Christopher Hitchens and the Days of Rage
On March 23, the Associated Press published a story dealing with sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church to little fanfare. It noted that allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church in the United States dropped in 2009, and that most of the alleged offenders “are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from ministry, or missing.” The article also noted that “Of the allegations reported in 2009, six involved children under the age of 18 in 2009.” It is easy to see why this story was not front page news in the New York Times: it is hard to use such numbers to convince the public to demand the resignation of Benedict XVI.
That, of course, is the object of the recent media campaign against the Pope, one that has seen everyone with an axe to grind against the Catholic Church clamber on board. Richard Dawkins, writing on the Washington Post website, described Benedict as “A leering old villain in a frock,” the leader of a “profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution,” one that is destined to tumble about Benedict’s ears, “amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins.” One wonders if the Post or the Times ever published similar condemnations of the Soviet Union, let alone such a description of any non-Christian religion. Dawkins declined to tell those lapping up his purple prose that, in 2006, he had written that “we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia” and that “All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).” Dawkins even wrote that “I can’t help wondering if [the Catholic Church] has been unfairly demonized over this issue.”
Dawkins’ fellow atheist and close ideological ally Christopher Hitchens has never expressed any such doubts about the perfidy of the Catholic Church. Hitchens, after all, opposed John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, in essence, because Roberts is Catholic, has said of Mother Teresa that “I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to,” and recently described Thomas More as “one of history’s wickedest men.” It should come as no surprise, then, that Hitchens devoted three successive columns to attacking the Pope. To Hitchens, Benedict is cut from the same cloth as Mother Teresa and Thomas More. He is a “grisly little man,” whose “whole career has the stench of evil.” But Hitchens’ case against the Pope, relying on the reporting of the Times and Hitchens’ own flights of fancy, falls short.
In his first column, Hitchens charges that while Joseph Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he was involved in “obstructing justice on a global scale,” and quotes from a document issued by that Congregation. However, as Sean Murphy points out at the Catholic Education Resource Center, the document Hitchens quotes was issued in 1962, when Ratzinger was still a priest in Bavaria: traveling through time to commit evil is quite a trick, even for a villain of Ratzinger’s magnitude. Moreover, canon lawyer Tom Doyle, quoted as an expert by Hitchens in the column, had this to say about the documents issued by that Congregation governing sexual abuse by priests: “It is not correct to state that the popes under whose authority any of these were published were either creating a blue-print for a cover-up or mandating a church-wide cover up of clergy sexual abuse.” Doyle also noted that “It is also incorrect to use these documents to accuse any of the personnel charged with administering the Church court, such as the Prefects of the Vatican Congregations, with a cover-up in a conventional sense.” Indeed, as John Allen noted in the generally liberal National Catholic Reporter, once Ratzinger reviewed all the files on priestly sexual abuse that made their way to the Congregation after his office was given oversight of such cases in 2001, he “seems to have undergone something of a ‘conversion experience,’” and “the substantial majority” of those cases “were returned to the local bishop authorizing immediate action against the accused priest—no canonical trial, no lengthy process, just swift removal from the ministry and, often, expulsion from the priesthood.” Hitchens also charges that a document Ratzinger issued in 2001 “wrote its own private statute of limitations” for canonical claims against abusive priests, running for ten years from a victim’s 18th birthday, and cites an attorney suing the Church in Texas characterizing this as an obstruction of justice. Hitchens neglects to mention that the State of Texas is apparently an accomplice to this obstruction, since the statute of limitations for rape in Texas is—you guessed it—ten years.
As Scott Richert ably explained at his blog at About.com, the horrific case of Fr. Murphy, trumpeted by the New York Times and seized upon by Hitchens, is a red herring, twisted to blame then Cardinal Ratzinger for Murphy’s monstrous abuse, which had stopped 22 years before Murphy’s case was referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by the Archbishop of Milwaukee. There is no evidence in the Times story that Joseph Ratzinger had any personal involvement in that case, and in any event the Congregation waived the statute of limitations for the crime of solicitation in the confessional so that a canonical trial against Murphy could proceed. (There could have been no criminal trial of Murphy at that point, since the Wisconsin statute of limitations had long since run and, indeed, police and prosecutors in Wisconsin had failed to take action against Murphy in the 1970's, when Murphy’s crimes were reported to them.) The Archbishop of Milwaukee abated the canonical trial against Murphy two days before he died, but also began the process of removing Murphy from ministry, a quicker process than a canonical trial. In Hitchens’ retelling, Ratzinger, described as “a cardinal in Rome, supervising the global Catholic cover-up of rape and torture,” made “no response” to Milwaukee’s request for a canonical trial, “until Father Murphy himself appealed to Ratzinger for mercy and was granted it.” Even putting aside Hitchens’ description of Ratzinger as “supervising the global Catholic cover-up of rape and torture,” Hitchens tells three distinct lies in his brief summary of the Times story: Ratzinger’s Congregation did not have jurisdiction over cases of clergy sexual abuse until 2001, and was only involved in the Murphy case because it involved a separate canonical crime, solicitation in the confessional; the Congregation did respond to Milwaukee, by waiving the statute of limitations and allowing a canonical trial to proceed; and Murphy was not granted “mercy,” much less by Ratzinger, unless beginning the process to remove a priest from ministry constitutes “mercy.” (In Hitchens’ defense, it should be noted that his retelling of the Murphy case is less lurid than that of the Times own Maureen Dowd, who, as Pat Buchanan notes, wrote that Ratzinger “ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy,” implying that Ratzinger failed to take action when Murphy was actively engaged in abuse.)
