Cracks in the wall of the curia

To add to the fiasco, the Curia has allowed some local Ordinaries, e.g. Bishop Bruskawitz of Lincoln, Nebraska, to opt out of the Charter for the Protection of Children and thus usurp any accountability whatsoever with regard to cases in that diocese. I grew up in the Lincoln Diocese and I can tell you as a survivor, the allowance of such blatant unaccountability is absolutely sinful at best and just one more example of the wall of secrecy. My prayer is that Jeff Anderson would be able to open a hotline in that Diocese, as I know it would hold the potential to be more swamped than the one opened in Germany!

Could someone point me to an equally scathing review in NCR about Rembert Weakland's misdoings?

It's time to clean house. Pope John tried to open the windows, but fresh air alone won't do it !!!

Sorry to dip back into ancient (well, early modern) history, but why does the apostolic succession make it difficult to discipline, even remove, bishops? What about Thomas Cranmer, named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1532, with the full blessing of the pope (helped by some cash from Henry VIII). He, of course, became a leader of the emerging Anglican Church after Henry's break with the pope -- but there was, after all, nothing invalid in the way he first took orders in the Roman Catholic Church, and then succeeded to the episcopacy. (And he was only one of many validly consecrated English bishops who made their way in these years to Henry's new church.

Presumably Rome took action against the errant bishops, valid though their orders were. What's to prevent the same thing from happening today? Perhaps simply professing a continuing loyalty to the papacy (unlike Cranmer and his colleagues) is enough to make you OK, whatever your other misdeeds may be.

As a committed Catholic, I am deeply grateful to Jason Berry for his investigative reporting. He is performing an outstanding service to the one true Church by assisting her in eradicating corruption from her human features. I hope that Mr. Berry will continue his work intrepidly.

Keep and spread the Faith.

"The church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification..."
Who is the pope speaking for here? In this regard, isn't it the heirarchy of the church, seeking to hide under the cloak of "the church"? Just more attempts to pass the buck and continue the denial.

And the Vatican wants to study women religious in this country and evaluate how they live, if they are faithful to the teachings of the church, do they pray etc. People that live in glass houses need to be very careful before they start throwing stones!!!!!!

May be I am wrong, but as far as I know, the Vatican has already laicized one bishop: Mons. Milingo...

B16 says little or just enough to quiet the fires. However, he has done NOTHING with the above cardinals, curial reform or bringing bishops who covered up these crimes (which is the real crisis) to justice.
All talk, no action. He is part of the clericalism that is responsible for this mess.
"Princes of the church, titles, excellency, holiness, gold rings, appointments, regalia" and on and on and on are all so far away from the lifestyle of the humble Galilean.

BTW, another cleric was chosen for Groer's position but at the last minute that candidate was dropped and Groer was chosen. Guess who it was that intervened on his behalf and pushed to have Groer appointed?
None other than Joseph Ratzinger.

Excellent article by Jason Berry. Thank you again NCR! Yes, I agree that Sodano and Law need to be removed but I believe until the entire College of Cardinals is dissolved or abolished, very few real reforms will take place. Bertone does need to atone for his words but the entire system is corrupt from its' own power and greed.

Send all these complicit cardinals to a monastary. They are a disgrace.
They can spend their time playing court with each other. The harm they have done to the Church is not possible to measure at this time.

They seem to love neither church nor people. Shame. What's worse, these are people selecting new bishops, so the pestulance continues. Loveless Machiavellians.

The curia needs to pack-up,check into a rehab for megalomaniacs,and go away. This would be best for our Church. The problem is they view the Church as their personal posession,to be used for their personal gain. What we are witnessing is infighting for spoils,an activity as old as the Vatican itself.

It is not true that CDF has never laicized a bishop. Bishop Fernando Lugo was laicized and on June 31, 2008 and now is a president of Paraguay. In fact the term laicization is only technical term as a priest, bishop or deacon never become a laity.

OK. So, bishops can excommunicate nuns and other laity for ANY involvement WHAT SO EVER in abortion, withold diocesean support because they don't like what was said, force visitations on religious communities, but it's still OK to have these cardinals and bishops who have enabled and covered up the sexual abuse and immoral actions of other priests to be in continued postions of power AND still be members of the Catholic church?

