Here’s a question, if the local bishop thought this guy was dangerous around children why did he continue to allow him to serve in a ministry that wuold put him near children. Even if the priest wasn’t de-frocked, there was nothing to prevent the local bishop from limiting his duties. I think if anyone is to blame here its the local bishop.
Brendan Loy
David, the following two concepts are NOT mutually exclusive:
1) The local bishop is to blame.
2) Rome is to blame.
I believe both are true. You and I agree on #1. Now, tell me why you disagree (if you do) on #2?
Brendan Loy
Or, to put it another way, suppose my post just said this:
AP: Future pope stalled pedophile case for “good of the church”
Ignore the “returned to youth ministry” part entirely, since you think that’s entirely on the local bishop. Even without that part… how is it remotely defensible for anyone, still less the future Pope, to ever say, ever — EVER? — that a factor which must be taken into account, in deciding whether to defrock a known pedophile and child molester, is the impact that the scandal of his defrocking might have on “the good of the universal church”?
This is the 1,834,287th example of the Catholic Church hierarchy putting narrow self-interest, in the public relations / damage control sense, ahead of 1) the prevention of child rape, 2) comfort, and justice, for the victims of child rape, and 3) consequences for the perpetrators of child rape.
Any other institution caught in a scandal 10% of this magnitude would cease to exist as a going concern. ACORN was disbanded because some local morons gave advice to someone posing as a pimp. Arthur Andersen was destroyed because it employed shady accounting tricks. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, willfully harbored child rapists, and put those rapists in situations where they could continue to rape children, and silenced victims of child rape, and purposely obstructed justice with regard to child rape, for decades, maintaining its stance that preventing bad Church P.R. is more important (“for the good of the universal church”) than preventing little children from being raped right up until the point at which it got caught red-handed. Then, and only then, did we start to hear about reforms and apologies and “zero tolerance” and whatnot. As I wrote on Patrick’s Facebook Wall, this is the moral equivalent of Tiger Woods suddenly becoming a contrite, “changed man” after getting caught, when he really had no choice if he wanted to salvage his career. When you seek forgiveness and change your ways after you’ve already gotten caught, people rightfully are skeptical of your moral conversion.
If there isn’t true accountability at the highest levels of the Catholic Church for this epic, indefensible shitstorm, I don’t see how the instituton can continue to have any respect from the faithful. That’s not an attack on the faith, but on its institutions. If there was ever a time for another Reformation and a breakaway sect to cleanse itself of the Church’s manifestly unholy actions…
David K.
“The Catholic Church, meanwhile, willfully harbored child rapists, and put those rapists in situations where they could continue to rape children, and silenced victims of child rape, and purposely obstructed justice with regard to child rape, for decades”
Bullshit.
The Catholic Church did not do this. It wasn’t a policy of the Church to do this, it was the actions of individuals within the Church (of which the Pope MAY have been one according to some allegations although I don’t buy that based on the evidence presented).
Nothing, absolutely NOTHING justifies what was done to the victims, and those who sheltered the abusers, whatever status they hold in the Church were wrong, period. Full Stop. End of Line. On that we agree.
But I am not going to call for the dismantling of an instution which encompasses billions of people and does a metric shit-ton of good in this world because some of its members were engaged in corrupt action.
Do changes need to happen, absolutely. Are they happening? Absolutely. Is this situation unique to the Catholic Church? Absolutely NOT. This wasn’t a Catholic problem, it was a societal problem. it happened across the spectrum in society for much of the past century. it happened in schools, in churches (not just catholic ones) in homes, in the Boy Scouts. That is not to excuse the wrongful behiavor of those in the Catholic Church who failed.
Basically what you are saying is that the actions of a few, no matter how odious should be used as an excuse to castigate the entire group.
Reggie Bush may have recieved improper benefits while a player at USC. I suppose in your mind that means that the whole team was corrupt and the SC athletic department should be disbanded right?
David K.
As to your first post
We agree on 1
I haven’t seen enough proof to believe 2.
That the (future) pope decided that defrocking a priest wasn’t something that should be done lightly isn’t proof that he thought that a pedophile should be harbored. The local bishop had every authority to remove the offender from any position where he presented a danger to children. If he failed to do so that is HIS fault, he didn’t need Rome’s permission to do that.
Brendan Loy
I am not literally calling for the Catholic Church to be disbanded. I am just trying to provoke a little bit of thought about why the Catholic Church is treated so differently than other institutions. You say “it was the actions of individuals within the Church,” but institutions cannot act; only individuals within institutions can act, and therefore we routinely judge institutions based on the actions of individuals. We have no other choice. There is no other way to judge institutions.
The proper question, therefore, is how widespread the behavior was, and to what extent the leadership could have / should have stopped it. Your analogy to USC is apt in this regard. I would say the Catholic Church most certainly displayed a “lack of institutional control” with regard to child rape. In fact, it’s worse than that: various members of the hierarchy actively facilitated the cover up. (That is an indisputable, established fact, by the way.) But certainly, at a minimum, they would meet the NCAA standard for severe institutional penalties based on individual actions that should’ve been stopped.
To make another example, remember when a bunch of Republicans were involved in corruption scandals around 2005-2006? Didn’t you, and a lot of other people, judge the party based on those scandals? And rightfully so, I’d say, because they were widespread enough to indicate some institutional culpability. Yet it certainly “wasn’t a policy of the [Republican Party] to do this.” Why the hell would that be the standard? So it’s OK to allow people in my organization to do horrible things, so long as I’m not allowing it as a matter of official “policy”? You wanna talk about “bullshit,” THAT my friend is bullshit, and you know it. That cannot possibly be the proper standard by which the Church, or any other institution, is judged. “Oh, well, we didn’t have a policy of facilitating and covering up child rape, so we’re in the clear.” WTF!
You are so eager to say it’s all individuals, it’s not the Church, but the standard you’re applying to reach that conclusion is a standard that neither you, nor virtually anyone else, apply to other human institutions. (And that’s what the Catholic Church is, let’s remember: a human institution. The Church purports to speak for God, but it is not itself God. Its leaders are fallible humans.) It is a special standard applied only to the Church, designed solely to make the Church impregnable to attack, because you’re creating an impossible burden of proof for those trying to demonstrate Church culpability. No matter how deep and high up it goes, you just say, “It was just individuals, not the Church.” Yeah, and the executive branch of U.S. government wasn’t involved in Watergate and its coverup; just the president and his top advisers and lots of other people, but not the “institution.” BULL. SHIT.
As for comment #5: if you “haven’t seen enough proof to believe 2,” then you absolutely, positively haven’t seen enough proof to believe 1, either. You don’t know what that bishop did or didn’t do! You have no idea! You are merely assuming he’s to blame, because he was in a position to prevent what happened. Well, guess what, SO WAS THE POPE. But you don’t apply the same standard to the Pope. With the Pope, you demand strict proof. With others, you’re willing to assume culpability based on circumstantial evidence, or simply based on the position they held. WHY?
Brendan Loy
*By the way, in reference to my Watergate analogy, note that the proper solution was not, of course, to “disband” the executive branch of the U.S. government. But REAL accountability, at the very top, was most certainly necessary. Same here.
Brendan Loy
**Also note that, in Watergate, no little children were raped. Just sayin’.
Brendan, on some of your soapboxes, your moral outrage is as pleasant to the ear (or, ahem, eyes) as nails on a chalkboard. But on this stuff, I’m in the choir and I am screaming “Amen!” If anything, the Catholic Church should be held to a higher standard — especially if Rome wants to lay claim to episcopal and ecumenical primacy for the Christian faith (which it does). To quote Russell Crowe, “Marcus Aurelius had a dream that was Rome. This is not it. This is not it!!!”
