That was then, this is now
The pope is not a modernist, nor is he any kind of pluralist. He is not one to think that morality improves over time.
When he was crowned Pope nearly five years ago, Benedict promised to clean up the Church. He would not be a showman Pope like John Paul II, he would not flog himself around the world addressing huge stadiums. The Church under his guidance would not have expansiveness as its goal, but purification.
He had a reformist phase in his youth, but he got over it.
…around 1968, he rejected all that and became a counter-revolutionary warrior, dedicated to liberating the Church from trendy nonsense and restoring the purity which he saw the reform movement as having polluted. As such, his ardour has never flagged.
But then…What is Sean Brady’s explanation for the actions he is now apologizing for?
Delivering his St Patrick’s Day mass on Wednesday, Cardinal Brady said: “This week a painful episode from my own past has come before me. I have listened to reaction from people to my role in events 35 years ago. I want to say to anyone who has been hurt by any failure on my part that I apologise to you with all my heart. I also apologise to all those who feel I have let them down. Looking back I am ashamed that I have not always upheld the values that I profess and believe in.”
He’s cagy, he does a classic guy apology (I’m sorry you were offended), but he does in the end admit that he did bad things. Well why did he do them? Because he wanted to? Or because at the time he didn’t get how bad they were?
The latter seems to be the view of the people who still turn up at Armagh cathedral.
The applause that rippled through Armagh’s vast St Patrick’s Cathedral as Dr Séan Brady entered this morning stated in the clearest terms exactly what his parishioners think of their cardinal…Marie Ryan said to condemn him for failing to alert the authorities about notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth 35 years ago was to judge him using today’s standards. “It was a different era back then and a lot of things happened that shouldn’t,” she said.
Ah. It was a different era back then. Times change, people change, views on morality change.
But then – if times change, and views on morality change, and people can look back on their pasts and feel ashamed of things they did many years ago, then –
Then why is the Catholic church so god damn confident that it is right to go on discriminating against gays?
Why does it not occur to the Catholic church that views on the morality of discriminating against people for bad stupid empty reasons have changed, and that it is entirely possible that they have changed for the better, and that the Catholic church ought not to preen itself on insisting on ‘church teachings’ when to other people those teachings are not just wrong but evil?
The church needs to get it. The church needs to realize that it has no moral high ground and no monopoly on moral wisdom; that it is in fact worse than many secular institutions, not better; that it has every reason to be very very humble, and to err on the side of generosity rather than purity. It’s not going to, of course, but it needs to.
> classic guy apology
Eh? Did you mean that to be humorous, or was that an unintentionally sexist remark? If the former, what would be a classic girl apology?
“Marie Ryan said to condemn him for failing to alert the authorities about notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth 35 years ago was to judge him using today’s standards. ‘It was a different era back then and a lot of things happened that shouldn’t,’ she said.”
Yeah, well 35 years ago I was 16. The behaviour that is being defended here was not acceptable then, either. And, as Ophelia clearly states, the Church is supposed to be *ahead* of the rest of us poor sinners when it comes to morality.
“Well why did he do them?”
Probably because he thought he could get away with it.
Thank goodness the man has a strong moral compass to show him the difference between right and wrong.
Lord knows what atrocities he might have committed without the guideposts of moral absolutism as received from his loving god via that infallible conduit the pope.
Humorous, intentionally (mildly) sexist, perhaps a bit in-jokey – but not all that in-jokey. Many guys are bad at apologizing; many guys, when they do apologize, do it in the form I gave. There’s no classic girl apology, there’s just an apology.
Or an apology of this nature.
“…[O]n face value, Dr Brady’s apology, delivered in humble tones, for the Church’s “hopelessly inadequate response” to the issue of clerical sex abuse appeared genuine.
…[D]espite having stated he would only resign if asked by Pope Benedict XVI, Dr Brady seemed to adopt a different view yesterday by suggesting his future as Primate of All Ireland would be based on his reflection on hearing the views of abuse victims and others.
But a careful reading of his homily shows that the cardinal may have also deliberately chosen not to make a direct reference to his own position.
Instead, Dr Brady asked aloud: “Does [a new beginning] allow for wounded healers, those who have made mistakes in their past, to have a part in shaping the future?”
One suspects his own answer to that question would be in the affirmative.
However, as the editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper, Garry O’Sullivan, pointed out, the cardinal’s comments about his own past failings were effectively dragged out of him.
Read more: http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/wounded-healer-may-be-incapable-of-leading-church-114775.html#ixzz0iW46AOmR
So, I turned to my wife just now and asked, “would you say that men or women are better at apologizing, or both about the same?” To which she replied, “Men, definitely. Women absolutely hate to admit we’re wrong or to apologize.”
Which pretty much confirms my experience.
As much as it pains me Ophelia, I’m gonna have to call you on the “guy apology” thing too:) Not because there aren’t distinctly “guy” responses to some issues (in a stereotypical way, there often are), but because the “I’m sorry you were offended” Not-pology is the classic politician’s response. I believe in laying blaming squarely where it’s due:)
Ooookay, I’ll call it the politician apology then. If I remember. Which I probably won’t. I apologize for that, in advance.
