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Thursday April 15, 2010


News Briefs II on Catholic Sexual Abuse Controversy: Radcliffe, De Souza, Coulter and More

* Disclaimer: The linked items below or the websites at which they are located do not necessarily represent the views of LifeSiteNews.com. They are presented only for your information.

Compiled by Steve Jalsevac

Note: This is getting hot! Exceptional commentary continues from a wide variety and sometimes most unexpected of sources. Even prominent atheists are defending the pope, while others say he should just apologize, apologize and not respond to the massively damaging lies, hatred and other calumny against himself and the Church. And then there are the hate spewing articles. One thing is sure, there has for some time been a need to clean out the “filth” from the Catholic Church. It might be that this mostly media generated firestorm will end up finally removing the obstacles within the Curia and Cardinals and bishops that have prevented Benedict and others from completing just that for some years.



Should I Stay or Should I Go? by Timothy Radcliffe

I have received emails from people all around Europe asking how can they possibly remain in the Church? I was even sent a form with which to renounce my membership of the Church. Why stay?

It is generally imagined that the Vatican is a vast and efficient organisation. In fact it is tiny. The CDF only employs 45 people, dealing with doctrinal and disciplinary issues for a Church which has 1.3 billion members, 17 per cent of the world’s population, and some 400,000 priests. When I dealt with the CDF as Master of the Dominican Order, it was obvious that they were struggling to cope. Documents slipped through the cracks.

…we must, in justice, understand why the Vatican is so self-protective. There were more martyrs in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries combined. Bishops and priests, Religious and laity were assassinated in Western Europe, in Soviet countries, in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

But we owe a debt of gratitude to the press for its insistence that the Church face its failures. If it had not been for the media, then this shameful abuse might have remained unaddressed.

Confidentiality is also a consequence of the Church’s insistence on the right of everyone accused to keep their good name until they are proved to be guilty. This is very hard for our society to understand, whose media destroy people’s reputations without a thought.

Why go? If it is to find a safer haven, a less corrupt Church, then I think that you will be disappointed. We may be embarrassed to admit that we are Catholics, but Jesus kept shameful company from the beginning.

https://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/15/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go/

A Critic Blinded by Hatred – Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Post

There is no pleasure to be taken in revisiting the sordid mess of sexual abuse, but the regular appearance of Christopher Hitchens in these pages requires it. Moles are naturally blind. Hitchens is blinded by hatred. A few weeks back Hitchens appeared here, vomiting forth his bilious anti-Catholic defamation.

My colleague Rex Murphy then shovelled out the Hitchens stall, but so prodigious is the excrement that there remains work to be done. On Tuesday, Hitchens, waging his atheistic holy war against Benedict, wrote that then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s signature had been found on a — get ready for it — “permission to rape.”

Quoting the Bible to Hitchens is like giving garlic to a vampire, but the prophet Jeremiah may have played a little Whack-A-Mole in his day, for he laments the “foolish ones, without understanding, who have eyes and see not.”

https://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=60ab942b-97f5-43b7-ab89-49d3067e3ca4&p=2

Bluster Masquerading as Reason – Rex Murphy, National Post

A sexual abuse scandal in Germany has become an excuse for anti-Catholic bigots to vent their hatred. If we are to have an adjudication on the Pontiff’s complicity or innocence in the matter of cover-ups or evasion by the Catholic Church in the sexual-abuse scandals that have rocked it, I’m not sure I’d go to Christopher Hitchens to get it. The man who “did in” Mother Teresa has made anti-religious rage a great theme of his career.

https://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/20/rex-murphy-bluster-masquerading-as-reason.aspx



The Pope-Hunters’ Pathological Campaign

THE New Atheist campaign to have Pope Benedict XVI arrested when he visits Britain later this year exposes the deeply disturbing, authoritarian and even Inquisitorial side to today’s campaigning secularism. My only concern, as an atheistic libertarian, is with analysing the emergence of a new form of hysterical and repressive atheism.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/the-pope-hunters-pathological-campaign/story-e6frg6zo-1225853773394

The Mob Should Lay Off. The pope is Completely Innocent – Jack Valero, The Guardian

Richard Dawkins’s case against the pope is nonsense. Benedict has striven to rid the church of child abuse

https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/15/pope-mob-benedict-misreading-abuse.

