The Church denies all of this, of course.
Nice, huh? It looks like the problems go right to the top, and aren’t merely limited to a few “bad apples.”
I am no defender of the Catholic church, but this story sounds like a beat up to me…tabloid journalism at its very worst.
Can’t they get some disinterested party to ‘interpret’ the document rather than a disgruntled ex-canonical lawyer?
:dubious:
Ah, Panorama, the programme that accused about five Premiership football managers of taking bungs without a shred of convincing evidence a few weeks ago. The matter’s now in the hands of the lawyers.
More quality journalism from the BBC, I see. Asking an ex-canon solicitor with an overt agenda to interpret the document. How very impartial :rolleyes:
Didn’t see the docu so can’t comment on it but it wouldn’t surprise me at all.
If the Arch-Bishop of Ireland (the main man in the country) can be involved in keeping things quiet and moving problem priests around parishes then I can see the problem going even higher.
I’m no defender of the RCC either - in fact I’ve ripped it several times on the SDMB. Furthermore, there’s no doubt at all that the RCC has conspired to hide sex fiends.
But this story in particular… it just sounds phony. For one thing, the connection between “Crimen Sollicitiatonis” and kiddie-banging in churches is not some new revelation; this has been a mild controversy for years, and the general consensus is that the document doesn’t quite say what Doyle says it does.
Roll your eyes all you want but who do you suggest conducts the interpretation. Surely not a member of the organisation that stands accused of covering up sexual abuse? That wouldn’t be very impartial either.
It’s not as if the Catholic Church has an unblemished history regarding sex abuse allegations- and convictions.
For more background information here’s the Panorama site about the programme
This is a salient point. Several of the victim support groups in the U.S. have latched onto Crimen Sollicitiatonis as some sort of official “hide the truth and punish the victim” document to be imposed on anyone accusing any priest of a crime. Yet, with all the media outlets in the U.S. that were clamoring for a good story and with several lawsuits filed in which it was submitted as evidence, neither the media nor the courts have come to the conclusion that Crimen Sollicitiatonis means what the the victim groups (or Panorama) claim.
It was a document written explicitly to deal with priests who had used the confessional to solicit sex. Given the whole nature of the Seal of Confession, (in which the accused priest would have actually been prevented from testifying on his own behalf) and the nature of society and the church in 1962, it was an attempt to ensure that priests who violated their role as confessor were punished while protecting them from false accusations.
There are aspects of the document that I hope have been modified, but it was never written with the intention of protecting guilty priests or harming innocent victims. I don’t have the direct citation for the current policies, but the 1962 document was superseded by the newly reformulated Canon Law of 1983.
Much has been made of the order to send information on the accusations to the Vatican, but the flip side of that is that, as the recipient, Ratzinger read every single one of them, told associates that the church had a serious problem, and made no effort to interfere with any civil or criminal proceedings in the countries where they occurred. When the scandal first began to get wide media attention over Law’s handling of Geoghan, Cardinal Ratzinger made an observation, widely repeated to this day, that it appeared to be simply an attack upon the church. His statement, however,
was made before he had begun reviewing the reports that he has been criticized for having sent to the Vatican,
was made in the context of the fact that the U.S. bishops had imposed ever tighter rules to protect victims and prosecute priests in 1989 and 1993 and before it became clear that Law had violated those statements from the USCCB.*
- (Of the 270+ diocese in the U.S., the overwhelming majority of them actually did implement new rules set out in 1989 and 1993. It was the fact that news reports of abusive priests from those diocese continued to be reported in accord with the USCCB declarations that led a number of people–I suspect that would include Cardinal Ratzinger-- to believe that the new round of accusations were overplayed. It was only after the situations in Boston, St. Louis, and California (L.A.?) were exposed that it became clear that several diocese had, in fact, ignored the USCCB statements.)