By Joel Mcnally
The Capital Times
April 10, 2010
http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/joel_mcnally/article_81737a0c-4078-5db6-a0bd-e0817d664751.html
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| In this Friday, April 2, 2010 photo, Pope's personal preacher Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa delivers the Good Friday homily during a service celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. At a solemn Good Friday service, Cantalamessa likened the tide of allegations that the pontiff has covered up sex abuse cases to the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism." But within hours, facing a storm of criticism at the comparison, the Vatican felt it necessary to distance the pope from the preacher's remarks. |
It was a heck of an Easter for the Catholic Church.
Who knew the latest revelations about a horrendous case of priest sexual abuse in Wisconsin would throw the worldwide church and the current pope into their most tumultuous credibility crisis yet?
In politics, there is an axiom that misdeeds can get you into a lot of trouble, but it’s the coverup that can be fatal.
An unbelievable Holy Week of dodging and ducking and lashing out by Pope Benedict XVI’s rapidly diminishing circle of defenders would make defrocked President Richard Nixon and his White House burglary ring proud.
It hasn’t been news for decades that the leadership of the Catholic Church, from the top down, was more concerned about protecting the church from embarrassing publicity and expensive lawsuits than it was with protecting children from sexually predatory priests.
What’s new are internal Vatican documents the church fought to keep secret in a lawsuit against the Milwaukee Archdiocese suggesting Pope Benedict himself, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the previous pope’s enforcer handling sexual abuse cases, intervened to shut down a church trial to defrock a priest who had sexually abused more than 200 boys at St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis.
Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland had sought direction from Ratzinger in 1995 in conducting a church trial against Father Lawrence Murphy, who headed the school. Not until two years later did Ratzinger’s deputy advise Weakland to use a procedure established in 1962 to handle priests who used the confessional to solicit sex. But then Murphy wrote directly to Ratzinger in 1998 asking him to dismiss the charges, citing ill health. Several months later, Ratzinger’s deputy advised Weakland and the bishop of the Superior Diocese, where Murphy had been reassigned, to end the trial.
It says a lot about how early the church knew about sexual abuse by priests that there had been a formal procedure in place since 1962 to deal with priests who trolled for sex in the confession booth. That was decades before details of widespread sexual abuse of children by priests began emerging in the ’90s.
On Good Friday, of all days, in a homily attended by Pope Benedict himself at St. Peter’s Basilica, the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, the pope’s personal pastor, compared criticism of the pope to the “collective violence” and “more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism” committed against the Jews.
Really. Criticizing the pope for failing to live up to his responsibility to protect children from predatory priests is similar to Nazis murdering 6 million Jews during the Holocaust?
The statement was so outrageous it overshadowed other equally absurd remarks made by Cantalamessa in the sermon. Cantalamessa claimed he had a Jewish “friend” who was indignant over “the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world.”
Criticizing the personal actions of a human being who holds a position of authority in the church is not an attack on “all the faithful of the whole world.” A whole lot of the faithful around the world have been victimized. They expect the current leaders of the church to come clean and take personal responsibility for their failed -- and many would say immoral -- attempts to cover up sexual abuse in the church.
Instead, the Vatican circles the wagons and denials become more and more preposterous.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, recently promoted from Milwaukee, on Palm Sunday actually compared the criticism of Pope Benedict to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The pope, Dolan said, was “now suffering some of the same unjust accusations, shouts of the mob and scourging at the pillar” and “being daily crowned with thorns by groundless innuendo.”
Pope Benedict is not Jesus Christ. And concerned Catholics and others raising moral questions about personal actions and inactions that protected priests who raped children bear no resemblance to a howling mob shouting, “Crucify him!”
Until the pope and other church bureaucrats recognize how their own human failings contributed to the church’s crisis, they cannot really begin cleaning up their house.
More virulent homophobia won’t be the answer either.
Ultimately, the Catholic Church will have to become more open to real change including married priests, male and female.
When the priesthood is closed to anyone with a desire for a healthy sex life, it is going to attract some people with unhealthy ones.
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a regular column for The Capital Times. jmcnally@wi.rr.com
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