Contrary to what David or Patrick might think, I do not have a hatred for Catholicism. In fact, I’m 90% my first born will be baptized Catholic (and I don’t even believe in infant baptism!). I am officially unaffiliated with any denomination, but my heart yearns to be part of a “holy catholic Church” and “the communion of saints”. The Catholic Church is, for many reasons, probably the best equipped to lead the ecumenical movement and re-unify the faith. But forget for the moment all of the theological differences that make me queasy about officially becoming a Catholic. On a practical level, why do I want to associate myself with an institution that is systemically so broken that it can’t get right on easy issues like clergy raping children? I work for a big, bureaucratic company, so I know all about how large institutions and their processes and rules are cumbersome and lead to lots of inanities, red tape, and unintentional impacts on otherwise healthy departments. So yes, institutional imperfections are allowed, and to be expected, but if rampant child rape in the Catholic Church isn’t a sign that something inside there is fundamentally broken and dissociated from God’s Plan for His Bride, then I don’t know what is or ever could be. I mean, in the cosmic scale of things, this has to be considered somewhere worse than indulgences, yet only slightly less bad than the Inquisition, right? Would you defend the Church so vehemently if it was selling indulgences or tormenting non-believers still? I doubt it, so why the hell do you tolerate this level of incompetence and abetment at the highest levels of the Church?
The reality is, all the screaming by folks like myself and Brendan isn’t going to change the Church. It’s only when folks like David and Patrick rise up with their pitchforks that things will truly be reformed. Until then, apologists like David and Patrick are as much of the problem as is the pope and the bishops.
David K.
“I am not literally calling for the Catholic Church to be disbanded. I am just trying to provoke a little bit of thought about why the Catholic Church is treated so differently than other institutions.”
Again I say bullshit and point to your subsequent tweet about the issue. Why make the comparison to Acorn and it being disbanded? If you want to provoke some thought why not be a little less one sided about this hmm? Twice now you have acted as if the Pope has been found guilty of some nefarious dastardly crime and acted morally outraged because of it.
The first was based on what turned out to be a pretty innacurate article from the New York Times. The second from a letter that suggested defrocking a priest shouldn’t be done in haste. From that letter you accused the Pope of stalling the case against him and allowing him to go back to ministering children, as if he persnoally tried to cover it up, when in reality there was no cover up, the case was ongoing, and the priest was allowed back into ministry with children by the same bishop who was supposedly so concerened that the priest by de-frocked in the first place!
Contrary to what Andrew so wrongly thinks, i’m not an apologist on this, I think this is a SERIOUS problem. Frankly I agree with local talk show host Dave Ross (a fellow Catholic) whose suggestion was that the Pope should cancel all non-essential activities and in their place meet individually with every single person who was abused personally, not because he himself was at fault, but because he represents the Church now and must be involved in the healing. And if, IF it turns out that the Pope was actually involved in actively facilitiating the coverup of pedophile preists and actively allowing them to be in positions to continue to do so, then I want him to step down. Of course accusations vs. actual guilt matter as well. Do you think that based on accusations and some,f rankly weak evidence he should be thrown out? I don’t.
As for why its treated differently, um, you do realize how much press coverage there has been about these cases right? You do realize that there have been lawsuits and settlements and payouts in diocese where the leadership DID do things that were horribly horribly wrong right? I mean what are you looking for here? Maybe people like me aren’t willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe people like me think that, gosh there are 95%+ Priests out there who have done nothing wrong and shouldn’t have to suffer for the actions fo a few. Maybe we see the good that the Catholic church does worldwide on a daily basis and think, gee, rather than shutting the whole thing down maybe we should fix whats broken and keep the good stuff. We realize that changes ARE being made, and the outrage over what happened is just that, outrage over what HAPPENED. Not what IS happening. Most of these cases are decades old. And while it doesn’t excuse ANY wrong doing by those involved, it seems rather strange to condemn the behavior now of the church and how its handling things NOW if its different than before.
I also think that the Church is not the Pope, or its Bishops or any one individual, the Church is the people. Whatever failings of the leadership doesn’t change my belief that the Body of the Church and its teachings are right. Individuals are sinners, they will fail, there is never going to be a point in history where every member of the clergy is perfect and free from scandal. I don’t define the Cathoilc church based on them. I believe that what happened was wrong, but I don’t believe it was done by the Church. Maybe you believe that the tree is rotten to the core, but *I* believe that it has some bad fruit that needs to be weeded out.
Jazz
David, did you read the linked article?
“Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years’ probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.
“As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.”
Then – four years later, the future Pope wrote back as follows:
“But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the ‘good of the universal church’ and the ‘detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age.’ Kiesle was 38 at the time.
David, for a guy who spills a lot of ink criticizing (often rightly) your Republican opponents for their partisan blindness, it is rather disappointing to hear you interpret from the above that this is the local bishop’s, and not Ratzinger’s, fault.
We all know that this conversation is one of those bang-your-head-against-a-brick-wall topics, but for any Catholic still in the bunker, AML’s second paragraph in 9 above is outstanding. Cognitive dissonance, organized religion style = immensely difficult to overcome. But AML gives it a pretty good effort.
Let me just add: I also love the idea of the holy catholic church. But it ought to be at least marginally competent. My only tiny quibble with AML’s #9 is that I am not sure that the systemic child rape in the 20th/21st century is actually less bad than the Inquisition – the Inquisition is an awful thing, but like the long sorry sordid history of the shaky relations between Gentiles and Jews, it has a strong political component.
The epidemic of child rape in the Catholic Church is first, last, always and only an issue of a mind-blowingly shitty lack of internal controls. Such hideous failing in internal controls is beyond unacceptable in any universal organization.
In the universal church, its … can’t do it, there’s no adjective that comes close to capturing how – bad – it is.
I am not Catholic. I am a member of a conservative protestant church. So this will color my views on this situation. But I figured it would be good to clarify where I come from with this, because really, your religion DOES color how you view churches in the world.
I’m going to stick up for Benedict a bit here. According to many I read who follow the scandal, he’s done more than other Popes, and did MUCH more as Cardinal then most of the priests. He was the one who wanted (and eventually did) to act against prominent abusers who had much influence during John Paul II’ papacy. Much of what I read seems to be as follows: “Ratzinger, much like most bishops, covered things up for a long time. But around the early 2000s, he started reacting differently, and started working against abusers. This was, remember, when everyone else was still in denial mode.
Now, as to why the Roman Catholic Church isn’t disbanded . . . a bit of history is in order here. (History – my favorite subject!)
Rome has survived MUCH worse. There is no way this takes Rome down. Let’s see, we’ve had popes who bribed the College of Cardinals to get elected, times in the church’s history where there were three sole heads of the church, times when the pope had a bajillion mistresses, while other priests were selling forgiveness for money. Bishoprics have been given away in the past because kings paid money to get relatives in them. And the Catholic Church has survived every one of these crises. EVERY ONE. It has splintered (which ends up being why there are Protestant churches like the one I am a member in), buckled, lost and gained, and re-lost and re-gained influence, and it keeps on going. This will not cause the Catholic Church to disband.
Another practical reason the church won’t be disbanded is that it controls its own country. Its top leadership cannot be touched. The US, EU, and all other entities cannot force the Pope out.
And the impression I get is that there is no one blameless in the church hierarchy at this point. Everybody shuffled other people around. If Benedict were forced out, somebody deeper involved who has done much less to solve the problem might end up at the helm.
Ironically, this may strengthen Rome’s hold over the parishes. Because as much blame as Rome has, the parishes have more, and will probably be marginalized by a beefed up enforcement unit controlled from Rome.
Oh, and here’s an account from a former Catholic (he moved to Eastern Orthodoxy, and his reason for leaving the Catholic church is that his journalistic work during the American sex abuse scandal completely shattered his faith in the Catholic Church – but he still hopes to see it figure this out). Reading stuff like this really helps, especially from somebody who was personally exposed and affected by this.
I also think that the Church is not the Pope, or its Bishops or any one individual, the Church is the people.
Careful there, David — you almost sound like a Protestant!
Individuals are sinners, they will fail, there is never going to be a point in history where every member of the clergy is perfect and free from scandal. I don’t define the Cathoilc church based on them. I believe that what happened was wrong, but I don’t believe it was done by the Church. Maybe you believe that the tree is rotten to the core, but *I* believe that it has some bad fruit that needs to be weeded out.
David, the Catholic apologists in this debate frequently cite the refrain that the Church — including the leadership and clergy — are human, fallible, sinners. This is a diversionary tactic; nobody is arguing they aren’t! Indeed, nobody is arguing that “every member of the clergy [ought to be] perfect and free from scandal” — that’s a straw man as well. What we are arguing is that child rape is so egregiously disgusting and damaging that the Church’s reaction to this scandal overall is woefully inadequate and speaks of deeper faults. This “bad fruit” indeed needs to be weeded out, but the rotten fruit doesn’t just randomly appear here and there, it has been actively sheltered and left to fester and infect surrounding fruits as well. Yeshua clearly warns, “And whoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me, to fall into sin, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” And yet you want us to pretend that the protection, shuffling around, and cloaking of these bad apples can be treated lightly so long as the bad apples themselves are thrown out?
