Anti-Catholicism and the Times
"Anti-Catholicism," said writer Peter Viereck, "is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual." It is "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people," said Arthur Schlesinger Sr.
If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling "Resign!" at Pope Benedict XVI.
To American Catholics, the story of pedophile priests engaged in criminal abuse of children, of pervert priests seducing boys, is unfortunately all too familiar. That some bishops covered up for pedophiles and seducers and enabled corrupt clergy to continue to prey on boys was equally disgraceful.
But to American Catholics, this is an old story. The priests have been defrocked, some sent to prison, like John Geoghan, who was strangled in his cell. Bishops have been removed. "Zero tolerance" has been policy for a decade.
Pope Benedict came to America to apologize for what these men did. And no one has been more aggressive in rooting out what he calls the "filth" in the church. And as the recent scandals have hit Ireland and Germany, why the attack on the pope here in America?
Answer: The New York Times is conducting a vendetta against this traditionalist pope in news stories, editorials and columns.
"Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys," blared the headline over a Laurie Goodstein story that began thus:
"Top Vatican officials—including the future Pope Benedict XVI—did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys . . .
"In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee's archbishop at that time."
The facts:
That diabolical priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, was assigned to St. John's School for the Deaf in 1950, before Joseph Ratzinger was even ordained.
Reports of his abuse of the deaf children surfaced in the 1950s. But, under three archbishops, nothing was done. Police and prosecutors were alerted by parents of the boys. Nothing was done.
Weakland, who became archbishop in 1977, did not write to Rome until 1996.
And as John Allen of National Catholic Reporter noted last week, Cardinal Ratzinger "did not have any direct responsibility for managing the overall Vatican response to the crisis until 2001. . . . Prior to 2001, Ratzinger had nothing personally to do with the vast majority of sex abuse cases, even the small percentage which wound up in Rome."
By the time Cardinal Ratzinger was commissioned by John Paul II to clean out the stable, Murphy had been dead for three years.
Yet here is Times columnist Maureen Dowd's summation of the case:
"Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed 'God's Rotweiler,' when he was the church's enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys."
In Goodstein's piece, Weakland is a prelate who acted too slowly. The controversy over his clouded departure from the Milwaukee archdiocese is mentioned and passed over at the bottom of the story. It belonged higher.
For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in "deep love" with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover's mouth shut about their squalid affair.
According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.
When one of Effinger's victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.
Dreher describes Weakland's tenure thus:
"He directed Catholic schools . . . to teach kids how to use condoms as part of AIDS education and approved a graphic sex-education program for parochial-school kids that taught 'there is no right and wrong' on the issues of abortion, contraception and premarital sex. He has advocated for gay rights and women's ordination, bitterly attacked Pope John Paul II, denounced pro-lifers as 'fundamentalist' and declared that one could be both pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing."
Speaking of sex-abuse victims in 1988, Weakland was quoted: "Not all adolescent victims are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often streetwise."
Just the kind of priest the Times loves, and just the kind of source on whom the Times relies when savaging the pope and bashing the church.
As the Catholic League's Bill Donahue relates, 80 percent of the victims of priestly abuse have been males and "most of the molesters gays."
And as the Times' Richard Berke blurted to the Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association 10 years ago, often, "three-quarters of the people deciding what's on the front page are not-so-closeted homosexuals."
Is there perhaps a conflict of interest at The New York Times, when covering a traditionalist Catholic pope?
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I basically agree with this. The NYT has a Catholic problem. On the other hand, I am disturbed to see, in the latest edition of the Times, an article about an Indian priest who allegedly abused two girls when he served in a Minnesota diocese. I admit I scoffed when I saw the headline--it seemed like the Times was trying to silence the homosexual-pedophile issue, which is far and away the largest problem. But the article raises new doubts in my mind about the Vatican's response to sexual abuse. The local Minnesota bishop repeatedly urged his higher-ups to do something about the priest then in India, and basically the Vatican passed the buck (I almost said "stonewalled"), citing traditional canon law which gives the descretion to the local bishop. This is too passive a response. The Vatican should examine the seriousness of the allegations and, if they are not unbelievable on their face should have the priest extradited to Minnesota.
