Ongoing religious scandals

PDN wrote: »

Apparently neither, since if they were listening to the Pope in the first place very few of them would contract AIDS.

That is a terrible load of nonsense.
The Pope joined with lunatic fundamentalist churches in the USA, to block campaigns promoting condom use to reduce the spread of HIV virus infection.
They probably have partial responsibility for millions of deaths from AIDS in Africa alone.

Galvasean wrote: »

I'm losing track of who high ranking RCC officials have blamed. Is my list up to date?

-secularists
-the gays
-the jews
-the devil
-atheists
-lapsed Catholics who don't pray enough

you forgot the little devils of children who tempted the poor priests ?

PDN wrote: »

So I'm not one of God's footsoldiers because I distribute condoms in Africa.

Oh Bloody Hell, not another of those " I've been to Africa and I gave out condoms...."
I worked there for years, madam and I am mad as hell about the stupidity of ABC. Lets de-mystify it for all postsers just to show what a load of rubbish it all is:
"One of the difficulties with the ABC approach is the lack of a clear definition. The slogan seems to have first been adopted by the Botswana government in the late 1990s. Seen on billboards around the country it exalted the fact that:
Avoiding AIDS as easy as...

* A bstain
* B e faithful
* C ondomise

Anyone who ever worked anywhere in Africa, Southern, East, West, Great Lakes or Sub-saharan, knows damn well that this is all a load of cobblers and never had a ghost's chance of appealing to sexually active adults who are at extremely high risk of HIV infection. I worked within the UN and we were all constantly appalled at the position of the US Gov. under the Bush's and the Pope. thankfully, most priests and religious there had more sense but the cutting of our UNAIDS budgets under USA duress cost many many lives.
People who push this kind of rubbish perhaps have a lot of personal guilt to think about.
Posters who deny the pope's role in banning condom use promotion here are akin to holocaust deniers and should head back to christianity forum where that kind of stuff might work but it won't here.

Lets get back on thread again? This article from " Keep the Faith" is worth a lokk:
http://www.ktfministry.org/news/669/roman-catholic-church-scandal-expands


"Roman Catholic Church Scandal Expands · March 31, 2010

On March 24, the New York Times reported that the priestly sex scandal may have implicated the pope. The Vatican, including Cardinal Ratzinger who is now pope, did not defrock, or in any other way discipline a Wisconsin priest who sexually molested more than 200 boys from 1950-1974. Several American Bishops warned the Vatican, even writing to Cardinal Ratzinger himself, who was in charge of the process of dealing with sexual predator priests.

The New York Times reported that documents obtained from the discovery phase of a lawsuit filed in Wisconsin clearly suggest “that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.”

The Pope is also accused of not reporting sex-offending priests to German civilian authorities while he was an archbishop in Germany and while he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, where he was the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

But the case in Wisconsin involving Father Lawrence Murphy was only one of thousands forwarded to the Vatican over decades to the Congregation.

Cardinal Ratzinger did not respond to two letters from American bishops to start a secret tribunal that would have led to Murphy’s removal from the priesthood. But Cardinal Bertone, the second in command at the Congregation started the trial process and then halted it after the priest wrote a letter to Ratzinger asking for leniency because of his age and health. “Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin,” said the New York Times, “were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.” Apparently the first two bishops didn’t even report the matter to Rome.

The church tried to keep the recently released documents secret, but was forced to release them under lawsuit discovery. Moreover, civil authorities also did not prosecute Father Murphy even though they had complaints from the victims themselves. No doubt many wonder if there was some sort of priestly intervention to prevent criminal prosecution in civil courts to avoid exposure. But so far that has not been discussed in the press.

Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved to another place where he worked with children for an additional 24 years.

“Even as the pope himself in a recent letter to Irish Catholics has emphasized the need to cooperate with civil justice in abuse cases,” wrote the Times, “the correspondence seems to indicate that the Vatican’s insistence on secrecy has often impeded such cooperation.”

Father [Federico] Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said that church law does not prohibit church officials from reporting child abuse to civil authorities. Why it never happened in the Wisconsin case, or in thousands of other cases, is one of the questions begin raised about Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Lombardi said, “the Code of Canon Law does not envision automatic penalties.”

