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by Ken Briggs on Mar. 21, 2010
It's been a while since "permissiveness" was blamed for America's social ills. Wall Street thievery and wildcate ventures including Bernie Madoff's helped set aside the notion that the old nemesis could be invoked on liberals with impunity -- and permissiveness talk sort of went away.
Now the pope's letter to the Irish, and the premise behind Rome's investigation of nuns, signal a revival. In one case, Benedict says child abuse was in large measure egged on when the "renewal" called for by Vatican II "was sometimes misinterpreted," a situation made more confusing by "profound social change" in and around it.
Nothing Benedict says indicates he thinks anything is wrong with church laws and discipline. Things just got lax and the church sheriffs were distracted from enforcing those laws. The remedy is to do a better job. There's no need to reform the system itself.
Unmentioned is the permissivness angle. Bishops are told they "failed, at times, greviously, to apply the long established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse." But so far the bishops face no sanctions for this permissive behavior.
His sorrow for the victims and their families is poignant. Perhaps the families will accept this compassionate apology as the end of it.
But the assumption that the church's existing laws just needed to be applied more assiduously ignores the discussion of systemic reform and resorts to the "few bad apples" approach. And aside from a little scolding, the pope's gives a pass to those in charge while the sordid record of decades of child abuse.
Meanwhile, Cardinal Rode and other church officials let it be known that the investigation of American nuns would be pursued because too many nuns had abused the directives they'd received from the Council. They were,in effect, being punished before examination, without predisposition. Not even the harshest critics of progressive nuns accuse them with abuses anything like criminal charges such as those leveled against Irish clerics. Most nuns, by contrast, stand by the decisions they made in renewal as a fulfillment of the Council's intentions. At most there have been honest differences of perspective.
A double standard on permissiveness? Seems so.
I think this church is rotten
I think this church is rotten from the top-down - in a way not experienced since the days of the Medicis. there must be a reform in leadership. The Holy Spirit may be trying to guide the church, but its leaders are not paying attention.
Ken, you are right on the
Ken, you are right on the money. If a bishop moves a pedophile from parish to parish, spreads a trail of lies to cover his tracks and accuses the victims of greed and vindictiveness, it is a failure to correctly apply canon law. If a nun questions the theology that excludes all women from the priesthood, she is expelled from her order. Our male-only clerical society is failing us.
Steve
From the book “Tim Unsworth”,
From the book “Tim Unsworth”, a collection of his articles in NCR between 1982 and 2007, published by Acta Publications:
"Bishops break out in shingles in the face of ambiguity; laity live with it each day in their homes, jobs and social life."
All of this would make so
All of this would make so much more sense if sexual abuse by clerics and religious only happened after Vatican II. No one seriously believes that, do they?
The response of B16 to the
The response of B16 to the Irish abuse scandal is bizarre. No penalties are enforced against bishops who covered up the abuse, including Bishop Ratzinger. The real culprit according to B16 is Vatican II. Lewis Carroll could not have devised a more tortured twist of logic.
The solution is simple: In penance for the sins of the Church, the Pope and every bishop in the US, in Ireland and Germany (and any other country where abuses were covered up) must resign and be reassigned to the poorest parishes in the third world to work as simple priests with no "hierarchical trappings". The bishops should be replaced based on election by the laity; a new Pope, in turn, to be chosen by those bishops. We can only hope that the Holy Spirit will influence that election; she hasn't been around since John XXIII was elected.
So much of the abuse happened
So much of the abuse happened before Vatican II and was covered up. How does B16 account for that? It was the reaction of the abused that changed. In a Catholic sub-culture abused people kept quiet, their parents if they knew about it kept quiet. In a diferent culture people spoke up. That is the big difference. And the Church procedures were shown to be inadequate or even corrupt.
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