The Times and Hitchens also make much of the transfer of an abusive priest from Essen, Father Hullermann, to Munich for psychiatric therapy in January 1980, when Ratzinger was Archbishop there. Hullermann later abused other teenage boys while working in the Archdiocese of Munich, at a parish assignment he received seven months after Joseph Ratzinger left Munich for Rome. There is no dispute that Ratzinger approved letting Hullermann reside at a rectory in Munich while undergoing therapy; the dispute concerns what role Ratzinger played in his vicar general’s decision to allow the priest to resume his duties while undergoing therapy. The vicar general has assumed full responsibility for that decision, while the Times notes that “Cardinal Ratzinger’s office” was copied on a memo from the vicar general returning Hullermann to full duties. But from the Times own report it appears that what chancery officials in Munich were told by the official dealing with Essen was that Hullermann needed “medical-psychotherapeutic treatment in Munich” and was “a very talented man, who could be used in a variety of ways.” The fact that this description of Hullermann turned out to be spectacularly wrong does not inculpate those who acted on such advice. And a subsequent Times story showed that even those unconnected to the Church in Germany doubted that Ratzinger knew much about Hullermann, quoting Hannes Burger, who covered the Church for Suddeutsche Zeitung, as saying that Ratzinger “certainly would not have realized anything; he was in a different sphere. He held beautiful sermons and wrote beautifully, but the details he left to his staff” and quoting Andreas Englisch, a German Vaticanist, as saying, “I don’t think he really knew the details; I don’t think he was really interested in the details.” Even the Times reporter noted that “How closely he would have watched personnel decisions, especially with an administrative chief, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, who had been in his post since 1968, is an open question.” To be sure, Ratzinger bears ultimate responsibility for what happened in Munich during his episcopacy. But there is a difference between Ratzinger’s possibly making a poorly informed or negligent decision on Hullermann and Ratzinger’s “finding another parish with fresh children for the priest to assault” and of making pederast priests his “pets,” as Hitchens charges. Indeed, when Hullermann was convicted by the German courts of sexually abusing minors in 1986, he received a suspended sentence, a fine, and probation conditioned on continued psychiatric treatment, but the probation imposed on Hullermann does not appear to have restricted Hullermann from working as a priest. Hullermann’s sentence shows that Catholic bishops were far from the only ones in the 1980's who regarded psychiatric treatment as an effective response to pederasty, though international media outrage over the result of such an attitude is in fact limited to Catholic bishops.
And that outrage is most intense when it involves a certain type of Catholic bishop, of whom Pope Benedict is seen an example. In Hitchens’ final salvo at the Pope, the outspoken atheist spends nearly as much time on Benedict’s transgressions against leftist theology as he does on his supposed failings in dealing with clerical pederasty. (Hitchens also keeps lying in this column, and further reveals his anti-Catholic animus, by claiming that “Almost every episode in this horror show has involved small children being seduced and molested in the confessional itself,” even though there is no evidence that such abuse has occurred primarily in the confessional.) We are told that as Archbishop of Munich Ratzinger reversed the “liberalism” of allowing children to make their First Confession one year after “subject[ing] small children to their first communion at a tender age,” that as Cardinal he defended the Legionaries of Christ, whom Hitchens had earlier described as “ultra-reactionary,” and that as Pope he lifted the excommunications of the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, “that group of extreme right-wing schismatics.” (Hitchens never mentions that as Pope Benedict barred the founder of the Legionaries of Christ from public ministry, instructing him to live a life of prayer and penance until his death, following a complaint for sexual abuse filed by former Legionaries in Rome, the truth of which the Legion has now acknowledged.) Indeed, we are told that for Pope Benedict, “the sole test of a good priest is this: Is he obedient to the traditionalist wing of the church?” Concerns over whether children receive their First Communion before or after their First Confession, over whether the SSPX is “schismatic,” over whether the Legionaries of Christ are “ultra-reactionary,” and over whether Benedict favors those in the Church’s “traditionalist wing” are very odd concerns for an atheist to have, unless they show his motivation in blasting Benedict as “a completely undistinguished human being” at the beginning of his papacy and in labeling him as “evil” today. The non-religious editors and writers of the New York Times have long expressed similar concerns over the contours of Benedict’s theology. Hitchens and his allies in the media fear a revival of traditional Christianity, and hate Benedict because they believe that is what he is trying to accomplish within Catholicism.
Of course, there have been many horrific cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, and many bishops who, at the very least, failed in their duty to protect those under their care. But sexual abuse within the Church was at its worst in the 1970's and 1980's, and John Allen’s case that Pope Benedict has been a force for good on this issue is substantial. Unfortunately, many media reports on this issue reflect, and are calculated to produce, an unreasoning frenzy, reminiscent of the 1960's, when radicals demanded immediate, wholesale change and expressed contempt for any who dared question their demands. The ranting of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dowd differs more in degree than in kind from much of what is being presented in mainstream media outlets, and comment boxes throughout the internet are filling up with hatred and vitriol. Iconoclastic British atheist Brendan O’Neill, writing at the online journal Spiked, has noticed the same thing: “The discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon as a ‘great evil’ of our age shows that child abuse in Catholic churches has been turned into a morality tale—about the dangers of belief and of hierarchical institutions and the need for more state and other forms of intervention into religious institutions and even religious families.” O’Neill also noted that “it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.”
