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Pope’s Irish letter faces critical Catholic world
Washington Post
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
March 20, 2010DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI addresses Ireland on Saturday in a letter apologizing for the sex abuse scandal here – a message being watched closely by Catholics from Boston to Berlin to see if it also acknowledges decades of Vatican-approved cover-ups. The church is only beginning to come to terms with decades of child abuse in its parishes and schools. The scandals first emerged in Canada and Australia in the 1980s, followed by Ireland in the 1990s, the United States this decade and, in recent months, Benedict’s German homeland.
Victims’ rights activists say that to begin mending the church’s battered image, Benedict’s message – his first pastoral letter on child abuse in the church – must break his silence on the role of the Catholic hierarchy in shielding pedophile clergy from prosecution. That includes abuses committed decades ago under the pope’s watch, when he was Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, as well as the pontiff’s role in hushing up the scandals.
As leader of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger was responsible for a 2001 Vatican edict that instructed bishops to report all cases of child abuse to Vatican authorities under strict secrecy; it made no mention of reporting crimes to police. "Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility?" said the Rev. Hans Kung, a Swiss priest and dissident Catholic theologian. "Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa," Kung said…
No country has been harder hit by the child-abuse scandals than Ireland, a nation of 4 million that has paid out more than $1 billion to some 13,000 victims. Victims’ advocates say they are tired of hearing church apologies that contain no acknowledgment of how bishops under Vatican direction let child molesters operate with impunity…
The cry is for the Catholic Clergy to take responsibility for covering up the cases of childhood sexual abuse in the Church over the years – paying off the victims and moving the offending priests to another Parish. Being molested as a child isn’t good for people. It’s one of those things that doesn’t go away [like cancer or schizophrenia]. And while it’s easy to understand the anger at the Clergy for essentially being complicit, that doesn’t "explain" why the problem of pedophilia is epidemic in this group. Does the priesthood draw pedophiles because of access? Are they previous victims themselves? Does the vow of celibacy have something to do with it? Do they flock to the priesthood in a failed attempt to escape their impulses? Whatever the case, beyond apology, it seems like the Church might try to figure out the answer. It’s a public mental heath problem of some magnitude.
I am not Catholic, and I see a lot of what the Church decrees about our "nature" as bizarre. That part about sex – if you’re going to have sex, expect a baby – is at the least anachronistic; is converse to the workings of the human sexual instinct which points to pleasure rather that parenthood; and is a population control nightmare. I can live with their stand on abortion, but it only makes sense if the church puts condom machines in the church bathrooms and subsidizes free birth control pills, intra-uterine devices, Tubal Ligations, or Vasectomies. Instead of if you’re going to have sex, expect a baby, I’d like to hear them saying don’t have unwanted children – God wants children to be cherished. These are things I might want from the Church, but they’re not asking me what I want.
I was a practicing Catholic who was in the convent out of high school came out on a leave of absence, fell in love got married and became a mother. I was asked and became a Eucharistic minister which is mostly giving out Communion at mass and to the sick wherever they might be. I quit the church because I no longer could ignore what I considered wrong. A big one was telling people in very poor countries no to have safe sex because that was a sin. Aids, unwanted pregnancey was ok. There were lots of other reasons and the priest sex scandal was another but I’m not going into that now because we all know what has been going on. Getting back to the church’s stance on sex, I remember walking past my parents bedroom and hearing my father say that the latin curio in Rome was made of a bunch of old men who sat around a table together and said if we can’t have it(sex) they meaning secular men and woman can’t either. My Dad was serious when he told my Mom. I surmised that he had just come from confession and he asked why can’t we have protected sex. I came from a family of 6 and my 1 brother was very sickly. There is a lot wrong and people are no longer bullied by the church on that issue.