We’re sure the Devil is responsible and all, but this is pretty disturbing. Even for a practicing Catholic. “The [German] archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.” [NYT]
So Did Pope Benedict XVI Cover Up a Priest’s Sex Abuse Or What?
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trickstertara
He wrote and signed the decree that prohibited people employed by the Roman Catholic Church from going to the authorities with suspicions or even evidence of child sexual abuse committed by clerics. Considering he set the standard for impeding the prosecution of a multiple crimes, I’d say the answer is yes.
The Daily Beast did a much better job of reporting on this story. And by “better,” I mean they devoted more than a paragraph.
spindoc
Of course he did, As far I know, he is still sheltereing the person who was responsible in Boston for transfering and sheltering and hiding priests who had been molesting boys for years. Not only is he hiding him in the Vatican, but promoted him to Cardinal….so yeah, this pope is very familiar with protecting peodophiles.
Anne
NO, he is not protecting paedophiles, and never did.
Get your facts straight, don’t repeat like parrots what MSM ( with agendas) write about this. Go to the web site of the Regensburg and Munchen/Munich-Freising diocese and read the objective, factual reports of their investigation. Ratzinger NEVER gave permission for a paedophile to be placed in a pastoral position.
And Bernard Law was not himself a paedophile, although a weak bishop. Neither was he “stowed away” in the Vatican by Ratzinger but by John Paul II. I agree he should have been sacked altogether, but he is now paying in another manner.
It is quite shocking to see the misrepresentation of facts by the Anglophone media around the pope. I hope you know who the authors of these slanted reports are. You all play right into their hands.
rust your own reading and investigation skills. Go to the origianl sources, please.
Todd Shui
Anne proves again the willingness of Catholics to insist that any fact that their church doesn’t like is a vicious lie. No sane person would ever claim that the the organization being accused is an objective source.
Anne either does not know or that the current Pope in 2001 sent a letter to every bishop in the world, threatening excommunication to anyone in the church hierarchy who cooperated with police or criminal investigation into child abuse. Or perhaps she believes the Pope’s PR flack, who claims that it did not say that, despite the actual words in the letter. Bishops in both Ireland and the United States have stated that they feared punishment from the Vatican if they cooperated with civil authorities because of what he wrote.
Anne can lie and lie to try to protect her imaginary friend. She can join with the Catholic Bishops of the United States who rejected a report that they financed when it did not support their bigoted assumption that gays were to blame for their pedophilia scandal. But she is an enemy of the truth, as surely as the church was when it killed and put people in jail because they stated the truth that the earth revolves around the sun.
Lying didn’t change reality then– we still revolve around the sun– and it will not change that the Catholic hierarchy has carried out a policy of protecting its own, even when they raped kids, and demonizing all who dare to question it. Anne loves a church that did everything in its power to destroy to lives and reputations of those had the courage to come forward about the crimes perpetrated against them. Anne does not care that the church still refuses to fully cooperate in the investigation of child abuse cases.
Why, Anne?
trickstertara
@Anne: Writing the letter that prohibited clerics from reporting crimes within their ranks to the police and reminding them of the “grave penalties” of revealing confidential details of internal enquiries into abuse allegations DOES make him part of a larger conspiracy to cover-up sexual abuse within the church. It’s called Obstruction of Justice. I’m sorry. And that *original source* document was, according to the curia, never intended to be made public — hence they won’t release a statement on it.
Russ
@Anne:
I do recall that Jesus gave specific warnings about ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’, i.e. beware evil men pretending to be good.
I also recall Jesus himself was at constant odds with the religious leadership of his day, accusing them of hypocrisy and immorality, he was never one to blindly follow anyone because they held a position of religious leadership.
Is the catholic church congregation so disillusioned and corrupt it is now ignoring the teachings of Jesus, or perhaps they follow the Pope’s teachings instead?
romeo
@ Anne: As a teacher here in California, I was legally obligated to report any and all suspicion of child abuse. Teachers have to sign a declaration to that effect in order to be employed, and there are severe penalties for non-compliance. The children are more important than the priests. And definitely more important than the reputation of the church, which is what the church’s aiding and abetting is all about. For this and other reasons, it is a testament to the stupidity and incompetence of the cardinals that Ratzinger was ever elevated to the papacy.
