention to forcibly assimilate these children, to erase their Indian-ness.

I don’t know how the various churches can square it up with Jesus. The legalistic wriggling, the lies, the cover-ups, the distortions, the secrecy, putting the institution ahead of the people - what does this have to do with the Gospels?

[vison]

solicitr and vison, please desist in your counter-productive argument about politics. You are both to blame, so it isn't going to do any good for either of you to complain about the other one.

Far from arguing politics, I distinctly said :"This isn't a political thread and that's the end of that."

[solicitr]

I don’t know how the various churches can square it up with Jesus. The legalistic wriggling, the lies, the cover-ups, the distortions, the secrecy, putting the institution ahead of the people - what does this have to do with the Gospels?

Is anyone doing that? Is ANYONE claiming that lies and cover-ups are good or right or holy?

[Cerin]

Many people mistakenly take vison's screen name to be 'vision'. I have seen it repeatedly.

[River]

Well someone must have thought they were okay because they persisted for so long...

[solicitr]

Nel:

In the Wisconsin case, the civil authorities investigated the claims against Fr Murphy and chose not to pursue them. You're quite right- things were different then. In particular, police (there were rarely ever any CPS workers involved) tended to dismiss claims by children.

What's also unmentioned in the media coverage is that Fr Murphy was removed from the active priesthood and spent the remaining 20 years of his life in unofficial retirement.

But the press firestorm- being stirred up further by Mo Dowd- is that then-Cardinal Ratzinger "intervened" to block the 1996 proceeding to defrock the man, which is not only untrue, but a scurrilous attempt to tar the Pope with the 'coverup' brush.




In the Irish case, it was a matter of a *very improper* demand for answers directed to the Papal Nuncio (the Vatican ambassador), whose entirely correct assertion of diplomatic immunity was then cynically spun as 'refusal to cooperate.' Imagine a Congressional committee investigating, say, allegations against the IDF doing the same to the Israeli ambassador.

[solicitr]

Far from arguing politics, I distinctly said :"This isn't a political thread and that's the end of that."

The conversational equivalent of ringing the doorbell and running away.

[vison]

Speaking spiritually here, this is also a spiritual problem. An apology is all well and good; real action is even better. But, ultimately, if the Church (any church) doesn't allow the light of Christ to shine into even the darkest reaches it will be a sick church. He has to be allowed to cleanse and heal and expose the rottenness we all build up over time.

I love the RCC, but like any church, we have to be more concerned with pleasing God than pleasing ourselves or covering our butts if people around us are doing unrighteous things. I wish there had been more clergy of integrity who would've been more afraid of God than the church. (And I'm sure there were clergy who acted with integrity in trying to stop the abuses.) After all, Jesus promised that his Church would prevail, so we shouldn't be afraid to speak out against things going on in the church that are sinful or evil. It may be painful in the short term, but it will be fruitful and life-producing in the long term.

(I know I'm using a lot of Christian-ese here, and I do apologize. But I'm really trying to look at this with spiritual eyes.)

I guess I wonder if there's true repentance here. And I wonder how that will be demonstrated not just to the people but to God. There should be weeping and mourning and fasting and all of that jazz. I know that sounds weird, probably, but God can't work till his people ask forgiveness. (In this case, the hierarchy of the RCC has a lot to repent for.) So I think this written apology is good as a first step toward that repentance, but there's a lot more room for action. And it should be directed by God.

I think Lalaith said pretty much everything a Christian needs to say.

[sauronsfinger]

"things were different then"

We are not talking about something which happened centuries ago but within the lifetime of everyone here. Did these crimes somehow predate the passage of laws saying that an adult can not molest children? Were there not penalties in the law for people who were convicted of such crimes?

Anyone who had knowledge of these crimes and failed to report them to the police for investigation helped to enable to make them possible. If that same offender went on to commit more crimes and molest more children, the people who failed to report offenders are now partially responsible.

That applies to anyone and everyone no matter if you think God Himself presided over your job interview.

[Frelga]

I was going to stay out of this, but this is getting mind boggling.

At Vatican Service, Persecution of Jews Is Invoked

Really? REALLY?

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

Being as charitable as I possibly can over this, I can only say that this statement was not very well thought through.

[vison]

No doubt it will all be cleared up in the morning.

[solicitr]

We are not talking about something which happened centuries ago but within the lifetime of everyone here. Did these crimes somehow predate the passage of laws saying that an adult can not molest children? Were there not penalties in the law for people who were convicted of such crimes?

Anyone who had knowledge of these crimes and failed to report them to the police for investigation helped to enable to make them possible.

Were you paying attention? It was the police who were different then. It was the police who refused to believe the charges or pursue the matter further. Back in the 1970s law enforcement was not trained to deal with cases of child sexual abuse, and typically handled them very poorly.

For example, they would do things like let confessed child-rapist movie directors out on pre-sentencing bond.

[solicitr]

No, Frelga, that was not at all well though out. In fact, it was a total brain-fart and Jews have every right to be offended.

What was he thinking?

[River]

I was going to stay out of this, but this is getting mind boggling.

At Vatican Service, Persecution of Jews Is Invoked

Really? REALLY?

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Father Cantalamessa quoted from what he said was a letter from an unnamed Jewish friend. “I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole word,” he said the friend wrote. “The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”

I think I can sort of see the guy's point. Sort of. Maybe. But...yeesh. Fail. EPIC FAIL.

Seriously. Wow.

Being as charitable as I possibly can over this, I can only say that this statement was not very well thought through.