I am an adult convert to Catholicism, so I am not a "critic" of the Church. But the Vatican has not, in my view, done nearly enough. Pope Benedict--whose "The Ratzinger Report" played a big role in my decision to become a Catholic--needs to act with more urgency and to more strongly condemn criminal priests--the vast majority of whom are homosexuals, but some are not. If this means criticizing some of the "reforms" of Vatican II, so be it.
"...citing traditional canon law which gives the descretion (sic) to the local bishop..."
This must be per subsidiarity. I see a lesson there in comparing it to our own federalist system. By keeping to the tradition of having the lowest levels of church governance that should be able to handle a problem, have the responsibility for handling that problem, the church protects itself. The whole Church won't get taken down. The Pope won't be liable. In addition, insisting on lower-level responsibility, must tend to reduce the number of problems the upper levels must deal with. Also, by that same insistence, the Church makes the most of the gifts of those lower levels. For instance, was there any doubt that the lower level Bishops had or should have had the moral courage and intelligence to protect their flock? Compare to our government, our constitution small 'c.' Instead of just some counties or states going bankrupt, the whole thing might capsize. A stretch of a comparison, and I'm sure I've left some things out, but I'm sure there's a lesson for America in that canon law tradition.
Mr. Kenny,
This is what Christians get for spitting at "pagans" while simultaneously declaring; sicut Iudaeis non, spiritually we are Semites, the Jews are our Elder Brothers, etc. etc. etc. Not to mention all that "dialogue" and "Ecumenism" and apologies for "anti-Semitism" and trips to Synagogues and cute little prayer notes inserted in the cracks of the "Wailing Wall."
On the bright side, with this distraction occupying them, maybe the Dervishes might (temporarily) stop coquetting with Moslems. Maybe.
Talk about pornography! Spiritual Semites indeed!
@#4 Evidently the Ides of March are still upon us and this time in the form of one sick lizard standing athwart St. Paul, St. Augustine, Gregory the Great and the history of our ages. The biggest problem for our times as Pat Buchanan has famously phrased it (and I will paraphrase it), "The problem is not too many Jews,or Pagans, but too few Christians." Dervishes indeed!! Who imitate the poor man Christ?
Re: homosexual issue, conservatives need to be careful on this one, as our opponents will go to any lengths to silence us without debate and to shut the ears of potential listeners. Nor should we imagine they are above playing off traditional prejudice and bigotry to work against us. The safest bet is to avoid all polemics and state the cold hard facts over and over, and with as much precision as possible.
Now, on pædophilia, it is true that a disproportionate number of molestations are male-on-male, but homosexuals insist there is no connection between pædophilia per se and homosexuality. In this they might have a point: physiologically the differences between prepubescent males and females is quite limited. However, homosexuals are wise to prefer using the term "pædophilia" if, as this writer suspects, it is their intention to distract attention away from pederasty: sex between adult men and adolescent boys or very young adult males.
Why is this important? Because the link between homosexuality and pederasty is much, much more difficult to deny. Historically, societies that tolerated homosexual contact preferred pederasty to the "Making Love" or "Brokeback Mountain" affair, which as far as I know has been considered perverse everywhere and at all times except our own. Culturally and socially, the two concepts have been closely linked throughout history and in some languages the words for the two are used almost interchangably. The UN umbrella association for GLBTQ rights only expelled the North American Man-Boy Love Association in the 1970's--only a few years after the movement arose with the express purpose of "normalising" homosexual behaviour as an "alternate lifestyle" to the traditional man-woman couple in the eyes of the public.
These are simply the facts. Not all or these days perhaps not even most [avowed] homosexual men prefer young boys to men their own age or to older males, but the kind of sympathy chronicled here is fairly archetypical. Homosexuals, if they wish to make good of their admittedly pitiable situation, would do well to stop pretending there is not a deep problem.
In an article for a Sydney-based magazine that was written – indeed was published – well before the latest NYT lynching-bee, I wrote: "Maria Monk has not died, but merely moved to a ritzier address, where she maintains a blatant ménage à trois with Dan Brown and Christopher Hitchens." Little did I know how extra a weight of truth my words would come to acquire.
