The pope invited the bishops to explain
It really is extraordinary how deferential the news media are toward the Vatican and how completely they are letting the pope get away with pretending to be outraged by the fact that the Irish church concealed sexual abuse of children when in fact the pope told them to do exactly that less than a decade ago. It really is extraordinary the way journalists simply fail to point that out. One is tempted to think they’re not doing their jobs properly.
Pope Benedict spent two days in one of the Vatican’s sumptuous marble audience halls closeted with 24 Irish bishops who both individually and collectively confessed to him their shortcomings and omissions in the paedophile clergy scandal which has shocked the entire Catholic world…Pope Benedict did not spare his words in addressing his Irish bishops. He said that child abuse was a “heinous crime” as well as a “grave sin”. He lambasted the bishops for failing to act effectively over cases of sexual abuse of young people. Seated at two long tables, the red-clad bishops were invited by the Pope to describe individually – in interventions limited to a maximum of seven minutes each – how they had dealt with cases of priestly paedophilia in their own dioceses, and to explain why so many cases had been systematically covered up during a period of decades.
Why? Why?! Because you told us to, that’s why! Because you told us to, you sanctimonious buck-passing white-robed sack of shit!
The BBC article doesn’t mention that. It has been reporting on this meeting for days, and I have yet to see it mention the 2001 letter to all the bishops in the church – the letter from Joseph Ratzinger. David Willey is the Beeb’s Vatican correspondent, yet he writes this long piece without mentioning the letter. That must be BBC policy rather than correspondent policy – and it’s pathetic.
The supposedly left-liberal BBC goes out of its way to play nice with religious types. I suspect that sometimes a kind of censorship is at work, perhaps born of a desperate fear of yet another volley from the Daily Mail et al.
For instance, the bloke arrested over the fake bomb detector scandal initially described himself – and was reported as such by the Beeb – as a born again Christian (so of course he wouldn’t do anything dishonest). I’ve been unable to find that early report on the BBC website. This might of course be down to my techno-ineptitude.
It is getting to the point that almost nothing being reported by mainstream media can be relied upon as coming anywhere near truth.
I got discouraged 25 years ago when being quoted in the NY Times and Wall Street Journal which had very little to do with what I told the reporters.
I liked the comment about how the scandal had “shocked the catholic world.” I suppose they’re right.The rest of us were simply disgusted ,rather than shocked, at having our suspicions confirmed.
I’m a community nurse.If I’d knowingly covered up paedophilia ,I’d rightly expect to be sacked,struck off the nursing register and probably prosecuted.If I worked for the Catholic Church, it seems I would get away with a little slap across the knuckles by my boss.
My Latin is admittedly not the best, and I may be subject to correction by the scholars amongst us, but ‘Benedict’ can be flexibly translated as ‘good talker’. On consideration, perhaps ‘Benerotatus’ would have been better: ‘good spinner’.
Well it’s short for benedictus of course – means blessing (or he-blessed) – like Baruch, and Barack.
Just saying.
OB: Well, there you go. But doesn’t ‘benedictus’ derive from ‘bene’ (good, well etc) + ‘dictus’ (speech, direction etc). Nota Bene: I don’t have a Latin dictionary.
All by the way. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking that if I got dressed up in white drag, I might be invited onto the Beeb too.
Worth a try wouldn’t you say?
Do we have any Latin experts here?
I came across a post on the True Catholic discussion board that disputes the accuracy of the article in the Observer about Ratzinger’s letter.
After a quick Google search, I found a Latin document on the Vatican web site which seems to be the letter in question. As noted here, the English title of the document is “Letter sent to all Bishops and other Ordinaries and hierarchs of the Catholic Church regarding the more serious offenses («graviora delicta») reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” dated May 18, 2001.
I have not yet waded through the entire “True Catholic” post because I don’t know whether FR JOHN GEORGE’s interpretation is any more accurate than the Observer’s. But it would be interesting to know what Ratzinger’s letter really says.
Does the fact that the Director-General of the BBC is a ‘Jesuit-educated Roman Catholic’ have any bearing on the deference the BBC shows to the pope?
An English translation of the letter is here. But, having read the English version, I’m not sure I know much more about what it really says than when I only had the Latin version.
Ian – sure – good + say=blessing.
Damn, you know what, there may be a different way of understanding that letter. If so I have a lot of crow to eat!
It could be that the letter is talking about the specifically churchy crime and not the secular legal crime. What the priests did is a churchy violation (‘against the sanctity of the sacrament of penance’) as well as a legal one – the letter may be saying the church has jurisdiction over the former, not the latter. It’s a little ambiguous to a lay person, but that could be it…
Like Hamilton, I can’t really figure out what the letter is saying.
“All tribunals of the Latin church and the Eastern Catholic churches are bound to observe
the canons on delicts and penalties, and also on the penal process of both codes
respectively”
What does that mean, for instance?! Is it saying that canon law trumps secular law? Or not? I can’t tell!
We need an expert.