A blessing for the Vatican in (really) deep disguise

Allen makes very good points, as far as they go... The continuing moral dilemma that involves the Vatican, however, revolves around the culture of silence that has perpetuated itself within the clerical culture for centuries, that has contributed to the problem by not being honest. Why doesn't the clergy understand that their sins in this regard are ones of omission and scandal? Why don't they understand that they have a misguided understanding of priorities? Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would always be with the Church-- so why the cover-ups and secrecy? Don't clerics believe in the Holy Spirit?

Don't be silly John Allen. The Vatican has not convinced anyone of its sincerity in this matter because it does not hold accountable any single bishop who has covered up the abuse. Period. But let one single bishop speak in favor of the ordination of women, and the Vatican acts ever so swiftly to remove that bishop. Your own pages document that fact. In that context, it seems clear that the Vatican is far more interested in sustaining the party line among bishops when it comes to the ordination of women, but is ever so tolerant of bishops when it comes to the cover up of sex abuse. Now surely you see that connection, John Allen.

This scenario just won't wash
•" the Catholic church has turned a corner over the last decade, adopting tough new policies and investing considerable resources in making them stick".
Just ask the district attorney in Philaselphia, just ask the Taoiseach in Ireland. How well did these policies work in Philadelphia? In Cloyne?
And even when the evidence emerged that they didn't have any teeth, did Rome act? And look at who was appointed to Philadelphia. A compliant flunkey who could be relied upon to do what he was told, who at his installation admitted only that he had heard there were some problems. No one had briefed him? He had not asked? The three monkeys could do better.
Surely you could too, John.

If church officials have really adopted "tough new policies" on abuse, where, outside of a handful of Western nations, can anyone cite instances of bishops

-- voluntarily giving info about proven, admitted and credibly accused chld molesting clerics to law enforcement, or
-- disciplining even one church employee who concealed or ignored or enabled sexual violence?

Allen may be half right: the policies may sound "tough" on paper. But almost no one's denounced, demoted, disciplined or defrocked for violating them, so almost nothing changes.

And Allen can't have it both ways, claiming on one than that the "problem" can't "be magically solved by flipping a switch in Rome" yet on the other hand claiming that this is what's already happened.

David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com)

One can of course claim, as Mr. Allen does, that Benedict XVI has been a reformer on the sex abuse issue. But the reforms have certainly been rather tepid.

If, for instance, while at the helm of the CDF he became convinced of Marcial Maciel's guilt in the Legionaries case, why did he go along with John Paul II's coverup (or at least refusal to investigate the case?) His supporters might respond that he was bound by an oath of loyalty to the Pope; but should such loyalty to a person (or an office) really trump one's loyalty to the dictates of Christianity? I hope not.

Why has he himself, like his predecessor, refused to take any action against bishops who have been guilty of coverups, and of enabling abuse to take place? Apart from Cardinal Law, who was hounded out of office, and rewarded with a fat Roman plum, what other bishop has been called to accountability? (Granted, there have been a handful, like Groer in Vienna who it seems have been let go because they ran up not just records of coverup, but of abuse itself).

Why has he not moved against Sodano, for example, one of Maciel's champions in the halls of the Vatican? What has been his reaction to Rigali (and before him, Bevilacqua) In Philadelphia? Why has he not made it clear that episcopal ordination is not, per se, tantamount to a grant of immunity from Vatican discipline? (It certainly wasn't in the case of Bishop Morris in Australia, whose crime in Vatican eyes, was not abuse and its enablement, but the floating of some ideas that Rome wished not to hear).

There may be good answers to such questions, but Rome seems the last place to look for them. I doubt whether the ICC can do much to clean up the Vatican as a cause for scandal; the impetus must come from within, if it's going to work, but there's little evidence of any such a firm amendment of purpose, as the penitential phrase has it.

I wonder if anyone has tried to argue that, whatever the situation is about lines of authority in the case of diocesan clergy, that Jesuits do, in fact, report more directly to the pope. They do take a 4th vow of obedience to the Holy Father. Seems like that’s a two way street.

" ...“the Swiss Guard hasn’t invaded anywhere.”)

Well not the Swiss Guard but the thousands of Paedophilia Priests DID
invaded Criminally the life of thousands of children around the World and
they shall face the Criminal Courts.

John--

Your last few articles on the sex abuse crisis truly are revealing how parochial your perspective is becoming ("parochial" meant here in its literal sense of having a limited or narrow outlook, often based on a perceived bias against outsiders). Your three "basically true" claims either miss the point or refuse to see it.

Regarding the first, nearly everyone gets that the Vatican doesn't police priests. That is not the issue with the ICC appeal or with SNAP's criticisms of the Church: the question is whether the Vatican polices BISHOPS and how the Vatican has directed them to act. To claim (as the Vatican does) that it does not police bishops, yet at the same time, demonstrate that the Vatican can both force bishops into retirement and re-assign them at will, is a contradictory set of data at the very least--and duplicitious at worst.