Anne
@Todd Shui (and the other posters)
[1] Why do you jump to conclusions in my case as well? Who said I am a Catholic? I’ve been Protestant for more than six decades.
[2] As a historian I have studied the phenomenon of MSM reportage about public figures for the past five years and it has become clear that reports about, especially, Ratzinger/Benedict are usually twisted, slanted or worse.
[3]I see now that I’ve landed (via Google alerts!) on a gay site. No problem. But I’ve reacted to the question whether the Pope “covered up” a priest’s sex abuse (see above) during his tenure as archbishop in Munich. Now, this story has already been reported in such a twisted and incomplete manner in various media outlets that it has only underlined precisely what I have seen in the past years. Subtle and not so subtle disinformation. So, how can one trust the media anymore on ANY subject?
I will repeat here: no, Ratzinger did not cover up the paedophilia of the priest from Essen (not his diocese anyway)that was sent to Munich for therapy. The only thing that he allowed was for the guy to stay in a rectory somewhere in the Munich diocese for the duration of the therapy. Not for a moment did he send the man into a parish for pastoral duty.Ratzinger already left Munich for the Vatican in February 1982. He did not assign this man to pastoral duties. The so called vicar-general made that mistake.
I asked myself: Why on earth did the Essen diocese (and others at that stage)even think in terms of therapy for this priest? We all know it is a waste of time? Interesting for me to learn was that it is only about 15 years ago that psychologists have reached the conclusion that paedophiles cannot be cured.
@trickstertara: You wrote “Writing the letter that prohibited clerics from reporting crimes within their ranks to the police and reminding them of the “grave penalties” of revealing confidential details of internal enquiries into abuse allegations DOES make him part of a larger conspiracy to cover-up sexual abuse within the church. It’s called Obstruction of Justice.”
Are you confusing canon law/the Church’s internal procedures now with civil proceedings? Nothing in the documents by Pope John Paul II or Ratzinger’s letter “states or implies that, nor could any Church documents state or imply any encroachment on the prerogatives of the state” as can be seen in the English translations of both Pope John Paul II’s motu proprio and Cardinal Ratzinger’s implementing letter at (inter alia)
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354564&p=1
It is a great pity that especially in the USA so many of the bishops had been weak and stupid and dishonest in their handling of these abuse cases. I am just not convinced that Ratzinger has to bear the brunt at all.
Go to:C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\PAPA RATZINGER FORUM – REFERENCES – on Recurrent false charges against Joseph Ratzinger.mht
The Milkman
Anne, Ratzinger has to bear the brunt of it all because he is the fucking VICAR OF CHRIST ON EARTH. He is supposedly the person who speaks for Christ on matters not directly addressed in scripture, right? Regardless of what psychologists years ago thought, don’t you think that it was generally accepted that raping children is not something that one just does on a whim or something that one goes to “talk therapy” to work through and get over? If I understand that today, then doesn’t it stand to reason that Jesus understood it then? And if Ratzinger is supposedly the infallible representative of Jesus on Earth, then how does one resolve that conflict? I’ll tell you how. By acknowledging that the Catholic church is, and always has been, a corrupt, abusive, negligent, fraud that is more interested in preserving its own idiotic dogma and its own power over the weak-minded than doing any semblance of good. I give them credit for producing some lovely art and music, but that’s in no way a balance to the terrible pain and suffering that they have wrought and continue to wreak in this world.
trickstertara
@Anne: Hardly. I said nothing about John Paul II. If children were being abused by clerics employed by the Church, that is a matter of secular criminal law and not ecumenical policy, no matter what anybody says. I’m not saying the current pope has to shoulder all of the blame for the conduct of the bishops, but he was in a position of authority to guide their decisions when it came to deciding what was a matter for the Church and the law. He made a mistake by deciding that the alleged abuse of children committed by clerics was a matter for canon law and not criminal law.
Also, I find it interesting that you accuse the media covering the subject of having agendas and the rest of us of as being the pawns of said men and women with agendas. Yet the link you sent me has a lot of people spewing venom about “liberals and anti-Catholics.”
terrwill
What a suprise!! Pope Benedick aka the boy nazi involved in more scurlious activities involving the church………….