Indeed. I have nothing but fond memories of my Jesuit high school, and the Catholic Church has been a great force for good within my family. I know my experience is far from unique, even though I am both saddened and angry that some priests and some bishops have caused other Catholics to have a far different experience of the Church. But I cannot ignore those who have long hated the Church and who are using legitimate concerns over clerical sexual abuse to further a campaign designed to topple the Pope and, they hope, the Church as well, a campaign that, if even moderately successful, will cause incalculable damage.
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Mr. Piatak, the media campaign is more than slightly disgusting and sacriligious, but--and forgive me if this is the Lefebvrite speaking up a bit--for a conciliar Church that has neglected to attend to the moral character of its seminarians, is this not the logical end? If abuse was indeed at its worst in the 1970s and 1980s, this suggests that the worst perverts began filling the rank of the priesthood im the mid-1960s. And yet nothing is being done to check the rampant number of young men with deep-seated homosexual tendencies, even though Cardinal Woyja was himself member of an investigative panel in the 1970s which concluded that the condition of seminaries was unacceptable as regarding the sexual maturity of graduating priests and their preparedness to live a lifetime of celibacy. Decades later it was pronounced that men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies" were unfit for the priesthood--and everything I hear suggests this has not been followed up on. The problem surely predates Vatican II, but the collapse in the numbers of young men pursuing vocations has created a huge temptation for bishops to save face by flouting or rationalising normal standards. These are the consequences. Small though be their numbers, I am told 25 percent of seminarists are to be found in SSPX, FSSP, Christ-Roi or other instiitutions dedicated in some form to the Tridentine rite. The damage is real, but I submit most of it is to a side of the Church that was doomed for decades anyway.
Mr. Moses, I had intended to address your first comment shortly after you wrote it, but I was laid up with a bad back and didn't have access to the article I intended to quote.
Without commenting on the "conciliar Church" (a phrase which I am sad to see you use, because it is almost invariably used by those who believe that the Church today is different in substance, and not simply in accidents, from the Church pre-Vatican II), I can safely say that the data on clerical sexual abuse offers no more comfort to traditionalists than to devotees of the Novus Ordo.
I discussed the reasons why in a Rockford Files column, "A Few Bad Men," back in June 2006. The first John Jay College of Criminal Justice study of clerical sexual abuse in the United States, which covered the years 1950-2002, found that “approximately a third of all reports [from that time period] were made in 2002 after an average delay of 30 years.” That places the average date in 1972.
A report issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2006, discussing the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, found a similar delay. As I wrote in that column, "According to the USCCB’s report, for incidents reported in 2005, the average time between the alleged abuse and the report is now close to 35 years," for an average date of 1970.
The problem should be clear by now: Priests who were abusing children in 1970-72 were largely priests who were ordained before Vatican II was convened. Indeed, the worst abusers that we know of, men such as John Geoghan, Paul Shanley, and now Lawrence Murphy, were ordained well before Vatican II. The data does not show that "abuse was . . . at its worst in the 1970s and 1980s." That (more specifically, between 1975 and 1985) is when many of the cover-ups occurred, but in most of those cases, the abuse began long before.
Discussing John Jay College's 2006 follow-up to their 2004 report, I wrote:
Nothing that has been reported in the two John Jay follow-ups since then would change a word I wrote.
Asking for Christopher Hitchen's opinion on the Catholic Church is like asking for Hitler's on Jews. The Cromwell of our age is in traditional English anti-Catholicism and knows it full well. No doubt he wishes he were back leading the mobs of the Gordon riots.
I spent five years studying for the priesthood and never experienced or observed any homosexual or any other 'creepy' behavior from any of the good priests who taught us and tried to mold us into good Catholics. Remember all priests in your prayers because despite the scandals of the past few decades many of these men...........all in my own experience.........were men of the highest morality and it is a shame that a few bad apples and some incompetent bishops allowed this problem to fester.
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. St. John 15:18
Amen, Patrick!
Mr. Piatak,
I want to thank you and Scott Richert for the timely articles. As a Christian, I know all too well that the evils which are besetting the Church cut across all faith communities of Christianity. As a Baptist, I came and have come to have great respect for Pope John Paul II and for Pope Benedict XI. In fact, in informal discussions, I have become their "apologist" in Baptist circles. As this latest "scandal" broke, I instinctively knew that the allegations were unfounded; yet, I lack the facts, the time sequence and the context. Your article has gone a long way in giving me those tools/weapons.
Thank you. I continue to pray for the Faith and for the Faithful.
This is a wonderful defense of the Holy Father. Thank you for this good work!
I must say that even acknowledging the odious Hitchens is distasteful to me, but I understand that you are correct in taking him on, since he gets so much media attention. (attention that only seemed to become significant after he became a supporter of our Middle Eastern adventures, but I digress) So we can look at this duty to call Hitchens to task on his many ludicrous statements as we would the job of cleaning the commode - hardly an enjoyable exercise, but necessary considering the alternative.
Again, thanks much for sharing this spirited and judiciously offered corrective.
It seems that the increase in main stream media venom on this sad issue has happened after the Church has taken steps against clerical pederasty. Where was this concern when most of these cases allegedly and actually did occur? Certainly many of these pundits do not attack pederasty itself, unless of course it is the result of the indecent actions of a Catholic priest or other Church official. The Church does need to do a much better job of keeping its clergy within proper limits, but the hypocrisy of its attackers is truly sickening.
