Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Benedict, Sexual Abuse and his Handlers

 The NY Times story:

Retired Pope Asks Forgiveness Over Handling of Abuse Cases

ROME — Two weeks after a report found that retired Pope Benedict XVI had mishandled four cases involving the sexual abuse of minors while he was an archbishop in Germany decades ago, he acknowledged on Tuesday that “abuses and errors” had taken place under his watch but denied any misconduct.

Greater detail about the response of Benedict and his aides are provided by this article in America

Pope Benedict asks for forgiveness in a ‘confession’ responding to Munich sex abuse report

Benedict, like most bishops of his time, made many mistakes in dealing with sexual abuse. If I had the time, information is out there that could argue that he was ahead of others in recognizing and dealing with the problem especially as CDF head and then Pope. His record of awakening to the problem is probably better than that of Francis who took a long while to get around to his present forceful stance. I think Francis was helped by recognizing the large role that clericalism has played in the sexual abuse scandal. I doubt that Benedict is very concerned about clericalism.

Benedict's poor showing in response to everything going on in Germany about sexual abuse is very likely due to his handlers. This interview with Father Hans Zollner in America makes a great case for that, namely that Benedict's "official response" is very inconsistent with his own thinking on many issues.

Father Hans Zollner on the German sex abuse report, Pope Benedict and the future of the church

Zollner overall views are very interesting

I began by asking Father Zollner if he thinks the greatest damage to the church came from the fact that Benedict was identified as one who mishandled abuse cases. His answer was striking: “While most attention has been drawn to this, the biggest damage to the church, the most shocking fact, is that none—not a single one, conservative or liberal—of the archbishops of the Munich-Freising archdiocese from 1945 to 2019 has done consistently what he should have done in dealing with cases of abuse.” On the other hand, “they were more consistent with lay people than with priests: when a lay person was accused, they removed him from service in the church, but not the priest.”

I noted that from the beginning of the abuse scandal putting the institution before the victim has been identified as one of the major problems. While Father Zollner agreed, he added: “It was a case of the inner circle, the in-house club,:‘We solve the problem among ourselves.’” Instead, he said, “dealing with the abuse problem calls for a sharing of power, for inclusion of experts, for independent audits. We have the latter in some parts of the world today, but we need it also for personnel strategy, for communication and so on. This is a call for the church to open up and not to remain in a fortress mentality.”

When I remarked that the synodal process started by Pope Francis aims to achieve this, Father Zollner said, “Yes, it combines well.” But, he added, the core challenge “is the relationship between the church and the world,” an issue that “Vatican II began to address, but we didn’t follow through on this, and so a 19th century defensive mentality still prevails, as Cardinal Martini noted when he said the church was 200 years behind the times.”

From his experience over the years Father Zollner said he has come to understand that “in the abuse and its cover-up you see life in ‘brennpunkt’ [the German word means ‘focus’]; you see the big questions concentrated there—sex, money, power, leadership, relationships, relationship to the state, to outside experts and to the media, and therefore our work in our Safeguarding Institute is not only about sex abuse, it is also about structure, systemic [abuse], accountability, transparency, and much else.” In other words, “the abuse and all its mishandling could be considered as a microcosm of the challenges facing the church today.

On Benedict:

It was good, in principle, that Benedict showed a willingness to cooperate. It showed he took it seriously.”

Benedict XVI “is lucid” and “has a very good long-term memory,” as people who visited him over Christmas told Father Zollner, and he put his signature to the 82 pages of responses that were sent to the law firm around Dec. 15 or 16, thereby taking responsibility for them. The Vatican was not involved in preparing or approving the responses, and Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the secretary of state, was only informed about it around Christmas Day.

After reading both the questions and the emeritus pope’s responses, Father Zollner, like many others, concluded that Benedict’s advisors had not served him well. He identified various problems with the 82-page response, besides the fact that it is obvious that the response was not written by Benedict. This was immediately evident, as it was written in a different style of German than Benedict ordinarily uses.

