The Moderator and Contributors of The Anglo-Catholic wish to express their horror at those stories of the clerical sexual abuse suffered by Archbishop John Hepworth (Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion) which were recently aired by The Australian newspaper. Our prayers remain with Archbishop Hepworth, especially at this time.
Archbishop John Hepworth
I reread Archbishop John Hepworth's Charge to the Synod of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia yesterday and was struck by how many of the points he made were similar to those made by Cardinal Ouellet when I interviewed him on Monday. I am not taking the comparison any further than what appears in Hepworth's text and my reporting of what the Cardinal said. I just find it very interesting how they share similar concerns about the need to proclaim the Gospel and to re-create a Christian culture in the face of much opposition.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
After you have read Ouellet's words, re-read Hepworth's.
Here are some examples of resonance below the break.
I must apologize to you all; no doubt some of you must have thought that I had sunk without trace. Partly it was simply the preoccupations of this time of year (Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and now Confirmations and First Communions) and the consequent tiredness, but for me the major problem was a kind of mental paralysis occasioned mostly by the storm surrounding the (nearly unmentionable) issue of child abuse.
For me, this issue has been going on a long time. In early 1998, having (for reasons I won’t bore you with) become suddenly available, I was appointed to Gatwick Airport as Catholic Chaplain. It wasn’t fun; the job itself I regarded as fairly pointless (travellers are dispensed from Sunday obligation, and staff all have their own local parishes), but the major issue was that my predecessor had recently been arrested for systematic child abuse. He was subsequently imprisoned. I had to deal with a lot of the fall-out in those early days when there were no helps of any kind (I hadn’t even been warned in advance of the problem). Most of the discussion of those days tended to circle around Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, and his actions in appointing that priest to that job. In the UK, action was then taken to make sure that this would never occur again. We all had to have checks run on our backgrounds, and the draconian system of child protection rumbled into action, something that (necessarily, alas) has utterly changed the face of our youth ministry. When I was first ordained, the young people in my parish used to run amok in my study, playing games on my computer &c. That has all ended, and we have to find other ways of reaching out to young people, befriending them only in a distant way. That is a grief to me, a constant reminder of the tiny minority of priests who have so damaged the work of the Gospel.
In my current parish, I was again appointed to a very demoralized community; again I found myself in a position where accusations of abuse had been made against my predecessor; this man had been instantly removed and the parish left without a priest for two years. Yet again I felt I had to deal directly with this dreadful problem which was not of my making. In the event it took a further four years for my predecessor to have his name cleared (something which has now happened); his total period of suspension a divinis was six years; six crucifying years in which this gentle and good man was regarded as a monster. When he was at last declared innocent, the newspapers which had trumpeted his removal scarcely thought his vindication worth a mention.
The parish, thanks be to God, has slowly recovered, but as with our Lord’s risen body, the scars are still there. The recent feeding frenzy of the media against the Church has been utterly horrible, and it has horrified and demoralized me. The crimes we are now accused of as a body were not even committed in this country; our house has been fairly well in order (insofar as it can ever be) for years now, and very good safeguards operate in most places. And even at its worst, I am informed, the rate of (mere) accusations (not convictions) against priests and religious stood at less than 0.4%—this is less than half the national average. I am, and my parishioners are, so sick of being made to feel guilty for something we didn’t do, of having our noses rubbed in it again and again. Any attempt to defend ourselves simply led to accusations of lack of compassion for the victims of abuse.
In the dying days of Lent, my bishop was contacted by several gleeful media types, asking whether Catholic Churches were going to be very empty this Easter, or extremely empty. What happened was that more than ever came to the Easter services. In the streets, ordinary people, so far from treating me with disgust, as was expected, have actually gone out of their way to smile, or say ‘good morning’. I suppose it’s a gesture of sympathy, and I am very grateful for it. Unlike some of my colleagues I have continued to wear clerical dress—often my cassock if I am on the way to Mass—and the gesture seems to be appreciated. And, incredibly, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, the man who has been so opposed to so much that we stand for, has described Catholics as ‘the conscience of the nation’. Our own Church has pulled together; in this country we are fairly accustomed to anti-Catholicism (the only acceptable prejudice, it has been said), and so people have felt more inclined, not less, to identify themselves as Catholics. Where sin has abounded, there grace has superabounded.
One thing that has greatly saddened me in all this is the complete lack of support from other Christian communions. We enjoy good ecumenical relations here, but I never heard a word of sympathy, through all the crisis, from any of them, publically or privately. On the national scene, the only words we heard were those off-the-cuff remarks from Rowan Williams about the credibility-free Irish Catholic Church. Finally, at a meeting last week, the chair of our local Ecumenical committee addressed some kind words and said that his prayers had been with us. I appreciated that but it would have been nice to have heard it some weeks ago when we felt so alone. I know very well that all denominations are scared of similar treatment, and don’t want to draw attention to themselves, but those words of Martin Niemoller are no doubt in your minds as well as my own.
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
And maybe were our positions reversed, I, too, might have said nothing. But I hope not.
Well, we all know why the schadenfreude, don’t we? For two thousand years, we have been preaching chastity and honesty, and here are some of our own clergy behaving badly. It is really an example of the ad hominem argument: if priests sin, then what they say must be wrong. ‘Look, Catholics and everyone: these priests who tell you how to behave are no better than you; in fact, they’re worse!’
As for having to suffer opprobrium while innocent, well, someone else innocent suffered for the guilty too, didn’t he? ‘If they hate you, remember that they hated me before you. The servant is not greater than his master’. ‘Woe to you when the world thinks well of you!’.
My final remarks concern today’s Divine Office. It is usually my custom to celebrate the Office according to the Extraordinary Form, but for the last few days I have been using the Ordinary Form—the first time in three or four years that I have done so in private recitation. This morning I read that extraordinary Epistle to Diognetus (probably 2nd century) at the Office of Readings, and it was like drawing a cork out of a bottle. It really helped me, and I hope that it might help you if you have felt as I have. And it expresses perfectly the status of a Christian in the world, and why a Church works better when it is not Established.
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of men. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country. Like others, they marry and have children, but they do not expose them. They share their meals, but not their wives. They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law.
Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult. For the good they do they receive the punishment of malefactors, but even then they rejoice, as though receiving the gift of life. They are attacked by the Jews as aliens, they are persecuted by the Greeks, yet no one can explain the reason for this hatred.
