Wednesday 27th of November 2024
Home » Blogs » John Richardson's blog

a story for children .....

a story for children .....

When Pope John Paul II was still living in Poland as Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, he claimed that the security police would accuse priests of sexual abuse just to hassle and discredit them. (New York Times, 3/28/10). For Wojtyła, the Polish pedophilia problem was nothing more than a Communist plot to smear the church.

By the early 1980s, Wojtyła, now ensconced in Rome as Pope John Paul II, treated all stories about pedophile clergy with dismissive aplomb, as little more than slander directed against the church. That remained his stance for the next twenty years.

Today in post-communist Poland, clerical abuse cases have been slowly surfacing, very slowly. Writing in the leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza,  a middle-aged man reported having been sexually abused as a child by a priest. He acknowledged however that Poland was not prepared to deal with such transgressions. "It's still too early. . . .  Can you imagine what life would look like if an inhabitant of a small town or village decided to talk?  I can already see the committees of defense for the accused priests."

While church pedophiles may still enjoy a safe haven in Poland and other countries where the clergy are above challenge, things are breaking wide open elsewhere. Today we are awash in a sludge of revelations spanning whole countries and continents, going back decades---or as some historians say---going back centuries. Only in the last few weeks has the church shown signs of cooperating with civil authorities. Here is the story.

As everyone now knows, for decades church superiors repeatedly chose to ignore complaints about pedophile priests. In many instances, accused clerics were quietly bundled off to distant congregations where they could prey anew upon the children of unsuspecting parishioners. This practice of denial and concealment has been so consistently pursued in diocese after diocese, nation after nation, as to leave the impression of being a deliberate policy set by church authorities.

And indeed it has been. Instructions coming directly from Rome have required every bishop and cardinal to keep matters secret. These instructions were themselves kept secret; the cover-up was itself covered up. Then in 2002, John Paul put it in writing, specifically mandating that all charges against priests were to be reported secretly to the Vatican and hearings were to be held in camera, a procedure that directly defies state criminal codes.   Rather than being defrocked, many outed pedophile priests have been allowed to advance into well-positioned posts as administrators, vicars, and parochial school officials---repeatedly accused by their victims while repeatedly promoted by their superiors.

Church spokesmen employ a vocabulary of compassion and healing---not for the victims but for the victimizers. They treat the child rapist as a sinner who confesses his transgression and vows to mend his ways. Instead of incarceration, there is repentance and absolution.

While this forgiving approach might bring comfort to some malefactors, it proves to be of little therapeutic efficacy when dealing with the darker appetites of pedophiles. A far more effective deterrent is the danger of getting caught and sent to prison.

Absent any threat of punishment, the perpetrator is restrained only by the limits of his own appetite and the availability of opportunities.

Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle

 

the vatican shuffle ....

Open warfare broke out in the Vatican over the clerical sex abuse scandal at the weekend as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, accused one of Pope Benedict XVI's closest aides of covering up past scandals.

Cardinal Schönborn, 65, seen as a possible future Pope, accused Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 82, the former Vatican Secretary of State (Prime Minister), of having blocked investigations into sex abuse crimes committed by his predecessor in Vienna, the late Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer.

Cardinal Schönborn, a former theology pupil of Pope Benedict and a close ally, also charged Cardinal Sodano with causing "massive harm" to victims by dismissing claims of clerical abuse as "petty gossip" on Easter Sunday.

Cardinal Sodano is now Dean of the College of Cardinals and as such due to convene and chair the conclave to elect the next Pope. The row thus pitches the man in charge of the next papal election against one of the leading contenders.

Archbishop of Vienna accuses one of Pope's closest aides of abuse cover-up

judgement day .....

The US Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal by the Vatican in a landmark case that opens the way for priests in the United States to stand trial for paedophilia.

Allowing a federal appeals court ruling to stand, the decision means Vatican officials including theoretically Pope Benedict XVI could face questioning under oath related to a litany of child sex abuse cases.