Father Zollner said the first problem relates to the fact that Benedict in his response said that as archbishop of Munich (1977-82) he was influenced by “the zeitgeist” of that time—whereas hitherto he had always insisted that as Christians we should not be influenced by the zeitgeist because we have moral values and standards that are independent of it. Furthermore, in an April 2019 article, Pope Benedict accused the zeitgeist of the 1960s for the abuse scandals in the church.

A third problem is that Benedict’s response says the bishop is not responsible for a priest who abuses “in private,” meaning when he is not wearing clerical attire and cannot be recognized as a priest. Father Zollner asked whether this means that priesthood is related to clerical attire. Moreover, this response reveals an “inconsistency” with Benedict’s own theology and indeed with the theology of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Because of this, Father Zollner said, “It is certainly not from him, even though he signed it.”

Pointing to a fourth problem, Father Zollner said he found it “astounding” that although Archbishop Gänswein and the lawyers assisting Benedict had received the relevant background documentation, including the minutes of the Jan. 15, 1980 meeting that showed that Cardinal Ratzinger had participated in the gathering where they discussed the Essen diocese’s request to allow an abuser, Father Peter, Hullerman to come to Munich for psychotherapy. Nevertheless Benedict, in his response, “stated on three different occasions that he was not present.” After the publication of the report, however, Benedict “had to backtrack and admit he was present” but attributed the mistake to “an error in editing.



16 comments:

  1. I wasn't raised Catholic, so my question has always been: Couldn't all this have been solved by picking up the phone and calling a cop? My guess is that if enough clergy had had their pictures in the paper while being arrested on sex charges, the Church would not have been able to dither around with cover-ups and in-house therapy-and-reclamation programs.

    I take a somewhat skeptical view of the laity that tries to let itself off the hook, "But we were brought up to see Father as Christ on earth! We were too afraid to turn him in! We just didn't want to believe it!"

    The Church, as I understand it, has done quite a good job inculcating a lot of guilt around sex. So why, when a priest acted out in that way, Catholics weren't quick to recognize what was going on as a sin and a crime completely stymies me.

    Do the laity really get to be let off the hook that easily for what amounts to collusion?

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    1. Yes - there was a lot of looking the other way. Most of the known cases occurred years ago. But that could be partly because more recent victims haven't come forward. They say it can take 15 or more years before they are emotionally ready to come forward. A friend of mine was abused by her pastor between the ages of 11-13. She never reported it. She told me about it after the Boston Globe story. She never told her Italian immigrant parents because her father was emotionally and physically abusive of her and the priest was one of his best friends. The parents of the victims who told their parents, what was happening, had been raised in the pre-Vatican II church, very often part of immigrant parishes and still dealing with anti-Catholicism. Kennedy had to make it VERY clear that the Pope or his bishop would NOT be among his advisors, and that he would not be imposing Catholic teachings on the country. (the current crop of bishops have forgotten that lesson). That generation of Catholics had far fewer college-educated members than did later generations of Catholics. They turned to the pastor first and always. The bishops often got the parents to sign NDAs and promise not to contact authorities in order to protect Holy Mother Church from all the anti-Catholics out there. They promised they would do what was needed about the abusive priests. The parents didn't know that this was simply a matter of swearing everyone to secrecy and moving the priests to new parishes. Catholics then were taught to be docile, and do whatever Father told them to do. They were never encouraged to think for themselves. Young priests were sworn to obey their pastors and bishops and that meant keeping their suspicions or even their absolute knowledge, secret.

      When the abuse scandal finally broke open in Boston, I thought back to something my mother had told me years before, when my two oldest sons were 4 and 2 and the third hadn't even been born yet. There was no talk at all then about widespread abuse of children, mostly pre-pubescent boys,by priests. I don't know what we were discussing on the phone that day, but I did remember her warning me to never allow my sons to be alone with a priest. My sons were adults by the time I learned that my older brother had been the victim of a priest in the junior seminary who tried to seduce him, and then became more aggressive when my brother rejected him. My brother was big for his age (14) and was able to protect himself. He came home and he never mentioned it to his siblings until we were all in our 50s and 60s. Unsurprising that he refused to go to mass by the time he was 16 or so in spite of my mother's pressure. I believe that my mother reported it to the head of the junior seminary, but it was all hushed up and she was told not to be concerned, they would take care of it. I know she never called the cops.

