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Author Puts Benedict on Trial Vancouver Writer Compiles Searing Indictment of Former Pope

By Tom Sandborn
Vancouver Sun
June 21, 2013

http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Author+puts+Benedict+trial/8561402/story.html

OSSERVATORE ROMANO/AFP/Getty Images files

Will Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI) who made history earlier this year by becoming the first Roman Catholic pope to resign in nearly six centuries, go on to become the central figure in yet another historic event, a trial of a former pope on charges of aiding and abetting child sexual abuse?

He will if the activists of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, have their way. Together with the Centre for Constitutional Rights, SNAP filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the then pope and other key Vatican figures on Sept. 13, 2011.

Some observers, including Gianluigi Nuzzi, in his book Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict and investigative journalists writing in Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper suggest that his unusual decision to resign may have been prompted in part by the ICC complaint and other scandals.

The ICC complaint alleges that the former pope and the other church leaders are responsible for the sexual abuse of as many as hundreds of thousands of children by Catholic priests, responsible both because the child rapes occurred on their watch as church leaders and, more damningly, because the pope emeritus and his clerical accomplices allegedly took active steps to conceal the ongoing crime wave within the priesthood, swearing victims to secrecy and discouraging co-operation with the police.

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Author Gawthrop was living on Vancouver Island during the heady days of Vatican II, a ’60s church conference that seemed to promise reforms within Catholicism ranging from a change in the language of worship (from Latin to the vernacular) to ecumenical outreach to other faith groups, as well as posing the possibility of a reformed attitude toward women priests and birth control.

Despite having left active Catholicism years ago, Gawthrop remains fascinated by the inner life of his former church, and is appalled by its shift back toward rigid dogmatism, misogyny and homophobia in the decades following Vatican II, much of it led by the former pope.

Gawthrop tells the story of that shift in his well-researched and searing indictment of the last pope’s record. (Full disclosure: Like most people who have knocked around either the local writing world or B.C. trade union activism over the last few decades, I know Gawthrop. And for one short giddy period of my life I was myself a Vatican II-inspired Catholic convert.)

Gawthrop’s book, then, is a lover’s quarrel with the Church, by and large even tempered and amiable in tone but persuasively scathing in content. The author wryly notes that during the Vatican II thaw, a young Cardinal Ratzinger was seen as one of the Church’s two pre-eminent reform theologians, a strong voice, together with Hans Kung, for opening up the church. Ratzinger soon tacked in a different direction and later played a role in attempts to silence Kung.

But, as Gawthrop’s detailed account makes clear, the attack on Kung was just the beginning. Kung’s old colleague went on to lead attacks on the figures within the church that were calling for a new theology of liberation, silencing and censuring activist priests and innovative theologians, especially in Latin America, where liberation theology represented a real threat to the established power of ruling juntas and American corporations.

And the former pope’s sexual politics seem as retrograde as his theological views. Whether describing gays as “objectively disordered,” or dismissing any suggestion that women might become priests, or see the Church revise its teachings on contraception and condom use, he could always be counted upon to provide alarmingly backward commentary. Gawthrop does a good job of sampling the worst of these pronouncements and stitching them into a lucid account.

Gawthrop manages all this painful and dense material in a calm, accessible prose that very seldom lapses into the temptations of rage, cynicism or horror that could easily intrude, given the subject matter. The most significant failure of this admirable tone occurs in his chapter on the Vatican’s odd status as a nation. Not content here to cite the many absurdities and problems this status creates, Gawthrop falls into a kind of laboured proof from abstract definition. But this is a minor flaw.

Overall, this is a strong, clear exposition of the case against the former pope and an intelligent reflection on the lost opportunities of Vatican II. It is a book that will engage and inform all readers, no matter where or whether they worship.

The Trial of Pope Benedict will be featured at a launch party on June 25 at Pat’s Pub & Brewhouse, 403 East Hastings St. Doors at 6:30; reading at 7 p.m. Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver, where if pressed, he will identify his current religious identity as High Church Secular Druid/Humanist. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos@infinet.net

 

 

 

 

 




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