Something is terribly wrong. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!

That bishops cannot be tried by the Inquisition (now the CDF), but only by the Pope himself, is a provision that goes back to the Council of Trent - one of the very few concessions made to bishops at the time when power in the Church was transferred radically from the episcopacy to the Roman curia. To change it would be mean centralizing power in the Church even more in the curial bureaucracy.

Thank you for reporting the truth. The God that I know is not only "love" but also "truth". This coverup must be resolved for us to continue supporting the Tradition we know and love.

Contrary to Mr. Berry's opinion that the 2002 Dallas Charter, as modified by the Vatican, provides "a workable model, at least on paper", the bishops quickly found a way around it. The most important part of the Protecting God's Children program, adopted by most of the U.S. dioceses, is the continuing education required of priests & others who regularly deal w/ children in their ministry. That program, part of VIRTUS, tells the dioceses who is & who is not doing the continuing education. But, the audits of these programs, w/ the knowledge of the bishops & their Officy of Child & Youth Protection, intentionally do NOT ask for that information. Why? At least in my diocese, Grand Rapids, MI, while I, as a volunteer, administered the PGC program, the priests, by & large, were the only group not doing what was supposed to be "manditory" for them, but the leadership ignored the fact. And, it continued to pass the so-called Gavin Audits, BECAUSE NOBODY ASKED!

Although it is rare, a bishop can be laicized. In a closed, hyper-clerical and hierarchical society like the Vatican, this reversion to the lay state must seem like a fate worse than death. A recent case was that of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. On December 17, 2009, the Holy See announced that Milingo had been reduced to the lay state after a prolonged dispute on several fronts. NPC

Actions speak louder than words. To date, we have had only words from Benedict. Until he treats Law as the criminal he is and defrocks him and all the other hierarchs involved in their "infallible" gibberish, nothing will really change. Beneict cannot have it two ways: punish the errant priests; do nothing about the hierarchs who facilitated the pedophilia.

Thank you, Mr. Barry for your work. Sunlight is the only disinfectant, though in the case of the Curia, it may take generations to cleanse.

Because I have admired Jason Berry's work for some time, I was disappointed with his suggestion that "The central issue of this long aching crisis is the Vatican's flawed justice system . . ." Really?

And what about his statement that . . . "On the airplane, Benedict uttered words that will make or break his papacy: 'The church thus has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice.'" Well, I suppose the ". . . make or break his papacy . . ." proposition is not outside the realm of potentiality for this pope, but is it really worth discussing in light of the current crisis?

To me, the crisis is far more portentous than either of these ideas suggest. My novel, THE MICHELANGELO DECEPTION (recently released on Amazon.com/books),
goes to the root of the problems the Church has had since its founding.

A little over a thousand years after the Church was founded, Michelangelo painted deceptions into the "Last Judgment" expressing his outrage at the papacy he served and what it had done to humanity.

To Michelangelo it was not just a matter of a flawed legal justice system; what the Church had done was foist on humanity a fraudulent religion based on fabricated ideas about what Jesus taught.

While the great artist could only intuit the true spirituality of mankind, we now know what Jesus was really all about; it can be found in the Gnostic gospels found buried in the Egyptian desert during the last century. What Jesus was about was love and compassion . . . not fear and terror, the two principles upon which the Roman Catholic Church was founded.

Totalitarian states are founded upon fear and terror and are doomed to failure because God's children long for a life of love and compassion and will not endure--forever--institutions based on threats of eternal damnation.

Recently I read that for the pope to try to get control of the curia it would be like "trying to herd cats." That metaphor speaks powerfully to me.

The princelings and princesses of the hierarchy really need to do some real good for the church and excommunicate themselves from the REAL church. These princelings want to show the world that they hold the "magic" powers because they believe they are the true defenders of the faith, when in reality they themselves are so faithless. They ARE todays Pharisees attired in white, red, purple, and a whole assortment of medieval play clothes. Feeble, narrow-minded, mean-spirited, ignorant old men who have nothing better to do than spout thousands of canon laws they dream up for controlling the laity. When will the REAL CHURCH be rid of them?

Money TALKS.