The key to Hitchens is that his god is Trotsky, and always has been. In his Atlantic Monthly article in July/August 2004, "The Old Man," Hitchens wrote: "Even today a faint, saintly penumbra still emanates from the Old Man....Until we are done with the ironies of history (because they will never be done with us), the image of Trotsky will not dissipate."
But Trotsky was no "saint," was not a benign "Old Man," and there was no irony. Instead, Hitchens' beloved was a mass murderer at the time unprecedented, the executioner of millions, especially Eastern Orthodox and Catholic priests, whose churches Trotsky dynamited.
And yes, although Hitchens attacks Stalin, Trotsky's nemesis, there would have been no Stalin -- and no Lenin -- without Trotsky's murderous brilliance as head of the Red Army. And if the Soviet murder-state had never gotten launched, there would have been no Hitler, no Mao, no Pol Pot.
For Hitchens to have even a shred of sympathy for this mega-murderer is perverse. The root of Hitchens' sympathy is Trotsky's executions of Christians, something Hitchens never denounces. Hitchens' hateful bigotry against Christians makes him idolize one of their worst persecutors.
(Link to Atlantic article: http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/2004/07/hitchens.htm)
Thank you all for your kind words.
A few words about the latest AP report, concerning a 1985 letter Cardinal Ratzinger wrote declining to grant a request by an abusive priest in the Diocese of Oakland, Stephen Kiesle, to be released from his priestly vows, saying that more work needed to be done on the case, even though there were grave reasons for the request. This was not a refusal to punish a priest, but a question of following procedures put in place to stem the tide of dispensations of priestly vows that followed Vatican II. The abusive priest was dispensed of his vows in 1987.
It also had absolutely nothing to do with the danger posed by this abusive priest, who never acted as a priest after 1981. This case and others from Oakland were covered in detail in a March 31, 2008 article in the San Jose Mercury News, by Rob Dennis, Jeremy Herb, Matthew Artz, and Chris De Benedetti. According to this article, "Kiesle was removed from the priesthood at his own request in 1981" and never again functioned as a priest. He did volunteer to serve as a youth minister at a Catholic church from 1985-1988, which ended when an employee at the Diocese's Office of Youth Ministry confronted the bishop about this, who then "removed Kiesle from his position." The fact that Rome had not dispensed Kiesle from his vows made no difference to any of this, and it did not take any lengthy canonical process, much less an edict from Rome, to prevent Kiesle from acting as a volunteer youth minister, just a simple order from the bishop. Nor did Kiesle's being dispensed from his vows in 1987 end his volunteering as a youth minister, for the simple reason that there was absolutely no connection between the process in Rome and what Kiesle was doing in California. The focus on Ratzinger is, again, a red herring. I suspect all the lawyers who have been suing the Church on these sad cases are combing their files for anything relating to Ratzinger, looking for something to give to the press.
I was about to suggest that Hitchens be torn apart by ten half-starved rottweilers, but then I abandoned this idea on two grounds: first, it could constitute cruelty to rottweilers; second, Hitchens would probably regard the process as some sort of off-beat sexual pleasure, transcending even the auto-erotic semi-asphyxiation which is his habitual practice.
#9--Mr. Piatek,
The fact that Kiesle officially remained a priest, even if not functioning as one, is offensive in itself. The Vatican was repeatedly warned that leaving this man in the priesthood would harm the Church--and so it is now doing, considering the latest reports which show Kiesle to have been an unrepentant pervert who says he molested "tons" of kids--anyone, he said, who sat on his lap.
The impression persists that the Church hierarchy is more worried about the reputation of the shepherds than about the well-being of the sheep.
KDZ,
I agree that it certainly would have been better for the repuation of the Church if Kiesle's petition for dispensation from his vows had been granted in 1985 instead of 1987. But it would have made no difference at all from the standpoint of safeguarding youngsters from Kiesle. The troubling aspect of this case is not that Kiesle's dispensation was not granted until 1987, but that he was allowed to volunteer as a youth minister from 1985 through 1988, a situation for which Cardinal Ratzinger bears zero responsibility, even though media reports are trying hard to blame Ratzinger for that.
@3: With all due respect to the good priests at that seminary and the many good priests worldwide, this problem cannot be "qualified" simply on the basis of such good priests. Chastisement of the media for their treatment of this issue is useless unless we point out what is really disgraceful: the media's attempt to shift the blame onto the Pope and clerical celibacy and to portray the problem as primarily a "policing" issue. In reality, the fault belongs to bishops who have refused to implement Papal orders regarding the moral and sexual maturity of seminarians. What I have seen and heard amounts to ample evidence that this root problem has not been attacked.
The MSM is a disgrace and does not deserve to exist, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
Just an update regarding what the Pope's enemies are hoping to do next. The London Times this morning reports that Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are conspiring with like-minded British lawyers to have a warrant issued for the arrest of the Pope when he travels to Britain in September for the beatification of Cardinal Newman, a la Pinochet. (Hitchens had mentioned this in his columns, but I did not go into it because my piece was long already). They have in their corner UN judge Geoffrey Robertson, who has long sought to have the Holy See removed as a permanent observer at the UN, and who had this to say about the Vatican's sovereignty: "The Vatican is not a state--it was a construct of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini." (Someone should tell Robertson that the Pope was sovereign in Rome before there was a king of England).
"The Vatican is not a state–it was a construct of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini."
It was before the Lincoln-loving Freemason Garibaldi annexed it. Is this clownish judge actually suggesting that the Lateran Treaty isnt valid? There is a good case to be made that Mussolini wasnt even a true dictator - he exercised strong power at the pleasure of Victor Emmanuel III.