The epidemic of child rape in the Catholic Church is first, last, always and only an issue of a mind-blowingly shitty lack of internal controls. Such hideous failing in internal controls is beyond unacceptable in any universal organization.
Yes, this.
And if we are being honest with ourselves, we must accept that this probably is not some recent phenomena; for as long as there have been priests and altar boys, there has probably been sex abuse in the Church, and the reaction has probably always been to shush up, shuffle the sick priest to another parish, and let time heal wounds. All that’s changed is that today we have TV docudramas, newspapers, lawyers, psychologists, and thankfully, a culture obsessed about uncovering and stopping domestic and child abuse, incest, rape, and other unspeakable crimes. Quite obviously the world didn’t always use to be this way (we use to own slaves and hang blacks for flirting with white women; in that kind of context, you think we didn’t deny rumors of men in positions of authority abusing children?). So when the light of day shines into the Church and we see something rotten, it’s a relatively safe assumption that the problem has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, but not much was mentioned of it until now because the abuses and injustices taking place outside the Church walls was even more common and hideous. I’ll purposely avoid highlighting any theological or doctrinal implications because I don’t want that to obscure the more empirical truth that should be obvious to all.
In the end, I will give David some credit. It’s obvious to me from his comments in #10 that he truly has begun to struggle and grapple with the evidence in front of him and that he isn’t just formulating apologies out of reactive self-defense of his faith. But I suppose it is inevitable that when one’s identity is so tightly bound to something under visceral attack, you cannot help but adopt a bunker mentality and otherwise partially excuse the inexcusable.
B. Minich, that’s a good blog post from Dreher. I especially liked this link by one of his commenters.
I would like to see some fundamental, structural reforms in the Catholic Church (haven’t we Protestants been saying that for almost 500 years now?), but absent any of that, I’d settle for a public admission of guilt, a humble request for forgiveness, a highly visible and well-funded dedication to healing of those who were harmed (including families and loved ones), and jail time for the bishops, priests, and cardinals who abused or who aided and abetted the abusers — preferably self-reported and voluntary, to show true contrition and willingness to undergo public penance.
Jazz
and jail time for the bishops, priests, and cardinals who abused or who aided and abetted the abusers
This is pretty much where my sympathy for Ratzinger as embattled CEO begins. I am obviously not a lawyer, and am a bit out of my depth on the following, but having grown-up Catholic, my hunch is that this request might be asking Ratzinger to do something utterly catastrophic.
Considering that: 1) the incidence of pedophilia in the priesthood has historically been widespread (relative to other professions), and 2) the Catholic Church has operated from its position as Bride of Christ, and 3) the strong influence of the confessional nature of the Church, I am not sure how Ratzinger practically achieves a full accounting without dealing a death blow to his already-thin priestly ranks.
One can imagine that many of the tragic victims of this epidemic, living within the Church Triumphant, would assume that their particular experience of abuse was a horrendous outlier, so their natural instinct might be to report it to the other, probably older, priest in the parish. Or at the next parish over that the family knows from church activities. Whatever the means, while the actual number of perpetrators might be reasonably small, the scope of the coverup could be fairly large indeed, given the confessional nature of the church and the historic posture of the Church Triumphant that this sort of thing doesn’t happen there.
IOW, and this is where I am out of my lawyerly depth, it could be a felony to find out about such matters (outside the confessional), and counsel a minor to say nothing further. If so, fully scrubbing this issue may kill the patient…I sympathize with Ratzinger not wanting to facilitate such an outcome.
Jazz
In fact, my childhood church briefly had a young priest who confessed to molesting young boys, was sent away for the proverbial therapy, and then reassigned…I don’t particularly recall the guy beyond him sitting in on our Sunday school class once or twice (I was five years old, fortunately a bit young to be considered for an altar boy and suffer these sorts of crimes).
Even so, I recall that when I discovered what had happened to the priest, I felt an immense shame that our parish had “let down” the Glorious Church by harboring such a bad seed. I have in mind that a lot of folks felt the same way, which fuels the perception that this sort of thing may have been revealed a lot, then given its perceived rarity, consequently covered up a lot as well.
Jazz
Finally, I agree with AML that David deserves a fair bit of credit for at least acknowledging that there is some rotten fruit on the tree, which is quite a bit more reasonable than many Catholics who exclusively play the persecution card when faced with these stories.
In the linked article, we learned of a young-ish priest who pleaded no contest to tying up and molesting boys and then, after completing his probation, asked to be removed from the priesthood, the diocese agreed, but the final arbiter (Ratzinger in Rome) dithered and scuttled because the case would “look bad”. Within the context of the article, an interpretration of the Kiesle case is that he is “one bad apple”, that Ratzinger’s office behaved regrettably…but we all make mistakes.
Suppose that the Microsoft country manager in an out-of-the-way place like Kyrgyzstan were caught embezzling a couple million. Suppose further that the auditors detected the embezzlement, and in addition to contacting local authorities, they told the audit committee, who recommended to Ballmer et al that the company report the incident and implement corrective measures. Suppose further that Ballmer resisted reporting it – or even taking any punitive action at all – on the premise that it might make Microsoft look bad.
Fast forward the hypothetical 30 years to a rhetorical question:
Do you believe there would be an epidemic of embezzlement at Microsoft following on from such non-intervention 30 years earlier, or do you believe that these sorts of things naturally go away on their own?
I’m willing to bet that every reader who engaged the rhetorical question in the paragraph above, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, answered it the same way. Going back to the Kiesle case, while it may just be a bad apple, one fears that it, and other cases like it, act as the tipping point of an epidemic when not dealt with, and that this story will only get far worse in the months and years to come.
Which is sickening, cause in spite of what the Catholic hierarchy says, a lot of us strayed Catholics really love the institution, and while B. Minich is probably right that the Catholic Church will survive everything, it is worrisome to think about what is still to come on this matter.
Jazz, I cannot accept that pedophiles leaving the Church to spend time in prison would be “catastrophic”. And for those who covered up and shuffled the bad priests around, it would hardly kill the church for them to spend six months or so in prison as well. Not to mention, they could stagger the sentences so that certain dioceses are not devastated by temporarily thinned ranks. Really, your argument at #16 seems incredibly flimsy to me, and even if it was catastrophic, that should not relieve the clergy from rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and accept civil punishment for the laws they have broken.
Jazz
Depending on the reach of the law, the scope of imprisonment for “aiding and abetting” could potentially be rather widespread indeed. Considering the triple Catholic pillars of 1) the sacrament of confession, and 2) the generally perceived infallibility of priests, and 3) the public position that this thing doesn’t happen in the church, it stands to reason that the actions of serial pedophiles may have been reported, without impact, to several other priests who would then be accessories after the fact.
If we limit the incarcerations to actual pedophiles, I agree that the church should easily be able to weather that storm. But if accessory after the fact in this instance is a felony, and if those priests are in scope too, it could be that in some regions the roster of acting priests will be devastated.
As I said in #16, I am not sure that accessory after the fact is a felony in this case – but by the setup of the church, it seems likely that many many priests would indeed be accessories after the fact.
Jazz
Actually, I am sort of glad that AML pushed back in #19, because as is so often the case, that argument made me rethink my view about Ratzinger’s situation. Six months for the molesters as a goodwill gesture, with the accessorizers after the fact off the hook? Sounds reasonable to me.
But from a manager (i.e. Ratzinger’s standpoint), how does he make that deal without exposing himself to the very real risk that a concession of the horror opens his priests to having the book thrown at them in many of the jurisdictions of the church? (To say nothing of not being sure that he’s entirely fixed the problem).
Been thinking that Ratzinger and deputies have probably had this conversation, only to realize that practically attempting the 6-month deal carries grave danger. Til now I’ve always figured that obfuscation is a reflection of cynicism on the part of the Catholic hierarchy; now I see that any other road is rife with grave danger. Again, “should” they be braver in the face of grave danger? Of course. But, you know, he that is without sin…at the end of the day, I can relate to why Ratzinger is handling things this way, where I couldn’t before.
He may not be the paragon of evil that his enemies describe him as. He’s guilty of fucking lots of stuff up, but his choices now are very difficult ones.
