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Hyperbole, vitriol and death by crucifixion
You have to wonder if the Roman Catholic Church circa 2010 is what Jesus had in mind as he hung on the cross. Probably not. On the other hand, the current explosion is likely not a surprise to him. According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus was executed as a common criminal--death by crucifixion--and hung between two thieves. One of his followers turned him over to the authorities, another denied knowing him, and all of them fled when he most needed them. His expectations about how these followers might undertake his commission to teach all nations were possibly not very high.
The past weeks' headlines, Catholic reactions, and official ecclesiastical responses would seem to confirm those low expectations.
A case of clerical sexual abuse by a German priest assigned to the Archdiocese of Munich when then-Cardinal Ratzinger was its archbishop has spiraled in a matter of days into an explosive war of words, charges and counter-charges. In the United State, it has revived all of the painful and vitriolic accusations of the 2002 clerical abuse scandal that came to light in Boston under Cardinal Bernard Law. Soon other bishops and other dioceses had their own scandals. Serious remedies were put in place, but the U.S. Catholic Church still suffers the consequences: accusations that it has not done enough for the victims nor sufficiently punished the guilty priests and the bishops who covered for them. Safe to say in this charged atmosphere there are conflicting accounts of what has been done and what still needs to be done.
The German case--and subsequent revelations there--have brought all of this back because Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, has been accused of a dilatory reaction in one of the most egregious American cases, that of the Reverend Lawrence Murphy who directed a school for the deaf in Milwaukee and is said to have abused some 200 deaf boys. The New York Times published the story along with documents related to those accusations. One of the troublesome issues in the whole controversy is whether the story accurately represents what the documents report. Or has the narrative created by the 2002 scandal set the story in stone making a factual account hard to agree on.
The Catholic blogosphere, right, left, and center has gone ballistic, each with its favorite theory and favorite remedy, while rehearsing the original Murphy scandal (he worked at the school from the mid-1950s until he was removed in the early '70s), the subsequent actions of two archbishops and their staffs, and the effort to remove the priest from the clerical state by convening a canonical trial in Rome. That effort ended (according to the documents) when Murphy died in 1998. To even repeat this chronology is to raise hackles across the board about who knew what when, who did what, and why more wasn't done. And though it is now a firmly fixed fact in the Ethernet, it seems unlikely that Ratzinger or his office ever had charge of Murphy's case. (We still don't know about his direct involvement as archbishop in the Munich case.)
But ultimately everyone smelled blood--Benedict's. For his sins, a raft of sentences have been handed down ranging from a public airing of his role in Munich and as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, to more apologies to victims, to the removal of errant bishops, and finally to his own resignation. Maureen Dowd's headline in Wednesday's Times proposed an inquisition; followed one presumes by burning at the stake.
Though I am no fan of this pope, I can't help wondering how such a level of hysteria has fixed so quickly and resolutely on him. Of course, there are theories about his responsibilities--right, left, and center, Catholic, secular, and extra-terrestrial--most of them advanced without much factual underpinnings. In the meantime, no one knows what is likely to happen. In Germany where this all started more revelations about abuse will probably surface. The legal process and its consequences are likely to be different since Germany does not seems to have the enthusiasm of American law for civil suits and for the depositions that have produced so many of the "facts" about the scandal. In the United States, Catholics are at each other's throats. On Wednesday, a bishop proposed to his priests canceling their subscriptions to the New York Times.
At the end of the day, the pope is not going to resign, while the Vatican's defensive stance contributes to the ongoing erosion of his credibility. All of this puts off for a good long time the reforms that might make the church more likely to carry out Jesus' commission to teach all nations with authority and credibility. And in that more prefect world, Maureen Dowd will be reborn as a Hindu in Mumbai.
By
Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
|
April 1, 2010; 9:21 AM ET
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Posted by: areyousaying | April 5, 2010 9:24 PM
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The down side of being "infallible" and an absolute monarch of your organization is that the buck stops with you every time.
Why are people crying for the pope to resign? Because he was either complicit or incompetent. He was given supreme administrative power as pontiff, and supposedly supreme divine power too. Yet he failed to punish those responsible for the rape of minors until the public started looking at how the church was handling things. It just goes to show that you really shouldn't trust any organization to uphold the law at its own expense. We don't need more priests, we need more police.
Posted by: Sajanas | April 5, 2010 10:39 AM
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It costs 145 billion dollars to operate global Christianity, records a book on evangelization. The Church commands 4,000,000 full time Christian workers, it runs 13,000 major libraries, it publishes 22,000 periodicals, it operates 1,800 Christian Radio and TV stations. It runs 1,500 universities and 930 research centers. It has 250,000 foreign missionaries and over 400 institutions to train them. These are 1989 numbers. No wonder Church needs Nazi gold looted from Jews of Europe and drug money to support this gigantic multinational operation.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "Only the other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple, and demolished it. This is outrageous." (quoted in Harijan: November 5, 1937).
