Top Cardinal Rejects Sex Abuse Claim

[DannyB II]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8602644.stm

Sunday, 4 April 2010 13:44 UK
 
Catholic Cardinal rejects sex abuse 'gossip'

Pope speaks of 'profound crisis'

A senior cardinal has said the Roman Catholic faithful will not be swayed by "petty gossip" about child sex-abuse allegations.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, made the remark in an unusual message of support to Pope Benedict XVI during Easter Mass.

The Pope did not did not mention the scandal directly in his Easter address.

He said humanity was suffering from a "profound crisis" and needed "spiritual and moral conversion".

Meanwhile, the Pope's personal preacher has apologised for comparing criticism of the Catholic Church over child abuse to "collective violence suffered by the Jews" in a Good Friday sermon.

   
Easter doesn't work magic
Pope Benedict XVI

Pope's preacher apologises
 
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa told Italy's Corriere della Sera newspaper that he had only meant to point to "the use of stereotype and the easy passage from individual to collective guilt".

Allegations of abuse - many dating back decades - have put pressure on the Church recently in many countries, including the Pope's native Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, and the US.

The Church has persisted in playing down the developing scandal provoked by the allegations, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

'Humanity's crisis'

During Easter Mass in St Peter's Square, Cardinal Sodano expressed solidarity with the Pope, who has himself come under scrutiny for his role in handling past cases of abuse.

"Holy Father, the people of God are with you and will not let themselves be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials that sometimes assail the community of believers," the cardinal said.

   
ANALYSIS
David Willey
David Willey, BBC News, Rome

The Pope seems uncertain how to deal with a crisis of confidence unparalleled in modern times.

The Vatican's public relations strategy so far has been to blame the media - particularly the foreign media - for exaggerating the problem.

Many bishops have rallied to support the Pope and his policies for dealing with paedophile priests, although some are openly demanding greater humility and transparency from the Church.

The Vatican has in the past consistently played down the extent of clerical paedophilia.

Its spokesman has been engaged in a major damage control operation. He has to try to convince the world that policies now in place are adequate to tackle the problem and ensure that clerics who commit these crimes are properly tried in the civil courts as well as punished by Church authorities.

His remarks echoed comments made a week earlier by Pope Benedict.

With the Church already under pressure over the abuse allegations, the Pope said his faith would help give him the courage to deflect "petty gossip".

In his Easter "Urbi et Orbi" address, the Pope said the salvation of the Gospel was needed "to emerge from a profound crisis, one which requires deep change, beginning with consciences".

After offering prayers for victims of crime, conflict and natural disasters around the world, he added:

"Easter doesn't work magic... After the resurrection the Church always finds history filled not only with joy and hope but also with grief and anguish."

Pope Benedict has not made any explicit comment on the issue since he penned a letter apologising for child-abuse in the Irish Church late last month.

The pontiff has been accused personally of failing to take action against a suspected abuser during his tenure as archbishop of Munich - a claim the Vatican strongly denies.

Critics also say that when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, he did not act against a priest in the US state of Wisconsin who is thought to have abused some 200 deaf boys.

The Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, stepped up its defence of the Pope in its Sunday edition, publishing messages of support from around the world and denouncing the "slanderous attacks and the defamation campaign surrounding the drama of abuse by priests".

 :shamrock:  :shamrock:
I wish they would just quit tap dancing around this abomination they created with unnatural spiritual prerequisites. I am sick of priests abusing young boys, every catholic I knew growing up knew Father Daniels (our priest growing up) was subjecting young boys to cruel punishment and nobody did anything about it, including your parents.
Danny

[Eliscu2]

The Church’s Judas Moment
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: April 6, 2010
http://http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/opinion/07dowd.html

I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial. We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial.

It’s a conundrum.

I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.

I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd.

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the 7th grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of ‘pink belly’ on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor. The priest protested he was sleepwalking. Three days later, the archbishop sent the priest to a rehab place in New Mexico; he ended up as a Notre Dame professor.

Vatican II made me wince. The church declared casual Friday. All the once-rigid rules left to the whim of the flock. The Mass was said in English (rendering useless my carefully learned Latin prayers). Holy days of obligation were optional. There were laypeople on the heretofore sacred ground of the altar — performing the sacraments and worse, handling the Host. The powerful symbolism of the priest turning the Host into the body of Christ cracked like an egg.

In his book, ‘Goodbye! Good Men,’ author Michael Rose writes that the liberalized rules set up a takeover of seminaries by homosexuals.

Vatican II liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates — drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way.

The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew. ‘I would probably kill someone,’ he replied.

We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols on stage to get President Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.)

The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?”