      Several of the reporters on the Globe story were Catholic, and one was the friend of a friend. My friend told me that the mother of her friend in Boston had cut off ties with her daughter because her daughter's research and reporting was "hurting" the church. The bishops have never come clean. In the few cases when judges ordered that dioceses turn over records, the abusive priest percentages were more than double that reported in the John Jay Report. But those researchers were denied access to the records - they had to work with those that the bishop authorized for release and were very unlikely to have been complete. Right now I'm sure the WH documents collected at Mar-A-Lago (moved there illegally) are incomplete - they have had plenty of time to remove incriminating evidence. The bishops probably did the same in order to "prove" that the abuse rate was the same as in the general society.

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    2. Among the many reasons (it wasn't the only by any means, but maybe the straws that finally broke my Catholic back) that I finally walked away was that once the scope of abuse was known, so few Catholics in the pews seemed to care. Very often there was an attitude that "it didn't happen to my kid', or even "it didn't happen in my parish so why should I care? I like my pastor" I suggested in multiple discussions that the people in the pews simply close their wallets and refuse to give a dime until the PTB really came clean. Their money was being used to defend the guilty. Billions of $. The only thing the hierarchy really seem to care about is money. Cardinal Law offered his resignation early after the scandal broke, but JPII liked him. Law was a good money raiser, like McCarrick, and Maciel of the Legion of Christ, and a whole lot of others whose transgressions were ignored in Rome. So JPII refused to take it. After it all heated up and Law was forced to testify in court, and documents were turned over to the Judicial authorities there (the prosecutor and the judge were Catholics who were sickened by this, I"m sure), he finally resigned. Once it appeared that the DOJ might also open a case, he was whisked to Rome (no extradition treaty with the Vatican), where he was given a luxury apartment, a car and driver, and three nuns to take care of his day to day needs. Plus he was given an honorary church to reflect his elevated status as a 'prince" of the church, and among his duties was serving on the committee that vetted bishop candidates. When he died he was given full honors at his funeral - by Francis! Sickening.

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    3. Jean, I finally read the Science article. Interesting - I commented on the Wordle thread

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    4. "Do the laity really get to be let off the hook that easily for what amounts to collusion?"

      I don't agree there has been some collusion on a massive scale.
      The great majority of the laity had no idea what was going on in their parishes. I was going to end the previous sentence with "...under their noses" rather than "... in their parishes", but in fact I don't think it was under their noses. When it was happening, it wasn't in plain site. It was hidden. It was secret. People had no idea. Oftentimes, the victims' own parents had no idea - and in many cases unwittingly enabled it by inviting the abuser over for dinner.

      For various reasons we all can understand, victims don't come forward until later in life - sometimes much later. By then, Father is long gone, the victim's parish school classmates have scattered to the four winds, and there has been a lot of turnover in parish membership. I.e. in a very real sense, it's no longer the same parish community.

      This dynamic applies, whether the abuse happened in a Catholic church, Catholic school, public elementary school, traveling sports team, Boy Scouts, or some other setting.

      In my view, the primary person who must be punished is the abuser. Secondarily are those in church leadership and, in some cases, civil leadership (police, prosecutors, judges) who failed to be accountable when abuse was reported. Beyond that circle of accountability, I think we have to tread carefully in assigning blame for what happened. Most people are rather stupid about what is going on around them, and quite ignorant about the signs of abuse which is happening in their midst. I suspect I'd fall into those categories, and I've had a certain amount of basic training in this business of detecting signs of abuse. Most people simply aren't aware.

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  2. Yes, there has been a lot of collusion among Catholics, e.g., police and prosecutors who let off priests or looked the other way when they knew better. Laity also looked the other way. In one parish in our diocese the word was out among the people. You can send your little girl to the Catholic grade school but not your little boy. Father only likes little boys. Surely many of the clergy likely looked the other way rather than confronting a fellow priest or reporting him to the bishop.