Sheesh. I can’t get away with anything around here.
See, if we didn’t hold you to Impossibly High Standards, then you wouldn’t respect us anymore, and you wouldn’t say such flattering things about the quality of your commenters. Then we’d have to cry, and you wouldn’t want that:)
“Marie Ryan said to condemn him for failing to alert the authorities about notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth 35 years ago was to judge him using today’s standards. ‘It was a different era back then and a lot of things happened that shouldn’t,’ she said.”
“And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.”
Mark 9:42, 2,000 years ago.
Peter, the “sin” in the ‘millstone’ verse is usually taken to mean causing the child to lose their faith (at least that’s the way I was taught it, growing up in Ireland). In that sense it is outspoken atheism rather than child rape that is the greatest danger to the morals of the new generation.
I read a letter to the ‘Irish Independent’ the other day from someone who compared Catholic Canon law with Sharia law and said they both have their place (in my opinion that place should be in history books).
The comment, however, made me think and realize that this whole mess is basically the clash of two separate systems of law – the secular state law (in which it is illegal to rape children on pain of imprisonment) and the Catholic Canon law – in which it is illegal to divulge matters that have been revealed in the confessional (on threat of excommunication).
Cardinal Brady seemed to think he did no wrong when he made the children swear the following oath:
“I will never directly or indirectly, by means of a nod, or of a word, by writing, or in any other way, and under whatever type of pretext, even for the most urgent and most serious cause (even) for the purpose of a greater good, commit anything against this fidelity to the secret, unless a…dispensation has been expressly given to me by the Supreme Pontiff.”
According to the procedures of Canon law Brady did nothing wrong – it was all entirely to the letter of the law. Brady himself as a participant in the inquiry had to swear the same oath and thus it was actually illegal (under Canon law) for him to speak to the authorities about the case.
This is a clear case of religion making people do bad things. I know from my own childhood that lay teachers were not subject to the same immunity that religious offenders could employ. When I was in primary school (run by the ‘Christian Brothers’) one of the non religious teachers was arrested for child molestation – no secret oaths in that situation. Coincidentally I’m 42 now and this was in the middle of my primary school experience which would have put it almost exactly 35 years ago.
I can assure Marie Ryan that child abuse – when exposed – was still considered child abuse in those days.
Was raping children really considered socially acceptable in 1975?
Ohhhhhhh dear god, is that the wording of the oath?
Fucking hell.
” I can assure Marie Ryan that child abuse – when exposed – was still considered child abuse in those days’
I second that — as there was a case in Goldenbridge brought to the attention of the gardai by Sr. Xaveria. Unfortunately, there were more cases that never got a gardai look in.
Breda Heffernan of the Irish Independent has a telling article over at Paddy Doyle’s God Squad.
“All those involved in the 1975 investigation into Smyth, Cardinal Brady — then a 36-year-old priest — the children who had been abused and Smyth himself, were required to sign the oath. To break the vow would lead to excommunication from the Catholic Church. The document was written by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, previously known as the Inquisition.
It was only to be circulated among bishops and it demanded that all parties to an investigation keep a “perpetual silence”.
Scripted in dense legal language, the document sets out the steps to be taken for investigating crimes of solicitation against priests.
Once the tribunal has reached its conclusion, it lays out a number of different courses. If there is no foundation to the allegations, all documents relating to the accusation must be destroyed.
If it is not possible to determine if a crime has occurred, the documents should be stored in the diocesan archives to be re-opened if another allegation is made in the future.
Morals
Should the tribunal find there are “indications of a crime serious enough but not yet sufficient to institute an accusatorial process”, a check should be kept on the “morals” of the priest.
In the event where it is certain the priest has offended, he is tried under canon law.
Since its unearthing in 2003, opinion has been split on whether the document provides the “smoking gun” to prove there was a conspiracy by the Vatican to cover-up the problem of paedophile priests.
The Irish Bishops’ Conference last week said the document had been consistently misrepresented in the media and that it was never the intention of the oath to prevent victims from reporting crimes to the civil authorities.
One canon lawyer has said an oath of secrecy is not unusual in church investigations and is not specific to sex abuse cases. And although those taking part in the investigation are required to remain silent while it is being carried out, they can report the abuse to police before this.
However Paddy Doyle, author of ‘The God Squad’ and a survivor of institutional abuse, last night described the oath of secrecy as “chilling”.
Good stuff, M-T; thanks.
It’s becoming clearer and clearer with every new revelation and every new witness heard from that it’s bullshit to claim that the secrecy didn’t mean actual secrecy, it just meant some special bit of churchy etiquette that applied only within the walls of the church on alternate Tuesdays. Everybody understood it to mean STFU with menaces.
That’s how Hans Kung understands it. If he does, I don’t think we need to read it more charitably.
Kung:
‘In his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from around the world, all cases of grave sexual offences by clerics had to be reported, under strictest secrecy (“secretum pontificum”), to his curial office, which was exclusively responsible for dealing with them. Ratzinger himself, in a letter on “grave sexual crimes” addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe “papal secrecy” in such cases.’
Boom, as Jon Stewart would say.