I do not ascribe ill motives to the pope, and I am sure he agonized over how best to address the problem and move forward while he was a cardinal. But from my perspective, the potential impact on the clergy and the Church is immaterial; those who have committed crimes must pay for their crimes according to the law. The law cannot and should not allow the guilty to stand behind spiritual sacraments and doctrines to avoid paying for their crimes. Perhaps the sacrament of confession and the forgiveness of God is powerful enough to absolve the priests (and their abetters) of their sins, but justice is owed to Caesar as well. The Church would do well to recognize that and have the guilty priests spend time in prison commensurate with their crimes, and for those who made the problem worse by putting these priests back into positions where innocents could again be harmed, they too ought to be punished.
Brendan Loy
Thinking about this today, and reading Andrew Sullivan’s post about the latest revelation, it occurred to me that the biggest problem with Ratzinger’s letter re: Kiesle is what it DOESN’T say. Don’t me wrong, what it DOES say is bad — “good of the universal church” seems pretty clearly to be code for “church P.R.,” especially in the context provided by the contemporaneous correspondence with the bishop — but I suppose Church defenders could argue that Ratzinger’s motive there was less nefarious than we are all supposing. However, what possible defense is there for the fact that, after saying “In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes,” Ratzinger didn’t add, “And oh by the way, MAKE EXTRA SPECIAL SURE THAT HE DOESN’T EVER WORK WITH CHILDREN AGAIN UNSUPERVISED, YOU MORONS” (in a more properly Pope-ish tone of course). This doesn’t appear to have been a consideration at all — the Church’s actions have consistently demonstrated a total lack of concern for that issue, which should of course be the #1 priority (and also the #2 priority, and the #3 priority, and really the entire Top 10 list), and Ratzinger’s letter is completely consistent with that trend.
That, really, is what galls me the most about this. It isn’t that the Church was trying to cover its ass. Everyone does CYA. It isn’t the obstruction of justice or the damage control. Those things are bad, but again pretty typical behavior by an institution faced with trouble. What’s absolutely and endlessly galling is the total failure to take effective, proactive measures — or even, in most cases seemingly, to make any effort to do so — to keep these monsters away from the children going forward, to make absolutely certain they can’t do it again. Even if you’re going to engage in “paternal care” and hush-hush special treatment because, uh, you’re the Catholic Church, or whatever, at the very least you owe the faithful THAT. Yet this simplest and most basic of requirements doesn’t even appear to have been on the priority list at all.
That fact, I think, is the salient point that seems to get overshadowed by all this other nonsense, and it’s why I wrote a while ago (on Facebook maybe) that I get pissed off by how we all seem to be arguing about the wrong things, and thereby downplaying the horrible reality of what happened here. If the Church wanted to follow its own internal protocols, to hold itself above the law, etc. etc., that wouldn’t be nearly so awful if those protocols seemed to have remotely taken into consideration the above-all-else necessity of PREVENTING MORE LITTLE CHILDREN FROM BEING RAPED by the evil monstrous people, erroneously known as “priests,” who the Church was providing “paternal care” to. If the protection of children had been properly prioritized, even within the context of a coverup, the Church would still need to be held to account for the coverup, but we wouldn’t be taking about something so gravely awful as the reality of what occurred.
And this memo shows Ratzinger was 100% complicit in that indefensible mentality — not merely prioritizing church P.R. ahead of the safety of children, but seemingly not even thinking about the safety of children AT ALL. And this guy’s the effin’ Pope?!?
gahrie
1) I’m no longer a Catholic, I am a Deist and so I explicitly reject the notion that the Church reflects the will of God. I have no dog in this fight.
2) Where is the post condemning Islam and it’s practice of child marriage and the way it tolerates child abuse?
3) The Catholic Church is viciously attacked for a variety of reasons, some good some bad. Child abuse is a horrible crime, one I am more than willing to punish with the death penalty. Many of the people attacking the Church and the Pope however are opportunists who are exploiting this issue.
4) How many child abusers work for the government? How many are teachers? Where are the calls to dismantle the public education system?
5) How about the U.N.? Child abuse and rape are rampant among U.N. peacekeepers and diplomats, and they are protected by the U.N. at least as much as priests by the Catholic Church. Where are the cries to disband the U.N.?
6) Show me where Cardinal Ratzinger ever suggested that Kiesle be assigned to work with children again. His memo was concerned with the ever shrinking and ever aging body of priests in the church.
7) The church has a lot of improvements to make in this area. They should publicly and criminally punish abusive priests. But child abuse is not exclusive to the Church, and not a defining feature of the Church.
Brendan, in my second-to-last paragraph in #14, I think there are the seeds for understanding why Ratzinger and the Catholic leadership didn’t think in the simplistic terms of “keeping these monsters away from the children so this can’t ever happen again.” That response is simply too modern for the Church patriarchs to comprehend. What I mean by that is, this is a Church steeped in hundreds and hundreds of years of history, in cultures where disease, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and bloody strife were far more the norm; the concept of Mayberry simply didn’t exist, and the road to get there doesn’t even exist until the Puritan movement (and that initial branch to here began in ghastly Cromwellian bloodletting as well). A child-molesting priest is disturbing, but seemingly minor and fixable compared to the daily evils evidenced in the barbarian-esque cultures around them. And recall that, historically from the priestly perspective, all sex is steeped in sickness and sin; a celibate man molesting an altar boy is only slightly more disturbing in this worldview than taking up a relationship with a marriageable woman.
What has since changed most radically is the world around the Church; it is you (and I), Brendan, who are hoisting up radical new standards of moral behavior, restraint, and justice and applying them to an institution ill-equipped to think in the same terms. We are shocked at the sex abuse, but until you recognize that the rot-stench you are now witnessing has been, to some degree, always there, nearly from the beginning, you’re never going to properly understand the Catholic Church’s behavior within its own context. It’s kind of like being shocked — shocked — that bribery is a rampant condition in third-world governments. The concept that you shouldn’t have to bribe an authority figure to gain justice and fair treatment is pretty radical for about 5 billion people or so.
Jazz
I asked several times on this thread for a legal interpretation as to the culpability of an accessory; no one jumped up, so I looked at Wikipedia, which says that an accessory’s guilt is treated on a par with a principal’s in common law, though there are several local statutes where an accessory’s guilt is considered less than a principal’s.
The Catholic Church is chock full now, and has been for several hundred years, with otherwise innocent, loyal priests who are accessories to pedophilia. Its fairly clear by now that Sullivan cares not a whit about this fact; well, his surprise that pedophilia has been part of the Catholic Church for centuries suggests that he simply doesn’t think about these issues all that deeply.
(Seriously. Sullivan is surprised that some random reader’s grandfather was abused by a priest in Poland in the early 20th century? Why wouldn’t a pedophile be more attracted today to the priesthood than, say, law, and why would that be any different 50, 500, 1000 years ago? I imagine that the vocations process kept pedophiles out of the priesthood until the vocational process fell apart a few generations ago. But Sullivan is really surprised that the vocations triage hasn’t always been perfect?)
Let us suppose, sake of argument, that the counsel Cardinal Ratzinger received in the early 80s was that putting the command on paper that a troubled priest be separated from children would be considered tantamount to confession of an institutional problem of child abuse, which Ratzinger’s lawyer advised would open the floodgates. Again, not at all sure which nation’s statute, just work with me here.
With the devil’s advocacy in mind, reread that letter from Ratzinger. The venerated legal mind Andrew Sullivan concludes with certainty that Ratzinger:
1) Doesn’t give a shit about children
2) Only worries about what the faithful might think
3) The letter is so indefensible that Ratzinger must necessarily be evil.
Among the venerated legal minds here, could any imagine that a Ratzinger attempting to protect a decent-sized pool of perpretators – and even larger horde of accessories – might write a non-committal letter such as the linked one that Sullivan believes to be conclusive evidence of his evil?
Obviously I can’t be sure. But Sullivan’s conviction that Ratzinger responded – four years late – in the way he did to an explosive case such as Kiesle’s, because
– Ratzinger is an evil, indefensible man, and
– not because his counsel advised him to do so
makes it seem like Sullivan just came into the city from the farm last week. Sullivan lives in DC? And East Coasters think we flyover country folk are naive rubes? Sheesh.