In Defense of the Pope – Alan M. Dershowitz

To begin with, this is an extraordinarily complex problem, because the Church has at least five important traditions that make it difficult to move quickly and aggressively in response to complaints of abuse. Most important, this tragedy should not be used as an excuse to attack a large and revered institution that does much good throughout the world. Blame must be placed with precision and praise should be given with precision as well. The eleventh Commandment, Thou Shalt Not Stereotype, must never be forgotten.

https://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/13/in-defense-of-the-pope/

Fr. Joseph Fessio’s interview with WGN-TV “Morning News”

The problem lies with the bishops of that time, not with the Pope today

https://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2010/04/fr-joseph-fessios-interview-with-wgntv-morning-news.html

The Moral Consequences of Episcopal Sin – Edward T. Oakes, First Things

Given how devastating must be the effect of these crimes on the victims, I cannot help but be struck—as has been the world—by the collusion of bishops in covering up these crimes, lest they cause “scandal to the Church.” Even now, explicit confessions of guilt in that sin have been remarkably muted.

I have long felt that we Catholics will know that this crisis has finally been put behind us, at least in the United States, when the bishops, in one of their collective annual meetings, passes a resolution actually thanking those newspapers who revealed the slime and filth lurking inside the presbyterate of too many dioceses and the attempted cover-ups by too many chanceries.

Here stand exposed all the attempts to hush up heinous crimes under the pretext that one was preventing “scandal,” when in fact one was, however unawares and unintentionally, colluding in the very secrecy that made these crimes go undetected and unpunished for so long.

https://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/04/the-moral-consequences-of-episcopal-sin

Should Gay Priests Adopt? by Ann Coulter

It is a fact that the vast majority of the abuser priests — more than 90 percent — are accused of molesting teen-age boys. Indeed, the overwhelmingly homosexual nature of the abuse prompted The New York Times to engage in its classic “Where’s Waldo” reporting style, in which the sex of the victims is studiedly hidden amid a torrent of genderless words, such as the “teen-ager,” the “former student,” the “victim” and the “accuser.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2002/03/21/should_gay_priests_adopt

Outrage, clarification follow Cardinal Bertone’s linking homosexuality to abuse

https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=6022

Following Bertone’s gaffe, Pope Benedict XVI has the chance to clear out the useless old guard from the Vatican

https://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100034544/following-bertones-gaffe-pope-benedict-xvi-has-the-chance-to-clear-out-the-useless-old-guard-from-the-vatican/

Stop Blaming, Start Repenting – By Charles Lewis, National Post

https://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/holy-post/archive/2010/04/14/analysis-stop-blaming-start-repenting.aspx

Pope Benedict at Crossroads – Charles Lewis, National Post

Fr. Thomas Rosica of Toronto, a member of the Pontifical Council for Communications, said the thing not to do now is take a defensive posture. “It’s not the best way,” said Fr. Rosica, who also runs Salt & Light, a Catholic television network. “They don’t understand the full impact of what’s happening [in terms of public perception].”

If underlings of Pope Benedict were made aware of abusive priests and did not act, whether the Pope knew or not, responsibility has to be shouldered, he said. “A leader is responsible not only for things he actually saw but what was under his watch. The best possible thing that could come about now is the Vatican admits that an error had been committed, that oversight had taken place — and if that were to come from Benedict himself that would be very important.

“He could say, ‘Under my administration, under my watch, an error was caused that has come to light and we are deeply sorry for that.’ ”

https://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=2732758

Saving The Vatican Brand, John Moore, National Post

If the Catholic Church is to endure, it is going to have do the unthinkable and yield to the modern world. Pope Benedict will have to admit fallibility, bring about massive institutional change and humble himself not to God but to his followers. Only that will save the Catholic brand.

https://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2908075

Vatican Must Confess, Apologize and Put Children First – USA Today

According to Father Thomas Reese, a Woodstock senior fellow at Georgetown University, what we have here is a failure to communicate. The way forward is plain: “Condemn abuse. Acknowledge mistakes. Apologize, apologize, apologize.”

https://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-04-12-column12_ST_N.htm

German Theologian Hans Kueng Urges Bishops to Disobey Pope

https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNOfSa1jBGKk_KjTBCQ6rTFoqJ7AD9F3CQ900

Obama Anti-Catholic Harry Knox Rips Vatican

Was rejected for ordination by the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ because of his homosexual lifestyle.

https://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1832

HuffPo Columnist Calls for Pope’s Arrest

On April 14 columnist Derek Beres wrote “Why Arresting the Pope is a Great Idea.” Not only that, but Beres actually compared Pope Benedict to director Roman Polanski, who raped a young girl.

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/sarah-knoploh/2010/04/15/huffpo-columnist-calls-popes-arrest

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