    I was very active in Voice of the Faithful in the Cleveland Diocese. We got a lot of cooperation from priests in the diocese in holding meetings on parish facilities. The bishop even cooperated saying that it was up to the pastors if we met. He noted that we were not advocating women and married priests. I was disappointed in the number of people who showed up and the willingness of people to organize to support victims. We had a lot of people who wanted to focus upon married priests and women priests as the solution.

    Ultimately VOTF nationally went that route. They were not willing to support victims with statute of limitations reform. While initially saying they would not endorse married priests and women priests nationally (although allowing local VOTF to do that) they changed their minds. Here in Cleveland where we have a nationally known group FutureChurch advocating for those issues, we told people to work on those issues with that group. We wanted to concentrate on sexual abuse, especially supporting victims.

    Once VOTF nationally changed its mind our group fell apart since we were no longer supported the national organization.

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    1. That's sad that your group fell apart, Jack. There is a simple-minded notion floating around among the laity that giving priests a sexual outlet within marriage somehow makes men sexually "safe." Sexual predators operate on opportunity and a sense of entitlement to whatever floats their boat. Marriage doesn't seem to curb them much. Any woman who's gone to an office Christmas party with other people's husbands knows this.

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    2. I don't think ordaining married men would be a panacea, either. However what it could do is broaden the pool of men who might consider the priesthood.

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  3. Catholic Americans ARE Americans. Why should they be any less blind to the malfeasance in their Church than they are to the injustices at home and abroad perpetrated by the US government? It's the passive American way. If there were a headline "Parishioners Discover Pastor's Sexual Abuse: Throw Him from a Parapet", I'd think there was hope for this country.

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  5. Off topic - question for thé choristers in the group. Are any of you familiar with the work of Father Rivers? Seeing this article woke me right up this morning, with memories of my youth in Paris. Fr. Rivers recruited Catholic students in Paris to sing his American Mass at St. Joseph’s, the English language Catholic Church in Paris. Coming out of our Catholic childhoods of the 50s and 60s, when the only songs we had ever sung in church were drone-like hymns such as Immaculate Mary, and Mary We Crown Thee with Blaaaahsoms Today, or Holy God we Praise Thy Name, etc his music was a revelation! We all loved it! I haven’t listened to the podcast yet. It should be interesting.

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    1. Link to story at NCR

      https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/new-podcast-explores-life-fr-clarence-joseph-rivers

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    2. Anne, thanks for that! I have to admit, I have never heard of him before. I will try to find some recordings of his music and listen.

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    3. My mom had a record of his Mass and some other songs. This was in the 60s, I think. She really liked it. It wasn't quite my thing, but he was very talented.

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  6. The name was familiar, but I had to do some research to place it. I was at the National Liturgical Conference in Saint Louis. The only thing I remembered about it was that we began with A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

    Once I found "God is love" on YouTube, I remembered it, although I don't recall hearing it in Saint Louis. Betty as a cantor was very familiar with it. It was a favorite of her charismatic group. Maybe if you listen to it you will remember it

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXqfh5KxqYs

    I did find in the American Mass collection a very good version of the Canticle of the Three Children

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOM769nrzrI&list=PL1d2CR62Cig8Q0rETTIipf7Fdec-VXn4q&index=6

    His music faded away for a very simple reason. He was a liturgical innovator at a time when liturgical innovation was still permitted. Once the Vatican under JP2 declared an end to liturgical innovation much of his stuff could no longer be done.

    One of the proposals at the Synod on the Amazon was to create an Amazon rite. That is now understudy. Maybe Black Catholics need a Black American Rite to be allowed appropriate liturgical creatively.

    Personally, I think we should evolve toward an American Rite that would combine Rome Rite material with African American material and the rich presence of the many Eastern Rite traditions in American. Outside of their native lands we generally have the greatest concentrations of most Eastern worship traditions.

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