FROM THE VATICAN: Holy Week 2010

Holy Week 2010

• Palm Sunday
• Holy Thursday
• Good Friday
• Holy Saturday / Easter Sunday

Way of the Cross 2010

• Introduction 
  [English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish]

• Meditations and Prayers by His Most Reverend Card. Camillo Ruini, Vicar General Emeritus of Holiness for the Diocese of Rome
  [English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish]

• Booklet for the Celebration [pdf]

BREAKING! - "Turkish man who shot Pope says Benedict should resign!"

We now interrupt you for this breaking news of the most fundamental importance from the Associated Press, in what might very well be the culmination of the media's campaign against the Pope:

ANKARA, Turkey — The Turkish man who shot Pope John Paul II says Pope Benedict XVI should resign over the Catholic Church's handling of clerical sex abuse cases.

Mehmet Ali Agca, who emerged from prison in January nearly 29 years after wounding Pope John Paul II in Rome, has declared himself a messenger from God.

Agca told journalists in Istanbul on Monday that "I want the pope to resign not arrested," as he waved a Turkish newspaper reporting calls for the arrest of the pope. The press conference marked his first public comments since his release.

The article also mentions "There are questions about Agca's mental health."

Pope Benedict, the Catholic Church and the sexual abuse crisis [Roundup]

The press of late has been dominated by coverage of the Church and the sexual abuse crisis. Much of this reporting has been sketchy on the facts and/or downright slanderous, the work of those who would exploit this tragedy to advance their vendetta against the Holy Father. Following is a roundup of news and commentary.

Prior Roundups

• Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI and "The Murphy Case" The Benedict Blog March 27, 2010. Cataloguing the responses (and rebuttals) to the New York Times' smear campaign against the Pope, concerning the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974.

  
  Recent updates include what really happened in the Murphy case as reported by Father Thomas T. Brundage, JCL, who oversaw the canonical proceedings against Fr. Murphy, and a statement by Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki, acknowledging:

  Mistakes were made in the Lawrence Murphy case. The mistakes were not made in Rome in 1996, 1997 and 1998. The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the Church, by civil authorities, by Church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness in the name of the Church and in the name of this Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

• Vatican rushes to Pope's defense against calumnious press The Benedict Blog March 14, 2010.

• From the Catholic Herald (UK): The Pope and the abuse scandal: a guide for perplexed Catholics "Here we publish a narrative account of the furore that engulfed Pope Benedict XVI after claims that he covered up clerical abuse." (A quick-but-helpful read for the impatient).

Further Commentary

• "Keeping the record straight on Benedict and the crisis" National Catholic Reporter John Allen Jr. finds that

  the first casualty of any crisis is perspective. There are at least three aspects of Benedict's record on the sexual abuse crisis which are being misconstrued, or at least sloppily characterized, in today's discussion. Bringing clarity to these points is not a matter of excusing the pope, but rather of trying to understand accurately how we got where we are. [more]

• "Pope's critics must get their facts straight" George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, schools Christopher Hitchens on the merits of accurate reporting.

• “A step comparable to a parent who denounces his or her own child”: A different perspective David Schütz (Sentire Cum Ecclesia):

  There has been a lot of confusion about the so-called “policy of secrecy” in the Catholic Church regarding the offences we are discussing. I thought it would be helpful to include here a few paragraphs from an interview by Italian journalist Gianni Cardinale with Monsignor Charles J. Scicluna, the Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ...

• Thomas Plante, PhD., ABPP, notes that "there are a lot more myths than facts bantered around" by the press and would like us to know Six important points about clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church (Psychology Today March 24, 2010).

• Ross Douthat reviews the pattern of priestly sex abuse which lends credence to the claim that "something in the moral/cultural/theological climate of the 1960s and 1970s encouraged a spike in sexual abuse." (On that note, see also Mary Eberstad's "Elephant in the Sacristy" Weekly Standard June 17, 2002).

• John Allen Jr. has an op-ed in the New York Times, in which he points out "For anyone who knows the Vatican’s history on this issue, Benedict XVI isn’t just part of the problem. He’s also a major chapter in the solution":

  To understand that, it’s necessary to wind the clock back a decade. Before then, no Vatican office had clear responsibility for cases of priests accused of sexual abuse, which instead were usually handled — and often ignored — at the diocesan level. In 2001, however, Pope John Paul II assigned responsibility to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s all-important doctrinal office, which was headed by Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal.