Only when dollars are witheld will true change arrive.
BANKRUPT the higher-archs.
BANKROLL the lower-archs.

Pennies for Peter's Pence 2010!
http://www.iheu.org/%E2%80%9Cmake-pope-pay%E2%80%9D-petition-delivered-u...

Many years ago I requested and received a decree of Laicization from the priesthood so thatI could get married within the Church. I knew that I wanted to be both a priest (which for 10 years, I truly loved) and to get sacramentally married to this one woman, (whom, after 40 years - thank God - I truly love). But I knew that the only way that I could live my life honestly (with God, self, and others) was to obtain a decree of laicization.
In today's Church that meant that we had to be married in the Cardinal's private Chapel by a Bishop who was also our Sacramental witness - because no one was to know that such a thing as this could happen. Those were shaky times, but compared to the other options open to priests who wanted to live honestly with their need to get married and stay active within the Church -our lives have indeed been graced and my gratitude is immense. So, personnally, I hope and pray that the Chuch will use these painful years of experiencing God's holy longing for some priests to be celibate and some to be able to live the married life, while giving up any option of becoming a Bishop, as it is wholistically lived in the Greek Orthodox Church, today.

Again, all of this CAN BE CHANGED, and MUST be changed if the Catholic Church is to truly represent a discipleship of Jesus Christ. These are man made systems that have changed many times over the many centuries. There is no reason whatsoever to think radical reform of the papacy and the way bishops are elected ( the best system would be to elect them locally in each diocese by lay people and clergy and for a set term of five or ten years maximum. Abolish the College of Cardinals and make the Bishop of Rome the symbol of Unity. The dogma of infallibility is flawed and needs to be abolished. It came very late in the Church's history and it is not of Christ or His Church. Celibacy as a requirement must be dropped, for priests, bishops and popes. Women must be ordained to the priesthood and episcopate. The Church belongs to the People of God, and that does not mean a small cadre of men(popes, cardinals and bishops), who live as monarchs. The entire magesterium theology must be reformed and renewed. It is seriously flawed and at times a cult like function that bears no likeness to the early Church. We can make this happen.

I applaud Jason Berry's work. Only the complete truth will purify the hierarchy. I disagree that the Dallas charter is a "workable model" for the rest of the world because the "Dallas charter" is non-binding in canon law (any bishop is free to ignore it) and because bishops and cardinals are exempt from any consequences.
Jason Berry is right when he says that the way the hierarchy thinks about Apostolic succession they don't think about Judas. In truth what Rome has done is reward bishops and cardinals for their obedient loyalty in defending the cover-up. That is why Cardinal Law got rewarded in Rome.
Jason Berry does not say it, but perhaps Rome's difficulty in forcing the resignation of bishops and cardinals has more to do with the fact that all the members of the hierarchy are guilty of following a universal policy of covering up the sexual abuse of children. A universal policy directed by the Roman curia. Rome's dilemma: Replacing the entire hierarchy.

I wish that there was a deserted island where all these bishops, archbishops, and cardinal who have and are causing such huge scandal could live together. Twice a month a helicopter would come with food and books. There would be no contact with the outside world. I wonder if they could survive without the pomp and circumstance, wealth and status that have been their daily food.

If Bishops can't be removed maybe thats why they're having the abuse accountability placed in their laps.
Obviously it wouldn't be fitting for the Vicar of Christ.
I have heard that once your a Bishop your right for life.
They can hand in their resignation or be retired of course,there's a clause in the Code of Canon Law that covers them to make a gracious exit.
Not so the priests who ask for Rescripts of Ligitimation to protect the child they've brought into the world and the mother that carried it in her womb for nine months.
That's too scandalous for the faithful and for the church.
Not to mention their fear of financial inheritance issues that would never have been a consideration of the parents.

We just need to worry about the Christ in all of this. Nothing else matters. Nothing.

Did everyone seem to forget about Cardinal Law, who still sits on, I don't know how many congregations in the Vatican, including the congregation for choosing future bishops.

