To hell with this paedophile-hiding Pope.

This story was on Czech TV last night and I had to dig for it. I found it at The Observer in the UK.

I have no clue how reliable The Observer nor The Guardian are…if they are the equivilent of the Nat’l Enquirer, then this might be wrong. But if true…What an abomination of a church leader.

Otherwise put, he told the Bishops that they could be ex-communicated if they went to the police with allegations of child-abuse.

And he ain’t alone! Archbishop Bertone co-signed it:

Has this story broke anywhere else?

-Tcat

That’s been known for some time. According to this story in the Times, at least some American Catholic lay leaders and some representatives of victims’ groups believe that he later came to a better understanding of the Church’s problem in the US and worldwide. They’re optimistic that the new Pope will deal with this issue wisely. I’m not aware if there are people who have a contrary view.

With all due respect, manny, I find that a less than encouraging story.

Major problems:

  1. No indication that the defrocking is applying to the bishops (and up) who helped hide the abusing priests by moving them around.
  2. No indication that any information on the abusing priests is being returned to the civil authorities.

Middling problems:

  1. No indication that the defrockings are being treated in any other than a hush-hush manner. It’s important that the laity know who has been separated from the priesthood and who hasn’t.
  2. No retraction of the blaming of these abuses on permissive American culture and sexual mores.
  3. A slow pace of investigation. As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied.

I’m strictly going by the article here. It may be that some of these problems are being dealt with. But if the NYT article is all that can be put forward in defense of Joey the Rat here, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Why is it that no one understands that the Catholic church views local governmental authorities to be subordinate to itself? I don’t understand why this is such a complicated concept to people. The Catholic church believes it answers to a higher authority than local governments. I do not know what the internal politics are regarding the punishment of transgressing priests, but to think that local governmental authorities are of a higher authority is naive. They might think that their jurisdiction based upon materialistic temporal boundaries such as borders might give them a higher authority, but the church very clearly does not agree. Any dispute on that is a matter of politics.

The Catholic church has no moral obligation whatsoever to take the matters outside of it’s own purview as it’s moral obligations are determined by itself. To turn one of it’s own over to temporal authority for punishment would be a choice that the pope makes.

Goddamn this world would be a lot better if people started to get an inkling that their own personal morality, no matter how common it may be, is hardly universal.

Erek

I’m not sure where you are getting this one. Of the 207 (or so) diocese in the U.S., well over 150 of them have been turning over evidence to local police departments since the 1989 conference of the NCCB and even more since the more rigorous rules proclaimed in the 1993 conference. Boston and L.A. (and too many others, but not a majority) were horrible violations to the current rules. When the Boston scandal broke, the majority of the not-yet-compliant diocese scrambled to “get right” with the bishops’ decree. Ratzinger’s objections were voiced before the Law-Geoghan scandal broke and before the American Bishops met in Texas to reformulate the 1993 rules. The only changes the Vatican made to that conference’s rules were intended to make due process more certain and the notification of civil authorities that was included in that documaent was not struck by the Vatican, despite Ratzinger’s letter from the previous year. I know for a fact (by watching the broadcast news) that Cleveland and Detroit are turning over information to the civil authorities and I have heard no sanctions leveled against Pilla or Maida. There has been a bit of back-and-forth regarding the exact procedures to be followed, but no one is currently withholding evidence from civil authorities based on declarations from the Vatican. (Given the idiots like Law who ignored the 1993 NCCB decision, I will not claim that there is no diocese out of compliance with the NCCB rules.) Ratzinger’s opinion was never officially set down as canon law and there is evidence that he has reconsidered his stance, somewhat, since the scandal has received better coverage in the media.

Eh. I believe in honeymoons. So far the guy has reached out to Muslims, to Jews, to non-Catholic Christians. On the subject at hand, the actual people who have been taking on the Church in the matter seem content to give him a chance. So let 100 days elapse, just like with presidents. Even if it turns out he was wrong previously high office can sometimes change a person.

More broadly, I know a lot of people have objections to Benedict’s theology. It is my belief that those people should cease being Catholic. Catholicism is not a democracy and has never, ever pretended otherwise. It’s not like an election where if one’s favored candidate loses one looks forward a few years and works harder to get the “right” guy elected. If one believes in God, one either believes that He moves the leaders of the Catholic Church, and in particular the Pope, to interpret His wishes or one does not believe that. That He does is a basic, central tenet of Catholicism. There are other Christian churches which do not believe that He does so and they’ll all pretty much welcome new members. To be upset that the Catholic Church chose a Catholic to lead it is silly. To be surprised is stupid.

Sorry, Tom, I should have made myself clear that I was referring to the review discussed in the article, the one being carried out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

So supposed Catholics who would have rather had another John XXIII or a Paul VI to lead the Church were hoping for a non-Catholic? Wow.

Color me stupid, then, because I’m sure as hell surprised. Not that the RCC chose a Catholic, because I was kind of expecting that. But surprised that the definition of one has gotten so narrow as to exclude fairly recent Popes who had a rather different take on the world than Wojtyla or Joey the Rat.

I support you on this, Manny. This Pope was known, before he became the pontificate, to voice opinions that were rather extreme. Since he has been elected to the Throne of Peter, he seems to be aware that his own opinions can not be the order of the day; he must lead the church and continue the good works that were set out before him.

Look, I am the last person in the world to believe the Catholic Church is all sunshine and roses, but - as the gentleman above said more eloquently than I - give 'em the 100 days. Then judge.