  As a result, bishops were required to send their case files to Cardinal Ratzinger’s office. By all accounts, he studied them with care, making him one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world to have read the documentation on virtually every Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse. The experience gave him a familiarity with the pervasiveness of the problem that virtually no other figure in the Catholic Church can claim. And driven by that encounter with what he would later refer to as “filth” in the church, Cardinal Ratzinger seems to have undergone a transformation. From that point forward, he and his staff were determined to get something done.

• Archbishop Dolan of New York City, blogging on the scandals:

  What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — but also that the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.

  That, of course, is malarkey. Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.

  The sexual abuse of our young people is an international, cultural, societal horror. It affects every religion, country, family, job, profession, vocation, and ethnic group.

  We Catholics have for a decade apologized, cried, reached out, shouted mea culpa, and engaged in a comprehensive reform that has met with widespread acclaim. We’ve got a long way to go, and the reform still has to continue.

  But it is fair to say that, just as the Catholic Church may have been a bleak example of how not to respond to this tragedy in the past, the Church is now a model of what to do. As the National Review Online observes, “. . . the Church’s efforts to come to grips with this problem within the household of faith — more far reaching than in any other institution or sector of society — have led others to look to the Catholic Church for guidance on how to address what is, in fact, a global plague.”

  See also Archbishop Dolan's latest column on the "a well-oiled campaign against Pope Benedict."

Challenging the critics

• "Why can't the media treat the Pope fairly?" asks the Telegraph's Andrew M. Brown:

  I read the coverage of the Pope every day in the newspapers and listen to the BBC news and as a Catholic and a journalist I feel like crying out pathetically: “This is not fair!” And it isn’t fair, or reasonable. Intelligent journalists who are normally capable of mental subtlety and of coping with complexities have abandoned their critical faculties. There is an atmosphere of unreason.

  I cannot help feeling that a lot of it is down to sheer, blind hatred. It amounts to the demonisation of a whole institution and its leader. We have come to a stage where nothing good whatever, no good faith can be assumed of anybody involved in the Church – however senior, however greatly respected, loved, admired, including the Pope.

• Diogenes (Off The Record) notices the appearance of "the usual suspects":

  Desperate for new witnesses who will join in the calls for the Pope's resignation, the media have rediscovered Hans Küng, who-- having honed his skills through decades of complaints that his old faculty colleague is responsible for all the world's ills-- sure, enough, thinks the Pope should resign.

  In other news, the sun rose in the east again this morning.

• Speaking of the usual suspects, the dour, unhinged, and factless, Maureen Dowd seeks papal whipping boy (Carl Olson, Insight Scoop).

• George Weigel and Rev. Jay Scott Newman respond to Sinead O'Connor (National Review):

  f Irish singer Sinead O’Connor wishes to denounce her mother publicly as an abusive parent, that is her privilege. If Ms. O’Connor wishes to shred a photograph of Pope John Paul II on stage, as she did almost two decades ago, she is, one supposes, within the boundaries of “performance art.” If Ms. O’Connor wishes to “separate” the God she believes in from the Catholic Church in which she was raised, as she put it in a March 28 article in the “Outlook” section of the Washington Post, she is free to do so.

  What Sinead O’Connor is not free to do is to misrepresent the teaching and law of the Catholic Church in the Post in order to buttress her claim that the Church is an “abusive organization” and that the Church threatens with excommunication those who would blow the whistle on clerical sexual abusers. That is utterly false. If Ms. O’Connor is aware of that falsehood, she has lied.

• Creative Minority Report points out "the worst headline ever".

• The Telegraph's Damien Thompson responds to the high priest of atheism, Richard Dawkins:

  [Dawkin's] article conjures up the image of a nasty old man who’s losing his marbles. It’s not very nice about the Pope, either.

• Fr. John Zuhlsdorf takes apart Fr. Richard McBrien's Newsweek screed ("I think McBrien is pissed off that Hans Kung got press on this issue before he did").