Offtopic: Of the sometimes silly Traditionalist Catholic Masonic conspiracy theories, in the case of Mexico and Italy they are actually true.
Benedict XVI is attacked as he is because he is the traditional leaning antidote the Church has long needed to right the ship. Most specifically, Benedict must be hated and reviled ceaselessly, even after he passes to his reward, because he set the Traditional Latin Mass on the road to comeback, and the Mass of the ages is to Leftists as the crucifix is to Dracula.
U.N. judge Geoffrey Robertson is another good reason to get the U.S. out of the U.N. and the U.N. out of the U.S.
The whole coverage of the priest scandals by the MSM is wildly skewed. The absolute worst obstructionists in the USA were two church bosses that Dawkins and Hitchens would no doubt approve of: Cardinals Law of Boston and Mahoney of Los Angeles. I always thought an ideal penance for both would be to send them as missionaries to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan or a similar locale in the Ummah with absolutely no personal security. The ever-zealous devotees of the religion of love and peace would surely have little trouble in thinking of something suitable to do with them in very short order.
The ongoing - and more frequent - sexual abuses of NEA public school teachers is routinely ignored, likewise the slap-on-the-wrist punishments to those actually convicted in court. The question that keeps popping up in my mind is: Why does anyone regard the NY Times and such organizations as credible? They are nothing but despicable, Soviet-style liars and have been so for decades now. Their "reporting" is completely predictable.
@15: Forgive me for straying off-topic, bug the longer I live, the more applicable those theories appear to be in other states as well. Not that the conspiracy is necessarily tied to THE LODGE, but look at media coverage of the unknown and unimpressive young candidate Barak Obama. Someone wanted him to be president years ago and did a damn fine job making sure it would happen.
Great essay, Mr. Piatak. Hitchens and Dawkins attack Benedict XVI because he is such an effective conservative reformist. These two men feel in their bones that Benedict XVI will restore the Church and push it into the direction of tradition. Unlike his predecessors, Benedict XVI is solving the problem of sexually wayward priests. This Hitchens, Dawkins and others of like mind do not want as they want a Roman Catholic Church that is in moral disrepute and impotent.
It is amusing to remember that it was only a few years ago, when Hitchens came out so forcefully in support of George W. Bush's Middle Eastern adventures, that the neo-conservatives lauded Hitchens as some sort of giant in the fight against "Islamofascism" or whatever silly jingle that sprouted from the minds of comic-book conservatives for Middle Eastern terrorists. That Hitchens has always despised all that conservatives wish to conserve seems not to have not mattered to the one-track minds of the neo-conservatives as long as he was in opposition to "Islamofascism." Inevitably, Hitchens helps clarify the issue of who are true conservatives. Those who have ever held Hitchens in high esteem can not be considered serious conservatives.
Mr. Piatak,
Excellent article. One of the good things that comes from a steady stream of viciousness and vitriole is that it defines the lines of combat. For years we Christians have mistaken our enemies for something else,which tends to lessen the gigantic burden of trying to love them,but it does at least put them in the right category and identify another truth about fallen man and his nature. Whatever the Popes are, whatever people like the late Mother Theresa represent, they remain a far more noble image of men and women than the contorted face, twisted heart and mind of hateful,mad-men like Hitchens and Dawkins. Defending Hitchens and Dawkins or encouraging them in their destructive quest of all that remains, is the world's feeble refrain from the original place of the skulls, "Not this man but Barabbas." And of course Barabbas has always been a robber and a thief, in this case stealing the good name and character of Christians like Thomas More,Catholic Popes founders of religious orders like Mother Theresa,for the sake of their own selves.
Great piece, Mr. Piatak.
I admire Pope Benedict--have admired him ever since I read *The Ratzinger Report* in the days when--as far as I can recall--I was not even thinking of becoming a Catholic. (My admiration for Cardinal Ratzinger upon reading that book no doubt played an important role in my conversion a few years later.) But one must reject the assumption that Pope Benedict has an impeccable record with regard to priestly sexual abuse. The Kiesle incident in the 1980s showed Cardinal Ratzinger to be more concerned about the reputation of the priesthood, aka "the universal church." From 1981 onward, the Vatican was on notice that father Kiesle was a menace, but stalled for four years.
But the important point is this: If Pope Benedict's learning curve is thus presumably not as steep as it might ideally be, that must largely be because he is a staunch defender of Vatican II--and that tribunal is arguably a major part of the problem.
If I'm inclined to be critical of the Catholic clergy, it's probably partly because I believe I was unfairly maligned by a former housemate, Father Tom Weinandy. For this and other reasons, I'm not as willing as Tom Piatek and others are to give priests the benefit of the doubt.
KDZ:
I would recommend read Phil Lawler's summary of the Oakland case at the Catholic Culture website.
KDZ:
By the way, I should add that I appreciate the calm and reasoned way in which you have presented your arguments.
Jake's comment at #16 makes a lot of sense to me. I would go farther and point out that not only is Pope Benedict conservative on liturgical topics but so too has he been on wider cultural issues from his criticism of western materialist tendencies to the honesty with which he has described Islam. None of this endears him to the multicultural secular elite. Some of the bishops might be considered liberals on this range of topics, but Benedict has not been - at least not during his tenure as Pope.
