Stop the presses! So Crimen Sollicitationis isn’t — as we’ve been told for so long — the smoking gun, the primary instrument by which the Vatican covered up sexual abuse by the clergy, the nefarious work of the former Inquisition, which imposed a secrecy so strict that it prevented bishops from reporting crimes to civil authorities?
No! In reality, it was the key to reform, the document that would have put all power for completely re-writing the Church’s policy on sexual abuse right into Cardinal Ratzinger’s hands as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), if only he would have been willing to use it!
Ah, but that’s not the only shocking revelation: it now seems that we were mistaken all along in asserting that U.S. bishops in the 80’s and 90’s were a sorry lot of aiders and abettors of child abuse, in fact, criminals themselves, who shuffled child-raping priests around from parish to parish. I know this is what we’ve always been told, but we now know that this is completely wrong. No, they were really noble-minded crusaders for emotionally-wounded victims of abuse, who spent the whole of the 1990’s prodding the Vatican and the recalcitrant Ratzinger into action!
I do wish the all-knowing members of the press would make up their minds. It’s so hard to keep the conspiracy theories straight. It’s like reporters don’t even remember what was previously said. As soon as they come up with some new “truth” they just expect us to play along. (Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia).
Note how, little by little, the burden of blame is shifting. Nothing was the fault of the bishops, the police, governments, or the abusing priests themselves. No, it’s solely and completely Ratzinger’s fault!
All that aside, what does the new story actually say? Parts of it do contain some valid reporting, but there is much obscuring of vital details (some already known and available from previous Times reporting), along with much editorializing and wild speculation.
The article is based on this premise. Crimen Solicitationis, an Instructio first issued (secretly) by the Holy See to bishops in 1922, and again in 1962, gave the responsibility to the Holy Office (the future CDF) for overseeing and serving as a court of appeal for the trials of priests accused of sexual solicitation in the confessional. The bishops of individual dioceses were responsible for hearing complaints, charging priests and holding trials. Almost as an afterthought, in a couple of paragraphs the Holy Office was also given similar powers for trials of priests accused of sexually abusing minors.
The major contention of the new Times piece, by Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger, is that based on this document (let’s call it CS henceforth), Ratzinger had the power in his hands to crack down on clergy abuse throughout his tenure at the CDF in the 80’s and 90’s but didn’t act on it. One of the canon law experts the authors of the piece depended on, Nicholas Cafardi, explains in a separate article “The fact that the Holy Office had jurisdiction over those crimes was very important, because crimes in the Holy Office’s jurisdiction are unprescribable, that is, they have no statute of limitations.” This would have meant that the CDF would not be bound by the five-year statute of limitations for abuse laid down in the 1983 Code of Canon law. In fact, the norms of CS were in effect, by Ratzinger’s own admission, up until 2001, when a complete overhaul was made in the Church’s approach to clergy abuse. So while the future Pope may have urged action in a few cases (like that of the notorious Fr. Maciel), he really deserves no credit for the reform in 2001.
Now Goodstein and Halbfinger do admit that the canonical situation was confusing after the promulgation of the 1983 code (recall that Ratzinger only came to Rome to head the CDF in February 1982). Many canonists were of the opinion that the new code nullified the earlier document.
But that didn’t stop the authors from engaging in speculation and innuendo in arguing that Cardinal Ratzinger ignored the problem of abuse throughout most of his tenure at the CDF. Other than that, the story is very light on evidence. They claimed to have interviewed some ten bishops who had inside knowledge, but only quoted a couple of them - in itself very strange. And the ones they do quote had only good things to say about Ratzinger’s efforts against abuse.
The authors say that Ratzinger blocked the laicization of one pedophile priest in the 80’s because of a fear of too many men leaving the priesthood. The priest is not named, but it is largely admitted to be a reference to the Fr. Steven Kiesle case in Oakland, CA on which the Times has based other reporting, with documentation. If this is the case, why didn’t they authors name the priest and provide the link to the sources which their own paper had published?
Perhaps the reason is that it is anything but clear in this case that Ratzinger did anything to block the priest’s request for voluntary laicization – or that he would have even been able to do much to expedite it, given Vatican policy at the time. (See my story here) It seems that the authors now realize they didn’t have much of a case there and conveniently hurried over this part.
