Posted on 03/22/2010 6:21:30 AM PDT by Gamecock
Pope Benedict's weekend apology to Ireland went further than any other papal statement on child-sex abuse by priests, but still fell too short for many victims of the scandals shaking the Catholic Church across Europe.
Following are details of some of the major abuse scandals in various countries:
SWITZERLAND: The Swiss Catholic Church is investigating allegations of abuse by clergy. The Diocese of Chur, in eastern Switzerland, said Saturday it was investigating about 10 complaints. The abbot of a monastery in the diocese said at least three of the 77 monks at Einsiedeln had committed acts of abuse since he took up office in December 2001, but no legal action had been taken.
NETHERLANDS: More than 200 Catholics have reported abuse after Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper NRC Handelsblad revealed that three priests from the Salesian order abused pupils decades ago at a boarding school. The church there has set up an independent inquiry headed by a Protestant politician.
GERMANY: A Jesuit high school in Berlin reported cases of sexual abuse there in January, starting a series of revelations at other Catholic boarding schools and non-religious schools.
- The Regensburg diocese admitted physical and sexual abuse cases at a boarding school for its famous Domspatzen (cathedral sparrows) boys choir. Its director, Pope Benedict's brother, Rev. Georg Ratzinger, admitted to slapping boys to discipline them but denied knowledge of sexual abuse. The ensuing wave of abuse charges from previously silent victims has since reached about 250.
IRELAND: In April 2002, Bishop Brendan Comiskey of Ferns resigned over his handling of charges against a priest who committed suicide in 1999 while facing 66 charges of abuse.
- May 2009 - The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse issued a five-volume report that took nine years to compile. It said priests beat and raped children during decades of abuse in Catholic-run institutions.
- Nov. 2009 - The Murphy report, a government-commissioned inquiry into abuse in Dublin from 1975 to 2004 said church authorities covered up widespread cases of child sexual abuse until the mid-1990s.
- Dec. 2009 - After meeting two Irish church leaders, Pope Benedict said he shared the "outrage, betrayal and shame" over the scandal in Ireland.
- Feb. 2010 - Benedict held crisis talks with 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican. The bishops promised him they were committed to cooperating with authorities. Four bishops have offered their resignations and the pope has so far accepted one.
UNITED STATES: June 2002 - The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed on a new policy that would forbid pedophile priests from ever again acting as clerics - but not necessarily expel them from the priesthood.
BRITAIN: July 2000 - London Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor acknowledged making a mistake in a previous post in the 1980s by allowing a pedophile priest to continue working. The priest was jailed in 1997 for abusing nine boys over a 20-year period.
AUSTRIA: July 2004 - Austrian News magazine Profil ran pictures of priests kissing and groping seminarians at a Catholic seminary in the St. Poelten diocese.
AUSTRALIA: July 2008 - On a visit to Australia, Pope Benedict apologized for sexual abuse by clergy. At that time there had been 107 convictions for sexual abuse in the church there.
MEXICO: March 2009 - Pope Benedict ordered an inquiry into the Legionaries of Christ priestly order whose founder was discovered to be a sexual molester. In 2006, the pope told the founder, Father Marcial Maciel, to retire to a life of "prayer and penitence". Maciel died in 2008. His order acknowledged in 2009 that he had fathered at least one child with a mistress.
CANADA: Oct. 2009 - Bishop Raymond Lahey of Antigonish, N.S., was charged with possession and importation of child pornography. Earlier that year, he had overseen a $13-million settlement with clerical abuse victims in the Antigonish diocese in a case dating back to 1950.
TOOOOO TRUE.
TOOOOO SADLY TRUE.
I wonder . . . what causes so many to —sort of— jump fence and become liberal idiots . . .
You're looking at the end result - the mail gets delivered. If something were to change internally, and the mail would get delivered faster, you wouldn't know why because you're not on the inside - you don't see any of the internal workings. For the seminary, this is the process of the screening, acceptance, and formation of Seminarians; you won't see that from the outside. If you are interested in reading about the formation of Catholic Seminarians, I would recommend reading the document Pastores Dabo Vobis or the USCCB's Program for Priestly Formation.
The "screenings" obviously aren't very rigorous or there wouldn't be this world-wide, decades-old (centuries) pedophilia scandal within the Roman Catholic church.
Some of the screenings that were done before were lacking - some combination of being not strong enough, not enforced well enough (for example, homosexuals have consistently been banned from seminaries - yet most of the abusers are homosexual - thus they were admitted when they should not have been).
The Screenings have only recently become as rigorous as they are. Our understanding of the problem has changed too - we know that it's not only a spiritual problem but also a psychological one - and it's only been more recently still that we know that many of the perpetrators won't be cured - even thirty years ago, we were still listening to the psychologists who were claiming that pedophila/ephebophila can be cured, and at the time that was the prevailing opinion within the medical community.
We won't see the fruits of the most recent strengthening of the screenings and seminary formation for some time - the seminarians who were first accepted under the new rules are only now being ordained. To judge the new screening and formation processes by the current scandals (the fruits of the old system) is to compare apples and oranges.
If you're a seminarian, then "good luck." You'll need it.
Thank you... it's been a fulfilling but also challenging journey thus far. Things like this make it no easier. God Bless you and yours.
A nice, gentlemanly reply. It speaks well for you.
:-)
May God bless you in your seminary years and lead you on to ordination. You are in my prayers.
Pax Christi
ROE
As usual, there is no acknowledgment of error in your post. You left off some essential quotations marks and it appears to me to be intentional, so as to make it look more authoratative than what it was - a quote from a lawyer.