Sexual abuse and corruption in India's Catholic Churches
http://myexperimentsagainstprejudice.blogspot.com/2009/02/church-sex-and-scandals.html
Posted by: futuralogic | April 4, 2010 5:04 PM
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There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no
redeemer liveth!
The only way to cure the cancer of catholicism, and stop the pedophilia, is to begin each ceremony of ordination to the deaconate with castration. Let any priest who wants to be celibate make a gift of his balls to jesus.
YOU ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN A NEW BLOG…
…that tackles Church abuse, separation of Church and State, Atheism, Buddhism, Existentialism….
Posted by: Schaum | April 4, 2010 3:37 PM
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What is the core of the Holocaust? The treatment of a member of the human family without any respect for their sacred dignity as a child of God?
Clericalism is not the problem at all It is a failure of individual souls to be true to their vows and the giving in to the dark side that is at the base of this deep and ugly wound. In focusing on those priests and religious who was seduced by the devil people should not forget all those good priests and religious who lived lives of pure love and service.There but for the grace of God could go any one of us. Now is the time to strive for personal holiness and bring back light into our darkening world.Whatever faith tradition we have grown up in now is surely the time to go down on our knees and pray humbly for God's graces to pour down into the hearts and minds of our troubled humanity.
Posted by: marymack77 | April 4, 2010 1:30 AM
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Comes now the Vatican comparing the outrage of its clergy child abuse victims to the Nazi's that killed the Jews.
Further proof of who this pope really is and the complicity of catholics who remain silent regarding this vile propaganda and his obstruction of Biblical, moral and civil justice.
"Chirst's Church" indeed.
Posted by: areyousaying | April 2, 2010 5:01 PM
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There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no
redeemer liveth!
The only way to cure the cancer of catholicism, and stop the pedophilia, is to begin each ceremony of ordination to the deaconate with castration. Let any priest who wants to be celibate make a gift of his balls to jesus.
YOU ARE INVITED TO PARTICIPATE IN A NEW BLOG…
…that tackles Church abuse, separation of Church and State, Atheism, Buddhism, Existentialism….
Posted by: Schaum | April 1, 2010 2:20 PM
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The Catholic Church needs to double-down on its conservativeness and its secrecy. Catholicism is a political affiliation, but it is not a democracy.
The Pope should issue an Oath of Allegiance that is read in every single Catholic Church on Easter. The oath should state the following:
ANY Catholic who supports abortion in any form or homosexual rights will be excommunicated unless they reject these positions and repent.
And any Catholic who questions Vatican/papal authority in matters of the flesh or the spirit is in direct conflict with Holy Roman Authority. These "doubters" must confess their transgression and cease questioning the manner in which the Vatican handles any and all civil/criminal affairs involving its clergy.
The Vatican receives orders from God, the Vatican and the clergy communicate morality to the lay people. The lay people are at the BOTTOM of the hierarchy and the sooner they remember that, the better.
This Oath will separate the wheat from the chaff. Better to have a Roman Catholic Church consisting of 5 million shocktroops that 1 billion "soft" adherents.
Posted by: biograph19851 | April 1, 2010 1:20 PM
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The sexual abuse of children is a horrible epidemic and it is getting worse througout society.
We must be outraged and yet we must see this as the much larger problem against human dignity it is, rather than as a convenient club with which scourge the current pope.
The data indicates the clergy sex abuse in the Catholic church in the USA peaked in the 1970s and 1980s and has since declined sharply. I wish the same trend were true in our public schools, our youth sports, and our families.
And the facts of this forty-year-old case and how it has been publicized presents more evidence about the behaviors and goals of our media than it it provides about misconduct by this pope.
"Christ is the point. I, myself, admire the present pope, but even if I criticized him as harshly as some do, even if his successor proved to be as bad as some of those who have gone before, even if I find the Church, as I have to live with it, a pain in the neck, I should still say that nothing a pope (or a priest) could do or say would make me wish to leave the Church although I might well wish that they would leave." ~ Frank Sheed (1897-1981)
Posted by: BruceinKansas | April 1, 2010 1:01 PM
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Comparing the Hitler Youth Pope's self-inflicted predicament to the suffering of Christ is blasphemy and typically Catholic.
How about the victims? What would you compare their suffering to?
Posted by: areyousaying | April 1, 2010 10:46 AM
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Know and recognize the symptoms of a priest "grooming" or molesting children:
http://sexual-abuse.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_pedophiles_groom_victims
Report suspicious behavior by priests to the FBI, the US Attorney or the National Child Abuse Hotline:
http://www.childhelp.org/pages/hotline
1-800-4-A-CHILD
DO NOT report the problem the the diocese, Catholic DAs or police departments with Catholic lieutenants, captains and/or chiefs.
It's time we put this church on notice that their pervert molesters and their criminal accomplices will now be reported to and investigated and prosecuted by US Justice. It's time to take a stand and say enough.