(Pope)Benedict's Mission of Healing

tampabay.com ^ | April 18, 2008 | staff

[kellynla]

Before he was elected to succeed John Paul II, the modern era's most popular pope, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI earned the nickname "the Rottweiler" for his staunch enforcement of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. But for a pope so steeped in the infallibility of the church, Benedict's visit to America this week will be remembered for his historic reaching out to the victims of the very church he leads — those thousands of children sexually molested by priests in the past five decades. His decision to focus on their pain and the church's betrayal sent a powerful message of healing to a fractured and ambivalent American church.

No single trip — even one so sweeping with pageantry and spiritually moving as a pontifical visit — can wipe away the physical and emotional damage that generations of Americans have had to carry. This pope, after all, was part of the leadership that kept a lid on the sex abuse scandal. The church has yet to come to terms with its legal and moral culpability. It has paid out $2-billion since the scandal broke six years ago, losing both clergy and dioceses in the process, to say nothing of the lost faith and financial support of American Catholics angered that Rome would not come clean.

Benedict took the first major step this week by facing a crisis with both a human and spiritual component. He addressed the abuse scandal with reporters Tuesday on his flight from Rome, setting the stage for the week to come. By Thursday he had raised the issue three times, during Mass at Nationals Park in Washington, and again in a surprise meeting with several victims from the Boston area, in what is the first publicly known meeting between a pope and victims since the scandal broke.

Make no mistake: Benedict is a doctrinal conservative. But he showed on this visit a depth of character and a capacity to unify through contrition as much as with an iron fist. The church needs to build on Benedict's remorse. His message should be seen as a monumental start for a church that never seemed to get it.

[kellynla]

ping

[perez24]

Funny, they must have missed the whole respect for life and love of our Lord Jesus Christ messages that he seems to stress.

[Mrs. Don-o]

They seem to be saying Pope Benedict is a "doctrinal conservative" and yet, and yet, he's takes seriously the moral horror of homosexual depredations against youth.

It is disturbing, but the Catholic Church is not the only organization which is explicitly opposed to acts of an abusive or homosexual nature, which nevertheless has had predators in its ranks. Another example of a good organization with bad apples in the Boy Scouts of America. Here is a list of books about sexual abuse in Scouting.

The point is that any organization that works with youth, attracts peopel who are "attracted" to youth for the wrong reasons. It's in every church, youth program and fellowship, even those opposed to sexual licentiousness.

And researchers say it's 100x more prevalent in the public schools. For that story, see this and especially this article about investigator Charol Shakeshaft in which she reports her finding that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

I am waiting for the trials, the exposes, the billion-dollar financial settlements, the bankruptcies, and the repentances.

[A.A. Cunningham]

You’ll continue to wait since the NEA does its utmost to keep the scope of the abuse under the radar and damage awards against public schools are capped.

[mountainfolk]

Pope Benedict has gone to great lengths to acknowledge and apologize for the sexual abuse of young people by Catholic priests. In so doing he has publicly emphasized a no tolerance stand for future violations of trust by any person in the Catholic chain of command. No telling what he has done or said to them in private but I expect it was pretty blunt with express details about the consequences to those who choose to sin in that area of responsibility, ever. That is where Benedict's rotwieler side will kick in.
In listening to him as he talks about this sinfulness of those priests who abused their trust, I began to think of the laity who are equally sinful by their promotion and tolerance of the pornography, whatever form it takes, America seems to be swimming in. I know of more than one family that has been destroyed by the husband who has linked himself to computer pornography sites and who, as a consequence, has been led to do as bad or worse than the priests we hear about. We hear the terms soft porn, or hard porn, as if there is really any difference. One being somehow benign and the other for stronger persons. As we think, so we are. Maybe on at least an individual basis, Pope Benedict will have caused many who heard him to leave their sexual destructiveness, confess their sins and realign their spiritual, as well as physical lives on a productive and positive path.

[The Great RJ]

Pope Benedict's acknowledgment of this abuse and announcing a no tolerance policy is a sharp contrast to the US Catholic bishops who not only knew of the abuse for decades, but did little or nothing to stop it and in some cases even covered it up.

[TChad]

Can anyone here point me to a specific statement by the pope that acknowledges that the American Catholic sex abuse scandal involved pederasts, homosexual priests who assaulted adolescent boys, and not pedophiles? The pope talked about pedophilia as though that were the main problem, when in fact it was a small part of the scandal. Surely in a matter of such grave importance to the church he would choose his words very carefully.

[kellynla]

You are correct. But to be fair, there was a small percentage of pedophilia. However the overwhelming majority of the assaults were attributed to teenage boys. I dug up the numbers a week or so ago and there was an independent study done on the number of sexual assaults in the Catholic Church between 1950 and 2001 and 78% involved homosexuals.
If I have time today I'll see if I can find the research again. I don't know but that maybe the pope doesn't want to alienate all the homosexuals who like the heterosexuals who are celibate and the Church may be doesn't know how to handle that situation...after all, the number of sexual assaults over fifty years involved about 4% of ALL the priests.

[kellynla]

“Age of the victims:

Almost 6% were 7 years of age or younger.

16% were 8,9 or 10 years old.

78% were 11 to 17 years old. “

INDEPENDENT SURVEY OF SEXUALLY ABUSIVE ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex20.htm

10 Myths About Priestly Pedophilia
http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/hudson/tenmyths.html

Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse
http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/DaileyHomosexualAbuse.htm

[kellynla]

“Number of priests who served during the interval (1950-2002): 110,000.

Number of priests alleged to have abused children: 4,450.

Percentage of abusive priests: 4.0% “
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex20.htm

[TChad]

I don't know but that maybe the pope doesn't want to alienate all the homosexuals

So he chose to alienate those of us who object to homosexual rape of male adolescents instead? Really?

So where is the pope's condemnation of 80% of the abuse? He must have said something about it, right? I cannot quite believe this.

[the invisib1e hand]

tampa “bay” is satan’s winter home, in case anyone was wondering.

[kellynla]

“So he chose to alienate those of us who object to homosexual rape of male adolescents instead? Really?

So where is the pope’s condemnation of 80% of the abuse? He must have said something about it, right? I cannot quite believe this.”

Hey, I don’t know...
gezzzzzzzzzzzzz

[big'ol_freeper]