See also

• The U.S. Bishops have published a statement expressing "profound gratitude for the assistance that Pope Benedict XVI has given us in our efforts to respond to victims, deal with perpetrators and to create safe environments for children." (Zenit March 30, 2010).
• Translation of a commentary by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the director of Vatican Radio, about recent sexual abuse scandals (Zenit March 26, 2010).
• Whether in favor, opposed or divided, the world's media received Benedict XVI's letter to Ireland's Catholics as an "unprecedented" document, not only for being the first dedicated by a Pope to the issue, but also because of the grief with which it is written, says Jesús Colina. (Zenit, March 23, 2010).

Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI and "The Murphy Case"

First, the charge:

• Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys, by Laurie Goodstein (New York Times March 24, 2010) charges that "Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church":

  The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal. ...

  The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

  In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

  But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

  “I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

  The Times cites as evidence " letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims’ affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican."
  
  

  According to the Times, "Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims":

  Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

  Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

From the Vatican, the full text of the statement given to the New York Times on Wednesday by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office:

The tragic case of Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, involved particularly vulnerable victims who suffered terribly from what he did. By sexually abusing children who were hearing-impaired, Father Murphy violated the law and, more importantly, the sacred trust that his victims had placed in him.

During the mid-1970s, some of Father Murphy's victims reported his abuse to civil authorities, who investigated him at that time; however, according to news reports, that investigation was dropped. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not informed of the matter until some twenty years later.

It has been suggested that a relationship exists between the application of Crimen sollicitationis and the non-reporting of child abuse to civil authorities in this case. In fact, there is no such relationship. Indeed, contrary to some statements that have circulated in the press, neither Crimen nor the Code of Canon Law ever prohibited the reporting of child abuse to law enforcement authorities.

In the late 1990s, after over two decades had passed since the abuse had been reported to diocesan officials and the police, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was presented for the first time with the question of how to treat the Murphy case canonically. The Congregation was informed of the matter because it involved solicitation in the confessional, which is a violation of the Sacrament of Penance. It is important to note that the canonical question presented to the Congregation was unrelated to any potential civil or criminal proceedings against Father Murphy.

In such cases, the Code of Canon Law does not envision automatic penalties, but recommends that a judgment be made not excluding even the greatest ecclesiastical penalty of dismissal from the clerical state (cf. Canon 1395, no. 2). In light of the facts that Father Murphy was elderly and in very poor health, and that he was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the Archbishop of Milwaukee give consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts. Father Murphy died approximately four months later, without further incident.

Further responses

• Cardinal Ratzinger An Evil Monster? - blogging for the National Catholic Register, Jimmy Akin provides an excellent point-by-point analysis of the charges and evidence (or lack thereof) in the Murphy case.

• "Shame on the New York Times" says Michael Sean Winters (America):

  ... I will grant that there is something to the argument that the victims’ right to have their story told, to receive justice for the crimes against them, demanded a canonical trial of the priest no matter his physical condition. I will grant that there is a coldness in the correspondence that seems more focused on the reputation of the Church than on the rights of the victims. I will grant that it was the victims of this priest’s abuse, not Cardinal Ratzinger, who had a right to decide when and how to show mercy to Father Murphy. It is not difficult to see that Cardinal Ratzinger might have made the wrong decision in this case, but I submit that there is nothing in the documents the Times presents that suggests Cardinal Ratzinger’s moral culpability for the abuse itself or for any cover-up of that abuse. And the Times article certainly suggests moral culpability even though the documents do not support the charge.

• The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you - Phil Lawler (CatholicCulture.com) examines the evidence and finds that

  ... his is a story about the abject failure of the Milwaukee archdiocese to discipline a dangerous priest, and the tardy effort by Archbishop Weakland--who would soon become the subject of a major scandal himself--to shift responsibility to Rome.

  Lawler lists six notable points:

  1. The allegations of abuse by Father Lawrence Murphy began in 1955 and continued in 1974, according to the Times account. The Vatican was first notified in 1996: 40 years after Church officials in Wisconsin were first made aware of the problem. Local Church leaders could have taken action in the 1950s. They didn't.
  2. The Vatican, following the standard procedures required by canon law, kept its own inquiries confidential. But the CDF never barred other investigations.
  3. Milwaukee's Archbishop Cousins could have suspended Father Murphy from priestly ministry in 1974, when he was evidently convinced that the priest was guilty of gross misconduct. He didn't.
  4. Having called the Vatican's attention to Murphy's case, Archbishop Weakland apparently wanted an immediate response, and was unhappy that the CDF took 8 months to respond. But again, the Milwaukee archdiocese had waited decades to take this action.
  5. This was, in effect, the final result of the Vatican's inquiry in this case; Father Murphy died just months later.
  6. The correspondence makes it clear that Archbishop Weakland took action not because he wanted to protect the public from an abusive priest, but because he wanted to avoid the huge public outcry that he predicted would emerge if Murphy was not disciplined.