Cam
No. 3 · Anne said…
NO, he is not protecting paedophiles, and never did.
Get your facts straight, don’t repeat like parrots what MSM ( with agendas) write about this. Go to the web site of the Regensburg and Munchen/Munich-Freising diocese and read the objective, factual reports of their investigation.
___________________
Are you joking? That would be like somebody coming in here and saying “If you want an objective report on whether or not the Big Banks caused the financial Meltdown, go to the Bank of America Website and read their objective report.”
The Catholic Church in America and Ireland was PROVEN to have protected, hidden and moved Peodophiles about for decades as well as having full knowlege of horrific abuse taking place in their homes for unwed girls and orphanages. Your trying to pretend that these things are made up by the media look ridiculous in the face of the the church paying out hundreds of millions in first hush money, then in court ordered settlement fees to the families.
Cam
Oh, and ANNE, sorry, but Cardinal Law is STILL being sheltered by the Vatican. Here is a brief snippet about him….
“Cardinal Law became the first individual shown to have actively participated in the cover-up of child molestation. Despite substantial amounts of documentation that demonstrated his deep involvement with the molestation of thousands of children, Law refused to step down from his position as Archbishop. Ater leaving Boston for the Vatican, there remain a significant number of undisclosed priests in the Boston area who confessed to molesting boys, and who continue to work as priests, a situation furthered by Law’s intransigence in not naming priests that he aided with their molestation.””
Law is currently 78…three years OLDER than 75, when dioscean bishops MUST offer their resignation to the Pope. THIS POPE has REFUSED to accept his resignation, is keeping him on AND is sheltering him in the Vatican from U.S. authorities even though they need to question him to find out about additional priests that could still be molesting children.
terrwill
Someone needs to remind the men in pointy hats wearing dresses in the vatican about that old saying about glass houses, these physcopaths live in a damm glass city. And yet they continue to volly rocks at the Gays……..
Todd Shui
Dear Anne,
For what it’s worth, I do not think Joseph Ratzinger is at fault in the case you seek to to defend him for, at least not if the facts are as they are currently being reported. Please, though, be aware that bishops in both the United States and Ireland believed that Ratzinger’s 2001 letter explicitly forbid them from participating with civil authorities, or at least they have sworn under penalty of perjury that they believed that the current pope could have them excommunicated if they reported chjild abuse to the police. Most damningly, the Bishops in Ireland did not get get clear answers from the Vatican when they asked if the letter allowed them, to report pedophiles to the police. Please excuse that behavior– or provide credible proof that the bishops are lying– before claiming the Pope is not to blame for part of the cult of secrecy that allowed thousands of children to be raped.
Also, please stop defending people who routinely seek to re-victimize the victims of child abuse in order to protect the reputation of their brothers. I agree with the Vatican that priests are less likely to abuse children than most other people. What seems to be unique about the church is the culture of intimidating victims into silence and allowing pedophiles to re-offend. The victims of Father Maciel were vilified until DNA tests proved he had fathered children out of wedlock. They were accused of every evil in a successful attempt to allow a serial pedophile to be free and to continue his abuse.
Those are facts, Anne. The Catholic Church is many good things, but it is also a criminal conspiracy to shelter rapists and child abusers from justice. See the weekly reports coming out of Ireland of pedophile priests living in freedom, still serving in ministry. Note the Pope’s refusal to publicly answer tough questions about his record on chjld abuse.
And please tell me what that man could possibly have to do that could be more important than meeting with victims of child abuse caused by his clergy. There are thousands. He has met with fewer than fifty. And he has never allowed one to publicly ask him questions about the scandal.
Is there a greater moral coward on the planet?
soul_erosion
I just instinctively knew that the first time I tried Chatroulette I’d wind up with a couple of those hidden priests in the Vatican, and sure enough… http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/weekinreview/21bilton.html?scp=1&sq=Chat%20Roulette&st=cse
anyway, I sure hope that’s not Cam and Terrwill
B
No. 8 · Anne wrote, “[2] As a historian I have studied the phenomenon of MSM reportage about public figures for the past five years and it has become clear that reports about, especially, Ratzinger/Benedict are usually twisted, slanted or worse.”