The Supreme Court effectively confirmed the decision of an appellate court to lift the Vatican's immunity in the case of an alleged paedophile priest in the northwestern state of Oregon.

US Supreme Court deals pedophilia blow for Vatican

papal platitudes .....

Pope Benedict arrived in Edinburgh overnight, beginning his controversial state visit to Britain by acknowledging the Catholic Church's tardy response to the clergy's abuse scandal.

There was no red carpet in sight due to high winds when the Pope's Alitalia jet landed, minus one of his most senior aides, the German Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Cardinal Kasper had embarrassed the Vatican on the eve of the visit, likening Britain to a Third World nation.

Responding to questions submitted in advance en route to Britain the Pope said abusive priests should never have access to children and that they suffered from an illness that mere ''goodwill'' could not cure.

He said he had been shocked and felt a great ''sadness'' that church authority had failed to be sufficiently vigilant to take the ''necessary measures'' to stop the abuse and prevent it. Victims, he said, were now the church's primary concern.

Pope's great 'sadness' for abuse victims

forever the layman .....

Traditional Anglican Communion leader John Hepworth has rubbished a Catholic Church inquiry that yesterday cleared Catholic priest Ian Dempsey of raping him nearly 40 years ago.

Archbishop Hepworth, who was first a Catholic and then an Anglican priest and is now the primate of the breakaway TAC, said no other victim of clerical abuse could feel safe after the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide's handling of his complaints.

"No victim in the world will be safe after this type of attack," he said. "Given that so many perpetrators of abuse were moved from diocese to diocese this process leaves the way open for findings in favour of victims in one diocese to be reconsidered by another diocese and overturned.

"I was told I would have to bear the costs of bringing witnesses before the inquiry, which I could not afford and I was also told that no witnesses would be indemnified.

"Adelaide's process, as far as we can discover, was a retrial of the Melbourne process."

Mr Hepworth had accused three priests of raping him.

The Melbourne process, conducted by the Archdiocese of Melbourne's independent commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan QC, earlier this year resolved his complaint against the late Ronald Pickering of Melbourne. Mr Hepworth received $75,000 compensation and an apology on behalf of the archdiocese from Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart.

Mr O'Callaghan also accepted that Mr Hepworth suffered "many other instances of sexual abuse by members of the clergy in South Australia".

But barrister Michael Abbott, QC, who conducted the inquiry for the Catholic Church in Adelaide, found there was "no substance to the allegations".

South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon, who named Monsignor Dempsey in parliament, said the process used by the Catholic Church was a "whitewash that was deeply flawed and lacked credibility".

"The Adelaide Archdiocese of the Catholic Church should hang their head in shame," Senator Xenophon said. "How can this be credible when no evidence was heard from the person that made the allegations?"

The church yesterday refused to release Mr Abbott's 150-page report because of its "personal and sensitive nature".

Adelaide's Catholic Archbishop Philip Wilson also refused to be interviewed, but in a statement said: "Based on the findings made in the report, and the evidence upon which it is based, I intend to accept the findings in full."

Monsignor Dempsey said that despite being cleared by the inquiry, the allegations, which had been raised in federal parliament, had taken a toll on his health.

He will remain on leave from his Adelaide parish of Brighton indefinitely.

"I'm not too sure when I might return. I'm feeling really, really devastated," Monsignor Dempsey said.

"It's very difficult to get up in front of a few hundred people celebrating the eucharist and knowing in your heart that there's all these accusations against you.

"I've known from the beginning that it was all false but it had to be in some way stated and proved, which, thank God, Michael Abbott has done."

Archbishop Hepworth said he did not take part in the inquiry "because I was not permitted to see the terms of reference or scope of the inquiry".

He has sought to reunite his church with Rome, but was delivered a blow last week after the Catholic Church said he would only be welcomed back to the fold as a layman.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/hepworth-cries-foul-as-church-inquiry-clears-priest-of-rape/story-e6frg6nf-1226208570690