Second, however or whenever then-Cardinal Ratzinger came to see the need for "reform," one still cannot deny that he too oversaw situations in which the abuse of children was happening. Was he aware then? If not, why not? Becoming a reformer later in life does not release one from culpability for acts done earlier in life--and we need to recall that our own sacramental life convicts of both sins of commission and sins of omission. On top of this, as we see in the Irish situation, it does appear that the Pope still encourages a certain amount of foot-dragging in the Vatican's refusal to aid the local church and the local government in eradicating this problem. Or are you now suggesting that the Pope does not control the Vatican, either?

Third, to say the Catholic Church has "turned a corner" is nothing more and nothing less than to say that a start has begun, but keep in mind that the start on this issue is neither a complete solution nor even clearly a sign that the hierarchy has "gotten it" yet. Cardinal George has refused to deal with problems in Chicago as recently as 2006 (with a new set of problems now dating back only a year or so), when he relieved a priest of duty only AFTER that priest had already been arrested (and later convicted) on charges of sexual abuse. The incidents occurred after the Dallas Charter was in place. We see this in Ireland and Philadelphia as well. The incidents come less frequently to the news because there is no longer a glut of hidden stories to uncover, but the abuse continues, often at the hands of priests who have been flagged as dangerous and then shuffled about.

The real blessing that could (and should) happen is that the Vatican finally confront its own refusal to face this issue squarely and in the way Christ wants. The pope can apologize all he wants, but he always apologizes on behalf of the CHURCH; this is an erroneous and dangerous misstatement. The Church did NOT do this because the Church includes the victims themselves, their family members who were silenced, and good people who were taught to hide these things away. It was ordained clergy (and men and women of religious orders) who knowingly committed these crimes and whose superiors covered them up. The religious and the hierarchy are NOT the Church, and until Pope Benedict makes changes in his understanding of that, the Vatican will have "so little luck," as you put it, in changing people's minds.

"Luck" is not a category of Christian thought, and it has nothing to do with this situation. "Sin" and "self-deception" and "authoritarianism" might be better terms to explain why the Vatican's message is not getting heard by people who are suffering.

a good public relations response on the part of the Vatican....but I think Mr. Allen's own words subvert what he is trying to get across...

to wit :

there was a culture of silence in the church, from the top to the bottom, in which the Vatican was obviously complicit....

FROM THE TOP .....

and that says it all for me

If prosecuting a good and holy man who is busy with the matters of the Kingdom is your idea of a good thing then I think you need to re-consider your point of view. It would be a travesty of justice and total fiasco.

The counter-intuitive hypothesis that John Allen floated in this article, might well be true from a legalistic point of view. However, I was more interested in his comment following the three core arguments: "To be sure...there was a culture of silence in the church, from top to bottom, in which the Vatican was obviously complicit." I'm not sure about the "top to bottom" part but I wish to just focus on "complicit". The Oxford Dictionary defines complicit as, "involved in an activity that is unlawful or morally wrong." The example it uses is "the careers of those complicit in the cover-up were blighted." Rather then spending the rest of the article describing how the Vatican has not been successful in their PR efforts, I wish he had spent more time on the "morally wrong" part of the definition of complicit. I believe that most of us are more concerned about our leaders morals than whether or not they can be convicted of a crime. For the most part, none of their careers have been "blighted", even though many of our leaders have participated in the cover-ups.

Actually, an objective review might conclude that all of the Vatican's "three core arguments" are wrong:

1) Oversight of individual bishops and religious superiors, the vast majority of whom still conceal the names of abusers, is lodged with the Vatican. So the abuse and cover-up problems largely COULD be "solved by flipping a switch in Rome."

2) Benedict XVI has been an obstructionist and dissembler more often than he's been a reformer. As head of the CDF in 2002, he stated that "less than one percent" of priests had molested children; the US bishops' own count as of 2010 reveals that 5.4% of active priests since 1950 have been accused. (See first link below.) Worse, in 2002, he oversaw a key sabotaging of the norms created by the US bishops in Dallas. The bishops' proposed requirement to "report ... any allegation" to civil authorities was deleted and replaced with the weaker requirement to "comply with all applicable civil laws." (See second link below.)

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AtAGlance/USCCB_Yearly_Data_on_Accu...

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/churchdocs...

3) The Church's supposed "tough new policies" are in fact riddled with strategic loopholes, as any close reader knows. Awful revelations this year in the dioceses of Philadelphia and Kansas City-St Joseph show that bishops can be in full compliance with church policies and still put children at risk. By giving credibly accused abusers continued access to children, Bishop Robert Finn in KC and Cardinal Justin Rigali in Philadelphia were certainly breaking all notions of common decency and good sense. Unfortunately, though, they were in compliance with the trickily worded "zero tolerance" norm approved by Ratzinger in 2002.

