Thermal pope
Things are getting hot for the Catholic church.
The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret…But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse. They stressed that the document merely concerned procedures for handling the church trial of an accused priest, and that the secrecy required by Rome for that hearing by no means extended to a ban on reporting such crimes to civil authorities.
Right…that’s the issue we discussed last month – concluding that it was so damn ambiguous and woolly and evasive we couldn’t be sure what it was saying.
Well guess what.
Bishop John McAreavey of Dromore in Northern Ireland, told a news conference this week that Irish bishops “widely misinterpreted” the directive and couldn’t get a clear reading from Rome on how to proceed. “One of the difficulties that bishops expressed was the fact that at times it wasn’t always possible to get clear guidance from the Holy See and there wasn’t always a consistent approach within the different Vatican departments,” he said. “Obviously, Rome is aware of this misinterpretation and the harm that this has done, or could potentially do, to the trust that the people have in how the church deals with these matters,” he said.
Interesting, isn’t it. They knew perfectly well that the document was hard to interpret, and they gave no help.
An Irish government-authorized investigation into the scandal and cover up harshly criticized the Vatican for its mixed messages and insistence on secrecy in the 2001 directive and previous Vatican documents on the topic. “An obligation to secrecy/confidentialtiy on the part of participants in a canonical process could undoubtedly constitute an inhibition on reporting child sexual abuse to the civil authorities or others,” it concluded.
In the United States, Dan Shea, an attorney for several victims, has introduced the Ratzinger letter in court as evidence that the church was trying to obstruct justice. He has argued that the church impeded civil reporting by keeping the cases secret and “reserving” them for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “This is an international criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice,” Shea told The Associated Press.
Hotter and hotter…but still never hot enough. Yet.
Cardinal Bernard Law went to work as a chaplain with the Sisters of Mercy in the wake of the child clerical abuse in Boston.
Will a similar fate, I wonder, await our own Irish Cardinal, Sean Brady, with the Sisters of Mercy – – who most assuredly will not be found wanting, when it comes to protecting one of their own male godly species?
Will Sean be also welcomed with open arms by the Vatican and will we the loyal laity be given another glimpse of ring kissing before he takes up a lucrative position in Rome, just like his religious counterpart, Law
Rome, after all, at all costs must be seen by its superiors, to protect and remain faithful to its own in whatever circumstances – as the powers that be in fancy frocks would not want them spilling too many unsavoury pontifical beans. The church is an extraordinarily massively rich empire and it cannot afford to lose its powerful status. It has invested so much energy over the years in trying to convert the world and it must not start fraying at the edges.
“Christopher Brauchli: The Return of Cardinal Law
Rome on $12000 a Month.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli06032004.html –
I think H. G. Wells may have been right in 1943 (?) when he asked: “Why aren’t we bombing the Vatican?”
The basic rule ,”When you’re in a hole,stop digging” doesn’t apply to the Catholic church in this case.The more they dig, the more the politicians in Ireland,generally educated by catholics will think,” I don’t understand how they can be doing this.But they’re so holy and righteous,they must have a point,just like when I was at school,when they always had the answers,even if I couldn’t understand them.So,I’ll leave them alone.”Oh,and ,of course,there’s the fact that they do deliver votes.A bigger force for evil would be difficult to imagine.
Andrewm…I can imagine a bigger force for evil quite easily. It’s name is Islam. At the same time, it is quite clear, I believe, not that the document is misleading, but that the document’s sole intention (that is, the purpose of the Vatican document, Crimen sollicitationis) was to keep cases of abuse from being leaked to the public and to public authorities. It had to do with protecting the ‘good name’ of the church. It is inconceiveable that it had any other purpose, for if it did not prevent church leaders from reporting offences to public authorities the whole issue of secrecy would have been pointless, since the secret would have been out. Why sign documents then promising to keep the matter a secret until ten years after the victim’s 18th birthday?! It is dishonest of the church to make these claims, and they do amount of criminal conspiracy.
I find the excuse that “the document merely concerned procedures for handling the church trial of an accused priest” wholly unconvincing. I doubt there ever were such trials, and if there were, I doubt they were honest trials. After all, how many of the priests involved are still in office?
And I agree with Eric MacDonald – even if they were handling these cases as an internal affairs matter, the only reason to keep them secret is if they have something to hide.
Privacy concerns for the victims (and possibly for the suspects as well) could be handled by offering anonymity, not by keeping it a secret that there were investigations going on at all.
“But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse.”
If that is the case why did Cardinal Sean Brady not fulfill his moral duty and complain to the gardai about the child abuse at the hands of the Norbertine Belgian order, priest, Brendan Smyth. CSB when he was in a top position as notary within the diocese of Kilmore in Co Cavan and also conducted one of the meetings on his own with the victims of abuse.
I encountered the parents of an abuse victim of child abuse when I resided in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan. They told me way back in the late eighties that they had stopped going to mass because of the abuse of their child. They were completely ostrasised by some of the people in this small rural village/town because they had pointed the finger at the clergy – – it was an unheard of thing and they were also sent to Coventry because they never attended mass. The valley of the squinting windows closed their minds to these people who were more sinned against.
If I found myself in the situation where I knew that children were abused and I did not act – I would see it as a matter of resignation. Cardinal Sean Brady said something to this effect only three months ago. Yet, it has just been discovered that he never went to anyone when he dealt with the abuse of children in 1975. So despicable.
To think that this cardinal was at the helm of the Irish contingency of bishops who went to Rome (to kiss the ring of the pope) to sort out the Irish clerical and institutional child abuse. Sure, no wonder, they did not want outsiders at the conference for fear of the real truth coming out. The church is not to be trusted at all.
There is a man in the audience on Pat Kenny ‘Frontline’ show saying that he is ashamed to say that he is a Catholic because of the latest news about the cover up by CSB.
Another person has said that the church expects children to understand things when they reach the age of reason – yet grown men who are highly educated are saying that they did not understand child abuse.
The religious used this “legal’ ‘lack of understanding’ spiel tag at the commission to inquire in institutional child abuse. It is like listening to a broken record.
It looks like the ambiguity in the Vatican document is intentional. As others have said here, it doesn’t have any other function except to direct a cover up, but phrased in such a way as to allow plausible deniability about that intent.
If I were on a jury, I would not grant such deniability any plausibility.
The most interesting thing to me about this whole affair is not the actual abuse or the church cover-ups or even the reluctance of the police authorities to intervene. The most interesting thing has been the admission by the church of the methods they used to publicly avoid liabilities – specifically the technique of “mental reservation”. In effect this technique allowed them to ‘misdirect’ questions by answering them in a way that leads the questioner in the opposite way to the actual true answer (in other words lying by semantics).
The recent revelation of his involvement in silencing abused children and allowing their rapist to avoid the law exposes Cardinal Sean Brady’s blatant and cynical use of this technique. In November he released a statement about the bishops who were found guilty of negligence in the protection of children from abusing priests. In that statement he claimed that if he had been similarly negligent as a bishop or manager then he would have no option but to resign. As is the case with “mental reservation” techniques one needs to examine the wording very carefully. Brady has indeed been found to have been just as guilty as the four bishops named in the Dublin abuse report however because he used the qualifying terms “as a bishop or manager” he now claims innocence of the charge.