Crisis at the Vatican II

Pope Benedict XVI is not out of the woods yet on the accusations that he was part of the cover-up of child abuse cases. The Vatican is, probably correctly, trying to show that, although he came late to sufficient awareness, he has since then become a chief proponent of change.

That may not be enough. To be the best of a bad lot is still not so good. The facts that seem to be emerging show, at best, an obliviousness to the seriousness of the situation and, at worst, putting the church and the priests ahead of their victims.

Added to the Munich and Wisconsin cases in which, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was at least indirectly complicit in inaction, is new evidence emerging today of two more cases from Arizona. As the Vatican Cardinal who headed the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, it was Ratzinger's responsibility to deal at that level with the cases of priests who had been accused of abuse.

As reported by Matt Sedensky on Huffington Post, Ratzinger allowed two cases from Arizona to languish for years without action. The Associated Press has reviewed documents that show that Bishop Manuel Moreno wrote to Ratzinger about one priest that he was "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he may have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.

In the other case, of Rev. Michael Teta,

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. . . .

In a signed letter dated June 8, 1992, Ratzinger advised Moreno he was taking control of the case, according to a copy provided to the AP from Cadigan, the victims' attorney. Five years later, no action had been taken.

"This case has already gone on for seven years," Moreno wrote Ratzinger on April 28, 1997, adding, "I make this plea to you to assist me in every way you can to expedite this case."

It would be another seven years before Teta was laicized [removed from the priesthood].

The Vatican has responded to these charges defensively, lashing out at the New York Times especially for its investigative reporting. A Vatican spokesman has called the allegations "absolutely groundless" and said that the facts are being misrepresented. In the case of Father Teta, he said the delay was due to an appeals process and to the Vatican's changing regulations for how it handled abuse cases.

Twelve (12) years?

Richard's comment on my 03-28-10 original "Crisis at the Vatican" blog seems even more pertinent now as the necessary repair for the Church:

If the Church looked at this as what it is, a horrendous moral outrage, the only recourse would be for the Pope to say mea culpa, and step down. That would be an incredible example to give for the Church. The Pope, like Christ, could 'accept' the sins of all the people and sacrifice himself for the good of all. Let himself be crucified. That is the only way I see to salvage this.

Instead, the Church, so far, is trying to portray itself as the victim. And a serious misstep in that direction was the Good Friday sermon delivered in the pope's presence by "the pope's preacher," who likened the "violent criticism" being directed at the Church to the persecution of the Jews. The Vatican quickly distanced itself from this charge, but it may be too late. This may have been the last straw in proving the collective tone-deafness of the current leadership of the Church.

Ralph

November 2010

What will happen in the November elections? Will the Republican noise machine be able to sell their lies and smear the Democrats as socialist, godless, totalitarian, deficit-exploding, big spenders?

I don't think so. Here's why:

I think this election will be about two things: the economy (mainly jobs) and competence.

1. Although unemployment remained high at 9.7%, the job situation has turned the corner. The hemorrhage has been stopped. There were 162,000 non-farm jobs added last month -- and the increase was true in every major industry except financial services. Manufacturing, construction, retail. "They're all hiring," according to the New York Times.

2. Most of the benefits of health care reform will not have taken effect by November, but there is an immediate intangible benefit to passing the bill. As flawed as it is, it was ultimately a test of whether Obama and Pelosi could get it done, or whether the Repubs could defeat them. And they got it done.

Do the Repubs really want to campaign on the promise of repeal? Take away insurance coverage for sick children?

If, in the next few months, the Democrats can also pass financial regulatory legislation, that will be another major demonstration of competency and good sense.

In addition, Obama shows his competence every time he opens his mouth and reveals his deep knowledge of every nook and cranny of government, in both domestic and foreign affairs.

There will of course be large numbers who will buy the Limbaugh-Beck-Boehner lies, but there is also a silent majority (to borrow a phrase from the other side's past) that wants a president who can speak articulately and with deep knowledge and who can get things done in spite of the paralyzing partisanship in Congress.

The Democrats have to campaign on these two points: that their economic plan is better than what the Republicans want and that the Republicans were the obstructionists that stood in the way of progress.

So, I am hopeful -- back in my optimistic mode. And we still have six months for things to get even better.

Ralph

TGFM . . . well, sort of

Follow up to my "Thank God for Mississippi" comment in yesterday's post, "Lower than the low," about the Mississippi school that canceled the senior prom rather than let a lesbian student bring her girlfriend:

Part of that TGFM feeling was the contrast with a parallel story about the gay teen age boy from Cochran, Georgia (pop, 5,000) who has been given permission by his local school board to bring his boyfriend to the senior prom.

The AJC story made it sound rather nice: the school board had voted to allow this. It did mention that Derrick Martin was not living at home now, but the implication was that he was staying with friends because of all the media attention, which includes an invitation to appear on the Ellen DeGeneris TV show.