To speak in general terms, we may say that the Christian is to the world what the soul is to the body. As the soul is present in every part of the body, while remaining distinct from it, so Christians are found in all the cities of the world, but cannot be identified with the world. As the visible body contains the invisible soul, so Christians are seen living in the world, but their religious life remains unseen. The body hates the soul and wars against it, not because of any injury the soul has done it, but because of the restriction the soul places on its pleasures. Similarly, the world hates the Christians, not because they have done it any wrong, but because they are opposed to its enjoyments.
Christians love those who hate them just as the soul loves the body and all its members despite the body’s hatred. It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world is held together. The soul, though immortal, has a mortal dwelling place; and Christians also live for a time amidst perishable things, while awaiting the freedom from change and decay that will be theirs in heaven. As the soul benefits from the deprivation of food and drink, so Christians flourish under persecution. Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.
(Nn. 5-6; Funk, 397-401)
I apologize for my rambling, but I felt that I owed you and Christian (‘Mr Patience’) Campbell an explanation.
This article by John L Allen Jr appeared on Apr. 17, 2010 in NCR Today. It is of more than passing interest.
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Perhaps the most remarkable defense of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis to appear in recent weeks ironically never mentions the current pope, and it comes not from a senior Vatican official but a lay Italian sociologist of religion. In a nutshell, the suggestion – never made explicit, but clear nonetheless – is that today’s drumbeat of criticism of the church over “pedophile priests” amounts to a replay of a Nazi smear campaign.
Massimo Introvigne, who directs the international Center for Studies on New Religions, published an essay in the April 16 edition of L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, about a Nazi campaign in 1937 led by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to discredit the Catholic Church following Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Introvigne argues that Goebbels created what sociologists would later call a “moral panic,” based on real facts, but facts which are distorted and amplified.
In the end, Introvigne says, the plan backfired – Goebbels’ attempt to smear the church generated more outrage than actual cases of sexual abuse in 1930s-era German Catholicism, which were reported in the German media and tried in German courts.
The following is an NCR translation of Introvigne’s essay, the Italian original of which may be found here: http://www.avvenire.it
Goebbels and the pedophile priests operation
In 1937 the Nazi propaganda minister organized a campaign to discredit the Catholic Church in response to the encyclical ‘Mit brennender Sorge.’ The head of the German military’s counter-espionage unit, Wilhelm Canaris, passed the documents to Pius XII.
By MASSIMO INTROVIGNE
“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”
An editorial from a great secular newspaper in 2010? No: It’s a speech of May 28, 1937, by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. This speech, which had a large international echo, was the apex of a campaign launched by the Nazi regime to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests.
Two hundred and seventy-six religious and forty-nine diocesan priests were arrested in 1937. The arrests took place in all the German dioceses, in order to keep the scandals on the front pages of the newspapers.
On March 10, 1937, with the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) condemned the Nazi ideology. At the end of the same month, the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda headed by Goebbels launched a campaign against the sexual abuses of priests. The design and administration of this campaign are known to historians thanks to documents which tell a story worthy of the best spy novels.
In 1937, the head of the counter-espionage service of the German military was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (1887-1945). He became gradually anti-Nazi, and at the time was maturing the convictions which led him to organize the failed assassination attempt against Hitler in 1944, following which he was hanged in 1945. Canaris disapproved of Goebbels’ maneuver against the Church, and instructed a Catholic lawyer named Josef Müller (1878-1979) to carry to Rome a series of highly secret documents on the subject.
In different phases, Müller – before he was arrested and sent to the Dachau extermination camp, where he survived, and later became the post-war Minister of Justice in Bavaria – carried the secret documents to Pius XII (1876-1958), who asked the Society of Jesus to study them.
With the approval of the Secretary of State, the study of the Nazi plot against the Church was entrusted to the German Jesuit Walter Mariaux (1894-1963), who had inspired an anti-Nazi organization in Germany called “Pauluskreis.” He was later prudently sent as a missionary in Brazil and in Argentina. There, as leader of the Marian Congregation, he exercised his influence over an entire generation of lay Catholics, among whom was the noted Brazilian Catholic thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995), who attended his group in São Paulo. In 1940, in London in English and in Argentina in Spanish, Mariaux published two volumes on anti-Catholic persecution by the Third Reich under the pseudonym “Testis Fidelis.” They contained over seven hundred pages of documents with comments, which aroused great emotion in the entire world.
The expression “moral panic” was only coined by sociologists in the 1970s to identify a social alarm created as a kind of art, accomplished by amplifying real facts and exaggerating their numbers through statistical folklore, as well as “discovering” and presenting as “new” events which in reality are already known and which date to the past. There are real events at the base of the panic, but their number is systematically distorted.
Even without the benefit of modern sociology, Goebbels responded to the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in 1937 with a textbook case of the creation of a moral panic.
As always in moral panics, the facts are not totally invented. Prior to the encyclical there were some cases in Germany of abuse of minors. Mariaux himself considered a religious in the school of Bad Reichenall guilty, as well as a lay teacher, a gardener and a janitor, who were condemned in 1936, although he believed that the sanction imposed by the Ministry of Public Instruction in Bavaria – revoking the authorization to run scholastic institutes of four religious orders – to be entirely disproportionate, and he linked it to the desire of the regime to undercut Catholic schools. Also in the case of the Franciscans of Waldbreitbach, in Rhineland, Mariaux was open to the hypothesis that the accused were guilty, although later historians have not excluded the possibility that they were framed by the Nazis.
The cases, which were few, but real, produced a very strong reaction from the episcopate. On June 2, 1936, the Bishop of Münster – Blessed Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946), who was the soul of Catholic resistance to Nazism, and who was beatified in 2005 by Benedict XVI – had a declaration read at all the Sunday Masses in which he expressed “pain and sadness” for these “abominable crimes” that “cover our Holy Church with ignominy.” On August 20, 1936, after the events at Waldbreitbach, the German episcopate published a joint pastoral letter in which they “several condemned” those responsible and underlined the cooperation of the Church with the tribunals of the state.
