The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church’s insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope. Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood. In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.
The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict — as a Vatican cardinal — was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality. "There’s no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of dangerous priests who were deemed `satanic’ by their own bishop," Lynne Cadigan, an attorney who represented two of Teta’s victims, said Friday. Meanwhile, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno’s replacement, defended the Vatican’s handling of the Arizona cases, citing the prolonged process of internal church trials that he acknowledged could be "frustratingly slow because of the seriousness of the concerns"…
In the 1990s, a church tribunal found that Teta had molested children as far back as the 1970s, and the panel determined "there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys." The tribunal referred Teta’s case, which included allegations that he abused boys in a confessional, to Ratzinger. The church considers cases of abuse in confessionals more serious than other molestations because they also defile the sacrament of penance. It took 12 years from the time Ratzinger assumed control of the case in a signed letter until Teta was formally removed from ministry, a step only the Vatican can take.
The problem with the Church’s handling of the cases of child molestation and the problem of the Church’s handling of the current outrage towards the Vatican and the problem of the accusations of the Pope Benedict’s complicity in both these problems are all the same thing. In such a situation, one suspects a structural problem – something embedded in the system that is guaranteed to recur if left unattended.
One could hypothesize that it has something to do with authority – some belief that the Clergy have a unique authority. That’s what many of the articles point to – that the Church is all tangled up with it’s own role. Or maybe it has to do with hierarchy and politics, something about power. But those ideas are kind of lame in that the Catholic Church is one of the most enduring Institutions on the planet.
My guess is that a priest who started preaching against the dogma of the Church would find himself "laicized" in the twinkling of an eye. Imagine some guy giving a sermon that said that the female parishioners ought to all see their doctors and get on birth control pills. He’d be on a water-slide to the outside world in a heartbeat. Or what about a priest who gave a Mass that celebrated Mary’s mortal-ness and said he didn’t think she was whisked up into heaven like Jesus, but died a just plain old regular death? It might well be one of his last ever Masses. When the Church wants to act, it acts with speed and precision.
I think the Church’s structural problem is its attitude towards sex. After all, this crisis is about sex. And the furor isn’t about the priests breaking their vows of celibacy – shame on the priests for having sex. It’s about molesting children. The church and sex have got a problem, I think. They always have had. The Bible actually starts with the problem. Okay, Adam and Eve, y’all run around naked here in the Garden, but don’t have sex. As long as you hold off on the sex thing you can have everything else you want. So the Clergy ends up a culture of Adams and Eves that go through the same struggle. Every single priest and nun, including the Pope, knows about that struggle from the inside. I expect they have a felt empathy for the "fallen." And what they don’t have is a felt empathy for healthy sexuality – heterosexual or homosexual. Sexual learning is a "hands on" enterprise [pun intended]. All they know is the internal grappling with sexual urges. They never know anything beyond what virginal adolescents know. And they obviously don’t understand pedophillia at all.
They treat these instances of child molestation as a "slip up." I expect that there are all kinds of heterosexual "slip-ups" by Catholic Clergy, and I’ll bet the offending priests or Nuns either move on to a different life, or get moved to a different parish. That would be expected in a celibate community. It ultimately destroyed the celibate Shakers who gave offending couples a goodbye party, a horse, and a bag of seeds and sent them on their way. Then one day, there were no men left, and their communities became tourist attractions. The Shakers had filled their ranks by taking in "foundlings." With the coming of orphanages, there was no inflow.
But the Catholic Church fills its ranks by recruitment, which has fallen to a trickle – probably around the issue of the mandatory vows of celibacy.
I reposted this article because it contains a remarkable statement, one that offers an insight into the Church’s problem. Think about this one – "The church considers cases of abuse in confessionals more serious than other molestations because they also defile the sacrament of penance." I find this beyond amazing. Molesting a child in a confessional is worse than molesting a child somewhere else? Defiling a sacrament is a greater sin than defiling a child? It says to me that child molestation is seen, as I said above, as a slip-up – analogous to some priest and the Church secretary falling for each other. It is actually a lot more like the priest raping the Church Secretary, something the Church would not likely tolerate or try to cover-up. Nothing in their response suggests that they really understand this difference.
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