Not so fast: the gay newspaper Georgia Voice has a long article in today's issue that paints a less nice picture. The school principle first said no, because it had never been done before and the school was not ready for it. But as Derrick has said, "I wasn't going to back down. I wasn't confrontational. I just kept telling the truth."

So the principle, to her credit, agreed to take it to the school board. On advice from their attorney, they eventually agreed, because there is no policy prohibiting same-sex dates.

But all is not sweetness and light. The school board say yes, not because it was the right thing to do, but because they had no legal justification for saying no.

A student group has held a rally, encouraging students to "come protest these queers." The group is organizing an alternate prom. One senior girl said, "I don't believe in going up there and dancing with gay guys like that," and she told Derrick that he wasn't a Christian. Others have accused him of bringing a bad name to Cochran. He's been called "a queer" and "a faggot," and he has received veiled threats.

And why is Derrick not living at home? According to this article, his parents kicked him out after he gave an interview on a local tv station. He is staying with a female friend.

It's not just the recent media attention, however. When Derrick's parents first found out he is gay 18 months ago, they took his car, his iPod, his phone, and his laptop to prevent him from communicating with the boy he was seeing then. They vehemently disapprove of his current boyfriend/prom date, Richard, who lives in a town two hours away. They met through Facebook. Richard has never been allowed to visit in Derrick's home, and his mother once threatened to call the cops because he was in their yard.

The important story here is about 18 year old Derrick Martin himself, who seems to be the most mature person in the whole affair. He says that "everything I have gone through has made me stronger." Even so, he is not bitter toward his parents, saying that it's their house and they had a right to ask him to leave.

Most important of all is the grace and maturity with which Derrick has endured all this. He even attended the rally staged to denounce him, "just to show my face and show them I wasn't afraid." He will enter Georgia Southern College on a scholarship this fall as a pre-law major.

To come back to TGFM: There is still plenty of bigotry and fear and hate in both MS and GA. But here's a big contrast: In MS, the liberals had to stage the alternate prom after the school chose to have none rather than allow same-sex couples to dance. In GA, it was the bigoted, queer-bashers who had to stage an alternate prom so they didn't have share a dance floor with gay guys.

That's some progress.

Best wishes and support to a very courageous and mature 18 year old pre-law student, Derrick Martin. You have my vote for Attorney General in 2032.

Ralph

Dr. No

From the Huffington Post:

Florida urologist Jack Cassell posted a sign on his office door reading, "If you voted for Obama ... seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years."

Cassell, a registered Republican, quickly backpedaled in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, but said he's perfectly happy to lose business over the sign. "I'm not turning anybody away, that would be unethical," he told the Sentinel. "But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."

Patients who continue past the sign on Cassell's door find a waiting room stacked with Republican pamphlets opposing health care reform . . .

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) responded:

"Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, 'Do no good'. If this is the face of the right wing in America, it's the face of cruelty. ... Why don't they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?"

Of course there are extremists in every party. But it does seem that the current GOP is full of little else. Let's hope the voters take notice and come to their senses by November as to which party really best serves their needs.

Ralph

Lower than the low

In a survey a couple of years ago, asking whether you would support "a ---------" for president?

The lowest number was for "Atheist." The number that sticks in my mind is 26%. Considerably lower than for "Homosexual," which another recent poll found 50% would support for president.

During the civil rights era, feeling ashamed of Georgia's reputation, we used to say, "Thank God for Mississippi." Still true, this time about a new demonstration of where atheists stand. And it's lower than gays.

The Itawamba County, MS school district denied the request of a lesbian student to come to the senior prom wearing a tuxedo and bringing her girlfriend as a date. Fearing further trouble, they canceled the prom. A federal judge ruled that her rights had been violated but did not require that the event be reinstated, because an alternate prom had already been scheduled.

The alternate prom was being arranged by the ACLU of Mississippi. Good for them.

Until . . . the ACLU of MS rejected a $20,000 donation to help fund the event -- because it came from the American Humanist Association.

Oops. Even the ACLU apparently isn't ready to go that far in Mississippi. The fundraiser for the ACLU-MS wrote: "Although we support and understand organizations like yours, the majority of Mississippians tremble in terror at the word 'atheist'."

Woo-ooo. Scary.

As far as I know, no humanist organization has ever started a war, over-thrown a government, or burned a cross on somebody's lawn.

What's to fear? Oh, yeah -- the truth.

Ralph

It's time to end the craziness

This is about ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell -- or, rather, about not ending it yet . . . and the craziness of what to do in the meantime.

Here are the facts, I think.

