[Catholic Caucus] Exclusive Excerpt from ‘The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy’

CNS News.com ^ | April 17, 2018 | Henry Sire

[ebb tide]

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from the book “The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story of the Francis Papacy.”

What Happened to “Zero Tolerance” for Clerical Sexual Offenders?

The phenomenon of widespread homosexuality among clergy and bishops had been public knowledge since at least 2001, when the Boston Globe began a series of exposés on the clergy sex abuse scandals. The John Jay Report, an investigation commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, published in 2004, found that more than 80 percent of the victims of clergy sexual abuse had been adolescent males.  Reports from dioceses around the world—including national bishops’ conferences in Australia, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the Philippines, India, and most of Europe—found similar results.

The John Jay Report covered the period from 1950 to 2002 and found the complaints had peaked at a period coinciding with the vogue for ignoring or re-writing seminary admission guidelines to allow homosexuals to study and be ordained as priests—the 1960s to the 1980s—a period that can be likened to the Catholic Church’s own internal Sexual Revolution. The Vatican itself was not immune to this global wave of sexual permissiveness. The broad parameters of the problem became clear in 2012 with the “Vatileaks” scandal that revealed an extensive and well-funded homosexual network operating out of the Curia, with Curial officials approving the use of Vatican-owned properties in Rome as homosexual brothels aimed at priestly clientele.

Despite attempts by the secular press to pin the blame retroactively on Pope Benedict, the records show that the former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had undertaken significant and effective reforms, described in the United States as a “zero tolerance policy.” Sexual abuse of minors, at least in 2001, was still a subject capable of arousing outrage among the public, and the demands for reform were loud. But even then, the homosexual lobby, had made enormous strides in image management. The secular media collaborated, pinning the blame on sinister and creepy “clergy paedophiles,” as distinguished from fresh-scrubbed and morally acceptable homosexual priests, while ignoring that the homosexual lobby favoured lowering the legal age of consent to fourteen, the age preferred by homosexual clergy abusers.  These larger cultural shifts, and the reality inside the Vatican, perhaps explain why Pope Benedict’s reforms—which included a ban on men with homosexual tendencies from the priesthood —have availed so little, even before they were subverted by his successor.

According to data presented by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the UN Human Rights Commission in January 2014, Benedict XVI had defrocked or suspended more than eight hundred priests for past sexual abuse between 2009 and 2012. These included the notorious Fr. Marcial Maciel, the influential founder of the Legionaries of Christ who under the previous pope had enjoyed immunity from investigation. In 2011, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent a letter to the world’s bishops’ conferences, asking them to adopt stringent guidelines on how to respond to allegations of sexual abuse. The guidelines required bishops to make every effort to protect minors, assist victims, collaborate with civil authorities, and forward all new cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith so that it could take action. In a March 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland’s Catholics, Benedict criticized the lax application of the Church’s laws and said the bishops’ failures had “seriously undermined” their “credibility and effectiveness.” He noted a “misguided tendency” against applying canonical punishments that he said was due to “misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council.”

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Benedict XVI had defrocked or suspended more than eight hundred priests for past sexual abuse between 2009 and 2012."

"Archbishop Miguel Maury Buendia, who said, “This Pope [Benedict] has removed two or three bishops per month throughout the world.... There have been two or three instances in which they said no, and so the Pope simply removed them.”

I miss Benedict XVI. He sure knew how to pope.