Here’s a question, if the local bishop thought this guy was dangerous around children why did he continue to allow him to serve in a ministry that wuold put him near children. Even if the priest wasn’t de-frocked, there was nothing to prevent the local bishop from limiting his duties. I think if anyone is to blame here its the local bishop.
David, the following two concepts are NOT mutually exclusive:
1) The local bishop is to blame.
2) Rome is to blame.
I believe both are true. You and I agree on #1. Now, tell me why you disagree (if you do) on #2?
Or, to put it another way, suppose my post just said this:
Ignore the “returned to youth ministry” part entirely, since you think that’s entirely on the local bishop. Even without that part… how is it remotely defensible for anyone, still less the future Pope, to ever say, ever — EVER? — that a factor which must be taken into account, in deciding whether to defrock a known pedophile and child molester, is the impact that the scandal of his defrocking might have on “the good of the universal church”?
This is the 1,834,287th example of the Catholic Church hierarchy putting narrow self-interest, in the public relations / damage control sense, ahead of 1) the prevention of child rape, 2) comfort, and justice, for the victims of child rape, and 3) consequences for the perpetrators of child rape.
Any other institution caught in a scandal 10% of this magnitude would cease to exist as a going concern. ACORN was disbanded because some local morons gave advice to someone posing as a pimp. Arthur Andersen was destroyed because it employed shady accounting tricks. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, willfully harbored child rapists, and put those rapists in situations where they could continue to rape children, and silenced victims of child rape, and purposely obstructed justice with regard to child rape, for decades, maintaining its stance that preventing bad Church P.R. is more important (“for the good of the universal church”) than preventing little children from being raped right up until the point at which it got caught red-handed. Then, and only then, did we start to hear about reforms and apologies and “zero tolerance” and whatnot. As I wrote on Patrick’s Facebook Wall, this is the moral equivalent of Tiger Woods suddenly becoming a contrite, “changed man” after getting caught, when he really had no choice if he wanted to salvage his career. When you seek forgiveness and change your ways after you’ve already gotten caught, people rightfully are skeptical of your moral conversion.
If there isn’t true accountability at the highest levels of the Catholic Church for this epic, indefensible shitstorm, I don’t see how the instituton can continue to have any respect from the faithful. That’s not an attack on the faith, but on its institutions. If there was ever a time for another Reformation and a breakaway sect to cleanse itself of the Church’s manifestly unholy actions…
“The Catholic Church, meanwhile, willfully harbored child rapists, and put those rapists in situations where they could continue to rape children, and silenced victims of child rape, and purposely obstructed justice with regard to child rape, for decades”
Bullshit.
The Catholic Church did not do this. It wasn’t a policy of the Church to do this, it was the actions of individuals within the Church (of which the Pope MAY have been one according to some allegations although I don’t buy that based on the evidence presented).
Nothing, absolutely NOTHING justifies what was done to the victims, and those who sheltered the abusers, whatever status they hold in the Church were wrong, period. Full Stop. End of Line. On that we agree.
But I am not going to call for the dismantling of an instution which encompasses billions of people and does a metric shit-ton of good in this world because some of its members were engaged in corrupt action.
Do changes need to happen, absolutely. Are they happening? Absolutely. Is this situation unique to the Catholic Church? Absolutely NOT. This wasn’t a Catholic problem, it was a societal problem. it happened across the spectrum in society for much of the past century. it happened in schools, in churches (not just catholic ones) in homes, in the Boy Scouts. That is not to excuse the wrongful behiavor of those in the Catholic Church who failed.
Basically what you are saying is that the actions of a few, no matter how odious should be used as an excuse to castigate the entire group.
Reggie Bush may have recieved improper benefits while a player at USC. I suppose in your mind that means that the whole team was corrupt and the SC athletic department should be disbanded right?
As to your first post
We agree on 1
I haven’t seen enough proof to believe 2.
That the (future) pope decided that defrocking a priest wasn’t something that should be done lightly isn’t proof that he thought that a pedophile should be harbored. The local bishop had every authority to remove the offender from any position where he presented a danger to children. If he failed to do so that is HIS fault, he didn’t need Rome’s permission to do that.
I am not literally calling for the Catholic Church to be disbanded. I am just trying to provoke a little bit of thought about why the Catholic Church is treated so differently than other institutions. You say “it was the actions of individuals within the Church,” but institutions cannot act; only individuals within institutions can act, and therefore we routinely judge institutions based on the actions of individuals. We have no other choice. There is no other way to judge institutions.
The proper question, therefore, is how widespread the behavior was, and to what extent the leadership could have / should have stopped it. Your analogy to USC is apt in this regard. I would say the Catholic Church most certainly displayed a “lack of institutional control” with regard to child rape. In fact, it’s worse than that: various members of the hierarchy actively facilitated the cover up. (That is an indisputable, established fact, by the way.) But certainly, at a minimum, they would meet the NCAA standard for severe institutional penalties based on individual actions that should’ve been stopped.
To make another example, remember when a bunch of Republicans were involved in corruption scandals around 2005-2006? Didn’t you, and a lot of other people, judge the party based on those scandals? And rightfully so, I’d say, because they were widespread enough to indicate some institutional culpability. Yet it certainly “wasn’t a policy of the [Republican Party] to do this.” Why the hell would that be the standard? So it’s OK to allow people in my organization to do horrible things, so long as I’m not allowing it as a matter of official “policy”? You wanna talk about “bullshit,” THAT my friend is bullshit, and you know it. That cannot possibly be the proper standard by which the Church, or any other institution, is judged. “Oh, well, we didn’t have a policy of facilitating and covering up child rape, so we’re in the clear.” WTF!
You are so eager to say it’s all individuals, it’s not the Church, but the standard you’re applying to reach that conclusion is a standard that neither you, nor virtually anyone else, apply to other human institutions. (And that’s what the Catholic Church is, let’s remember: a human institution. The Church purports to speak for God, but it is not itself God. Its leaders are fallible humans.) It is a special standard applied only to the Church, designed solely to make the Church impregnable to attack, because you’re creating an impossible burden of proof for those trying to demonstrate Church culpability. No matter how deep and high up it goes, you just say, “It was just individuals, not the Church.” Yeah, and the executive branch of U.S. government wasn’t involved in Watergate and its coverup; just the president and his top advisers and lots of other people, but not the “institution.” BULL. SHIT.
As for comment #5: if you “haven’t seen enough proof to believe 2,” then you absolutely, positively haven’t seen enough proof to believe 1, either. You don’t know what that bishop did or didn’t do! You have no idea! You are merely assuming he’s to blame, because he was in a position to prevent what happened. Well, guess what, SO WAS THE POPE. But you don’t apply the same standard to the Pope. With the Pope, you demand strict proof. With others, you’re willing to assume culpability based on circumstantial evidence, or simply based on the position they held. WHY?
*By the way, in reference to my Watergate analogy, note that the proper solution was not, of course, to “disband” the executive branch of the U.S. government. But REAL accountability, at the very top, was most certainly necessary. Same here.
**Also note that, in Watergate, no little children were raped. Just sayin’.
Brendan, on some of your soapboxes, your moral outrage is as pleasant to the ear (or, ahem, eyes) as nails on a chalkboard. But on this stuff, I’m in the choir and I am screaming “Amen!” If anything, the Catholic Church should be held to a higher standard — especially if Rome wants to lay claim to episcopal and ecumenical primacy for the Christian faith (which it does). To quote Russell Crowe, “Marcus Aurelius had a dream that was Rome. This is not it. This is not it!!!”
Contrary to what David or Patrick might think, I do not have a hatred for Catholicism. In fact, I’m 90% my first born will be baptized Catholic (and I don’t even believe in infant baptism!). I am officially unaffiliated with any denomination, but my heart yearns to be part of a “holy catholic Church” and “the communion of saints”. The Catholic Church is, for many reasons, probably the best equipped to lead the ecumenical movement and re-unify the faith. But forget for the moment all of the theological differences that make me queasy about officially becoming a Catholic. On a practical level, why do I want to associate myself with an institution that is systemically so broken that it can’t get right on easy issues like clergy raping children? I work for a big, bureaucratic company, so I know all about how large institutions and their processes and rules are cumbersome and lead to lots of inanities, red tape, and unintentional impacts on otherwise healthy departments. So yes, institutional imperfections are allowed, and to be expected, but if rampant child rape in the Catholic Church isn’t a sign that something inside there is fundamentally broken and dissociated from God’s Plan for His Bride, then I don’t know what is or ever could be. I mean, in the cosmic scale of things, this has to be considered somewhere worse than indulgences, yet only slightly less bad than the Inquisition, right? Would you defend the Church so vehemently if it was selling indulgences or tormenting non-believers still? I doubt it, so why the hell do you tolerate this level of incompetence and abetment at the highest levels of the Church?