By the end of 1936, the severe measures taken by the German bishops in reaction to these very few cases, some of which were doubtful, seemed to have resolved the real problems. Submissively, the bishops also pointed out that among teachers in the state schools and in the very youth organization of the regime, the Hitler Youth, the cases of condemnations for sexual abuses were much more numerous than among the Catholic clergy.
It was the anti-Nazi encyclical of Pius XI that led to the great campaign of 1937. Mariaux proved it publishing highly detailed instructions sent by Goebbels to the Gestapo, the political police of the Third Reich, and above all to journalists, just a few days after the publication of Mit brennender Sorge, inviting them to “reopen” the cases from 1936 and also older cases, constantly recalling them to public opinion. Goebbels also ordered the Gestapo to find witnesses willing to accuse a certain number of priests, threatening them with immediate arrest if they didn’t collaborate, even if they were children.
The proverbial phrase “there’s a judge in Berlin,” which in German tradition indicates trust in the independence of the court system from the political power of the moment, applied – within certain limits – even in the Third Reich. Of the 325 priests and religious arrested after the encyclical, only 21 were condemned, and it’s all but certain that among them some were falsely accused. Virtually all of them ended up in extermination camps, where many died.
The effort to discredit the Catholic Church on an international scale through accusations of immorality and pedophilia among priests, however, did not succeed.
Thanks to the courage of Canaris and his friends, and to the persistence of the Jesuit detective Mariaux, the truth was already out during the war. The perfidy of the campaign of Goebbels aroused more indignation than the eventual guilt of some religious. The father of all moral panics in the area of pedophile priests blew up in the hands of the Nazi propagandists who had tried to organize it.
[John Allen is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.]
This is beautiful. Biretta tip to Whispers in the Loggia.
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In an extemporaneous homily delivered at a Mass this morning for the Pontifical Biblical Commission, B16 made his first comments on the sex-abuse tempest that's shaken the global church over recent weeks.
The fulltext of pontiff's off-the-cuff reflection to the Vatican's top body of Scripture scholars still to emerge, two early briefs have appeared….
First, from Vatican Radio:
[T]he Holy Father said that in modern times we have seen theorized an idea of man according to which human being would be, “free, autonomous, and nothing else.”
This supposed freedom from everything, including freedom from the duty of obedience to God, “Is a lie,” said Pope Benedict, a falsehood regarding the basic structure of human being – about the way women and men are made to be, “because,” he continued, “human being does not exist on its own, nor does it exist for itself.”
The Pope said it is a political and practical falsehood, as well, because cooperation and sharing of freedoms is a necessary part of social life – and if God does not exist – if He is not a point of reference really accessible to human being, then only prevailing opinion remains and it becomes the final arbiter of all things.
Citing the Nazi and Communist regimes of the 20th century as examples, Pope Benedict said such dictatorships can never accept the notion of a God who is above ideological power – and he also stressed that in the present, there are subtle forms of dictatorship like that of a radical conformism, which can lead to subtle and not-so subtle aggression toward the Church.
The Holy Father also stressed that for Christians, true obedience to God depends on our truly knowing Him, and he warned against the danger of using “obedience to God” as a pretext for following our own desires.
“We have,” he said, “a certain fear of speaking about eternal life.”
“We talk of things that are useful to the world,” continued Pope Benedict, “we show that Christianity can help make the world a better place, but we do not dare say that the end of the world and the goal of Christianity is eternal life – and that the criteria of life in this world come from the goal – this we dare not say.”
We must rather have the courage, the joy, the great hope that there is eternal life, that eternal life is real life and that from this real life comes the light that illuminates this world as well.
The Pope noted that, when we look at things this way, penitence is a grace – even though of late we have sought to avoid this word, too.
Now, under the attacks of the world, which speak to us of our sins, we see that to be able to do penance is a grace – and we see how necessary it is to do penance, that is, to recognize what is wrong in our lives: to recognize one’s sin, to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare for pardon, to allow oneself to be transformed.
The pain of penance, the pain of purification and transformation – this pain is grace, because it is renewal – it is the work of the Divine Mercy.
Pope Benedict concluded his homily with a prayer that our lives might become true life, eternal life, love and truth.
…and a first-post and full report from Catholic News Service:
Recognizing the sins of priests who have sexually abused children, performing penance and asking for forgiveness, the Catholic Church trusts that God will purify and transform the church, Pope Benedict XVI said.
"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace," the pope said April 15 in a homily during a Mass with members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.
For the record, this morning's comment came two years to the day after Benedict made his first-ever statement on the scandals during a press conference aboard the Papal Plane to Washington for his six-day US tour — a week which, alongside numerous references to the Stateside church's crisis, included an unprecedented meeting with victim-survivors.
The pontiff marks his 83rd birthday tomorrow, and Monday sees the fifth anniversary of his election to Peter's chair.
"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” - St. John 15:18
How many times have we read or heard that verse, and thought about how Christ was hated during His lifetime? He was hated so much that those who were driven by it insisted on His crucifixion. But when it comes to that hatred, I tend to think in the past tense. I allow myself to forget that there are still those who loathe Him with an intensity that defies imagination, and their revulsion extends to His Church and to the Pope, who is the earthly head of the Church.
We’re inclined to underestimate the power of hatred, because we’ve sanitized it through an over-use of the word. Children “hate” school and they “hate” broccoli. A lot of people “hate” getting up on Monday mornings. I “hate” polyester vestments and bad music. Now, I suppose we could take the path of some Scripture scholars and say that “hate” really means “to love less,” and that’s how they interpret the words of Jesus when he tells us, “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26). And I’m sure that softer interpretation is correct. It’s how we tend to use the word now. When the child claims to hate school, what he really means is that he’d prefer to stay home and watch cartoons, or play with his friends. When a person says he hates to get up in the morning, he’s really saying that he’d like another hour in bed.
But there is such a thing as a vicious and deep hatred for something or someone – a hatred which is primal and demonic. That’s the kind of hatred which nailed Christ to the cross. It’s a hatred which is traced back to Lucifer himself when he asserted “Non serviam,” and who then went on to plant the same attitude in our first parents, Adam and Eve. And it’s the kind of hatred which we’re seeing in some of the present attacks on the Holy Father.
It’s one thing to call for truthfulness and integrity when it comes to the treatment of victims of abuse, and to demand restitution from the abusers. Indeed, it’s right to call for an assignment of responsibility if someone in authority has purposely evaded his duty, leading to the injury of an innocent victim. This is nothing less than a Catholic understanding of justice.