• Damien Thompson (The Times UK) "smells a stitch up":

  Murphy? Guilty as hell. Various bishops? Likewise. But the fact that in 1996 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger may have approved the decision not to pursue complex canonical procedures against Murphy on the grounds that the guy was dying anyway doesn’t strike me as much of a smoking gun.

  I do, however, get the very strong feeling that the Pope’s enemies, including his enemies in the Church, are trying desperately hard to discover serious complicity on his part in a child abuse case. Because that would be just so convenient, wouldn’t it?

• As Riccardo Cascioli of Avvenire concludes: The documentation published by The New York Times contradicts its own thesis, which accuses Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of not being sufficiently energetic in the case of an American priest who the Church punished for acts of pederasty.

Update!

The following circumstances are worthy of note, says Fr. Raymond J. de Souza in his response to the New York Times (National Review):

The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.
• The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him. Archbishop Weakland had responsibility for the Father Murphy case between 1977 and 1998, when Father Murphy died. He has long been embittered that his maladministration of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee earned him the disfavor of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long before it was revealed that he had used parishioners’ money to pay off his clandestine lover. He is prima facie not a reliable source.
• Laurie Goodstein, the author of the New York Times story, has a recent history with Archbishop Weakland. Last year, upon the release of the disgraced archbishop’s autobiography, she wrote an unusually sympathetic story that buried all the most serious allegations against him (New York Times, May 14, 2009).

• A demonstration took place in Rome on Friday, coinciding with the publication of the New York Times story. One might ask how American activists would happen to be in Rome distributing the very documents referred to that day in the New York Times. The appearance here is one of a coordinated campaign, rather than disinterested reporting.

Update!

• Father Thomas T. Brundage, JCL, who oversaw the canonical proceedings against Fr. Murphy, challenges the New York Times on the veracity of its reporting(The Catholic Anchor March 29, 2010):

  I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

  As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth.

  The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

  My intent in the following paragraphs is to accomplish the following:

  To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;

  To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;

  To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

  To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

  Read the rest.

• Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, WI spoke out on clergy abuse at the end of the March 30, 2010 Chrism Mass:

  ... The Holy Father does not need me to defend him or his decisions. I believe, and history will confirm that his actions in responding to this crisis, swiftly and decisively and his compassionate response to victims/surviovrs, speak for themselves. The Holy Father has been firm in his commitment to combat clergy sexual abuse; root it out of the Church; reach out to those who have been harmed; and hold perpetrators accountable. He has been a leader, meeting with victims/survivors and chastising bishops for their lack of judgment and leadership.

  Mistakes were made in the Lawrence Murphy case. The mistakes were not made in Rome in 1996, 1997 and 1998. The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the Church, by civil authorities, by Church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness in the name of the Church and in the name of this Archdiocese of Milwaukee. ...

  Read the rest.

• "The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI: how it looks to an American in the Vatican" - The current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith weighs in (Catholic San Francisco):

  As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s “disturbing report.” But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his “successor” Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Vatican Website & Twitter Channels

From Vatican Radio:

The publication of the Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland regarding the clerical sexual abuse crisis is accompanied by two new Vatican internet services. The first is a new website:

www.resources.va

The second is a series of six channels on Twitter, each in a different language. The English channel is named: news_va_en. The other languages are French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. And can be accessed by changing the final piece of the channel name to the proper language abbreviation. That is:

• for FRENCH: _fr
• for GERMAN: _de
• for SPANISH: _es
• for PORTUGUESE: _pt
• for ITALIAN: _it

Through these Twitter channels, Vatican Radio and other Vatican media outlets will inform users about the publication of news and multimedia content of particular relevance to the life of the Church.

Today there will be published texts, video and audio referring to the Pope’s Letter to the Catholics of Ireland Regarding the Clerical Sexual Abuse Crisis, using www.vaticanradio.org, www.resources.va, the four Vatican YouTube channels and the six Twitter channels.

Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland

Here is the full text of Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland. It begins:

1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.

