BishopAccountability.org
	Sex, Lies and Vatican By Conrado de Quiros Inquirer April 5, 2010 http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100405-262508/Sex-lies-and-Vatican PHILIPPINES -- THOMAS Reese, a Vatican expert based at Georgetown University in Washington, is right. "You know," he said, "you wish that people in the Vatican had at least some idea of how what they say will be perceived by an audience outside of the Vatican clergy." Insulation of an epic order is the only way to explain Raniero Cantalamessa's mind-boggling remarks last Good Friday, turning the one day Christendom regards as Jesus Christ's most painful moments on earth into what is likely to become many years of excruciating moments for the institution he left behind. Cantalamessa is the Pope's personal preacher. The accusations that the Pope is a party to the cover-up of sexual abuses by the Roman Catholic clergy, he said, are like the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." Comparing the spontaneous, if strident, attacks on the Vatican with the systematic, and murderous, attacks on the Jews naturally sparked outrage across the world. Said Stephan Kramer, general secretary of Germany's Central Council of Jews: "It is repulsive, obscene and most of all offensive toward all abuse victims as well as to all the victims of the Holocaust." Said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests: "It's morally wrong to equate actual physical violence and hatred against a large group of innocent people with mere public scrutiny of a small group of complicit officials. The Catholic hierarchy has engaged in and still engages in widely documented, self-serving and ongoing cover-ups of devastating clergy sex crimes." In fact, what's so mind-boggling about it is that it compares two things that are completely antithetical. The reviling of an entire race, which leads to the extermination of 6 million of them is an unqualified evil; the reviling of a head of a church for foot-dragging or, worse, helping to hide crimes within its ranks is an unqualified good. That is so whether the church is big or small, whether it is the Church of Pope Benedict or the Church of the Reverend Moon. That is so moreover because the reasons for the attacks are different. In the first, it is to uphold the supremacy of the Aryan race; in the second, it is to uphold the rights of the victims. That is the difference between day and night. All this came in the wake of the Vatican's already mind-boggling defense of itself in recent days, which was to complain about being singled out or stereotyped for pedophilia when pedophilia was a society-wide issue. Truly, you've got to wonder if its officials step out of their walls to breathe the air outside. Surely it cannot be unknown to them that there is a difference between a priest victimizing children and Romeo Jalosjos doing the same thing? It is in the nature of politicians to screw people, notably impressionable minds; it is in the nature of priests to enlighten them, or give them moral guidance. Pedophilia is a vicious enough crime in itself. It's so much the worse when committed by someone held up by society as guide and guardian. I don't particularly care that priests (or nuns, to be democratic about it) honor their vow of celibacy more in the breach rather than in the observance: What consenting adults, priests or layman (no pun intended), do with or to each other is their lookout. But I do care that they prey on the innocent. That is completely literally looking at the flock as sheep, to sacrifice at the altar of the second cardinal sin, if I remember my catechism right. It adds betrayal to lechery. I agree completely that the pedophiles in the clergy are the exception rather than the rule, and the whole Church may not be disparaged because of them. But the whole Church is not being disparaged because of them. It is being disparaged because its officialdom, specifically the Vatican, has not been forthcoming about them. That is where the exception ceases to be the exception and becomes the rule. You aid and abet, you become party to the crime. Pedophilia is a crime, and we do jail people like Jalosjos for it. Why should a particular calling, however presumably otherworldly, provide immunity? All this makes you miss the previous Pope, John Paul II, who parted the heavy drapes in St. Peter's favorite haunt and brought fresh air into it. To be sure, John Paul II was hounded by the issue of deviant clergy too, but he at least had an open mind in more ways than one. He it was who brought a great deal of transparency, or honesty, into Vatican's dealings with the world, apologizing at one time for the pile of bones that had been raised over the centuries in the name of Christianity. Who knows where he could have gone with the issue of the shepherds preying on the flock if he had lived a little longer. Today's Vatican only reminds us that the Church is also, and staunchly so, a temporal power. Like the kings and the nobles, or more so in the Middle Ages, the Church could pretty much do anything it pleased without question or rebuke. If anyone questioned or rebuked, he could always be sent to the rack for heresy. The instinct clearly hasn't died among Vatican officials, notwithstanding the epic changes wrought by the march of time. When people protest against the Pope or the cardinals, the problem is not the Pope or the cardinals, the problem is the protester. Or his protest. The problem is not that the Vatican is harboring wolves in sheep's clothing, it is that the protesters are slaughtering sheep like wolves. Or mounting a holocaust like the Nazis. You truly miss the previous Pope who promised, or threatened, to change things. With secrecy being the norm again, you have to wonder if Dan Brown isn't laughing his head off. With blindness being the norm again, you have to wonder at the meaning of "Holy See."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.