The reality is, all the screaming by folks like myself and Brendan isn’t going to change the Church. It’s only when folks like David and Patrick rise up with their pitchforks that things will truly be reformed. Until then, apologists like David and Patrick are as much of the problem as is the pope and the bishops.
“I am not literally calling for the Catholic Church to be disbanded. I am just trying to provoke a little bit of thought about why the Catholic Church is treated so differently than other institutions.”
Again I say bullshit and point to your subsequent tweet about the issue. Why make the comparison to Acorn and it being disbanded? If you want to provoke some thought why not be a little less one sided about this hmm? Twice now you have acted as if the Pope has been found guilty of some nefarious dastardly crime and acted morally outraged because of it.
The first was based on what turned out to be a pretty innacurate article from the New York Times. The second from a letter that suggested defrocking a priest shouldn’t be done in haste. From that letter you accused the Pope of stalling the case against him and allowing him to go back to ministering children, as if he persnoally tried to cover it up, when in reality there was no cover up, the case was ongoing, and the priest was allowed back into ministry with children by the same bishop who was supposedly so concerened that the priest by de-frocked in the first place!
Contrary to what Andrew so wrongly thinks, i’m not an apologist on this, I think this is a SERIOUS problem. Frankly I agree with local talk show host Dave Ross (a fellow Catholic) whose suggestion was that the Pope should cancel all non-essential activities and in their place meet individually with every single person who was abused personally, not because he himself was at fault, but because he represents the Church now and must be involved in the healing. And if, IF it turns out that the Pope was actually involved in actively facilitiating the coverup of pedophile preists and actively allowing them to be in positions to continue to do so, then I want him to step down. Of course accusations vs. actual guilt matter as well. Do you think that based on accusations and some,f rankly weak evidence he should be thrown out? I don’t.
As for why its treated differently, um, you do realize how much press coverage there has been about these cases right? You do realize that there have been lawsuits and settlements and payouts in diocese where the leadership DID do things that were horribly horribly wrong right? I mean what are you looking for here? Maybe people like me aren’t willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Maybe people like me think that, gosh there are 95%+ Priests out there who have done nothing wrong and shouldn’t have to suffer for the actions fo a few. Maybe we see the good that the Catholic church does worldwide on a daily basis and think, gee, rather than shutting the whole thing down maybe we should fix whats broken and keep the good stuff. We realize that changes ARE being made, and the outrage over what happened is just that, outrage over what HAPPENED. Not what IS happening. Most of these cases are decades old. And while it doesn’t excuse ANY wrong doing by those involved, it seems rather strange to condemn the behavior now of the church and how its handling things NOW if its different than before.
I also think that the Church is not the Pope, or its Bishops or any one individual, the Church is the people. Whatever failings of the leadership doesn’t change my belief that the Body of the Church and its teachings are right. Individuals are sinners, they will fail, there is never going to be a point in history where every member of the clergy is perfect and free from scandal. I don’t define the Cathoilc church based on them. I believe that what happened was wrong, but I don’t believe it was done by the Church. Maybe you believe that the tree is rotten to the core, but *I* believe that it has some bad fruit that needs to be weeded out.
David, did you read the linked article?
“Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years’ probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.
“As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.”
Then – four years later, the future Pope wrote back as follows:
“But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the ‘good of the universal church’ and the ‘detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ’s faithful, particularly considering the young age.’ Kiesle was 38 at the time.
David, for a guy who spills a lot of ink criticizing (often rightly) your Republican opponents for their partisan blindness, it is rather disappointing to hear you interpret from the above that this is the local bishop’s, and not Ratzinger’s, fault.
We all know that this conversation is one of those bang-your-head-against-a-brick-wall topics, but for any Catholic still in the bunker, AML’s second paragraph in 9 above is outstanding. Cognitive dissonance, organized religion style = immensely difficult to overcome. But AML gives it a pretty good effort.
Let me just add: I also love the idea of the holy catholic church. But it ought to be at least marginally competent. My only tiny quibble with AML’s #9 is that I am not sure that the systemic child rape in the 20th/21st century is actually less bad than the Inquisition – the Inquisition is an awful thing, but like the long sorry sordid history of the shaky relations between Gentiles and Jews, it has a strong political component.
The epidemic of child rape in the Catholic Church is first, last, always and only an issue of a mind-blowingly shitty lack of internal controls. Such hideous failing in internal controls is beyond unacceptable in any universal organization.
In the universal church, its … can’t do it, there’s no adjective that comes close to capturing how – bad – it is.
First off, a disclaimer:
I am not Catholic. I am a member of a conservative protestant church. So this will color my views on this situation. But I figured it would be good to clarify where I come from with this, because really, your religion DOES color how you view churches in the world.
I’m going to stick up for Benedict a bit here. According to many I read who follow the scandal, he’s done more than other Popes, and did MUCH more as Cardinal then most of the priests. He was the one who wanted (and eventually did) to act against prominent abusers who had much influence during John Paul II’ papacy. Much of what I read seems to be as follows: “Ratzinger, much like most bishops, covered things up for a long time. But around the early 2000s, he started reacting differently, and started working against abusers. This was, remember, when everyone else was still in denial mode.
Now, as to why the Roman Catholic Church isn’t disbanded . . . a bit of history is in order here. (History – my favorite subject!)
Rome has survived MUCH worse. There is no way this takes Rome down. Let’s see, we’ve had popes who bribed the College of Cardinals to get elected, times in the church’s history where there were three sole heads of the church, times when the pope had a bajillion mistresses, while other priests were selling forgiveness for money. Bishoprics have been given away in the past because kings paid money to get relatives in them. And the Catholic Church has survived every one of these crises. EVERY ONE. It has splintered (which ends up being why there are Protestant churches like the one I am a member in), buckled, lost and gained, and re-lost and re-gained influence, and it keeps on going. This will not cause the Catholic Church to disband.
Another practical reason the church won’t be disbanded is that it controls its own country. Its top leadership cannot be touched. The US, EU, and all other entities cannot force the Pope out.
And the impression I get is that there is no one blameless in the church hierarchy at this point. Everybody shuffled other people around. If Benedict were forced out, somebody deeper involved who has done much less to solve the problem might end up at the helm.
Ironically, this may strengthen Rome’s hold over the parishes. Because as much blame as Rome has, the parishes have more, and will probably be marginalized by a beefed up enforcement unit controlled from Rome.
Oh, and here’s an account from a former Catholic (he moved to Eastern Orthodoxy, and his reason for leaving the Catholic church is that his journalistic work during the American sex abuse scandal completely shattered his faith in the Catholic Church – but he still hopes to see it figure this out). Reading stuff like this really helps, especially from somebody who was personally exposed and affected by this.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/roddreher/2010/03/sex-abuse-scandal-what-can-the-pope-do.html
I also think that the Church is not the Pope, or its Bishops or any one individual, the Church is the people.
Careful there, David — you almost sound like a Protestant!
Individuals are sinners, they will fail, there is never going to be a point in history where every member of the clergy is perfect and free from scandal. I don’t define the Cathoilc church based on them. I believe that what happened was wrong, but I don’t believe it was done by the Church. Maybe you believe that the tree is rotten to the core, but *I* believe that it has some bad fruit that needs to be weeded out.
David, the Catholic apologists in this debate frequently cite the refrain that the Church — including the leadership and clergy — are human, fallible, sinners. This is a diversionary tactic; nobody is arguing they aren’t! Indeed, nobody is arguing that “every member of the clergy [ought to be] perfect and free from scandal” — that’s a straw man as well. What we are arguing is that child rape is so egregiously disgusting and damaging that the Church’s reaction to this scandal overall is woefully inadequate and speaks of deeper faults. This “bad fruit” indeed needs to be weeded out, but the rotten fruit doesn’t just randomly appear here and there, it has been actively sheltered and left to fester and infect surrounding fruits as well. Yeshua clearly warns, “And whoever shall cause one of these little ones that believe in me, to fall into sin, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” And yet you want us to pretend that the protection, shuffling around, and cloaking of these bad apples can be treated lightly so long as the bad apples themselves are thrown out?