Also, the Times said nothing about another much-publicized case that showed Ratzinger’s office being pro-active in urging action in a canonical trial for abuse in Tucson from 1992-97 (although the AP and a Tucson reporter tried to make it look like the opposite). I also wrote about this case here:
This particular span of time, the mid-to-late 90’s, is key, since canonists had begun asking the CDF about CS around 1994, and urged its use to expedite cases. Yet the Times doesn’t give any clear timeline as to when Ratzinger might have taken action (See this superb piece by Mollie at GetReligion for an explanation).
Yet the Times, it seems, already has information on this very question that it didn’t use: it comes right from the notorious article on the Father Murphy case - also written by Goodstein the Times back in March with extensive documentation. Among the documents was an April 6, 1998 letter from Cardinal Bertone of the CDF to Bishop Raphael Fliss of Superior, WI, in which he reminded the bishop that Crimen Sollicitationis had ruled that penitents in cases of solicitation in the confessional must make their accusations within 30 days. Wait! So CS does mention a statute of limitations after all?
In fact, it does. Archbishop Weakland of Milwaukee, who had originally been handling this case, had written to the CDF to ask if this provision could be waived. Evidently it could. On the other hand, Bertone then went on to say that there was no statute of limitations as to how long after the event a trial could be held, which meant that the bishop would be able to prosecute a 35-year old case. This document shows clearly that by 1998, the CDF (or at least Bertone) making use of CS to expedite a case. And the statute of limitations questions turns out to be more complicated than expected. Why didn’t Ms. Goodstein include this information from her own files?
And yet while they had space for none of the above, the authors did find time to castigate Cardinal Ratzinger for — gasp! — actually doing what his Congregation was set up to do: oversee Catholic doctrine.
As [accused molester] Father Gauthe was being prosecuted in Louisiana, Cardinal Ratzinger was publicly disciplining priests in Brazil and Peru for preaching that the church should work to empower the poor and oppressed, which the cardinal saw as a Marxist-inspired distortion of church doctrine.
Here, I believe, is the real reason for the Times‘ fury - Cardinal Ratzinger just kept right on and on, upholding true Catholic teaching, refusing to substitute Marxism for salvation in Christ refusing to accept everything else that modern wisdom tell us is good, like divorce, sexual promiscuity, abortion, etc. etc. etc.
What of the authors’ main contention the CS was the key to reform? It may have been helpful with the statute of limitations, but it clearly wouldn’t have given Ratzinger the power to make new regulations, rewrite parts of canon law, or go deeper into the causes and solutions to the problem of clergy sexual abuse. That’s clearly why the whole 2001 re-organization was needed. So trying to base an argument on this one document doesn’t hold water.
Stop the presses is right! Can no one stop the press from distorting the truth?
Update: Sunday, July 11
I just learned that late in June, many Catholics in Germany began making plans for rallies in support of the Holy Father today, on the feast of his papal patron, St. Benedict. Very heartening news! Note to the Times: if your plan was to detach Catholics from the Pope — it’s not working!
Update, July 16
Yesterday, the Vatican put out some new norms, including those on sex abuse cases. The document has a lengthy section giving the historical background of the Church’s legislation on the subject, with some much-need clarifications:
Cases concerning the dignity of the Sacrament of Penance remained with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office; its name changed in 1965) after the Council, and the Instruction “Crimen Sollicitationis” was still used for such cases until the new norms established by the motu proprio “Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela” in 2001.
A small number of cases concerning sexual misconduct of clergy with minors was referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after the Second Vatican Council. Some of these cases were linked with the abuse of the sacrament of Penance, while a number may have been referred as requests for dispensations from the obligations of priesthood, including celibacy (sometimes referred to as “laicization”) which were dealt with by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith until 1989 (From 1989 to 2005 the competence in these dispensation cases was transferred to the Congregation for Sacraments and Divine Worship; from 2005 to the present the same cases have been treated by the Congregation for the Clergy).
The Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1983 updated the whole discipline n can, 1395, § 2: “A cleric who in another way has committed an offense against the sixth commandment of the Decalogue, if the delict was committed by force or threats or publicly or with a minor below the age of sixteen years, is to be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants”. According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law canonical trials are held in the dioceses. Appeals from judicial sentences may be presented to the Roman Rota, whereas administrative recourses against penal decrees are presented to the Congregation for the Clergy.\
In 1994 the Holy See granted an indult to the Bishops of the United States: the age for the canonical crime of sexual abuse of a minor was raised to 18. At the same time, prescription (canonical term for Statute of Limitations) was extended to a period of 10 years from the 18th birthday of the victim. Bishops were reminded to conduct canonical trials in their dioceses. Appeals were to be heard by the Roman Rota. Administrative Recourses were heard by the Congregation for the Clergy. During this period (1994 - 2001) no reference was made to the previous competence of the Holy Office over such cases.