But it’s quite another thing to allow a blind rage to take over. This is what we see in the following article out of Australia, appearing on the site of ABC, which is the national public broadcasting company. It’s called A Tale of Two Battles, and the author, Bob Ellis, links Pope Benedict XVI with Osama bin Laden. Be warned: his final sentence is a question. “Why not bomb the Vatican, and riddle the Pope with bullets as he staggers out of the flames?” It’s not a rhetorical question for him. He sees no reason why that shouldn’t happen.
A TALE OF TWO BATTLES
by Bob Ellis
No-one has yet suggested bombing the Vatican and pursuing the Pope through the sewers of Europe till he is caught and riddled with bullets in order to stop priests buggering choirboys in Boston, Chicago, Dublin and Sydney. But a precise mirror image of this is how we behaved in Afghanistan.
If we bomb it flat, we were told, and pursue Bin Laden through the caves of Tora Bora and the mud huts of Waziristan until he is caught and riddled with bullets, al-Qaeda won't hijack planes and blow up trains any more. And the world will live at peace.
We were told this eight years ago. And we believed it.
It's a curious premise to base a war on, really. Yet no curiouser I suppose than saying Saddam has nuclear weapons and he won't use them if 32 nations invade his country, he will bury them in the sand. But there you go.
It's the sort of thing that lately, since we have stopped thinking connectedly, we have been persuaded to believe. Like, if we shoot a pregnant woman, a policeman, a lawyer and a girl who is engaged, shoot them dead in a single town in broad daylight and cover it up and say we never did it, that town will soon forgive us and join us in a war against its neighbours.
We did this last month in Afghanistan and we still think the war there is going well.
We are doing really dumb things lately and imagining we'll win 'hearts and minds' by killing people for things they haven't done and declaring we 'acted appropriately, within the guidelines'.
Let's consider for a while the comparable crimes, or iniquities, or sins, or misdeeds, or culpable errors of Osama bin Laden and the Pope. Osama's followers killed 3,000 people in New York and around 700 more by terrorist acts in London, Bali, Madrid and Mumbai in the past eight years and desolated maybe 20,000 lives of the relatives of the dead.
The Pope's followers desolated, perhaps, 100,000 lives (or this is my guess) by sexual depravity in the past 80 years and killed, perhaps, (this too is my guess, I ask for yours) no more than 5,000 smashed and embittered Catholic boys and girls they drove to suicide or drunken oblivion and early death in those years.
The crimes are comparable pretty much and well-attested and well known from enquiries here and in Germany, the US and Ireland. Why then do we not bomb the Vatican and obliterate Italy for harbouring this criminal mastermind, this known protector of evil predators? Why do we not pursue him through the sewers of Europe and riddle his corpse with bullets?
Can it be, perhaps, because we think Italians and Germans are in some way superior to Afghans or Saudis or Palestinians? Can it be because we believe Catholic priests have a right to hurt little boys and Taliban mullahs and chieftains no right to hurt little girls and young women?
Why do we do this? Why are we not bombing the Vatican?
Is there a racial component in our inconsistency? Do we think we should bomb brown people but should not bomb white people? Is that it?
One wonders now what should be done with buggering priests and those that hide them from our detection. Clearly bombing Italy and Ireland is an insufficient solution, to judge by what little effect our bombing and rocketing and random arrest and rendition to houses of torture have had on the Taliban thus far and their hold on the minds of their people.
One wonders what we should do.
Under our terrorist laws, if you fail to report an imminent act of terror (and if raping repeatedly a deaf and speechless little boy is not an act of terror it's hard to say what is) you go to jail, and for 48 hours or 50 days, depending on the country, you can be 'questioned' without a lawyer.
Under these existing laws 100,000 Australians could be locked up for concealing vital information, and perhaps they should be. Certainly this would be better than bombing all of Sydney, where the crimes took place. But it feels a little harsh somehow, to me at any rate; especially since a lot of the covering-up was done by the parents of the children victimised, and other adjacent pupils and priests and nuns, not guilty themselves of any abuse but not wishing to make waves.
They are not exactly innocent, but they are not entirely criminals either.
What should be done?
Well, there are precedents. I remember Scientology being outlawed in Victoria 40 years ago for a lesser abuse of vulnerable minds and souls. I remember Holocaust Denial being made an imprisonable crime a decade ago and David Irving being put in jail for it in Austria.
I remember office harassment being made a sackable offence around the same time. I remember a female parliamentarian losing her career for speaking sternly to a waiter only a year ago. And I saw this week on The 7.30 Report a suggestion that schoolyard bullying (which also causes suicides) be made a notifiable crime with at least theoretical periods in jail or a padded cell for offenders.
What we should do, perhaps, before we do anything, is make a pertinent comparison.
If an Australia-wide child care corporation had been shown to have covered up 1000 cases of child rape by its teachers it would have been wound up, its assets seized and sold, its CEO arraigned for criminal neglect, its employees held for questioning, the offending perverts jailed or put in madhouses, its name eternally stained.
Yet precisely this kind of crime has occurred in another institution responsible for the care and shaping of children, the Catholic Church.
Should it be outlawed?
Or is it, simply, too big to fail?
Just asking.
It is worthwhile, I think, to make these connections, of how forgivingly we treat the First World rich and the contrasting way we treat the Third World poor. How we treat the crimes of Christians and of heathens in very different ways. It shows how crazy we have lately come to be, and how justly we are despised by the Islamic world, and the Communist world, and many of our former colonies.
If we do this violence to the Taliban for the way they treat their women and children, why not the Catholics too?
Why not bomb the Vatican, and riddle the Pope with bullets as he staggers out of the flames?
This is a glimpse into the raw face of evil. But as horrifying as it is, actually I think we can take some encouragement from it all. It’s proof to me that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be: the Body of Christ. The Catholic Church warrants the attention of Satan because he hates Christ; to hate Christ is to hate the Catholic Church; and to hate the Catholic Church is to hate the Pope, who is the head of the Church on earth. Let’s face it: it was a triumph for the devil when he was able to lure certain members of the Catholic clergy into a demonic web of sin, so that their actions were able to pave the way for this frontal assault on the Church. And the devil has found plenty of dupes to help him in this sulphuric attack. He thinks he’s winning. But then, he thought he was winning a couple of thousand years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem.
