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	Pope Should Clarify His Letter Jackson Sun March 18, 2010 http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20100318/COLUMNISTS25/3180301 UNITED STATES -- Dr. Gene Davenport is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Lambuth University. Readers can send e-mail to him at genedavenport@yahoo.com. The scandal of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church now threatens the integrity of the pope himself. In a letter written in 2001, while he still was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the pope said that the CDF's examinations of charges of sexual abuse of minors were to be treated with pontifical secrecy. That is, public disclosure of the proceedings would be subject to papal punishment. In the Roman Catholic Church's bureaucracy, a "Congregation" is a department with responsibility for certain areas of the church's life. The CDF was established in 1542 with the stated purpose of maintaining and defending the integrity of the faith and of examining and proscribing errors and false doctrines. In a formal decree in 1983, Pope John Paul II said the Congregation exists to promote and safeguard doctrine on faith and morals throughout the Catholic world and that "for this reason everything which in any way touches such matter falls within its competence." Obviously, this was a significant expansion of the department's original purpose, one that closely parallels the secular role of the National Security State, which says, in effect, that every personal and governmental act or involvement is subject to national scrutiny because it has implications for national security. The pope's declaration, like the assumptions of the National Security State, is an example of how all institutions increasingly widen the spread of their cloaks of power over those under them. And central to the ability to maintain that power is secrecy.
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