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  What Catholics Want

By Jim Palos
Chicago Tribune
April 18, 2010

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0418-catholics-20100418,0,3903419.story

It's a tough time to be Catholic. Reading the accounts of sexual abuse victims causes deep pain. Incompetent — even cowardly — behavior by superiors and bishops arouses anger and disbelief. Our faith is tested when we see allegations going all the way to the Vatican and the pope himself.

It is fitting that all of us — belonging as we do to a faith community that understands itself to be a family — share in some small, small way the pain experienced by the victims of the abuse. This is a process of purification that we all need to share in.

What do we, the Catholic faithful, ask during this time of questioning and trial?

We want fairness and accuracy from the media. In fact, we need it because the news media is the principal instrument for surfacing and processing information about the scandal. Unfortunately, the recent barrage of stories surrounding Pope Benedict XVI's role has been neither fair nor accurate.

The stories have focused on three abuse cases, two in the U.S. while then-Cardinal Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and one in Germany when he was archbishop of Munich. Coverage of the two U.S. cases faulted the pope for failing to prosecute sexual abuse crimes. But he lacked jurisdiction over pedophilia cases, a fact that went unmentioned for the first several days of the story. The situation in Germany is less clear. Subordinates of his allowed a pedophile priest to return to the active ministry, perhaps with the knowledge of Cardinal Ratzinger.

Judging the long and highly public ecclesial career of Joseph Ratzinger shows that the man has persistently and insistently sought to make the church safe for children. In 2001 he persuaded Pope John Paul II to transfer authority for sexual abuse cases to his congregation and brought rigor to a system that had been loosely structured and deficient. He pursued cases that had previously gone unprosecuted, including those of prominent churchmen such as Hans Hermann Groer, the cardinal of Vienna, and Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ. He has continued to tackle the issue as head of the universal church. When he visited the U.S. in 2007, Pope Benedict addressed the abuse scandal head-on before even landing on American soil when he engaged the issue with reporters on the flight across the Atlantic. While here, as he has done elsewhere, he met with victims.

Investigations and revelations by the news media have served a purpose. They have helped move the church to action and have been a vehicle for legal justice. But coverage needs to be fair and accurate.

From the church we ask straightforward communication and courageous leadership. Too often local churches and the Vatican have been slow or unwilling to engage public discussion. If someone strikes at the heart of my church I want it to respond at the speed of the American news cycle. We need facts delivered quickly, clarifying errors when they have occurred and facilitating justice when wrongdoing is confirmed.

We also need courageous leadership when claims are found to be false. I have a good friend who, after 17 years of dedicated priestly service, was wrongly accused of molesting a child. The police investigation concluded that the accusation was without foundation, lacking sufficient substance even to bring the case to trial. But his archdiocese (not Chicago), operating with a hyper sense of caution in the current atmosphere surrounding accused priests, declined to admit him back into active ministry. Instead, it encouraged him to quietly resign from the priesthood. He refused, saying he had done nothing wrong.

Through it all, we Catholics must remember that our belief is grounded in Jesus Christ and the church he established. It is an institution, we believe, that has divine origins and the promise made by the same Christ that it will endure even through the darkest moments and until the end of time.

 
 

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