Seems awful fast and it’s rather alarming to me that folks are actively searching out reasons to discredit a man who has just been installed. All these things were known before he was raised as Pope. See what he does AS Pope before you ridicule his reign.

My opinion.

Respectfully,

Inky

I got a firefox extension that does that by default, actually.

You’re so cute. Both of those guys, not to put too fine a point on it, have actually already been Pope. Did either of them endorse condoms or female priests or non-sinful homosexual relationships or any of the other stuff that people have on their current “Catholics should do this” list? Or did Paul VI specifically withdraw (heh) contraception from the Council of Bishops when there arose the possibility that things would go against him? Benedict has done nothing to show that he won’t be as progressive or more so than either of those Popes.

I sort of agree…and don’t. And I’m not even Catholic, so my opinon counts for less than beans, but I’ll chime in anyway.

Some of my friends are devout, practicing Catholics, and at one time my Ex worked at a Catholic college, even though he was a lapsed–very lapsed–Lutheran. Eating lunch in the faculty dining room was a stitch. Those educator-priests were bright as hell, besides being devout.* My comments are based on all those moments of silent, wide-eyed eavesdropping.

The Catholic church is old, and that gives a certain time perspective even among the faithful, I think. I’ve croggled at frank, chatty ‘insider Catholic’ dissing among the faithful, from local parish to Vatican-level politics. There seemed to be a very sensible skepticism about current goings-on that was quite separate from the enduring truth and value of Mother Church. It was a (to an outsider) weird blend of wordly sense and belief, but it wasn’t hypocritical in the least.

I don’t ‘get’ the wordly/intelletual skepticism about church politics blended with faith in papal infallibility. But overall it seems to work for them–spiritually and otherwise–and it’s their church. I’m extending waaayyy into speculation here, so apologies to anyone who disagrees. Maybe the Catholic faithful are onto something when they put even Popes into broader context. Even Popes come and go, but the church endures.

I don’t particularly like what Benedict XVI espouses but he’s already an old man, who’s grown old in service, as he’s seen it. He knows he’s a stop-gap answer, at best. And he might well have quailed at the pressures, because they’re gonna weigh squarely on his shoulders for the few years he has left. He wouldn’t have been elected at all if he hadn’t manouvered over years to be in position for it. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have second, third, fourth and how many other thoughts about it when his elevation to Pope actually happened.

I can’t begin to match the informed/enlightened perspective of Catholic faithful but he’s just one Pope in a long line for the church.

Veb

  • The priests were, to a man, rabid fans of BBC’s Father Ted. They were also a never-dry font of Pope jokes, not to mention collections of Catholic clergy jokes. They were stone-cold sober–and absolutely devout. A less stuffy, stifled group you’d never meet.

As I recall, when others did the constant name calling on your ox, you got rather incensed. Maybe I mis-remember…

You like to claim the higher ground, RTFirefly. Need to get back to it as this ‘tude’ ain’t it. IMO. This is beneath you. Or so I thought.

YMMV

Wow, you’ve come a long way, baby.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=1949881&postcount=2

So, is the catholic church in the US still a “child sex cult?”

Or, should we just accept your “apology?”

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=106985&highlight=catholics

Like I posted, you’ve come a long way.

What gives?

And he’s pulled out the paddle and threatened to spank Catholics who comply with the law in Spain.

If this is a honeymoon, the marriage is sure to be hell.

mswas, the charge is ‘obstruction of justice’ - it is illegal. When someone commits a felonious crime and is given safe harbour by someone else to hide the criminal from punishment is also illegal. Moralilty does not come into play. The Catholic church is not above the law just because it says so.

The Catholic Church receives tax-breaks, protection, support, plumbing, etc from the society it is acting within, and therefore is subject to that society’s laws. If the country Vatican City wants to pass a law that paedophiles are only to be judged by priests, fine, it is within that country’s right to do so. But in the other 99.9% of the civilized world, paedophilia is a crime that demands justice be served by the society as a whole. And that demands, by law, that when evidence exists of this crime it be handed over to the proper authorities.

-Tcat

You’re cute too, Manny, especially since it’s all about the sex for you. The RCC is about a bit more than that, you know. Pope John XXIII ensured that a wider array of voices would be heard in his Church. (You may have heard about Vatican II.) Wojtyla and Ratzinger went in the opposite direction.

Pope Paul VI, while making sure liberation theology didn’t get out of hand, strongly endorsed its basic thrust, and made sure that the Church was on the side of the downtrodden in the Third World. Paul VI was the reason people like Archbishop Romero had the freedom to act. Humanae Vitae was what Americans knew him for, but aside from that, he moved the Church forward - way forward.

And I don’t recall either of those two Popes taking a man who they knew had enabled child molesting priests to move around to new parishes, molesting more children as they stayed one step ahead of parishioners’ awareness of what these scum were doing to their kids, and elevating such a man to a position of high honor in the Vatican.

When Bernard Law undergoes the Rite of Degradation, I will take Ratzinger seriously. Not until then.

So what, exactly, is RCC theology about all those corrupt medieval Popes, the ones for whom the Papacy was just another worldly power base enabling them to live in wealth with lots of mistresses?

If Catholics believe God moved those Popes to interpret His wishes, that doesn’t mean much really, does it? If they don’t, how do they square God’s failure to do so in the past with a belief that He’s successful in that endeavor now?

They can’t have it both ways: either something’s changed, or those corrupt Popes are exemplary of God’s ability to move the Pope to interpret God’s will.