The epidemic of child rape in the Catholic Church is first, last, always and only an issue of a mind-blowingly shitty lack of internal controls. Such hideous failing in internal controls is beyond unacceptable in any universal organization.
Yes, this.
And if we are being honest with ourselves, we must accept that this probably is not some recent phenomena; for as long as there have been priests and altar boys, there has probably been sex abuse in the Church, and the reaction has probably always been to shush up, shuffle the sick priest to another parish, and let time heal wounds. All that’s changed is that today we have TV docudramas, newspapers, lawyers, psychologists, and thankfully, a culture obsessed about uncovering and stopping domestic and child abuse, incest, rape, and other unspeakable crimes. Quite obviously the world didn’t always use to be this way (we use to own slaves and hang blacks for flirting with white women; in that kind of context, you think we didn’t deny rumors of men in positions of authority abusing children?). So when the light of day shines into the Church and we see something rotten, it’s a relatively safe assumption that the problem has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, but not much was mentioned of it until now because the abuses and injustices taking place outside the Church walls was even more common and hideous. I’ll purposely avoid highlighting any theological or doctrinal implications because I don’t want that to obscure the more empirical truth that should be obvious to all.
In the end, I will give David some credit. It’s obvious to me from his comments in #10 that he truly has begun to struggle and grapple with the evidence in front of him and that he isn’t just formulating apologies out of reactive self-defense of his faith. But I suppose it is inevitable that when one’s identity is so tightly bound to something under visceral attack, you cannot help but adopt a bunker mentality and otherwise partially excuse the inexcusable.
B. Minich, that’s a good blog post from Dreher. I especially liked this link by one of his commenters.
I would like to see some fundamental, structural reforms in the Catholic Church (haven’t we Protestants been saying that for almost 500 years now?), but absent any of that, I’d settle for a public admission of guilt, a humble request for forgiveness, a highly visible and well-funded dedication to healing of those who were harmed (including families and loved ones), and jail time for the bishops, priests, and cardinals who abused or who aided and abetted the abusers — preferably self-reported and voluntary, to show true contrition and willingness to undergo public penance.
and jail time for the bishops, priests, and cardinals who abused or who aided and abetted the abusers
This is pretty much where my sympathy for Ratzinger as embattled CEO begins. I am obviously not a lawyer, and am a bit out of my depth on the following, but having grown-up Catholic, my hunch is that this request might be asking Ratzinger to do something utterly catastrophic.
Considering that: 1) the incidence of pedophilia in the priesthood has historically been widespread (relative to other professions), and 2) the Catholic Church has operated from its position as Bride of Christ, and 3) the strong influence of the confessional nature of the Church, I am not sure how Ratzinger practically achieves a full accounting without dealing a death blow to his already-thin priestly ranks.
One can imagine that many of the tragic victims of this epidemic, living within the Church Triumphant, would assume that their particular experience of abuse was a horrendous outlier, so their natural instinct might be to report it to the other, probably older, priest in the parish. Or at the next parish over that the family knows from church activities. Whatever the means, while the actual number of perpetrators might be reasonably small, the scope of the coverup could be fairly large indeed, given the confessional nature of the church and the historic posture of the Church Triumphant that this sort of thing doesn’t happen there.
IOW, and this is where I am out of my lawyerly depth, it could be a felony to find out about such matters (outside the confessional), and counsel a minor to say nothing further. If so, fully scrubbing this issue may kill the patient…I sympathize with Ratzinger not wanting to facilitate such an outcome.
In fact, my childhood church briefly had a young priest who confessed to molesting young boys, was sent away for the proverbial therapy, and then reassigned…I don’t particularly recall the guy beyond him sitting in on our Sunday school class once or twice (I was five years old, fortunately a bit young to be considered for an altar boy and suffer these sorts of crimes).
Even so, I recall that when I discovered what had happened to the priest, I felt an immense shame that our parish had “let down” the Glorious Church by harboring such a bad seed. I have in mind that a lot of folks felt the same way, which fuels the perception that this sort of thing may have been revealed a lot, then given its perceived rarity, consequently covered up a lot as well.
Finally, I agree with AML that David deserves a fair bit of credit for at least acknowledging that there is some rotten fruit on the tree, which is quite a bit more reasonable than many Catholics who exclusively play the persecution card when faced with these stories.
In the linked article, we learned of a young-ish priest who pleaded no contest to tying up and molesting boys and then, after completing his probation, asked to be removed from the priesthood, the diocese agreed, but the final arbiter (Ratzinger in Rome) dithered and scuttled because the case would “look bad”. Within the context of the article, an interpretration of the Kiesle case is that he is “one bad apple”, that Ratzinger’s office behaved regrettably…but we all make mistakes.
Suppose that the Microsoft country manager in an out-of-the-way place like Kyrgyzstan were caught embezzling a couple million. Suppose further that the auditors detected the embezzlement, and in addition to contacting local authorities, they told the audit committee, who recommended to Ballmer et al that the company report the incident and implement corrective measures. Suppose further that Ballmer resisted reporting it – or even taking any punitive action at all – on the premise that it might make Microsoft look bad.
Fast forward the hypothetical 30 years to a rhetorical question:
Do you believe there would be an epidemic of embezzlement at Microsoft following on from such non-intervention 30 years earlier, or do you believe that these sorts of things naturally go away on their own?
I’m willing to bet that every reader who engaged the rhetorical question in the paragraph above, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, answered it the same way. Going back to the Kiesle case, while it may just be a bad apple, one fears that it, and other cases like it, act as the tipping point of an epidemic when not dealt with, and that this story will only get far worse in the months and years to come.
Which is sickening, cause in spite of what the Catholic hierarchy says, a lot of us strayed Catholics really love the institution, and while B. Minich is probably right that the Catholic Church will survive everything, it is worrisome to think about what is still to come on this matter.
Jazz, I cannot accept that pedophiles leaving the Church to spend time in prison would be “catastrophic”. And for those who covered up and shuffled the bad priests around, it would hardly kill the church for them to spend six months or so in prison as well. Not to mention, they could stagger the sentences so that certain dioceses are not devastated by temporarily thinned ranks. Really, your argument at #16 seems incredibly flimsy to me, and even if it was catastrophic, that should not relieve the clergy from rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and accept civil punishment for the laws they have broken.
Depending on the reach of the law, the scope of imprisonment for “aiding and abetting” could potentially be rather widespread indeed. Considering the triple Catholic pillars of 1) the sacrament of confession, and 2) the generally perceived infallibility of priests, and 3) the public position that this thing doesn’t happen in the church, it stands to reason that the actions of serial pedophiles may have been reported, without impact, to several other priests who would then be accessories after the fact.
If we limit the incarcerations to actual pedophiles, I agree that the church should easily be able to weather that storm. But if accessory after the fact in this instance is a felony, and if those priests are in scope too, it could be that in some regions the roster of acting priests will be devastated.
As I said in #16, I am not sure that accessory after the fact is a felony in this case – but by the setup of the church, it seems likely that many many priests would indeed be accessories after the fact.
Actually, I am sort of glad that AML pushed back in #19, because as is so often the case, that argument made me rethink my view about Ratzinger’s situation. Six months for the molesters as a goodwill gesture, with the accessorizers after the fact off the hook? Sounds reasonable to me.
But from a manager (i.e. Ratzinger’s standpoint), how does he make that deal without exposing himself to the very real risk that a concession of the horror opens his priests to having the book thrown at them in many of the jurisdictions of the church? (To say nothing of not being sure that he’s entirely fixed the problem).
Been thinking that Ratzinger and deputies have probably had this conversation, only to realize that practically attempting the 6-month deal carries grave danger. Til now I’ve always figured that obfuscation is a reflection of cynicism on the part of the Catholic hierarchy; now I see that any other road is rife with grave danger. Again, “should” they be braver in the face of grave danger? Of course. But, you know, he that is without sin…at the end of the day, I can relate to why Ratzinger is handling things this way, where I couldn’t before.
He may not be the paragon of evil that his enemies describe him as. He’s guilty of fucking lots of stuff up, but his choices now are very difficult ones.