The 1994 Indult for the US was extended to Ireland in 1996. In the meantime the question of special procedures for sexual abuse cases was under discussion in the Roman Curia. Finally Pope John Paul II decided to include the sexual abuse of a minor under 18 by a cleric, among the new list of canonical delicts reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Prescription for these cases was of ten (10) years from the 18th birthday of the victim. This new law was promulgated in the motu proprio “Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela” on 30 April 2001. A letter signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, respectively Prefect and Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was sent to all the Roman Catholic Bishops on 18 May 2001. This letter informed the bishops of the new law and the new procedures which replaced the Instruction “Crimen Sollicitationis”.
The acts that constitute the most grave delicts reserved to the Congregation were specified in this letter, both those against morality and those committed in the celebration of the Sacraments. Also given were special procedural norms to be followed in cases concerning these grave delicts, including those norms regarding the determination and imposition of canonical sanctions….
The important thing to not here is that after the promulgation of the 1983 code of Canon law, the CDF only had jurisdiction of abuse cases that were connected with the Sacrament of Penance. This is indoubtedly what was meant in 20001 in saying that CS had remained “in effect until now.” The effect referred only to the particular cases the Congregation still had the authority to treat after 1983.
This is the first of a new series inspired again largely by Pope John Paul I, but also by my interest in the writings of his successors about the vital subject of the imagery we use for God. I hope to finish it by this August for the 32nd anniversary of his election as Pope.
In his 1995 book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote an in-depth analysis of the modern approach to God. This passage is especially telling:
Hegel’s paradigm of the master and the servant is more present in people’s consciousness today than is wisdom, whose origin lies in the filial fear of God. The philosophy of arrogance is born of the Hegelian paradigm. The only force capable of effectively counteracting this philosophy is found in the Gospel of Christ, in which the paradigm of master-slave is radically transformed into the paradigm of father-son.
The father-son paradigm is ageless. It is older than human history. The “rays of fatherhood” contained in this formulation belong to the Trinitarian Mystery of God Himself, which shines forth from Him, illuminating man and his history.
This notwithstanding, as we know from Revelation, in human history the “rays of fatherhood” meet a first resistance in the obscure but real fact of original sin. Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love and leaving man only with a sense of the master-slave relationship. As a result, the Lord appears jealous of His power over the world and over man; and consequently, man feels goaded to do battle against God. No differently than in any epoch of history, the enslaved man is driven to take sides against the master who kept him enslaved. leaving man only with a sense of the master/slave relationship.” (1)
This is a profound statement of the origins of modern humanity’s alienation from God, and the source of so much atheism.
The Pope was not alone in this view. In his book Faith of the Fatherless, Paul Vitz posits that the rejection of the idea of God by many prominent atheists, including Freud, Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be traced to their anger at dead, abusive or emotionally distant fathers. (2)
On the other hand, trying to fill in the gap, we have the pop culture feminist view of God as the “goddess within,” the life-affirming, fun loving earth mother Gaia. One of the most prominent examples of this is the idea of the “Sacred Feminine,” popularized by Dan Brown and The Da Vinci Code, which counters the teaching of the Church with a sex goddess (I wrote about this here). Not all goddess worship is this silly. But it is often very tied to the rejection of the father. Comments I have heard from those who believe in a goddess indicate that they fundamentally reject the idea of God as an authority figure. A goddess, they reason is non-judgmental, and doesn’t have all the “rules” of the patriarchal male God. Here are more signs of a dysfunctional relationship with the father, as well as the Father.
This trend toward “feminization” of God baffles and upsets many Catholics. Of course, it is hurtful to see God the Father as understood in Scripture and Church tradition rejected by so many people. Not surprisingly, these Catholics particularly resist the idea of God as Mother when people try to bring it into the Church.
Once, maybe four or five years ago, we had a guest speaker come to our Secular Franciscan fraternity meeting in the Bronx. He wanted to give a talk about spirituality, but hardly got beyond the first paragraph where he encouraged us to think of God as mother. He met with fierce resistance to this idea from the membership of our fraternity – which, by the way is 100% female, most of them older women. I, who was the youngest in the group, was the only one not opposed, but I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The women in the group said to the speaker: “God is our Father; this is traditional, why are you changing it?”