Additionally, it seems to me that there is a political angle in all this. If Pope John Paul II was a leading figure in the destruction of the Soviet Union then Pope Benedict must be considered a leading figure in a potential reconciliation of western and eastern Europe (Christendom). That he pays great respect to the Orthodox Church does not go unnoticed in eastern Europe. The Orthodox hierarchs and priests see in him a willing partner within the Vatican the likes of which JPII, whose extra-Christian ecumenism was well known, was not. JPII returned relics stolen during the Fourth Crusade to their rightful home in Constantinople but Benedict's respectful visit to St. George's at a gathering of Orthodox archbishops and patriarchs was an extraordinary event.
Prominent Russian bishops have re-engaged in dialogue with Latin counterparts and the Serbian Church has extended its first ever invitation to a pope to visit Serbia. I am not saying that this suggests an imminent reunion of the two halves of the Church but for the first time since perhaps the schism there is real dialogue and genuinely improved relations between the two. One could only hope that this helps reunite Europe in some broade sense - spiritually, as much as politically and culturally. But one can also guess that this does not suit the tastes and beliefs of some in the west, particularly those, as previously mentioned, view Christian Tradition and custom with hostility as well as those who obsess over Russia and the Orthodox as eternal enemies and not real members of "the West".
The time has come for us believers in God to take the gloves off. Let us recall that Prof. Dawkins' belief that the source of life on Earth is that Space Aliens flew over our planet and spinkled spores or the equivalent that seeded life on Earth. Of course this begs the question of where or how the Space Aliens came into being. Prof. Dawkins is a crank and should be called one.
Christopher Hitchens is a crazed aetheist because his mother murdered herself and this been the fundamental source of his derangement ever since.
If these two aetheist Klu Klux Klansmen do bring suit againt the Pope in London, then the Pope should countersue them for defamation. An international warrant should be sworn out against Mr. Hitchens for being a collaborator in the anti-Vietnam War movement which was controlled, directed and subsidized to the tune of $1 Billion Dollars by the Soviet Union and Red China, whose American defeat inevitably led to the genocide of millions of Indochinese. Please remember that it was Fundamentist Darwinists who started World War II, bombed London in 1940, set up Auschwitz and the Gulag and have the blood of 70 million Chinese on their hands. Curse Christopher Hitcherson and Dawkins!
Dawkins and Hitchens are pathetic little piss ants who are riding the wave of atheistic "coolness." Remember the "God is Dead" days of the 1960's? Their hatred and vitriol will eventually spend itself, perhaps on each other. Or, more likely, we will all get bored of their inanities and look for other cartoon characters to amuse us.
Dawkins, Hitchens, and the like are instruments. Their views, like the views of so many that we look upon as wrong, crazy, or evil, must be countered. But these people are in some ways objects of pity. Some may have suffered some early life traumas that has resulted in a twisted view of the world, as previous posts suggest. And then they become tools for others to use to further an agenda. Analyzing this agenda, as part of dismantling these individuals' arguments, is important. Exposing the agenda and arguing against the wrongness of the agenda are far more important undertakings than simply debunking individual lies, though the methodical dismantling of the individual lies are steps towards exposing and impeding the overall agenda and this essay and the discussion here are valuable contributions in the task.
#24--Tom Piatek
Thanks for the reference. Lawler's article is very clarifying. Pope Benedict is clearly singing from a different hymnal than he was in the '80s. The media are not entirely off base, though, in pointing out that as Cardinal he was notably unwilling to throw the book at a convicted child molester (Father Kiesle was convicted of lewdness in 1978). Because of that, the Pope now needs to show urgency and do everything possible to purge wayward priests--I suggest that this includes reevaluating certain parts of Vatican II.
"An international warrant should be sworn out against Mr. Hitchens for being a collaborator in the anti-Vietnam War movement which was controlled, directed and subsidized to the tune of $1 Billion Dollars by the Soviet Union and Red China, whose American defeat inevitably led to the genocide of millions of Indochinese"
America's participation led to the deaths of millions of Indochinese as well. As reprehensible as the anti-war left was in the 60's, that was by virtue of their being leftists, not anti-war.
No one will dispute that you have "nothing but fond memories" of your Jesuit high school, and that "the Catholic Church has been a great force for good" within your family. Good for you. However, the Vatican is a medieval (i.e. absolutist) institution incompatible with the modern world, and in the public world it has many things for which to answer, your personal memories aside. Yes, the Catholic church (the Vatican) has been singled out on this issue. It has however earned the contempt it is getting. There might be less atheists in the world if the Church behaved differently. It's tedious to hear the hierarchy blaming atheists, blaming secularism, blaming homosexuals. I'm not impressed.
As an aside. The following paragraph appears in an article written by Taki.
"No one’s been more vigorous in cleansing the church of the effects of this sickening sin than this pope, but just because he won’t play ball with the media and the modernists, vile rotweillers like Dowd and Maher, and Dawkins and Hitchens, are taking cheap shots against an institution that will not fight back. We all know that the ethical teachings of Jesus Christ are more important than his divinity. The Catholic Church has made many mistakes in the past, some horrific ones in fact, but the good always has and always will outnumber them. The great contributions of the church in the fields of medicine, education, and charity the world throughout and over so many centuries often go unnoticed. The church is now being crucified by the media and is turning the other cheek. But it will be around long after the New York Times will be a distant and unpleasant memory."
Now, I realize that I am not a very learned person but I wanted to check with the Catholics here at Chronicles. Is it the Catholic Church's instruction that Jesus's ethical teachings are more important than his divinity? I included the entire paragraph so that I did not take anything out of context.