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/04/09/cardinal-ratzinger-next-pope-nazi/ (given the URL this does not look like a pro-Catholic site) claims that in 2001 Ratzinger sent a letter reminding people that the previous rules were still in effect, and provides a link http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf to what is claimed to be a copy (English translation) of the 1962 document outlining how to handle these cases. If you are a historian, perhaps you have access to material that would show if this leaked copy is real and translated properly.
It sounds like a bureaucratic document outlining internal procedures, and you may have to read other documents as well to understand the context. Curiously, they seem to think it is far worse for a priest to take advantage of a boy than a girl, which in 2010 sounds pretty sexist. Internally they are supposed to maintain secrecy. Whether that precludes informing civil authorities of a crime is less clear and may interact with their rules about priests hearing “confessions”.
This can be a bit tricky: in the U.S., you have a 5th Amendment right to not incriminate yourself, so if they order a priest to “confess his sins”, they may treat that the same way as in the case of a priest who hears a member of his church confess a murder – in that case, the priest is not supposed to repeat anything, although I guess he could tell the murderer to turn himself in as part of a “penance”. If another priest catches a child-abusing priest in flagrante delicto, it is probably not covered by the rules in question, but I’d guess catching someone that way is pretty unlikely so such cases don’t turn up in practice.
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
@No. 3 and @No. 8 ANNE
Anne is a homophobic bigot blinded by her anti-gay bias.
Her words:
“Get your facts straight, don’t repeat like parrots what MSM ( with agendas) write about this.”
“As a historian I have studied the phenomenon of MSM reportage about public figures for the past five years and it has become clear that reports about, especially, Ratzinger/Benedict are usually twisted, slanted or worse.”
MSM = men who have sex with men. Reading Anne’s comments and the tone she inflects, substitute “faggots” for MSM, and then reread her comments.
Anne is a sick minded individual who is so twisted in her hatred of gays/lesbians, that she has downed the Catholic Cult Kool-Aide.
B
No. 8 · Anne wrote, “Go to:C:\Documents and Settings\User\Desktop\PAPA RATZINGER FORUM – REFERENCES – on Recurrent false charges against Joseph Ratzinger.mht”
… at the risk of using some computer jargon, if you want us to log onto your windoze box and rummage through the file system, you should at least provide a host name or IP address for us to get started.
Seriously – the full path name to a file on your computer is not a useful citation.
trickstertara
@17: Actually I think by MSM, Anne meant “mainstream media.” Most conservatives aren’t clued in to “men-who-have-sex-with-men” (unless they are one). We’re all just fags and dykes to them (and liberals and anti-Catholics to Anne).
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
@No. 19 Trickertara
Well my way is soooo much more fun. I mean, really, she is the one commenting on a gay web site defending the hypocritical Catholic Church, But, alas, I rechecked her 2 posts, and have to agree, she was probably referring to mainstream media (though I have never seen it abbreviated as MSM).
Dashed all my gist to hell, oh well.
Lets seem there must be more devilish fun to skewer Anne. She wrote:
“It is a great pity that especially in the USA so many of the bishops had been weak and stupid and dishonest in their handling of these abuse cases. I am just not convinced that Ratzinger has to bear the brunt at all.”
Hmmm, all that background and experience in research and history, Anne, and you can’t make the itsy bitsy tiny leap that, beginning 25 years ago, Ratzinger has been using the threat of excommunication against all those US bishops, forcing those bishops to either forsake their religion or become “weak and stupid and dishonest” Catholic bureaucrats. Ratzinger’s letter is easily found on-line, along with a valid English translation.
Read the letter Anne, and then ask yourself whether the thousands upon thousands of the young boys and girls victims of these hypocritical amoralists should be granted safe harbor under the protection of the Church OR rot in prison cells.
Have you no decency, Anne? All up in arms over words about leader of an organization that has conspired, over decades and centuries, to protect child molesters, abusers and rapists, And not one word about the lives of the innocent children terrorized by the on-going conspiracy that practically allows too many priests unlimited access to victims.
The pedophiles are disgusting; their Church that protects them is disgusting; and you, Anne, and your fellow defenders of such unGodly and outrageous conduct are disgusting.