I’ll toss out corrections whenever I find the time, and I usually have corrections for your posts, because they so often lack essential information or contain misinterpretations or outright lies about Catholics, about priests, about the pope, and about doctrine. They’re nothing if not consistent. They also repeat over and over the same thing, as if no corrections or clarifications had ever been given. An endless carnival wheel, with garish colors. I never did like clowns anyway.
authoritative
In addition to the headline, you consistently seem to miss that there is no bar to parallel civil action in these cases. The secrecy has been explained multiple times as being concerned with confidentiality, not unlike grand jury proceedings, I would imagine.
Again:
These documents deal with the Church's internal judicial acts, at the canonical level. Therefore they do not deal with the accusations and the provisions of the civil courts of states, which must be carried out according to their own laws. Whoever has addressed or addresses the ecclesiastical court can also address the civil court, to denounce similar crimes. Therefore the action of the Church is not aimed at retracting these crimes from the jurisdiction of the state and keeping them hidden.
Your post is gibberish.
You seem like a pleasant person and I’ve enjoyed talking with you. But to aspire to be “another Christ,” no matter how the words are danced around, does not seem to be a worthwhile goal for any young man.
Since I was describing your posts, I find that rather hilarious.
Yes, your description of my posts is pretty funny; downright loony.
Here's the real question being side-stepped by RC apologists...
Is CRIMEN SOLLICITATIONIS still in effect?
Is CRIMEN SOLLICITATIONIS still in effect?
What a joke. Thanks for providing a good example of your repetitious accusations. It wasn't side-stepped at all. I said TO YOU, back on .March 2:
Strike one. Crimen Sollicitationis was written by Cardinal Ottaviani in 1962. As of 2001, it is no longer in effect, being replaced by Pope John Paul II's Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela. Cardinal Raztinger authored De delictis gravioribus in 2001. It says nothing about victim secrecy.
Here is further information for you. Please keep it handy for further reference:
3. Crimen Sollicitationis remained in effect until 2001 when the Vatican published a new set of procedures for prosecuting especially grave canonical crimes, including certain sexual crimes committed by the clergy. Two official documents were issued. The first was an apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, known by its Latin title Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, by which the actual norms were promulgated. This letter, dated April 30, 2001, was followed on May 18, 2001 by an official document that set forth the norms. This latter document was signed by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both documents refer to certain serious canonical crimes and among those is sexual abuse by clerics. These documents represent revised procedures to be used by Bishops and major religious superiors in response to allegations of clergy sexual abuse.
I hope you’re not holding your breath.
I’d be dead already.
Yes and there are tons of Protestants who condemn Catholics to Hell because of their doctrinal beliefs.
I am a Catholic married for 41 years to a Protestant we go to a non denominational charismatic church, why? because neither of our churches make God relevant to us like the one we go to now.
I don’t think doctrine other than the belief that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, that he died for my sins on the cross, and that he resurrected, sits on the right hand of the Father. He was the Lamb of God. He took away the sins of the world. When I go to heaven, it’ll be because of Him, not me. I think people get to involved in “doctrine”. It’s what divides us, as Christians.
Whether a person goes to Heaven or Hell is up to them and God. Human beings don’t have the power to send any one to Heaven or Hell. They can make your life a heaven or a hell, but they certainly can’t send you there.
Don’t you think that God is a whole lot wiser than all of us. “The wisdom of man is as foolishness to God.”
Just show me from Ratzinger's letter where he rescinded Crimen Sollicitationis.
Distorting the theology of the Catholic Church time and time again after countless times being corrected isn't a worthwhile goal of any person.
At approximately the same time, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, through an ad hoc commission established, devoted itself to a diligent study of the canons on delicts both of the Code of Canon Law and the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches in order to determine "more grave delicts both against morals and in the celebration of the sacraments" and in order to make special procedural norms "to declare or impose canonical sanctions," because the instruction Crimen Sollicitationis, issued by the supreme sacred Congregation of the Holy Office on March 16, 1962,(3) in force until now,, was to be reviewed when the new canonical codes were promulgated.
It wasn't, as much as some RC apologists would like it to have been so spare me the endless verbage ducking the question.
Unless you can prove where I ducked the question, you really ought to drop the red herring.
The convenient phrase "until now" seems to be attempting to mark some point in time when Crimen Sollicitationis is supplanted by...by...NOTHING
Nothing has changed, according to this letter. All it does is reiterate that the code of silence must be enforced for 10 years after the child has reached his 18th birthday. That means if the child had been abused at the age of seven, secrecy upon threat of excommunication was invoked for 21 more years!
This is the way Rome operates. Talk around an issue, say not much of anything, and then declare whatever conclusion they want.
Ratzinger's letter is shown here.
Anyone who wants to read this very short letter clearly can see the majority of the letter doesn't even discuss Crimen Sollicitationis. As I asked, show me where this letter says Crimen Sollicitationis has been rescinded.
It doesn't because it hasn't.
"...Simply stated, the Catholic priest is another Christ. Through his ordination he has been granted the amazing gift of being a channel of divine grace for the eternal salvation of those he come into contact with — both in his official ministry and in his personal life..."
Do Roman Catholics not read the Bible or do they just not understand the Bible?
For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect." -- Mark 13:21-22
"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." -- Mark 10:18"And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not:
We are commanded to become Christ-like; not Christ Himself. Christ dwells within us. He is not us. We are mortal; He is divine.
I should accept your own personal interpretation, you who can't even correctly post a headline without twisting its meaning, and not admit what you did? Nah.
I've given you three sources which show that it is no longer in force. That's far more time than you deserved.
Talk around an issue, say not much of anything, and then declare whatever conclusion they want.
LOLOL It is amazing how often people are guilty of the very things about which they accuse others...
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