Pope demands halt to sexual, financial scandals

Reads like a contemporary account of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Grace and peace with prayers always...

God Bless Pope Benedict XVI

I can hardly stomach the lack of credibility of "the face" of today's Church everywhere in the world. By face I mean the phony facade that is put forth by the heirarchy.

"Bishops must have greater oversight of priests and religious, Benedict says"

That is all well and good, but who will provide oversight of the bishops?

Seems to me that this is just another whitewash, another scapegoat designed to shield the bishops from being held accountable for their own immoral and often criminal actions. The writing is already on the wall. If the Vatican will not provide greater oversight and greater accountability over the actions of the bishops, especially in the US, then the government will.

"Meanwhile, echoes from the pope’s call yesterday for Christians to speak out against “corruption and abuses of power,” continue to be heard. "

No doubt. His "call" however will come back to haunt him and the bishops in the US, where there is no oversight, nothing to stop their flagrant abuse of power. I wonder if Pope Benedict really meant what he said, or is it just another in a endless flow of "impotent rhetoric" from the Vatican.

There are only so many scapegoats, and the Vatican is rapidly running out of groups to blame for their corruption and abuse.

(Cameroon borders both Chad and Congo-Brazzaville):
I guess the countries you mention are only examples. Nigeria, the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea, the other neighboring countries, are not exactly peace havens either.
Thanks for a good piece. You might want to read today's issue of the local newspaper Le Messager.

Over the years, the present Pope had all the opportunity in the world to "Put A Stop" to the sexual victimization of the children, young people and vulnerable adults of our Holy Mother Church; that, and other, "Scandals". After all, was he (the Pope) not, for many years, once Prefect For the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith? Therefore, a great number of these cases of sexual violation of the innocent by Catholic Priests, Brothers, Deacons and Bishops went across his (Then, Cardinal Ratzinger's) desk. I have no doubt that the file of the pedophile priest who sexually harmed me, and over 200 other little girls, was viewed by the man who now sits on the Throne of Peter. I would suppose that this present Papal Command to "PUT A STOP" to these scandulous sex crimes comes, not out of concern for the terrible sufferings of the victims, but because it is costing the Catholic Church too much money. But that is only one bit of "Scandal" the Pope wants, "Stopped". We haven't even reviewed the other messes that our Catholic Clergy have gotten themselves into: Embezzlement, Drug Addiction, Drunk Driving, Internet Pornography, Internet Child Pornography, Man Slaughter and, last but not least, Murder. And now, after years of the Catholic Clergy running amuck, hip deep in Sacriligous Sin, free of accountability or punishment, the Pope wants it, "Stopped". Good Luck.

The Church in Africa has its work cut out for it. Women religious, especially those in diocesan orders, get raped by diocesan priest often after pronouncing final vows. This doesn't happen to religious from international orders (especially those that have European or American members), but it does happen in communities with all African members----and there is no protection for these Sisters.

To enforce silence among the nuns, they are threatened with lack of support (food, medicine, etc) if they inform local authorities (who are often corrupt themselves), or if they go to their bishop.

The Pope is right here---there's much to do.

After reading John L. Allen’s (Jr.) 3-18-09 “Pope demands halt to sexual, financial scandals,” I think we are ready for a democratic global government. There is no more certain sign than the following. Too many problems of too many countries are overwhelming the planet and its inhabitants. The Pope’s African visit highlights just one portion of the world in need of a unified government. Regardless of what other consequences come from the trip, this coverage helps to promote a global mindset change. But the Church must recognize that it does not possess all the answers and must collaborate with secular society to solve some of even its own internal problems. The institution needs to adopt a humble, receptive, effort-to-learn, reasonably cooperative attitude. This takes multidisciplinary education so that we can as a billion or so people, embrace the solutions along with the rest of the world population to save Mother Earth. What do we have, about 90 years before civilization-destroying warming does us in? Our infants of today could witness the “unmentionable” unless we change quickly and effectively.
Here is a partial Internet statement that should move us quickly and effectively.