Dear Chris Hewlitt - I don't think your question would ever occur to a believing Catholic. The Catholic Church's teaching are suffused with Christ's divinity and that God loves Mankind, and Mankind should love and obey God, in the Trinity, in return. One of the most contentious issues of the Reformation was whether the Lord was really presence in the Eucharist. Please recall the Apostle's Creed and you may wish to obtain a copy of the Church's Catechism. This sounds like a fall back position for people who don't or won't accept the resurrection and the divinity of Christ. It probably better for such person to at least listen to his ethical teachings than ignoring him all and the Gospels altogether.
Wayne Spear @32
Mr. Spear,
Don't think great thoughts, just read the article. Mr. Piatak wrote in the paragraph just before the one you most enjoyed, "Of course, there have been many horrific cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, and many bishops who, at the very least, failed in their duty to protect those under their care. But sexual abuse within the Church was at its worst in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and John Allen’s case that Pope Benedict has been a force for good on this issue is substantial. Unfortunately, many media reports on this issue reflect, and are calculated to produce, an unreasoning frenzy, ... The ranting of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dowd differs more in degree than in kind from much of what is being presented in mainstream media outlets, and comment boxes throughout the internet are filling up with hatred and vitriol. Iconoclastic British atheist Brendan O’Neill, writing at the online journal Spiked, has noticed the same thing: “The discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon as a ‘great evil’ of our age shows that child abuse in Catholic churches has been turned into a morality tale—about the dangers of belief and of hierarchical institutions and the need for more state and other forms of intervention into religious institutions and even religious families.” It is quite true to say, as you said, that the Church is medieval -- she is also classical, ancient and evidently (if your comments are any indication of a trendy prejudice) always new to those ignorant of her timeless essence.
Hating Christianity and invading the world to spread democracy is the new religion of America. Christopher Hitchens is merely the prophet.
No one will dispute that you have “nothing but fond memories” of your Jesuit high school, and that “the Catholic Church has been a great force for good” within your family. Good for you. However, the Vatican is a medieval (i.e. absolutist) institution incompatible with the modern world
"Absolutism" is a product of the ashes left by French Wars of Religion, decidedly POST-MEDIEVAL. It does not refer to religious doctrines but to political power. Absolutism was not well-received by the ultramontane (i.e., hard right-wing) Catholic League at its inception.
and in the public world it has many things for which to answer, your personal memories aside.
Yes--mostly allowing Gallicanism and leftism to get out of control and to infect the souls of its faithful since the 1960's.
Yes, the Catholic church (the Vatican) has been singled out on this issue. It has however earned the contempt it is getting. There might be less atheists in the world if the Church behaved differently. It’s tedious to hear the hierarchy blaming atheists, blaming secularism, blaming homosexuals. I’m not impressed.
True, it's tedious, but it's only tedious because the hierarchy has made accommodations to its enemies. Look at the conduct of those cited people outside the context of the Church. The only reason they get away with it without attracting the same wrath as the Catholic Church is that they do not have a central organisation (or at least they vehemently deny that they do).
Francis J. Bredestege wrote in the introduction to Abbé Laux's English-language textbook on Church History (through the early 20th century) that "[w]hat is the hardest task of the high school teacher in religion is to show how the human element in the Church is continually thwarting the divine, and how at the same time Divine Providence is daily making use of this human element in helping the Church achieve her destiny." He immediately adds, "At no time has the tendency to pass by in silence the claims of the Church to a special deference as God's mouthpiece been more blatant than at present"--and this in 1929!
The element of truth in Monsieur Spear's thesis is of course that the Church is indeed an ancient, medieval and eternal institution and it is indeed without relevance for those whose imaginations have become the captives of the modern world, where novelty, chaos, temporality and suicide are the order of the day. This is also the problem with the "Spirit of Vatican II," more so than any novel doctrine in itself: its proponents attempt to appeal to modern minds without first disenchanting them of modernity. You cannot drive a car, however beautiful, through a brick wall; you must tear down the wall.
@36: Great one. No less dogmatic are the "democrats" and "republicans" who believe in some "universal hunger for liberty." Postmoderns can cry about tolerance and diversity all they like, but any restriction of sexual liberty is flatly unacceptable.
Matt @ 34, Thank you, your explanation is what I would expect. Is Taki a non-believing Catholic? Well, of course we wouldn't know for certain but the statement was a quote from him.
I thought Taki was Greek Orthodox, whether believing or not I don't know.
Oh, ok, Greek Orthodox certainly makes sense. Maybe they have a different instruction than Roman. I don't know, I was just trying to get to the bottom of the quote because it kind of surprised me. It sounds like the social gospel.
Mr. Hewlett, my thought when I read Taki's column several days ago was similar to Eagle's. It seemed to me to be a bit tongue in cheek, or even sarcastic, when taken in the context of the entire column. In other words, "Nonbelievers always try to convince us that what is really important about Jesus is His ethical teaching. But even on that score, the Church clearly comes out ahead. Look at all Her good works," etc., etc.
It is, of course, entirely possible that I misread Taki's intention in writing that line. But at the time I first read it, I didn't think twice about it—in the context, it seemed to me to be clear what he was doing.
I cannot speak for what the intent was in Taki's piece (perhaps his context was what many lay people find important?), but the Orthodox faith clearly finds the resurrection and divinity to be true.