I do not ascribe ill motives to the pope, and I am sure he agonized over how best to address the problem and move forward while he was a cardinal. But from my perspective, the potential impact on the clergy and the Church is immaterial; those who have committed crimes must pay for their crimes according to the law. The law cannot and should not allow the guilty to stand behind spiritual sacraments and doctrines to avoid paying for their crimes. Perhaps the sacrament of confession and the forgiveness of God is powerful enough to absolve the priests (and their abetters) of their sins, but justice is owed to Caesar as well. The Church would do well to recognize that and have the guilty priests spend time in prison commensurate with their crimes, and for those who made the problem worse by putting these priests back into positions where innocents could again be harmed, they too ought to be punished.
Thinking about this today, and reading Andrew Sullivan’s post about the latest revelation, it occurred to me that the biggest problem with Ratzinger’s letter re: Kiesle is what it DOESN’T say. Don’t me wrong, what it DOES say is bad — “good of the universal church” seems pretty clearly to be code for “church P.R.,” especially in the context provided by the contemporaneous correspondence with the bishop — but I suppose Church defenders could argue that Ratzinger’s motive there was less nefarious than we are all supposing. However, what possible defense is there for the fact that, after saying “In the meantime your Excellency must not fail to provide the petitioner with as much paternal care as possible and in addition to explain to same the rationale of this court, which is accustomed to proceed keeping the common good especially before its eyes,” Ratzinger didn’t add, “And oh by the way, MAKE EXTRA SPECIAL SURE THAT HE DOESN’T EVER WORK WITH CHILDREN AGAIN UNSUPERVISED, YOU MORONS” (in a more properly Pope-ish tone of course). This doesn’t appear to have been a consideration at all — the Church’s actions have consistently demonstrated a total lack of concern for that issue, which should of course be the #1 priority (and also the #2 priority, and the #3 priority, and really the entire Top 10 list), and Ratzinger’s letter is completely consistent with that trend.
That, really, is what galls me the most about this. It isn’t that the Church was trying to cover its ass. Everyone does CYA. It isn’t the obstruction of justice or the damage control. Those things are bad, but again pretty typical behavior by an institution faced with trouble. What’s absolutely and endlessly galling is the total failure to take effective, proactive measures — or even, in most cases seemingly, to make any effort to do so — to keep these monsters away from the children going forward, to make absolutely certain they can’t do it again. Even if you’re going to engage in “paternal care” and hush-hush special treatment because, uh, you’re the Catholic Church, or whatever, at the very least you owe the faithful THAT. Yet this simplest and most basic of requirements doesn’t even appear to have been on the priority list at all.
That fact, I think, is the salient point that seems to get overshadowed by all this other nonsense, and it’s why I wrote a while ago (on Facebook maybe) that I get pissed off by how we all seem to be arguing about the wrong things, and thereby downplaying the horrible reality of what happened here. If the Church wanted to follow its own internal protocols, to hold itself above the law, etc. etc., that wouldn’t be nearly so awful if those protocols seemed to have remotely taken into consideration the above-all-else necessity of PREVENTING MORE LITTLE CHILDREN FROM BEING RAPED by the evil monstrous people, erroneously known as “priests,” who the Church was providing “paternal care” to. If the protection of children had been properly prioritized, even within the context of a coverup, the Church would still need to be held to account for the coverup, but we wouldn’t be taking about something so gravely awful as the reality of what occurred.
And this memo shows Ratzinger was 100% complicit in that indefensible mentality — not merely prioritizing church P.R. ahead of the safety of children, but seemingly not even thinking about the safety of children AT ALL. And this guy’s the effin’ Pope?!?
1) I’m no longer a Catholic, I am a Deist and so I explicitly reject the notion that the Church reflects the will of God. I have no dog in this fight.
2) Where is the post condemning Islam and it’s practice of child marriage and the way it tolerates child abuse?
3) The Catholic Church is viciously attacked for a variety of reasons, some good some bad. Child abuse is a horrible crime, one I am more than willing to punish with the death penalty. Many of the people attacking the Church and the Pope however are opportunists who are exploiting this issue.
4) How many child abusers work for the government? How many are teachers? Where are the calls to dismantle the public education system?
5) How about the U.N.? Child abuse and rape are rampant among U.N. peacekeepers and diplomats, and they are protected by the U.N. at least as much as priests by the Catholic Church. Where are the cries to disband the U.N.?
6) Show me where Cardinal Ratzinger ever suggested that Kiesle be assigned to work with children again. His memo was concerned with the ever shrinking and ever aging body of priests in the church.
7) The church has a lot of improvements to make in this area. They should publicly and criminally punish abusive priests. But child abuse is not exclusive to the Church, and not a defining feature of the Church.
Brendan, in my second-to-last paragraph in #14, I think there are the seeds for understanding why Ratzinger and the Catholic leadership didn’t think in the simplistic terms of “keeping these monsters away from the children so this can’t ever happen again.” That response is simply too modern for the Church patriarchs to comprehend. What I mean by that is, this is a Church steeped in hundreds and hundreds of years of history, in cultures where disease, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and bloody strife were far more the norm; the concept of Mayberry simply didn’t exist, and the road to get there doesn’t even exist until the Puritan movement (and that initial branch to here began in ghastly Cromwellian bloodletting as well). A child-molesting priest is disturbing, but seemingly minor and fixable compared to the daily evils evidenced in the barbarian-esque cultures around them. And recall that, historically from the priestly perspective, all sex is steeped in sickness and sin; a celibate man molesting an altar boy is only slightly more disturbing in this worldview than taking up a relationship with a marriageable woman.
What has since changed most radically is the world around the Church; it is you (and I), Brendan, who are hoisting up radical new standards of moral behavior, restraint, and justice and applying them to an institution ill-equipped to think in the same terms. We are shocked at the sex abuse, but until you recognize that the rot-stench you are now witnessing has been, to some degree, always there, nearly from the beginning, you’re never going to properly understand the Catholic Church’s behavior within its own context. It’s kind of like being shocked — shocked — that bribery is a rampant condition in third-world governments. The concept that you shouldn’t have to bribe an authority figure to gain justice and fair treatment is pretty radical for about 5 billion people or so.
I asked several times on this thread for a legal interpretation as to the culpability of an accessory; no one jumped up, so I looked at Wikipedia, which says that an accessory’s guilt is treated on a par with a principal’s in common law, though there are several local statutes where an accessory’s guilt is considered less than a principal’s.
The Catholic Church is chock full now, and has been for several hundred years, with otherwise innocent, loyal priests who are accessories to pedophilia. Its fairly clear by now that Sullivan cares not a whit about this fact; well, his surprise that pedophilia has been part of the Catholic Church for centuries suggests that he simply doesn’t think about these issues all that deeply.
(Seriously. Sullivan is surprised that some random reader’s grandfather was abused by a priest in Poland in the early 20th century? Why wouldn’t a pedophile be more attracted today to the priesthood than, say, law, and why would that be any different 50, 500, 1000 years ago? I imagine that the vocations process kept pedophiles out of the priesthood until the vocational process fell apart a few generations ago. But Sullivan is really surprised that the vocations triage hasn’t always been perfect?)
Let us suppose, sake of argument, that the counsel Cardinal Ratzinger received in the early 80s was that putting the command on paper that a troubled priest be separated from children would be considered tantamount to confession of an institutional problem of child abuse, which Ratzinger’s lawyer advised would open the floodgates. Again, not at all sure which nation’s statute, just work with me here.
With the devil’s advocacy in mind, reread that letter from Ratzinger. The venerated legal mind Andrew Sullivan concludes with certainty that Ratzinger:
1) Doesn’t give a shit about children
2) Only worries about what the faithful might think
3) The letter is so indefensible that Ratzinger must necessarily be evil.
Among the venerated legal minds here, could any imagine that a Ratzinger attempting to protect a decent-sized pool of perpretators – and even larger horde of accessories – might write a non-committal letter such as the linked one that Sullivan believes to be conclusive evidence of his evil?
Obviously I can’t be sure. But Sullivan’s conviction that Ratzinger responded – four years late – in the way he did to an explosive case such as Kiesle’s, because
– Ratzinger is an evil, indefensible man, and
– not because his counsel advised him to do so
makes it seem like Sullivan just came into the city from the farm last week. Sullivan lives in DC? And East Coasters think we flyover country folk are naive rubes? Sheesh.