by Eric Convey
Friday, August 8, 2003
A Vatican document heralded recently as a blueprint for shrouding clergy sexual abuse in secrecy was in fact a narrow set of instructions for disciplining priests who used the confessional to solicit sex, canon lawyers said yesterday.
As such, several experts in church law said, the document will provide little fodder for plaintiffs' attorneys seeking to use it as proof that the Vatican ran a broad cover-up scheme to protect priests who molested children.
``I don't think it has anything to do with the sexual misconduct scandal,'' said Edward O'Flaherty, a Jesuit priest and canon lawyer based in Boston.
The 1962 document, reports of which surfaced in Massachusetts newspapers last week, prescribes stiff penalties for priests who misuse the confessional and for lay Catholics who fail to report such abuse.
Under church law, a priest who uses the confessional to seek sex from anyone - child or adult - is excommunicated.
``It's a question of sacramental practice,'' O'Flaherty said. ``Any person is free to go to the police or anyone else they want. It's a question of how the church handles the abuse of a sacrament.''
The document was presented to Massachusetts law enforcement officials late last month by civil lawyers Daniel Shea and Carmen Durso.
Shea also gave copies to media, including the Boston Herald.
An influential canonist speaking on condition of anonymity said the document ``is not the smoking gun that some civil lawyers want to make it.''
Several others noted that it never mentions dealing with civil authorities - either bringing abuse to their attention or hiding it from them.
Durso said he disagrees with canonists who consider the document a narrow description of solicitation in the confessional.
But even if they're right, he said, ``it doesn't make any difference. The pedophile priests regularly used all of the tools available to them, which included the rites of the church, the sacraments, all of the things that kids are taught to respect.'' The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer with extensive archives of church documents who provided the 1962 letter to Shea, also questioned yesterday whether it would prove to be useful in civil cases.
``Basically that document is about solicitation in the confessional,'' said Doyle, who has publicly criticized the church hierarchy for secrecy. ``(But) I think it's a good historical document and it illustrates the mindset of the Vatican in dealing with these problems.
``I still think that it's unfair to characterize that document as it has been,'' he said.
It had to be said. CBS can try to hoodwink all of the people all of the time, if they want to. It's rather curiously ironic that they seem to be unfamiliar with the fact that some spiritually sensitive Catholics in a state of grace can read souls and can tell when someone is lying. We're not fooled by their power games. As is often the case in the realm of the Big Lie, Satan and his minions end up biting their own tails.
If the secular liberal media were interested in exposing sex crimes, we would be hearing about the non-Catholic sodomites who have raped and molested minors. They would investigate NAMBLA and the subculture of underage prostitutes. In fact, if they were so interested, CBS would have pursued the rape allegations against their boy, Bill Clinton. CBS is as guilty of covering up sex crimes. So are the Democrats. The truth is they want sodomy and perversion to be promoted within the Church (for whatever peculiar reason along with the rest of their weird anti-Christian ideological agenda). Apparently, they are only interested in covering sex crimes that can be linked with the Catholic Church. Same old story. The Church is the target of manipulation by hostile elements from OUTSIDE of the Church.
How many (non-Catholic-linked) stories did CBS run last year about teenage prostitutes and young women in the pornography industry who end their lives by suicide? How many times do they run the names and photos of the movers and shakers in LA's and NY's sleazy pornography industry? With about as much vigilance as they delivered for the Clinton rape allegations. This is high-weirdness hypocrisy at its liberal worst.