Scott,
I must disagree with you here. When I read Taki's comment the other day, I figured that his idea of Christianity could bear improvement. With all due respect to Taki, his comment suggested to me that he does not have a personal knowledge of what Christianity is. But no one can deny that he is a vigorous opponent of non-Christian political ideas--he deserves credit for defending Christian culture.
Your response reminds me of M.E. Bradford's suggestion that Richard Weaver was being "ironic" in his celebration of Lincoln's way of reasoning (in The Ethics of Rhetoric). With all respect to the estimable and admirable Mel Bradford, I think this is just wrong. Weaver did praise Lincoln and criticize Edmund Burke--he wasn't being facetious.
Ken, did you read Taki's column, or just the paragraph quoted by Mr. Hewlett? Reading the paragraph by itself, Mr. Hewlett's and your interpretation seems the obvious one.
But, as I said, when I read the entire column (not having first seen the paragraph out of context), I read the remark as tongue in cheek or sarcastic. As I say, I could be wrong; I don't know what Taki intended. But reading the column as a whole, it never crossed my mind that he intended what you think he intended.
As for Bradford and Weaver and Lincoln, that has nothing to do with what I wrote. I wasn't trying to rescue Taki; I was simply letting Mr. Hewlett know how I read it when I read it.
Scott,
I was basing my judgment on Taki's article, which I had read previously. After rereading it, I can see how someone might think he is being facetious about the non-importance of the divinity of Christ relative to Jesus' ethical teachings. That is a sensible interpretation. But if it was intended as facetiousness, it didn't quite come off because it was thoroughly unclear what he meant. In any case, I do not want to appear to be casting stones at anyone else, least of all at so charming a fellow as Taki.
The reference to Bradford on Weaver on Lincoln is only relevant if it was clear that Taki was not being facetious, as you assumed he was, and I have now conceded that it is not clear at all. However, I should say that Bradford's mistake about Weaver, which appears in a footnote to one of his essays somewhere, does not entail that he is wrong about Lincoln, nor do I think he is wrong.
@Dr. Richert: I regret that my use of "Conciliar Church" upset you and the sense in which it was understood was not what I had meant to say. "The Church since Vatican II" would have been a better choice.
However, I did also concede that the problem likely preceded Vatican II and I am not surprised by what you have cited. There are many problems in the Church that predated and indeed, in my mind, precluded the Council, the aftermath of which was the grand harvest of the bitter fruit that had been blooming. It cannot be denied that many if not most bishops since the Council have taken advantage of misperceptions and confusion to produce a deeply Gallican path in their dioceses so far as doctrines and discipline are concerned. This often includes the flat-out ignoring of the 1961 Vatican guidelines on discernment of vocations, which clearly stated that men with perverse sexual inclinations or hyperesthesia were to be barred from ordination on account of the grave danger this posed. Adherence to this may not have eliminated but would certainly have mitigated the problem.
There are many reasons for the chaos in the Church today, but the post-conciliar "renewal" culture cannot be let off the hook for impeding forthcoming solutions.
The NY Times today, April 19, 2010, includes a diatribe against the South by Frank Rich. The two things the Times spews continuous bigoted hate against are the Catholic Church and the South.
Once more: The Internet can't dissolve the Times fast enough.
After posting the previous blog, I noticed that the NY Times on this same day, April 19, 2010, included yet another bigoted and hateful attack on the Catholic Church, this time by Nicholas Kristof. He spews against "a patriarchal premodern mind-set.... It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies.... The first-century church was inclusive and democratic, even including a proto-feminist wing and texts. The Gospel of Philip....chauvinist translators....
"Yet over the ensuing centuries, the church reverted to strong patriarchal attitudes, while also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with sexuality. The shift may have come with the move from house churches, where women were naturally accepted, to more public gatherings....
"The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut....
"That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today....
"The rigid all-male Vatican hierarchy that seems out of touch when it bans condoms even among married couples where one partner is H.I.V.-positive. To me at least, this church — obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice — is a modern echo of the Pharisees whom Jesus criticized....
"....the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church...."
Today was a twofer: The NY Times screeching at both Southerners and the Catholic Church. Their happiest time in history was 1863, when Irish Catholics fresh off the boat were gunned down in NY City during the draft riots -- or were drafted to go kill Southerners, and be killed by them.
Today the L.A. Times, out here in Soviet Kalifornia, ran an anti-Catholic cartoon by a "Pulitzer Prize-winning" cartoonist.
The bigoted hate just keeps on coming.
Die, NY Times and LA Times, die!
"The first-century church was inclusive and democratic, even including a proto-feminist wing and texts. The Gospel of Philip…"
Ah yes, the hailing of a gnostic gospel by our own modern day gnostics. Its a wonder the author didnt mention the fantasy of '1st century deaconesses', another favorite of modern day heretics.
"Nicholas Kristof. He spews against “a patriarchal premodern mind-set…. It wasn’t inevitable that the Catholic Church would grow so addicted to male domination, celibacy and rigid hierarchies…. The first-century church was inclusive and democratic...."
The sad truth is that the Grey Lady once had writers who had an education or at least knew a friend or family member who did. This type of commentary by Mr. Kristof, however, is pathetic (actually pre-modern in his own misguided use of the word) but the poor fool doesn't even know why. You know in times such as these, if decent and intelligent commentary such as provided at Chronicle's summer schools and their monthly magazine, if in such times we cannot draw a crowd or a remnant of the remnant that has survived, it really is time to at least understand the Early Church in terms of persecution and the catacombs, simply say our prayers, read a few good books, plant a garden and stay as far away from any political activity as is humanly possible.