Scientists: Global warming is accelerating beyond predictions
Feb.16th, 2009 by Richard. (He used The Washington Post 2-14-09 as a source.)
It’s only two years since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report was published, but it’s already out-of-date, according to Dr. Christopher Field, one of the IPCC lead authors. Field says that the pace of global warming has accelerated beyond recent predictions because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased faster than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems.
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations,” said Dr. Field, founding director of Stanford University’s Department of Global Ecology at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) annual meeting.
Field says that recent emissions from burning fossil fuels have largely outpaced the estimates used in the UN panel’s 2007 reports because developing nations are increasingly turning to coal to generate cheap energy. But the more worrying concern is that Mother Nature is no longer cooperating.

(My suggestion -- read more for the scary facts.) The Church must en masse join the global effort that must become global village democratic governance meeting the needs of people, our other inhabitants, and the necessary infrastructure we are able to restore at this precarious time.

Speaking to the bishops of Cameroon, the pope called for greater oversight of priests and religious:

“I urge you to be especially vigilant regarding the faithfulness of priests and consecrated persons to the commitments made at their ordination or entry into religious life,” Benedict told the bishops in a meeting in Christ the King Church in Tsinga, outside the national capital of Yaoundè.

“The authenticity of their witness requires that there be no dichotomy between what they teach and the way they live each day,” the pope said.
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Perhaps, the Vatican ought to call the American Bishops too for another seesion at Rome to address similar challenges posed by these "supposedly celibate" Priests, like the one in New York mentioned below?

http://www.buffalonews.com/nationalworld/state/story/480629.html

NEW YORK — A Catholic priest accused of seducing a distraught New York divorcee has been dropped as a hospital chaplain and barred from serving as a priest in the city.

The Rev. Elvis Elano is named in a $25 million lawsuit that details his relationship with Judith Rodrigues-Lytwyn, whom he met when she came to him for confession at a Queens church.

He left two months ago to work as a chaplain at Benedictine Hospital in Kingston, living in the rectory of nearby St. Joseph’s Church.

“Father Elano has been suspended from his duties at Benedictine Hospital, where he provided pastoral care to our patients since August,” hospital spokesman Sean Casey told the Daily News.

Church officials in New York City said Elano — ordained in the Philippines in 1992 — also had been barred from serving as a priest here. But the Rev. Kieran Harrington, a church spokesman, said Elano’s departure from Our Lady of the Snows Church in Queens had nothing to do with the sex scandal.

In the lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn state Supreme Court, the 50-year-old woman said her affair with the 44-year-old priest began in March, after she told him about her divorce during confession at Our Lady of the Snows Church in Queens.

She said he began “encouraging her to engage in a sexual liaison with him to assist her in overcoming her pain associated with her husband and because it was ‘ordained by God,’ ” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit also names the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens, and the Our Lady of the Snows Church as defendants, charging them with negligence for failing to properly supervise the priest.

On Thursday, the Vatican issued a new document saying that candidates for priesthood should take tests to screen out heterosexuals who cannot control their sexual urges and those with strong homosexual tendencies.

Priesthood “requires certain abilities as well as moral and theological virtues, which are supported by a human and psychic — and particularly affective — equilibrium, so as to allow the subject to be adequately predisposed for giving of himself in the celibate life,” said the document from the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education.

Can anyone tell me just what the pope considers women's particular vocation is as he says in his quote: “the dignity of women and their particular vocation in the ecclesial community and in society”?

Dear crackedearthenvessel

If you're interested in women's particular vocation, Mother Theresa wrote quite a bit about it. I think its still in paperback.

In an interview with the Austrian newspaper "Die Furche", archbishop Diarmuid Martin from Dublin admitted that about 3% of the pedophil perpetrators are priests. But only about 0,1% of the adult males are priests. Consequently a priest is 30 times more likely to become a pedophil perpetrator than an average man. This means the system is wrong.