On another magazine’s comments blog, someone wrote (if memory serves me) the following words: "Wake me up when the NYT starts whining about pedophile imams and pedophile atheists." Couldn't put it better myself, particularly in view of Daniel Cohn-Bendit's basing a pagan political career on his self-confessed kiddy-fiddling. As for Britain's Peter Tatchell and Harriet Harman ...
Happily, every self-identifying Jew I have ever met under the age of 50 seems disgusted with the AIPAC racket. I think it's a generational thing: fanboys of Podhoretz and Foxman tend to be septuagenarian or octogenarian, while younger Jewish intellectuals of the Leon Hadar type - real scholars, in other words - have no guilt feelings about putting the boot into Bibi N and such.
Just what you would expect from the NY Times, the paper of Walter Duranty, Jayson Blair, Judith Miller, and the team that smeared the Duke lacrosse players. The Internet can't kill off the NYT quickly enough.
#2 - How can the Vatican have a priest extradited from India to Minnesota? The Church cannot perform the functions of the state and if a crime is suspected, extradition is up to the authorities of Minnesota, the US and India. All the Church can do is carry out an ecclesiastical investigation with a possible Church trial and defrocking if the priest is found guilty.
#9--I don't know my canon law! The point is that the Church should work more closely with the civil authorities to identify and punish pedophile priests. That would be a good sign that the Church is indeed taking the problem seriously. The Church must create an institutional framework for making that happen, even if it means fewer working priests in an era of a severe shortage of priests. Beyond this, the Church needs to reassess some of the facets of Vatican II, which essentially caused both the current scandal and the holy orders-deficit.
#3--Subsidiarity should not be the last refuge of a scoundrel. If pedophiliac priests harm individuals as well as the integrity of the priesthood, the solution must come from the top--the Vatican. And anyway, the U.S. and the Vatican are on a different footing with respect to subsidiarity. The U.S. is properly (and was originally) a confederationist or decentralized regime, whereas the Catholic Church, unlike the protestant churches, is properly a centralized entity.
Anyone who really doubts the seriousness of this problem should read (or try to - parts were so horrifying that I couldn't get through the whole thing) the book Sacrilege by Leon Podles, an orthodox Catholic. The problem is not the relatively small number of pedophile or pederast priests (probably no greater than in other organizations, I agree) but the large number of bishops who believed the proper respsonse was therapy and movement to another parish (if even that) rather defrocking and reporting to the civil authorities for prosecution. Blaming it all on the Jews may be fun for some but is not reality.
Has Chronicles ever printed anything on the issue of homosexuality? In particular, what interests me is how it has gone from a mental disease to a protected class in just a mere 40 years.
Mr. Maxwell,
"In particular, what interests me is how it has gone from a mental disease to a protected class in just a mere 40 years."
Your question reminded me of the book of the late psychiatrist and pioneer of psycholgical health, Karl Menninger (and to a certain extent, Freud)who asked, "Whatever happened to sin?" He and his hospital eventually parted ways over recognizing a perversion that leads to death and destruction and a pyschological propensity that can be pruned like a fruitful tree to renew life.
One of the first serious cases I tried as a young lawyer was a molestation case in which I either spoke with or read a few of the leading psychiatrists of the time who educated me on the degress of "rehabilitation" potential of various types of molesters. This is all a very interesting field of study and other than conversations with the editors of Chronicles, I have never seen it addressed very well at all except in the ancient teachings and traditions of our Faith. Puritanism brought destruction everywhere it gained ground but never so much as in its odius application of the sixth commandment to almost every sphere of cultural life. Bill Clinton may have been a disgrace to the office of the Presidency but to the ordinary Christian of the last two thousand years his sex life would have been the lessor fault than his public violations of the five prior commandments. St. Augustine may have sinned out of pagan ignorance, Bill Clinton may have sinned out of weakness or malice. The really strange thing to consider is we live in an age that doesn't recognize sin at all except the ones the Catholic Church commits. T'is very strange!!
@ 13
Yes, thats what I figured. When a disorder is removed from the list of disorders not by careful research but instead by political lobbying it leads me to believe that is still in reality - a disorder; it just now contradicts the modern gnostic religion.