People very frequently say to me when subject comes up: “Replacing God as Father with God as Mother feminizes the Church, and it’s already too feminized!” Or “It doesn’t help the spirituality of men in the church to replace God the Father with God the Mother. Men no longer have a real sense of masculinity because of this.” Or “Jesus told us how to speak of God as our Father, and that’s that. We don’t need any more than that.”
Yet our last three Popes have thought differently.
It all began in September 1978, when John Paul I startled a great many people during his very short papacy by proclaiming, “God is a father, but even more a mother.” (3) Yet this memorable remark doesn’t begin to exhaust what he had to say on this subject both before and after he became Pope. John Paul II continued this trend by speaking about God as mother in his encyclicals and letters, in his audience talks, and even in his lovely proclamation of the Our Father. In turn, his successor, Benedict XVI, has used some of the same imagery, and introduced theological clarifications to it.
Yet the idea of God as mother as taught by the most recent popes has penetrated very little into the mind or life of the Church. Many people continue to identify this feminine and maternal imagery for God with dissent in the Church, or at least with something suspiciously trendy, completely unaware that it is papal teaching.
But why have recent popes spoken about God this way?
It is true that we are almost a fatherless society. We are rapidly becoming a national of single mothers, with hardly a father in sight. Perpetual male adolescence is celebrated as the norm, and the responsibility of fatherhood is something people hardly expect anymore. Many people have no relationship with their fathers. In the past, literally or emotionally fatherless Catholics have often turned to priests as father figures. And yet this relationship has so often been betrayed because of the clerical sex abuse scandal.
Yet this emotional distance isn’t connected with just one parent. Radical feminism, and the prevalence of abortion has wounded many women precisely in their maternal instinct.
Some radical feminist pro-abortion women with whom I have had discussions have shown an amazing disgust for motherhood; they are unable to see pregnancy and childbirth, particularly of an unlooked-for child, as anything but “rape for nine months,” “slavery of the uterus,” and “forced motherhood.” Becoming pregnant makes you no more than a “breeder” or “incubator,” and Christianity, by its praise for motherhood, perpetuates this “dehumanizing” view of women. Some of these feminists have even denied that women have a biological maternal instinct, because this “naturalizes” the idea of women as mother – which is an contradiction of their ideal of woman as a career-driven, independent person; above all, motherhood is a slap in the face to the dream of being able to have sexual pleasure any time they like without unpleasant consequences like children.
What is most frightening of all is that women with this deficient maternal sense sometimes do end up becoming mothers. I feel certain their children must suffer for it. Other women who have had and regretted abortions have also admitted great difficulty in parenting when they do have “wanted” children because of their unresolved guilty feelings. So yes, motherhood in our society is in as much trouble as fatherhood is.
Some who have had both parents who were distant have found they were unable to relate to God as Father or Mary as Mother. One recent commenter on an internet post said:
I think there is definitely a correlation. In my own case, my father was rather distant (spent his energies in various get-rich-quick schemes) and my mother is an alcoholic. I became an atheist, quietly (they never knew) in my teens.
I’m now back Home, but I have a hard time with God as Father — oh, not intellectually (I’m solid there) but in terms of any emotional attachment — the heart just isn’t involved. Nor do I have any idea how to regard Mary as my Mother — again, I accept the concept intellectually, but there simply is no attachment. I have no idea how to change this at all — I just trust that God will forgive me my lack of love, as I truly do want to love Him and His Mother. I just don’t know how. (4)
This suggests that negative reactions to emotionally abusive or absent mothers also influence us spiritually.
But — presuming we can actually form an attachment to a spiritual mother- don’t Catholics have a sufficient mother figure in Mary? Why do we need to speak of God as mother?
Mary is a wonderful spiritual mother to us. Yet Mary is not God nor any part of God. In fact Catholics know that it is blasphemous to call Mary God. So she is not a divine mother; a divine mother is different.
If Mary really were sufficient as a spiritual mother, we wouldn’t expect to see John Paul II put forward the maternal image of God as he did. For it is just about impossible to imagine a more ardent or devoted lover of Mary than he was!