Article from Damian Thompson: 'Journalists abandon standards to attack the Pope'. You can say that again. Damian Thompson quotes Phil Lawler, the American Catholic commentator and director of CatholicCulture.org, on the shameful professional sloppiness of the news reports attempting to implicate Benedict XVI in the case of the predator ex-priest Stephen Kiesle.
Journalists abandon standards to attack the Pope
By Phil Lawler | April 10, 2010 10:03 AMWe’re off and running once again, with another completely phony story that purports to implicate Pope Benedict XVI in the protection of abusive priests.
The “exclusive” story released by AP yesterday, which has been dutifully passed along now by scores of major media outlets, would never have seen the light of day if normal journalistic standards had been in place. Careful editors should have asked a series of probing questions, and in every case the answer to those questions would have shown that the story had no “legs.”
First to repeat the bare-bones version of the story: in November 1985, then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed a letter deferring a decision on the laicization of Father Stephen Kiesle, a California priest who had been accused of molesting boys.
Now the key questions:
• Was Cardinal Ratzinger responding to the complaints of priestly pedophilia? No. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the future Pontiff headed, did not have jurisdiction for pedophile priests until 2001. The cardinal was weighing a request for laicization of Kiesle.
• Had Oakland’s Bishop John Cummins sought to laicize Kiesle as punishment for his misconduct? No. Kiesle himself asked to be released from the priesthood. The bishop supported the wayward priest’s application.
• Was the request for laicization denied? No. Eventually, in 1987, the Vatican approved Kiesle’s dismissal from the priesthood.
• Did Kiesle abuse children again before he was laicized? To the best of our knowledge, No. The next complaints against him arose in 2002: 15 years after he was dismissed from the priesthood.
• Did Cardinal Ratzinger’s reluctance to make a quick decision mean that Kiesle remained in active ministry? No. Bishop Cummins had the authority to suspend the predator-priest, and in fact he had placed him on an extended leave of absence long before the application for laicization was entered.
• Would quicker laicization have protected children in California? No. Cardinal Ratzinger did not have the power to put Kiesle behind bars. If Kiesle had been defrocked in 1985 instead of 1987, he would have remained at large, thanks to a light sentence from the California courts. As things stood, he remained at large. He was not engaged in parish ministry and had no special access to children.
• Did the Vatican cover up evidence of Kiesle’s predatory behavior? No. The civil courts of California destroyed that evidence after the priest completed a sentence of probation– before the case ever reached Rome.
So to review: This was not a case in which a bishop wanted to discipline his priest and the Vatican official demurred. This was not a case in which a priest remained active in ministry, and the Vatican did nothing to protect the children under his pastoral care. This was not a case in which the Vatican covered up evidence of a priest’s misconduct. This was a case in which a priest asked to be released from his vows, and the Vatican– which had been flooded by such requests throughout the 1970s — wanted to consider all such cases carefully. In short, if you’re looking for evidence of a sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, this case is irrelevant.
We Americans know what a sex-abuse crisis looks like. The scandal erupts when evidence emerges that bishops have protected abusive priests, kept them active in parish assignments, covered up evidence of the charges against them, and lied to their people. There is no such evidence in this or any other case involving Pope Benedict XVI.
Competent reporters, when dealing with a story that involves special expertise, seek information from experts in that field. Capable journalists following this story should have sought out canon lawyers to explain the 1985 document– not merely relied on the highly biased testimony of civil lawyers who have lodged multiple suits against the Church. If they had understood the case, objective reporters would have recognized that they had no story. But in this case, reporters for the major media outlets are far from objective.
The New York Times– which touched off this feeding frenzy with two error-riddled front-page reports– seized on the latest “scoop” by AP to say that the 1985 document exemplified:
“… the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.”
Here we have a complete rewriting of history. Earlier in this decade, American newspapers exposed the sad truth that many American bishops had kept pedophile priests in active ministry. Now the Times, which played an active role in exposing that scandal, would have us believe that the American bishops were striving to rid the priesthood of the predators, and the Vatican resisted!
No, what is “fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal” is a media frenzy. There is a scandal here, indeed, but it’s not the scandal you’re reading about in the mass media. The scandal is the complete collapse of journalistic standards in the handling of this story.
I quote all this because it is really important for us Anglicans to know and be in a position to insist that Pope Benedict XVI is the chief mover towards providing a solution to the filth in the Church – and not a part of the corruption. I have a feeling that this media onslaught will do the opposite to what those godless reporters want – it looks as if it will reinforce the Pope's credibility and give him even more confidence he needs to clean up the Church's episcopate, not only clearing out those who are indeed guilty of cover-ups and corruption, but also those who are throwing spanners into the works of every attempt to reform the reform and bring Christ and orthodox Catholicism back into the Church.
OK, you hacks, keep them coming! Sling all the mud you want, but you won't even dent the Church or scratch the paintwork!
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Update: to add some reflections. Why does the Vatican not respond directly to the media accusations against the Pope? The simple response would seem to be that there would be no point in doing so. The journalists write what they want, knowing that the Church is an easy target, will not sue them for libel and does not issue fatwas to have their throats cut. Even if the press had to retract their accusations the very next day, the damage would have been done by the headlines, including one that could be interpreted as saying that the Pope had personally committed a paedophile act and had realised he had gone too far!
We live in a world of electronic communications, but I have the impression that communications are no better than in the middle ages or the eighteenth century. However, I do think the Vatican should improve its Internet site and provide information for those who are really interested. Perhaps some conscientious journalists would find it helpful.
Ordinary Catholics need support, since their only source of information is usually the mainstream secular media (newspapers and TV). I wonder how many parish priests are looking in the right places to find objective information to tell their faithful. I have to admit that when David Yallop wrote In God’s Name in the early 1980’s about the death of Pope John Paul II in 1978, the Vatican Bank scandals and the involvement of P2 Freemasonry and people like Roberto Calvi choking at the end of a rope under Blackfriars Bridge, and the Gorilla (Archbishop Marcinkos) and the Shark (Grand Master Michele Sindona) in Rome, I believed all that stuff because the conspiracy theory seemed cogent and I found no more convincing information elsewhere.