I do not think the International Criminal Court is the venue that is needed. But I do understand the frustration of those who want child molestors and those who abetted their crimes brought to justice. We need more state and federal courts willing to bring charges against those who abet child abuse by refusing to bring in the police when abuse is suspected - that means the bishops and those on their staffs who are supposed to oversee priests, schools, etc. The same application of national laws needs to be seen in courts around the world - in Ireland, England, Belgium, Germany, countries in South America, the Phillipines - whereever abuse by priests or vowed religious has occurred.

Rome's claims of innocence would be much more believable if they sent Law back to Boston and fired bishops who do not report and investigate cases of possible abuse. Rome appoints them. The local folks in the parish and diocese have no voice in making that selection and are not listened to if they don't like the guy. Rome puts them there - Rome claims to be the only ones who can remove them. So - Rome is responsible - absolutely, positively, without a doubt- for dealing with bishops who fail their people. One more time - it really gets Catholics upset to see Rome refuse to act when the bishops screw up - or, worse, give them plum assignments in Rome to get them out of the country before they have to face the people they let down so badly and maybe the national courts, too.

One of the reasons the sex abuse scandal just doesn't seem to go away is because we know we cannot rely on Rome to act when our bishops fail us.

I agree, for the most part, with the three arguments you present for not blaming the Vatican (entirely).

But you are begging the question about the role of the bishops. This pope and the last one, have reduced the bishops to passive obedient order-takers whose biggest concern is pleasing their only client, the Vatican. Playing up to Vatican politics and obsessions, instead of attending to local pastoral concerns, has become the main focus of the bishops. This includes keeping the number of clergy as high as possible within their dioceses, even it it means tolerating horrible behavior from priests. This tolerance of bad behavior is accompanied by a vicious emphasis on utter doctrinal conformity from priests, especially to the invented doctrines of birth control, married clergy and homosexuality.

If such action might be helpful to the Vatican and the Pope personally, as hypothesized by Mr. Allen, the Vatican apologist, then let the Vatican and the Pope get on with it and let the cards fall where they may. Or does the Vatican and te Pope need a "stacked deck" as they do in other Roman Church matters of consequence?H

POPE IN HANDCUFFS?......My thanks to you John and to the Vatican's lawyers who spin you. As a Harvard Law trained international lawyer with over 40 years of experience, my opinion is you are wrong. The International Criminal Court will hear the case against the Vatican clique of Ratzinger, Sodano, Bertone and Levada. There is clear jurisdiction and a prima facia case of crimes against humanity orchestrated from Rome. It is not necessary to prove the pope sent direct orders for priests to rape children. It will be legally sufficent to establish a criminal motive and acts of aiding and abetting the multiple and widespread crimes of child rape. If an apparent worldwide conspiracy of child rape orchestrated by one government is not reviewable by the ICC, then a fundamental loophole would be established to the prohibition of crimes against humanity.The ICC will not, in my opinion, permit that..............................The clear motive of the Roman clique is obvious to anyone who looks objectively, as the ICC will, at the Roman cliques' consistent conduct. The Roman clique is desparately trying to preserve the coercive power that Constantine tragically gave the pope over 1,500 years ago. This power has for centuries provided and still provides Roman cliques and Catholic bishops with unaccountable wealth, privilege and, as is sadly being uncovered, opportunites for secret sex. In the pope's case, his abetting has already been uncovered in numerious reliable media reports, e.g., covering up abuse in Munich in the 70's, ducking the Maciel investigation in the '80's, burying the Milwaukee, LA, etc. investigations, etc. in the '90's, burying the Law , Vangulhuwe, Mueller, etc., investigations in the 200O's............................... The ICC will not be fooled by the mystical smokescreens the pope's lawyers regularly put in his mouth, even if these statements apparently fool sychophantic media members and some Catholic elites who feed at the Roman trough. The Roman cliques' secret files will be reviewed. Why are these files secret? What is the Roman clique afraid of? Vatican witnesses will be questioned under penalty of perjury............................. Not only will the ICC likely ascertain that the Roman clique has systematically abetted thousands of child rapists, but the ICC will uncover the perverse way the Roman clique uses "celibacy" to control bishops and priests. Of course, as has been increasingly been uncovered recently, this celibacy is in fact already "optional" since priests and bishops appear often to disregard their vows. This has necessitated the Roman clique to support pedophile priests at all costs, since many of the pedophiles are in a position to spill the beans on the hierarachy........................... Moreover, by limiting the supply of priests by excluding married candidates, the Roman clique has forced bishops to retain pedophiles since there are very few priests to replace them. Priests are controlled by the Roman clique mainly by low wages, insecure pensions and interpersonal isolation. The ICC case will only reinforce for Rome the present reality. The Roman clique no longer rules by fiat an Italian monarchy. All of them are now accountable to international laws............................................... The current protests in Germany, Ireland and Austria are proving the Roman clique is increasingly unable to fool all the people all the time. Hollywood-style pectacles, like well funded but staged beatifications and youth rallies, are not evangelization. No one is fooled. Slanted Catechisms, arcane liturgy, bizarre theology, , brutal suppression of numerous alternative voices, etc., have failed. The Gospels are clear. Neither countless lawyers, well rewarded publicists nor self-interested "in house" theologians can obscure the Gospel message any longer................................... Ironically, the Church's David, Hans Kung, is gaining ground against the Church's Goliath, Joseph Ratzinger. The battle of the octagenerians is in its final round. Please see Der Spiegel (9/21/11):Interview with Hans Kung- "A Putinization of the Catholic Church" at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,787325,00.html ........................ The Good News is the Christian community will survive and even thrive. The Spirit works in strange ways.