As you know, I recently invited the Irish bishops to a meeting here in Rome to give an account of their handling of these matters in the past and to outline the steps they have taken to respond to this grave situation. Together with senior officials of the Roman Curia, I listened to what they had to say, both individually and as a group, as they offered an analysis of mistakes made and lessons learned, and a description of the programmes and protocols now in place. Our discussions were frank and constructive. I am confident that, as a result, the bishops will now be in a stronger position to carry forward the work of repairing past injustices and confronting the broader issues associated with the abuse of minors in a way consonant with the demands of justice and the teachings of the Gospel.

2. For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation. ... [more]

Vatican rushes to Pope's defense against calumnious press

• Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia) offers a roundup of recent events concerning the priestly sex abuse crisis:

  ... with the president of the German bishops due to hold crisis talks with his countryman-Pope tomorrow morning, Austria's senior churchman -- once the lead editor of the first universal catechism in five centuries -- calling for an "unflinching examination" of (among other things) priestly celibacy in the face of scandal (then seeking to row back the comment), the Holy See's own newspaper on an astonishing front-page tear and, even if not personally responsible nor implicated, the specter of revelations reaching to the august choir led for three decades by B16's own brother [Georg Ratzinger], it's safe to say that, as never before and all in a matter of days, the "Long Lent" wrought by the global reports of sexual abuse by clergy -- and, above all, its woeful mishandling by church institutions -- has landed on the Vatican's doorstep with a seismic, shattering thud.

• the Vatican has provided extensive details of its handling of priestly sex abuse cases in recent years and has strongly defended Pope Benedict XVI against accusations of covering up such crimes -- the information was conveyed by way of an Avenire interview with Msgr. Charles Scicluna, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who deals with cases of priests accused of abuse of minors. John Thavis (Catholic News Service summarizes the interview in the following points:

  1. The allegation that Pope Benedict covered up sex abuse crimes is “false and calumnious,” he said. As head of the doctrinal congregation, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger handled such cases with wisdom and courage, and as pope he has dismissed many priests from the clerical state.

  2. The Vatican’s insistence on secrecy in the investigation of these cases by church authorities does not mean bishops or others are exempt from reporting these crimes to civil authorities (a point made in our recent article on the same topic.)

  3. Since 2001, when the doctrinal congregation took over juridical control of accusations of sex abuse by priests against minors, it has processed about 3,000 cases, dealing with crimes committed over the last 50 years. About 60 percent of theses cases involved sexual attraction towards adolescents of the same sex, 30 percent involved heterosexual relations, and the remaining 10 percent were cases of pedophilia.

  4. Most cases have been handled without a church trial, because of the advanced age of the accused, and the penalties in such cases has usually been the imposition of strict limitations on the priest’s ministry. About 20 percent of cases resulted in a church trial, with most of the accused found guilty. In the most serious cases, about 10 percent of the total, the pope has dismissed the offender from the priesthood, and in another 10 percent the priest has been laicized at his request.

  5. The number of new cases of sex abuse by priests has declined; last year there were 223 cases reported from around the world. And while the majority of the 3,000 or so cases handed by the Vatican since 2001 have been from the United States, by last year U.S. cases had dropped to about 25 percent of the total.

  Read the full text of the interview here.

• Fr Federico Lombardi SJ addressed the scandal in a note from the Holy See's Press Office:

  “For some months now the very serious question of the sexual abuse of minors in institutions run by ecclesiastical bodies and by people with positions of responsibility within the Church, priests in particular, has been investing the Church and society in Ireland. The Holy Father recently demonstrated his own concern, particularly through two meetings: firstly with high-ranking members of the episcopate, then with all the ordinaries. He is also preparing the publication of a letter on the subject for the Irish Church.

  “But over recent weeks the debate on the sexual abuse of minors has also involved the Church in certain central European countries (Germany, Austria and Holland). And it is on this development that we wish to make some simple remarks.