You get people like Davide Icke saying that the world is ruled by alien shape-shifting reptiles that travel to and from the South Pole in Nazi flying saucers – and people believe him. The madder the story, the more money they make. And, Icke is making hay out of this Catholic Church ‘crisis’ too.
Some say the Church should answer like a commercial enterprise. But, the Church is the Church and nothing else. Little or nothing is being said in the same way as Jesus standing silent before his judges. Our Lord was silent because nothing he would say would have done any good. When your judge’s mind is made up to kill you and merely find the right pretext to do so, there is nothing to say. Jesus once made the point about the Pharisees saying that someone was a glutton if he ate normally and possessed by a demon if he fasted. In a Catch-22 situation, you cannot win.
The Church does well to eschew any temptation to using propaganda. We live in a world where the media exercises control over people in a way that is developing along the lines of the Thought Police in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. We are already watched, told what to buy (telephone advertisers get very angry when I tell them that I buy products because I need them and not because someone needs to sell them to me). The media represents the tip of the iceberg of a very powerful force against which the Church cannot fight on its own terms. The only way this war can be won is God’s way, not by exchanges of propaganda.
The question is always the same: why do they want to do in the Pope? It is not because they are interested in making life safe for children or promoting human rights, but because they want to discredit what the Holy Father is teaching as objective truth.
With a biretta tip to the Forum Catholique here in France, I have come across a Radio Vatican article in French. I have looked in the English section of this site, but this article is not there in English. Such an English article might yet appear. In the meantime, I give a resume of the French article.
Cardinal Sodano, who had been Pope John Paul II’s Secretary of State, gave an interview to the Osservatore Romano. In this interview, he explained that Benedict XVI is the target of attacks because he incarnates moral truths that are no longer accepted. According to him, the origin of this media campaign is a conception of the family and human life that contradicts the Gospel. It is part of a cultural combat. This had been the case with the battle by Modernisn against St Pius X, the offensive against Pius XII for his apparent positions during World War II, and finally against Paul VI for Humanae Vitae.
In this present war waged against the Church because of bad priests and their mishandling, the Cardinal mentioned people saying that the Vatican’s communication was no good, that they had to react differently [than by denials and stonewalling]. The Church cannot answer the press back without fuelling the flames. Even so, Catholics feel hurt when they are implicated in matters with which they have absolutely no connection or responsibility. Individual crimes and sins are transformed into collective responsibilities. I am brought to think about all the silly stuff about global warming and “carbon footprints”! That is when science is not 100% convinced that global warming or cooling has anything to do even with human industry – but rather depends on the cycles of the sun. Most of us have absolutely nothing to do with a sick old priest in some American town groping little boys in the 1970’s!
Anti-Catholic graffiti begins to appear on churches in Italy. Elsewhere in Europe, church services are disturbed and clergymen are insulted or spat upon. Some sociologists see this media campaign degenerating into open hatred against Catholics and Catholic clergy. Perhaps it is here that Fr Cantalamessa, despite his clumsy Easter sermon and apology, saw a comparison between the present anti-Catholic media campaign and the anti-Jewish propaganda of Göbbels and Streicher in the 1930’s and during the war. The element in common is ideology.
I am careful about conspiracy theories, but there have been real conspiracies in history. Could there be a connection between all the various newspapers and TV channels and the globalist and secular agenda of the Church’s real enemies? The Church opposes abortion, the UN “politically correct” theories of gender, research on human embryos and contraception. The Magisterium of the Church has never ceased to condemn these moral evils, but only now, since the election of Benedict XVI five years ago, is she beginning to wake up again to her Catholic identity. The Church is working on getting all hands on deck – the traditionalists, the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Anglican groups.
This is a cultural war. The tendency now in America is for the media to try to bring President Obama into a position similar to that of Jaurès, Combes and Clemenceau – Grand Orient Freemasons to a man – against the Church. Yes, French-style anti-clericalism in a country that has always boasted its respect for freedom of conscience. They gasp for blood! They want to arrest the Pope and have him framed for some purported responsibility in matters related to paedophile priests. Just imagine a moment what would happen if they did that, even if the court was forced to acquit him (after all, he has not committed any crimes). Indeed, we live in dangerous times. What we are looking at is the dystopia portrayed by Orwell and Huxley, a world without love or humanity, where our very thoughts and emotions are policed, babies born from test tubes and incubators in factories, people put to death after their young and useful lives are over. If you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever. Only the Church stands between us and that first circle of hell!
I am often brought to reflect. Should the Pope go further than the humble letter he wrote to the Irish Catholics. Should he go grovelling to the press and let the reporters into the Vatican secret archives, saying “Help yourselves”? No, he is doing the right thing as when Christ faced Caiaphas, Pilate and Herod. Without presuming to know the Holy Father’s mind, I think he will have to adopt a much more aggressive approach, particularly in regard to reforming the Catholic Episcopate. What should he do? Any of us who wish for an answer to this question should be prepared to assume the consequences of what will actually be decided.
What we can safely do is to pray and not to believe what we read in the papers and see on TV.
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Stop press: here's the latest from Damian Thompson about Fr Maciel and the juicy sex and money stuff the media love. Again, the Holy Father is seen as the solution, not part of the problem. He did his best in the 1980's and 90's to bring down monsters like Cardinal Groer of Vienna and Fr Maciel. He was stonewalled by the liberal old boy network in the Vatican. Sure, heads need to roll, but not that of the very man who was elected to bring the Church out of this quagmire. One day, Benedict XVI will be vindicated!
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Second update: read Sandro Magister's new article The Passion of Pope Benedict. Six Accusations, One Question. The six accusations he highlights are resumed by the reaction of radical Muslims following the Holy Father's lecture in Regensburg in 2006, and his peaceful words became the pretext for killings. Secondly, he dared to challenge the arrogance of modern science insofar as it violates the integrity of human life and is used to attempt to extinguish faith. He is accused of being a reactionary traditionalist by removing all restrictions from the old Latin Mass. Along the same lines, Benedict XVI is accused of derailing ecumenism, of putting reconciliation with traditionalist Catholics ahead of dialogue with other Christian confessions, liberal Protestantism in particular. More recently, he is criticised by the ecumenical establishment for Anglicanorum Coetibus and a pastoral outreach to conservative Anglican groups like the TAC, Forward in Faith and the Anglican Use parishes in America, already in communion with Rome but in need of a firmer base in the Church. Some of the radical Jewish clerics protested his writing a prayer for the Jewish people to be inserted into the Good Friday liturgy of the 1962 Roman Missal. How dare the Pope pray for the conversion of the Jews in the Catholic liturgy? We all know this prayer is worded in such a way as any accusation of anti-Semitism is completely unjustified. The revelation that Bishop Williamson of the Society of St Pius X had expressed some 'anti-social' opinions concerning the Nazi concentration camps during World War II was a profound embarrassment for the Pope who, just a day before, had absolved him from the excommunication he had incurred for receiving an illegal episcopal consecration. Finally, to keep the pressure on, he is accused of having "covered up" the scandal of priests who sexually abused children, and this one takes the cake, because Benedict XVI is the very man who has done more than anyone, in the Church hierarchy, to heal this scandal.