My sincere thanks to Jason Berry for continuing the work of interpreting recent and not so recent events in the 'Church' and the world. Finally I have a bit of a structure to place my 'gut' response to likes of 'Bernie Law', Marciel Maciel Dellogado, Soldano et al. Indeed the walls of the fortress are cracking and if you look down, way down, you will see some rather large leeches. I wonder if the DSM, diagnostic and statistical manual used by psychiatrists has a classification for sociopaths who have a penchant for trafficking in things religous? I hope that Jason Berry will be with us for a good long time as this kind of forensic reporting actually enlightens. George Wiegel probably has to find a change of underwear upon reading what can be accomplished with a swift and sharp sword vis. rearranging the location of Mr. Ratzinger's head. Oh yes, I know, I read the reported comment by one of the 'survivors' in Portugal post basking in Ratzinger's beatific glow. " You have a saint". Blech! What we have is a curial politician and reader of many books. Lies and deception as a deceased friend said referring to the catholic church. Fortunately my life has been touched deeply by deeply Catholic folk. It's why I converted. Currently I stand outside and look in through the various prisms.

I applaud Mr. Berry in his journalitic investigative reporting; however, I do not think that the walls to the Vatican are the only things cracked in the Roman Church Sanctuary. I think that may of the denizens of the "sanctuary" are also cracked and, perhaps, even more so.

The pope should order the cardinals to sit for a week at the door of churches and beg the people for forgiveness for their sins as the sins are recited quietly over their ego-inflated heads. it won't change their hearts - they are too hardened by pride and the ridiculous custom of referring to them as princes - but it will strengthen the faithful. Any who refuse this public act of penance should be forced to resign and live in an austere monastery.

Since the bishops will find a way around any rules on educating priests against abuse, the state should mandate such education for all ministers of all churches, temples, mosques, etc. Any institutions found not in compliance should lose its tax exempt status and pay stiff fines. Compliance officers with the secular law behind them will cleanse these dioceses better than any "old boy" agreements with no bite.

The early Church appointed presbyters(elders or pastors) and Episkopos (overseers)and deacons as found in the Acts of the Apostles. We need to discontinue other titles and positions such as monsignor ( my lord), cardinals along with their pink and red robes and beanies etc. which were garments from the middles ages that reflect royalty and power not humility and service which is what ministry is all about. The garb and titles only contribute to the sense of entitlement and hierarchy which was opposed by Jesus!

So far, Papa Ratzi has only paid lip-service to his own guidelines.

"For his papacy to put this crisis to rest, Benedict must establish procedures to remove bishops from the hierarchy, and priesthood where warranted, and to establish uniform procedures of genuine justice."

Isn't the Church, nay the world, fortunate to have Jason Berry on hand to tell it exactly what it must do?

Rome has twice excommunicated and once laicized Emmanuel Milingo, because he married, he ordains married men as priests and bishops, and he has become too involved with the Unification Church.

Other bishops who married and ordained married men were accepted back to Rome.

The late Czech Felix Davidek, who ordained married men and at least one woman as a priest, is also listed as a Catholic bishop.

No pederast bishop has been laicized.

Jason Berry, you are my hero. This is yet another great article on lowdown behavior in high places. Thank you for all the work you do.

Thereare so many scoundrels in bishop's chairs that we will have to wait for this generation of bishops dies out before the church can start healing again. Unfortunately, with Bernard Law and Archbishop Burke on the Congreagation for Bishops, the future does not look much better.

The real heart of the problem lies in the attitude experessed by oft-used phrase, "princes of the Church". WE have only one prince--the Prince of Peace.

I am so disgusted I have stopped attending mass. Perhaps there is in your article a glimmer, but only just, of hope. Maybe soemthing will come of granting lay boards more authority over the appointment and dismissal of pastors, bishops and cardinals. The danger there, though is that the most influential (rich) members of the laity will control. That can't be good. The Jesus agenda was in support of the powerless not the powerful. How far we have come. People talk about putting Christ back in Christmas. How about putting Christ back in Christianity?

I am beginning to think there may be other "cadavers" in the parlor as you deftly put it. If the hierarchs have pulled their punches on child abuse, essentially out of sinful vanity, then in what other ways have they pulled their punches? In doctrine, in dogma? Change implies error. Is the resistance to change in the modern world just another example of protecting their own vanity at the expense of Christ's Church which is by definition, the laity. God help us all.