From Mr Kabala @11: 'The problem is not the relatively small number of pedophile or pederast priests (probably no greater than in other organizations, I agree) but the large number of bishops who believed the proper respsonse was therapy and movement to another parish (if even that) rather defrocking and reporting to the civil authorities for prosecution.'
So the real internal problem, at the root, is not the tiny number of molestations percentage-wise, it is that so many bishops have imbibed modernism and the clinical-therapeutic mentality.
@10: We as lay folk are however at the bottom of the hierarchy so far as the Catholic Church is concerned. First of all, the Pope has a flock of a billion to look after and if responsibilities were not delegated for even serious matters there would simply be nothing doing. Second, reporting a confrère to civil authorities is a serious matter. The Church fought hard for a separate sphere of authority and for clerical immunity in the Middle Ages and priests have been martyred for refusing to break the seal of confession. I personally find it distressing that she should be expected to flip on this mentality even by her own rightfully outraged children.
That said, the situation is indeed grave and needs to be addressed at the root. Selective auditing of some choice seminaries for their screening of candidates would definitely be in line, if only to scare the others into compliance with long-existing rules about the moral and psychological condition of those with potential vocations. The other solution, in my humble opinion, is to remind all bishops and canons of their grave obligations to protect those under their tutelege. The lifelong damaging effects of sexual molestation should be seconded only to the grave effects of breaking the seal of confession. This latter entrains automatic excommunication reserved only to the Pope--and although this only means the Pope needs to sign an approval for absolution it entrains a bureaucratic procedure that all but ensures the proper procedure will be followed; specifically, a guilty priest is never again allowed to hear confessions and perhaps banished to a monestary.
A priest who molests a child should, where possible (if it becomes possible anywhere in the future because confessional states will have returned), be prosecuted in an ecclesiastical tribunal. Confessors should be warned of a grave obligation to refuse absolution to any molester--lay or otherwise--who does not promise to give himself up. Bishops should be placed under obligation to cooperate if approached by civil authorities but in my opinion those clamouring for authorities to be alerted with every rumour sounded are following the Day Care Abuse hysteria wave from the 1980's and demanding an inhumanly tyrannical obligation, whether for clerics or for others. Just my opinion.
"it is that so many bishops have imbibed modernism and the clinical-therapeutic mentality."
Even if they had imbibed it, the therapeutic mentality for pedophiles is that there is not any therapy that really works to "cure" a man who molests young boys. The recidivism for this type of act is very very high. Much lower for men who molest young girls. But I don't want to defend the therapeutic mentality as a substitue for spiritual reality-- there was a reason that Christ revealed only prayer and fasting as a remedy for certain demons.
"Confessors should be warned of a grave obligation to refuse absolution to any molester . . . who does not promise to give himself up."
Yes. I hope it is already being done.
Putative day care abuse is different in one key respect from sexual molestation. Only the sickest perverts would abuse little children under their care (and by "abuse" I do not mean corporal punishment). There are very few such people--too few to ordinarily believe someone is guilty of the allegations of that kind of abuse. Comparatively common is the physical attraction of an adult to pubescent "children" and the temptation to take advantage of minors under one's tutelage. That is why allegations of sexual abuse by priests can readily be believed--especially when the victims are boys and the priests are homosexuals. The question is how to best prevent abuse and identify culprits. The Church is widely perceived as not having a good record on this score, and I agree with that perception.
For a good example of good Catholics being in denial about the problem of pedophile priests, and about the threat to the integrity of the Catholic Church, see Bishop James Conley's blog piece at the First Things website. ("In Defense of the Pope," April 8.)
Thank you for the piece on Bishop Conley. I think that illustrates what I was talking about, actually, especially this part:
But no other community or institution has examined itself on this painful issue as rigorously as the Catholic Church. No other group has put into place zero tolerance policies for sexual abuse and created safe environment programs like the Catholic Church in America, to the point where the Church is one of the most secure environments anywhere for children and young people.
Think about this critically for a moment. Because of top-down "zero-tolerance" fist-pounding, the Catholic Church "is one of the most secure environments anywhere for children and young people."
Suppose I had put it this way: "Because of top-down zero-tolerance fist-pounding, the United States is one of the most drug-free environments in the world for children and young people."