It’s well known that Karol Wojtyla lost his mother at a very early age. Soon afterward he asked the Blessed Virgin to become his mother. He put Totus Tuus (All Yours) on his episcopal coat of arms out of devotion to her. After the assassination attempt against him in 1981, he credited her with deflecting the deadly bullet from his heart. We can find a similar robust devotion to Mary in the other two Popes I have mentioned. So we can’t say that it was a lack of devotion to the motherhood of Mary that led them to speak of God as mother. Evidently, sometimes only a divine Mother will do.
Still, many have as much difficulty with the idea of God as Mother as they do with God as Father. Given that our sense of the motherhood as well as fatherhood of God may need healing, I hope we can learn something of what divine motherhood is like and how it differs from the neo-pagan conception of Gaia and the Sacred Feminine.
So I plan to make “God as Father and mother” the subject of my next few posts. We will learn something of what John Paul I, John Paul II and Benedict XVI have thought on this subject.
I think it’s important to stress that I am not striving to “replace God the Father with God the Mother” as some good Catholics fear – and some feminists are actually trying to do. I want to explore the maternal images of God that exist in the Bible that have come to be an important though unacknowledged part of the papal Magisterium and how they can affect our spiritual lives.
So next time I will start with the teaching of John Paul I.
NOTES
(1) John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, paperback ed., (New York: Knopf, 1995, 2003), pp. 225-26.
(2) Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism; Dallas: Spence Publishing Co, 2009).
(3) Angelus address, September 10, 1978; L’Osservatore Romano [Italian ed], 11-12 September 1978.
This video actually dates from more than 10 days ago, but I only found out about it the other day from the Anchoress, who took part in the Brooklyn diocese TV show - as did Jimmy Akin, who mentioned my translation of the important memo in the Fr. Murphy case. It’s an excellent discussion all the way around.
I’m putting this up now since the video I linked to last year is now gone. This one is actually the whole 90-minute or so direct feed — without commentary or any other frills — from the Centro Televisivo Vaticano (CTV). The real action starts in Part 6 with the announcement, and continues through 7 and 8. (when each video ends, just click on the next link that appears in the video window)
Many of us have felt enraged, and often close to tears of frustration over ignorance and malice of the press in their treatment of the Pope in these last few weeks.
Maybe it’s time for a laugh, courtesy of this editorial by Hilary White, on the attempts by the two most embarrassing atheists alive, Messieurs Dawkins and Hitchens (who else?) to have the Pope arrested when he visits Great Britain this fall. Maybe the press will finally back off, when it learns these two nutjobs are involved in the attack against Benedict. Oh, they originally got acclaim for their books, but now people just more or less look at them funny when they talk. Think of the two oddest uncles at the secularists’ family reunion.
Pointing out that the behavior of the author of The God Delusion, has become more and more well, delusional, the author compares him to Napoleon, who actually did arrest a Pope — Pius VII — and held him captive for six years, an adventure that didn’t turn out well for the emperor:
It is notable that upon Napoleon’s defeat and imprisonment on the remote island of St. Helena, Pius VII begged the British government to treat his former captor more gently.
It is to be hoped that Professor Dawkins has not yet come to the point where he believes he is Napoleon, but if he has, I am confident that our current pope, known for his gentleness and courtly good manners, will be as solicitous for his welfare as was his predecessor for that of the former Emperor.
But laugh, or cry, as we might, there is a serious side to all this: these men are using the misery and suffering of the victims of horrible sexual crimes for their own political purposes, and worse, for their own self-aggrandizement. The frenzy of pope-bashing that has gone on since Holy Week is an insult not only to the man who has done more than any other religious or political leader to put a stop to the sexual abuse of young people, but to those who have suffered from the crimes and those who have tried to help them.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The history of the Catholic missions is by now a long road: at the beginning of that road is the Father of Mercy, who holds out his arms to all his children. All those who encounter the missionaries encounter the Father. And they also encounter the Son, the first missionary, who, obeying the Father, comes to earth, becomes flesh in human nature, is one of us, in solidarity with our misery (except for sin) and ends up dying for us in order to then return to heaven, carrying on his shoulders the human race his has won back.
Out of the same mold are the missionaries, who repeat, in some way, his journey. They too leave their fathers and families and depart to go among a foreign people. They too strip themselves of the refined culture they have acquired in their homelands; and of their native customs and habitat, of a hundred little comforts, in order to be in solidarity. With who? With a people who are on one hand naked and poor, and on the other rich in possibilities, which the missionaries intend to respect, value and elevate."
Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), to the people of his diocese of Vittorio Veneto, on his return from the diocesan missions in Africa in 1966