While from a church law standpoint there may be flexibility to deal with problems, the neglect, or cover up of these cases, and efforts to keep them secret, have greatly tainted the churches reputation.

“The Vatican’s inaction is not unusual,” said the Times. “Only 20 percent of the 3,000 accused priests whose cases went to the church’s doctrinal office between 2001 and 2010 were given full church trials, and only some of those were defrocked… an additional 10 percent were defrocked immediately. Ten percent left voluntarily. But a majority — 60 percent — faced other ‘administrative and disciplinary provisions…’ like being prohibited from celebrating Mass.”

The rather mild disciplinary approach of the Vatican toward sex abusers was no doubt a contributing factor to the wide-spread problem around the world.

After the death of Father Murphy, and in face of a lawsuit, Archbishop Weakland wrote to Cardinal Bertone in which he said that “we are still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church.”

The Vatican tried to defend the inaction against Father Murphy, saying that by the time the Vatican knew about the problem in 1998 he was old and sick. But this only raises more questions. If that is in fact true that Murphy molested the children, why didn’t the Vatican know about a known sex offender before then? Why didn’t the local diocese deal with him? His victims actually alerted the police. When they did find out about it, they merely transferred him to another diocese to work with, and potentially molest, more children.

The Vatican also suggested that it would have handled the matter differently today and that more recent policies would have precluded a continuation of the problem. Mechanisms, however, were already in place to deal with sex offenders appropriately, though in disuse, according to press reports. Why didn’t the Church use the existing structure to deal with these cases? Were these recent, supposedly better policies put in place because the Church has reformed itself, or because society is much more demanding and investigative?

Now that the scandal has reached the heart of the church, to the pope himself, it is clear that the Church is at a crossroads. Marco Politi, a veteran Vatican journalist said, “Up to now [the scandal] was far away — in the States, in Canada, in Brazil, in Australia. Then it came to Europe, to Ireland. Then it came tao his motherland. Then it came to his diocese, and now it’s coming to the heart of the government of the church — and he has to give an answer.”

“Last weekend, in a heartfelt letter to Irish Catholics reeling from reports of decades of systemic sexual abuse,” wrote the New York Times in another article, “Benedict apologized but did not discipline any church leaders who had covered up abuses, fueling growing anger in Ireland.”

“As archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982, the future pope approved the transfer to Munich for psychiatric treatment of a priest who had sexually abused boys. The priest… was quickly returned to pastoral work with children.”

The church has lashed out at her accusers in defense saying that the expanding scandal is an “elaborate personal attack on the pope.” The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said the New York Times article was written “with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.”

Such allegations are likely self-serving. The Vatican obviously is unhappy about the unwelcome and spreading exposure to many countries. The increasing concern is that Cardinal Ratzinger was deeply involved in the attempted cover-up.

Some might argue that the liberal news organizations are unfairly criticizing the Catholic Church, since similar things go on in other churches too.

There are at least two reasons why this is not a valid defense. First, the Catholic Church claims to be the moral leader of the world. Rome is much more than a mere church. It is a political power, and a powerful one at that. She stands before the world in white vestments claiming to be the ethical and moral guide of nations, kindreds, tongues and people. Her responsibility therefore is greater than other churches that are not political organizations. Rome’s double standard is now being scrutinized by the court of public opinion. Perhaps it would surprise no one that many people despise religion because of that very double standard.

Secondly, though other churches that make high spiritual and moral claims have their cases of abuse, immorality, and vice, the Catholic system of celibate priests as well as male and female monastic orders is unnatural and lends itself to sexual immorality and abuse. The culture of secrecy also aids and abets predator priests. Sexual abuse has become so endemic and so prolific that it cannot be classed as mere individual or isolated lapses in morality. It is a systemic problem, and therefore deserves more scrutiny and accountability in the public arena than other churches.

“Since January,” wrote the liberal Huffington Post, “more than 300 former Catholic school students and others have stepped forward with abuse claims and the church has seen it’s poll numbers fall drastically.

“According to Stern magazine, Only 17 percent of Germans polled said that they still trust the Catholic church, compared to 29 percent in late January, just before the first abuse cases there were made public.”