1. Obama has put his support behind ending DA/DT, but wants to give them time to plan and adjust.
2. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense both support ending it.'
3. A period of study for how to implement it is supposedly underway, but will take a year to complete.
4. The Pentagon says it wants to hear from the troops about how they feel about ending DA/DT, and it wants to include gay troops in the survey.
5. But that would put them in jeopardy for being discharged, because it is illegal to discuss your sexual orientation if you're on active duty.
6. A few days ago, Army Secretary John McHugh said he will not pursue discharges for soldiers who tell him in private conversations that they are gay.
7. Today, McHugh had to walk it back, saying that until Congress repeals DA/DT it is the law of the land, and he is obligated to enforce it.

Come on, guys. This is crazy. Is it because today is April Fool's Day?

You know it's going to end. At least just put a moratorium on discharges while you figure out what you have to do.

Harry Truman didn't dither this long on ending racial segregation in the military.

Ralph

Crisis at the Vatican

I haven't read it in any public statement yet, but friend Richard, himself a Roman Catholic, left a comment on this blog on 3/27: "I do believe the Pope must step down. He may not have personally done anything horrid, but if he couldn't be a good steward as Cardinal, he can't be a good steward as Pope."

Today's New York Times has an op-ed by John L. Allen, Jr., correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter. He acknowledges that bad things happened on the pope's watch as archbishop in Munich and that he has to bear overall responsibility, even for what he was not directly aware of. However, the main point of the article is that, beginning in 2001 then Cardinal Ratzinger began to be part of the solution as the Vatican official responsible for handling all reports of abuse in the church worldwide. Allen writes:

The experience gave him a familiarity with the pervasiveness of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic Church can claim. And driven by that encounter with what he would later refer to as “filth” in the church, Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have undergone a transformation. From that point forward, he and his staff were determined to get something done. . . .

Under his guidance cases began to be handled more expeditiously and with compassion for the victims. After becoming pope, he made the abuse cases a priority, he disciplined high-profile clerics who had previously been protected at the hightest levels, and he was the first pope ever to meet with victims. Allen continues:

What we are left with are two distinct views of the scandal. The outside world is outraged, rightly, at the church’s decades of ignoring the problem. But those who understand the glacial pace at which change occurs in the Vatican understand that Benedict, admittedly late in the game but more than any other high-ranking official, saw the gravity of the situation and tried to steer a new course.

Be that as it may, Benedict now faces a difficult situation inside the church. From the beginning, the sexual abuse crisis has been composed of two interlocking but distinct scandals: the priests who abused, and the bishops who failed to clean it up. The impact of Benedict’s post-2001 conversion has been felt mostly at that first level, and he hasn’t done nearly as much to enforce new accountability measures for bishops.

That, in turn, is what makes revelations about his past so potentially explosive. Can Benedict credibly ride herd on other bishops if his own record, at least before 2001, is no better? The church’s legitimacy rests in large part on that question.

And from an editorial in the same paper:

“No longer can the Vatican simply issue papal messages — subject to nearly infinite interpretations and highly nuanced constructions — that are passively ‘received’ by the faithful. No longer can secondary Vatican officials, those who serve the pope, issue statements and expect them to be accepted at face value. . . . We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history. How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come. It is time, past time really, for direct answers to difficult questions. It is time to tell the truth.”

That is strong stuff coming from a Roman Catholic newspaper, albeit one that calls itself "the independent newsweekly." While the church folks figure out what they're going to do, I pass along the advice of a psychoanalytic expert on trauma, my friend Mickey Nardo. (See his 1boringoldman.com web site.) The Vatican should consult Mickey on this. He understands what they need to do:

In treating people who were sexually abused as children, there’s one wish that emerges in almost every case, a fantasy of a confrontation - not a confrontation with the perpetrator, but a confrontation with the "silent witness." The "silent witness" is the person in their life who "knew" but did nothing, or the person in their life who "should have known" and did nothing, or the forces that gave them an unprotected life. Such confrontations sometimes occur, but they rarely offer the anticipated relief. The reason is something deeper in the mind, the reparative fantasy of almost every abused child. The only solution would be that the abuse never happened in the first place. That’s the only thing that would ever make things right. Revenge, retribution, reforms are nice for the people who come in the future, but not the victims of the past.

What’s happening here isn’t really about the Catholic Church. It’s about what happened to those children. And it’s about our awareness that something really bad happened in that Church, something that went on for a very long time, and nobody did anything about it. The Church speaks incessantly about forgiveness through confession followed by genuine remorse and acts of contrition - not a bad policy. But, as these articles point out, that’s not what the Church itself is doing. We are entering Holy Week, the celebration of Christ’s crucifixion - an act of contrition for "the sins of the world." But what we’re going to read about during Holy Week this year are the sins of the Church, and their defenses against these obviously true accusations.

It is irrelevant that an old retired, non-christian, psychiatrist says these things. What would be relevant would be for the Pope to be saying them himself.

There you have it. Listen up, Vatican.

Ralph