Get Religion
April 14, 2019
By Terry Mattingly
It isn’t everyday that you get to point readers toward a think piece written by a pope, even if we are talking about a retired pope, in this case.
It also helps that retired Pope Benedict XVI wrote about the hottest of hot-button topics in Catholic life — the ongoing scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing children, with the vast majority of the victims being teen-aged males. That has created all kinds of hot topics to debate or to attempt to avoid debating.
Reactions to the letter have been predictable, to say the least, renewing discussions of the church of Pope Francis and the church of Pope Benedict XVI. The same has been true in the press, with this New York Times story being so predictable that, at times, it verges on self-parody. This Washington Post story hows evidence that reporters tried to gather cheers and boos that were linked to the crucial passages in the retired pope’s text. Here’s the Post overture:
ROME — Breaking years of silence on major church affairs, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written a lengthy letter devoted to clerical sex abuse in which he attributes the crisis to a breakdown of church and societal moral teaching and says he felt compelled to assist “in this difficult hour.”
The 6,000-word letter, written for a small German Catholic publication and published in translation by other outlets Thursday, laments the secularization of the West, decries the 1960s sexual revolution and describes seminaries that became filled during that period with “homosexual cliques.”
It helps, of course, to read the actual text of “The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse.” Click here for an English translation, care of Catholic News Agency.
The key is that Benedict — returning to a theme voiced throughout his long public life — warns believers that they are living in an age in which the basics of Christian faith are under attack (even in seminaries). Thus, Christians in a smaller, embattled, church must be prepared to get back to the basics of doctrine and sacraments. Just going to Mass will not be enough. Note this passage:
Faith is a journey and a way of life. In the old Church, the catechumenate was created as a habitat against an increasingly demoralized culture, in which the distinctive and fresh aspects of the Christian way of life were practiced and at the same time protected from the common way of life. I think that even today something like catechumenal communities are necessary so that Christian life can assert itself in its own way.
Oh my, that’s a quotation that could be featured on the next edition of “The Benedict Option,” by my friend Rod Dreher.
Like I said earlier, it’s easy to find cheers and boos for this remarkable intervention by Benedict in the church’s current discussions of topics such as clergy sexual abuse, seminary life, worship, homosexuality and life in post-Christian cultures.
In this think-piece slot, I would like to point readers to a critique of the former pope’s articles by a Catholic conservative — but one whose work on the sexual-abuse crisis has made insiders on the right nervous, as well as the left. I am talking about Leon Podles, author of the blistering, brutal, relentlessly researched book, “Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.” He often cooperated, in his research, with the late Richard Sipe — an important voice on the Catholic left.
In his online look at the Benedict article, Podles opens with this summary, which includes an important correction:
In retirement Pope Benedict has written an article for a Bavarian journal for priests on the causes of the sexual abuse crisis. I largely agree, and the article is not an exhaustive catalogue, but there are still some serious omissions. The causes that Benedict identifies are:
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.