It would still be messy in the short term. The Vatican will continue on of course but legally facing these problems head on is exactly what the doctor ordered. The Vatican's penchant for stonewalling should end and a public move to a trial is as you say a blessing in deeeeeeeeep disguise.

The first argument the Vatican makes acts as if the Bishops were each virgin births arising out of sea foam. The selection of the bishops remains a papal responsibility. Some inherited bad situations. Some made it worse. A few cleaned house. If this was happening in Wallmart or General Motors, we'd assume a basic problem in management and clean out a lot of more than the plant managers.

I accept the second argument fully. Say what you will, Benedict has done more than any pope in the last century to fight clerical abuse.

The problem with the third argument is that the church has turned a corner in places where there is a strong independent court system, AKA where they've had no choice about cleaning house. For the first decade the cry out of the Vatican was that it was an American Problem, or a problem overblown by the press.

I think that there are still problems in the Church and that there will be more revelations that the corner hasn't been turned everywhere.

I understand John Allens perspective, but have difficulties with the notion that the Vatican would be exonerated by an ICC adjudication.

The consistent pattern throughout the world of Vatican appointed bishops (essentially, Vatican employees, appointed by Rome with the potential to be removed by Rome) and THEIR consistent pattern, of legal obfuscation relative to molestation issues throughout the world and the appointment of Bernard Law to a major basilica in Rome, cause me to think that Rome carries heavy responsibility, and the buck generally stops at the top.

If Rome truly wanted to clean up this mess, why employ only forty some folks in the office that reviews molestation cases...when there are 4000 to 5000 bishops worldwide?

Why not require , not advise, bishops to report molestation issues to civil authorities?

Why not promote Laws internationally that would punish administrators for passing on known predators? Or, for that matter, punish these guys internally?

Why is it that the US bishops have for the past ten years been actively working through their individual state catholic conference offices to eviscerate mandatory clergy molestation reporting requirements and statuate of limitation extensions that would help protect children

No, John Allen, I think you are too close to Rome and too far from the truth!8

There you go again, John! By your Roman approach, I think you made it perfectly clear that there are two very different mindsets regarding the Catholic clerical abuse and coverup. A major part of the problem is: What is the Vatican, is it a state or is it a religion? For those opting for religion, criminal laws enforced in secular society do not apply and God forgives, with a special forgiveness for those in the clerical structure.

If you are in the mindset of Vatican as a state, then sexual abuse is a crime and covering that up is also a crime. If an organization is set up in such a way that potential perpetrators can not be held accountable by secular people, the organization has enabled criminal activity to occur and flourish. The Catholic church is such a structure. When the leader of that organization [Pope] makes and approves policies that allow such activity to continue, he is at the very least complicit in the criminal activity. When he supports that system and tries to strengthen it through the centralization of power, he is an active offender.

Tens of thousands of little kids in the Catholic church were abused with the full knowledge of the authorities [bishops, cardinals, and popes]. The authorities had no oversight to compel them to be legal and moral. This abuse tormented and pillaged these children for life, some committing suicide to gain freedom. If in your opinion, that doesn't qualify for a crime against humanity, than nothing can!

The reason that the international court must get involved is because this is a global problem perpetrated by a global organization. The solution will involve more than apologies, road trips to preach sorrow, and Fridays without meat. The organization that allowed the clerics and hierarchy to perpetrate these crimes must be held accountable by an outside source. I suggest that the source should be the lay people of that structure. The unlimited and monolithic structure of the Catholic church must be reformed so that the people of the church have governance over the clerics of that church. Nothing gets past "the people of God" and the clerics become the true servants that Jesus envisioned.