Sandro Magister ends his piece with the question: Why is this pope so under attack, from outside of the Church but also from within, in spite of his clear innocence with respect to the accusations? Simply, The beginning of an answer is that he is systematically attacked precisely for what he does, for what he says, for what he is.
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Update: See The End of History and the Last Pope by George Neumayr in The American Spectator. Diderot spoke of strangling the last priest with the guts of the last king. Charming people these so-called angels of the Enlightenment! Biretta tip to Atonement Online.
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It has been noted that one of the most outspoken critics of Pope Benedict XVI in Ireland is a pop singer by the name of Sinead O'Connor, who, according to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/328709.stm, dated May 4th 1999, was "ordained to the priesthood" by a schismatic bishop by the name of Michael Cox, himself consecrated by a group of episcopal progeny of the late "Pope" Gregory XVII (Clemente Dominguez y Gomez) in the Spanish so-called Palmarian Catholic Church headquartered at Palmar de Troya near Seville. The BBC article interestingly states:
Although her status is not recognised by the mainstream Catholic Church, O'Connor has sought to make amends by apologising for tearing up a portrait of the Pope, and donating IR£150,000 to the bishop who ordained her.
She gave the money to Bishop Michael Cox, who ordained her, as "an act of charity" to set up a healing centre for Ireland's travelling community in County Offaly.
Another dissident bishop, Pat Buckley, called the donation "disturbing" and said there was a question of whether simony – the act of purchasing a sacrament – had taken place.
In an interview for Irish broadcaster RTE from Lourdes, O'Connor, 32, said: "It would be a lie to say I bought my priesthood. This man would not have ordained me for any money if he had not know I had a true vocation.
At the time, she declared her intention to "continue in the music industry as Mother Bernadette Mary" and "wear a dog collar and clerical shirt daily". It is not known whether she still simulates Mass or pretends to be a priest. In her own website, Ms O'Connor explains that she is first and foremost a Rastafarian. 'It was a Rastafarian act to have myself ordained'.
Prior to her "ordination", O'Connor had torn up a portrait of Pope John Paul II in public, an act she later regretted, saying "I'm sorry I did that, it was a disrespectful thing to do. I have never even met the Pope. I am sure he is a lovely man. It was more an expression of frustration".
This is the kind of level of credibility of one of the most outspoken people who say that Pope Benedict XVI should abdicate!
Isn't this amazing? This was the Party newspaper under the Communists, and the Party line was there there was no God, religion was the opiate of the people, and the Soviet Union was the 'workers' paradise'. So much for this Russian word pravda, meaning truth, Stalin's and Lenin's truth.
And now, this journal of truth is actually writing the truth!!!
Correction: This comes as a disappointment, but I have just found the following piece of information:
As a Russianist, I think I should probably point out that this website isn't that of the Communist pravda (which still exists, is still communist, and has a website at www.gazeta-pravda.ru) but an on-line only publication with the same name, that isn't communist (and doesnt' really have any political orientation as such, beyond a taste for general sensationalism and love of conspiracy theories) that was set up in the late 1990s – I think by former staff of the paper. I can only presume that they chose the name (and logo) as an attempt at false representation (of a kind that was fairly common in the Russian media in the 1990s/early 2000s). It doesn't have any print equivalent; and I sometimes wonder even if it is a professional publication, rather than a hobby of a Russian-speaker, an English-speaker and a Portuguese-speaker.
Which is, of course, not to say, that this sort of article isn't welcome. Just that it's not really from "Pravda", not the "Pravda" that is actually read and sold in Russian news kiosks. (A quick search of THEIR online archive suggests that that publication has barely if at all touched the question of the abuse stories in the church).
Whoever wrote it, despite the loss of the sensationalism, and regardless of the political colour of Pravda B, it is worth reading.
Biretta tip to Dr. William Tighe.
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[Here follows the text of the Pravda article]
Much of the news coming out, in the effort to disguise ideological propaganda, contains the fundamental error of mistaking the wood with the trees … especially when the aim is to denigrate. That is, from an isolated case, preferably rough outlines, and generalized in order to induce the reader to think that the whole is of the same nature. This generalization obviously has ideological connotations and follows a political agenda that seeks to deconstruct traditional society and all its secular institutions and to impose a New World Order after the manner of the sinister interests of the international oligarchy, the same ones that handle the financial markets and through them, largely control the global economy. We refer to cases of pedophilia within the ranks of the Catholic Church recently publicized by international news agencies.
Indeed recent reports of pedophilia involving priests have the outlines of information that journalistic ethics require, regardless of their moral gravity. Such stories raise suspicion about their "goodness" even among non-Catholics like us. Although disagreeing with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, in some respects, but we recognize the importance of their role in our history to defend the ethical values that shape our Judeo-Christian culture and their social merit on behalf of those who have been victims of the usury and greed of the international oligarchy, which is after all more interested in destroying Catholicism and religion in general, as they constitute a serious obstacle to achieving its goal, which is to reduce mankind to the status of robotic slaves.
We emphasize, beforehand that it should not be confused with defending pedophilia, that by making the defense of the Catholic Church we are not justifying the actions of dishonorable men who have forgotten all of their most basic obligations as priests, respect for others, especially the weaker, as is the orphan child, lacking the affection of a true family.
