UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches
By Elizabeth Drescher
In the wake of Benedict’s sudden announcement of his early retirement, Catholic luminaries from Cardinal Timothy Dolan to James Martin, SJ have already begun, as is the custom when a papal career ends, to lionize the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.
But on the margins of the Catholic Church, the legacy Benedict began shaping in 1980 as Cardinal Ratzinger, when he was named as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faithful (the office formerly known as the Inquisition), and which he solidified during a mere eight years as Bishop of Rome is seen as something far more complex and troubling. …
Joelle Casteix, Western Region Director for SNAP, which advocates on behalf of some 20,000 survivors and allies of those abused by Roman Catholic priests, likewise sees the action of laypeople as critical to any meaningful change in the Roman Catholic Church. “The only way that we can have influence,” she says, “is if Catholics sitting in the pews demand change. It’s time for the Catholic laity stand up and demand that the church truly embody the teachings of Jesus Christ in protecting children.” She sees that as unlikely to happen between now and when the College of Cardinals meets in March to elect a new pope, especially in a Church that “evolves in geological time.”
Pope Benedict, Casteix says, “offered empty promises and apologies” about the abuse scandal “as a PR move” while at the same time “portraying victims as enemies of the Church.” This, she says, has continued to “ensure the marginalization of abuse victims within the Church” even as civil authorities have moved more decisively to extract a measure of justice from abusive priests and the Church leaders who often enabled them to continue as abusers and actively covered up the Church’s protection of them.
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