  “The main ecclesiastical institutions concerned – the German Jesuit Province (the first to be involved, through the case of the Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin), the German Episcopal Conference, the Austrian Episcopal Conference and the Netherlands Episcopal Conference – have faced the emergence of problem with timely and decisive action. They have demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved date from many years ago. By doing so they have approached the matter ‘on the right foot’, because the correct starting point is recognition of what happened and concern for the victims and the consequences of the acts committed against them. Moreover, they have re-examined the extant ‘Directives’ and have planned new operative guidelines which also aim to identify a prevention strategy, so that everything possible may be done to ensure that similar cases are not repeated in the future. [more]

• As expected, some in the mainstream media are exploiting this as an opportunity to attack the Pope with scurrilous charges -- Tito Edwards (American Catholic) offers has the roundup, while Damien Thompson compiles Catholic reaction to a particularly vicious headline slander by the Times' Richard Owen, and Deacon Greg Kandra asks: "what did Benedict really do?" -- responding to a similar spurious allegation from blogger Andrew Sullivan.

Pope Benedict Roundup!

• Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is preparing to welcome the Pope on March 14 (video - RomeReports.com).

• Benedict XVI is encouraging the Brazilian bishops in their efforts to free people from the slavery to money and bring them back to God. (Zenit).

• The archbishop of Barcelona is affirming that Benedict XVI expressed interest in an invitation to consecrate the Sagrada Familia Church in that city, though he has not yet confirmed. (Zenit)

• Pope Benedict XVI urged Irish bishops to show “determination and resolve” in confronting the sexual abuse scandal convulsing the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (New York Times February 16, 2010)

Addresses from Pope Benedict

• Pope's "Lectio Divina" to Roman Priests (Part 1) | Part II - given during his audience on February 18, 2006.
• Pope's Address to Roman Seminarians delivered Feb. 12 upon visiting the Roman Major Seminary on the feast of Our Lady of Trust.

Pope Benedict XVI: "Let us use the weapons of faith: prayer, listening to God’s Word and penance"

Lent is a long “retreat,” during which we return to ourselves and listen to God’s voice to overcome the temptations of the Evil One and find the truth of our being. It is a time, we could say, of spiritual “contest” to live together with Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the weapons of faith, that is, prayer, listening to God’s Word and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our baptism. May the Virgin Mary help us so that, guided by the Holy Spirit, we live this time of grace with joy and fruit.

Conclusion to Pope Benedict XVI's midday Angelus, prior to embarking on a Lenten spiritual retreat with his co-workers in the Roman Curiae. February 21, 2009.

Related

• Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi: "The Pope Is a Model for Living Lent"
• A Peek at the Pope's Retreat - Interview with Father Enrico dal Covolo, Preacher of the Spiritual Exercises.

"Repent and believe in the Gospel"

... The call to conversion, in fact, uncovers and denounces the easy superficiality that very often characterizes our way of living. To be converted means to change direction along the way of life -- not for a slight adjustment, but a true and total change of direction. Conversion is to go against the current, where the "current" is a superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and illusory, which often draws us, controls us and makes us slaves of evil, or in any case prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, instead, one aims to the lofty measure of Christian life; we are entrusted to the living and personal Gospel, which is Christ Jesus. His person is the final goal and the profound meaning of conversion; he is the way which we are called to follow in life, allowing ourselves to be illumined by his light and sustained by his strength that moves our steps. In this way conversion manifests its most splendid and fascinating face: It is not a simple moral decision to rectify our conduct of life, but it is a decision of faith, which involves us wholly in profound communion with the living and concrete person of Jesus.

Pope Benedict XVI receives ashes during the celebration of Ash Wednesday mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina, in Rome. Source: AP

To be converted and to believe in the Gospel are not two different things or in some way closely related, but rather, they express the same reality. Conversion is the total "yes" of the one who gives his own existence to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ, who first offered himself to man as Way, Truth and Life, as the one who frees and saves him. This is precisely the meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus began the preaching of the "Gospel of God." "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15).

"Repent and believe in the Gospel" is not only at the beginning of the Christian life, but accompanies all its steps, [this call] remains, renewing itself, and spreads, branching out in all its expressions. Every day is a favorable moment of grace, because each day invites us to give ourselves to Jesus, to have confidence in him, to remain in him, to share his style of life, to learn from him true love, to follow him in daily fulfilling of the will of the Father, the only great law of life -- every day, even when difficulties and toil, exhaustion and falls are not lacking, even when we are tempted to abandon the following of Christ and to shut ourselves in ourselves, in our egoism, without realizing the need we have to open to the love of God in Christ, to live the same logic of justice and love.

~ Pope Benedict XVI Ash Wednesday Address 2/7/2010