One aspect that makes us suspicious of the "goodwill" of these stories is that they focus exclusively on cases of pedophilia of Catholic clergy, when we know that addiction cuts across all religions and organizations. We find it in all social strata and even within families. The pedophile is in principle very close to the victim and their confidence, that is not a stranger … and may even be a father, uncle, etc.. When it is argued that priests are more prone to abuse because of the celibacy that is required, as they repeatedly try to justify the temptation toward sexual abuse, it seems to be forgotten that these buggers are not always single and are often seen as "good" heads of the family, so the person apparently seems normal.
Another detail that suggests that a campaign of demoralization of the Catholic Church is in motion, is that news of pedophilia within it appears like mushrooms born every morning, confusing the number of victims and the pedophiles, it seems they are as many as a hive of bees … Almost all of the Catholic hierarchy … Of course, this does not exonerate the perpetrators of sexual abuse.
In fact the victims are many, but the alleged abusers are only a tiny minority. Of the evil, better … Even if we take into account the statistics in the USA, the number of victims in Catholic institutions compared with others, particularly in the school environment where it is much higher, there is a ratio of 157 to 1, within a time period 52 years, 1950 to 2002. Is it difficult work, no? On the other hand, this disproportion shows that in the U.S., as child abuse is an extensive social phenomenon, that is, that is not restricted to a specific sector of society.
The case of the Casa Pia de Lisboa is also illustrative as to the definition of a pedophile. The Portuguese government orphanage, founded in the late eighteenth century, by the Manager of Police, Pina Manique, a man in the confidence of the Marquis of Pombal, was a process of pedophilia in progress, and brings together more suspects accused of sexual abuse of minors than in all the cases mentioned recently in the media to tarnish the image of the Catholic Church.
Ten defendants were indicted by the public prosecution service, including an accomplice. Nevertheless some say that a "sexual binge" at the Institute involves many people and quite big, since it goes back over a decade ago in the 80's of the last century and many of the victims, now adults, are not willing to go through the torment of police investigations and still less the public shame that they have been the "rent boys" directly involved in the process.
There is a note in support of truth, that not all complaints are genuine. There are those who take advantage to extort money. It maybe difficult to ascertain how much is the truth and where does the lie begin … either one side or the other. Moreover, it is noted that in issues of sexuality, such as sodomy and others, it always tends to occur in boarding schools, even among the confined, although they are severely repressed, it also leaves indelible marks for the rest of their lives.
The fury of the anti-clerical secular lobby goes so far as to revive old cases like that of Father Lawrence Murphy, back in 1975, to address the current Pope insidiously and in this way, the very Roman Catholic Church. On 25 March of this year, the prestigious New York Times published an article that allegedly accused Benedict XVI of covering up for the priest from Milwaukee in 1995 when the Pope was still Cardinal and responsible for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith It must be motivated by a very strong hatred of Catholicism to raise this issue 35 years afterwards…
The complaint is all the more insidious when it ignores all that this body has had is the specific function to monitor doctrinal deviations, heresies, so nothing to do with the Law, which deals with cases of indiscipline, as are the acts that violate the chastity of the clergy are required. It is ignored that this priest was acquitted by civil law, which did not find evidence of the practice of pedophilia on deaf boys who were protected. How aware are we made that the Catholic hierarchy kept him under surveillance and did so not so much for suspicion of sexual abuse of minors, but for doctrinal deviations. It was this and only for this reason that the then Cardinal Ratzinger, in 1995, sanctioned, and then limited his pastoral functions. Four months later Murphy died. We do not believe that the New York newspaper was absolutely unaware of these facts. From here, it follows that bad faith exists and a defamatory smear campaign has been articulated against the world Catholic hierarchy.
And it is understandable. The current pontiff, consistent with the principles of the Catholic Church, has developed a tenacious resistance against unnatural and divisive proposals, carried out by secular organizations seeking to impose a vision of a sexist, hedonistic society, reducing man to his animal nature to deny its spiritual dimension. These organizations obviously have not arisen by "spontaneous generation," or live on air … they have been created and are supported by the cunning of said philanthropic foundations like the Rockefeller family. The financial interests of those are linked to a wide range of economic sectors ranging from banking, oil, pharmaceuticals, military industry, etc., to audio visual media, including the "media", which clearly meets an agenda dictated by the Global Elite to which they belong.
Besides, who is it that postulated that humankind has to be reduced to 1/3 of the current population and contributes to the misery of millions of human beings and cannot see the charitable activity, specifically in areas where poverty is most felt, sometimes coinciding with rich subsoils operated by the same Global Elite.
Therefore there is an intention in this kind of news that goes far beyond the desire to tell … If the same phenomenon were not omitted in other similar institutions. Further, a balanced assessment of responsibility in Catholic Church pedophilia should refer to the canonical and civil cases that have been raised for clerics accused of sexual abuse of minors and their outcome, not just advertising complaints, which may not be genuine, as has knowledge in processes of this kind.
Artur Rosa Teixeira
Translated from the Portuguese version by:
Lisa KARPOVA
PRAVDA, Russia
Elizabeth Lev has a great piece examining the parallels between the anti-Catholic vitriol after the French Revolution and the current hate-fest in the mainstream media. She writes:
In 1790, most of the world was congratulating France for what seemed like a successfully completed revolution. The hated King had been brought to heel, and change had swept through an oppressed nation, offering hope for a brighter future under better government.
Newspapers, then coming into their own, proclaimed the dawn of a new era of peace and prosperity while proto-pundits compared the change of rule to England's Glorious Revolution of 1688.
One observer however, English statesman Edmund Burke, wasn't fooled by the triumphant images produced by revolutionary PR teams; he saw gathering clouds for the darkest storm yet. His first clue that the Revolution had yet to run its course? The sustained hostile attacks on the Catholic clergy.
She adds:
What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks, as stories of a clerical sex abuser in Germany a quarter century ago, made front page headlines and top TV stories in US news? What would he think of the insistent attempts to tie this sex abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links?
In 1790, Burke answered his own question with these words: "It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those whom they are going to plunder. I rather suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated when profit is looked for in their punishment." As he wrote these words, the French revolutionaries were readying for the mass confiscation of Church lands.
As the present sales of church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators, one has to credit Burke for a profound and historical sense of human nature.
Please read the whole thing.
As an aside, when I took the wonderful Church Up Close Seminar sponsored by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in 2008 (another will be held this September and I highly recommend it), Elizabeth Lev was our guide through the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's. What an experience!