The problem should now be very clear.
Most Chronicles readers understand that the War on Drugs has done nothing to root out the main cause of substance abuse in America: bored or disaffected youths from broken or dysfunctional families exploited by ethnic criminals (white or otherwise) who profit from a soil that has promised everything to the deracinated. Likewise, we should also understand the root problem of this Church scandal is a serious misunderstanding and underestimation of sexual perversion, which, as Robert hints, is one of the many bitter fruits of Calvinism, Jansenism and Victorianism, as well as their libertine afterglows. I know the words "Society of Saint Pius X" and "Mgr Marcel Lefebvre" are practically forbidden on "neutral" ground (full confession: I am not a "Conciliar Catholic" and my confessor is a SSPX priest), but as early as June 2002, Fr. Scott had all the points you discuss nailed and a very good diagnostic of the root problem and what exactly needs to be done about it:
http://www.sspx.org/District_Superiors_Ltrs/2002_ds_ltrs/june_2002_ds_ltr.htm
Of note:
"However, the astonishing number and frequency of cases that continue to come to light is clearly the sign of an extremely grave disorder... There can be no other explanation than a giant cover up operation."
"[B]efore Vatican II a priest committing such a crime had to be suspended from all priestly duties and declared as publicly immoral, and in more serious cases to be deposed from the priesthood (Canon 2359,§2)."
"'Attention was drawn to the fact that almost all the cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia.' Pederasty is the name given to this particular perversion..."
"Many authors who have commented on the proportion of homosexual men in the 'Catholic' priesthood in the U.S. have come up with numbers between 30-60 % of all priests, and rather at the higher level when it comes to young priests. They are not all 'active,' but they are all necessarily disposed towards this kind of perverse behavior... they will continue to protect and cover up for their perverse orientation."
"There is no effort to exclude homosexuals from the seminary, even in the wake of the present crisis, and a recent article on Mundelein, the largest Seminary in the U.S., pointed out that despite this scandal their doors are open to homosexuals, provided that they are not 'active.'"
Bottom line: I am not denying that there is a very serious problem going on and that stonewalling was a part of it. I am, however, reluctant to prescribe as the solution the systematic throwing of any and all suspects accused from any and all angles to the wolves of civil authority. That is going from one bad move to another and it goes against what the Church stands for. Moreover, we have discussed on these forums in just what consists American criminal proceedings these days.
“Confessors should be warned of a grave obligation to refuse absolution to any molester . . . who does not promise to give himself up.”
Is there in fact such an obligation - either morally or in canon law? I have never heard it taught that there is. And it is certainly unclear why such an obligation should exist in the case of molestation and not in the case of any other crime subject to civil law - murder, for example. In 16 years of Catholic education and much study since, I have only heard of an obligation to have a firm purpose not to sin again as a condition of absolution. Also, there is an obligation to compensate for injury to another person, if possible, but priests I have heard speak on the subject say that this does not include an obligation for the penitent to expose himself to civil penalties or other retaliation. Making absolution conditional on turning oneself in to civil authorities, essentially turns the confessors into police agents and would simply result in no one ever confessing a crime in the confessional unless he intended to turn himself in anyway.
@21: It could easily be added to canon law to clarify the situation. With regard to such a serious crime with such a high rate of recidivism (our friend the judge can correct me if I am wrong, but at least 40 percent - lower than that for all crimes but very high for serious crimes) as child molestation, I cannot find the specific reference at the moment but I have read that the priest is within his rights to demand such a move as a condition for absolution: the obligation to resolve not to sin again is accompanied by an obligation to resolve to avoid near occasions of sin and definitely to avoid entangling others--especially--in one's own sin. Molestation is not a case where reparation can be made out of court, such as with theft; nor is it a crime of violent passion, such as murder.
A side note regarding recidivism, near occasions and "special cases": it would seem the Church in fact recognises the particular perversity of carnally-related deviances: lust is the only capital sin for which full consent to any species makes the sin mortal. Our Lady herself affirmed that "more souls go to hell for sins of the flesh than for any other reason."
In the face of the NYT's excellent reporting, I was wondering how Chronicles would respond to the child-rapist priests and their Vatican enablers, and I guessed correctly.