Recently, the Catholic Church — and even the Pope himself — have been coming under increasing criticism for failing to appropriately discipline church officials who had sexually abused thousands of children. On March 24th, the New York Times characterized “Pope Benedict XVI’s latest apology for the emerging global scandal of child abuse by predatory priests,” as inadequate, noting that Benedict “ made no mention of the need to discipline diocesan leaders most responsible for shielding hundreds of priests from criminal penalties by moving them from parish to parish to continue their crimes.” 
 
 The Catholic League responded the op-ed by running an ad in the New York Times criticizing the paper for its editorial and blaming the scandal on homosexuality: 
 
 The argument itself is confusing and contradictory. If “homosexuality does not cause predatory behavior” then why is is the “pedophilia crisis” a “homosexual crisis”? Most of the molesters were also over the age 30 but the Catholic League does not rename the “pedophilia crisis” an “older man crisis” or an “white older man” crisis or anything of the sort. But all this misses the point. What the Catholic League is trying to do is imply that there is a connection between homosexuality and molestation, just like segregationists once accused African Americans of raping white women, and Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies. 
 
 In reality, pedophilia has little to do with the gender of the child or the orientation of the molester; pedophiles are attracted to youth and control. “Accessibility is more the factor in who a pedophile abuses,” psychotherapist Joe Kort writes. “This may explain the high incidence of children molested in church communities and fraternal organizations, where the pedophile may more easily have access to children.” 
 
 Last night on Larry King Live, Catholic League President Bill Donohue tried to dismiss this argument by claiming that “it’s not a pedophilia” because “most of the victims were post pubescent,” as old as 12 or 13 years of age. Anything older than that is the fault of gays. ||||| The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI: 
 
 how it looks to an American in the Vatican by Cardinal William J. Levada 
 
 Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith In our melting pot of peoples, languages and backgrounds, Americans are not noted as examples of “high” culture. But we can take pride as a rule in our passion for fairness. In the Vatican where I currently work, my colleagues – whether fellow cardinals at meetings or officials in my office – come from many different countries, continents and cultures. As I write this response today (March 26, 2010) I have had to admit to them that I am not proud of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness. I say this because today’s Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein, a senior columnist, headlined “Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest,” and an accompanying editorial entitled “The Pope and the Pedophilia Scandal,” in which the editors call the Goodstein article a disturbing report (emphasis in original) as a basis for their own charges against the Pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting. In her lead paragraph, Goodstein relies on what she describes as “newly unearthed files” to point out what the Vatican (i.e. then Cardinal Ratzinger and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) did not do – “defrock Fr. Murphy.” Breaking news, apparently. Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “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, according to the documents and interviews with victims.” But in paragraph 13, commenting on a statement of Fr. Lombardi (the Vatican spokesman) that Church law does not prohibit anyone from reporting cases of abuse to civil authorities, Goodstein writes, “He did not address why that had never happened in this case.” Did she forget, or did her editors not read, what she wrote in paragraph nine about Murphy getting “a pass from the police and prosecutors”? By her own account it seems clear that criminal authorities had been notified, most probably by the victims and their families. Goodstein’s account bounces back and forth as if there were not some 20 plus years intervening between reports in the 1960 and 70’s to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and local police, and Archbishop Weakland’s appeal for help to the Vatican in 1996. Why? Because the point of the article is not about failures on the part of church and civil authorities to act properly at the time. I, for one, looking back at this report agree that Fr. Murphy deserved to be dismissed from the clerical state for his egregious criminal behavior, which would normally have resulted from a canonical trial. The point of Goodstein’s article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time. She uses the technique of repeating the many escalating charges and accusations from various sources (not least from her own newspaper), and tries to use these “newly unearthed files” as the basis for accusing the pope of leniency and inaction in this case and presumably in others. It seems to me, on the other hand, that we owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors. These efforts began when the Pope served as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and continued after he was elected Pope. That the Times has published a series of articles in which the important contribution he has made – especially in the development and implementation of Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, the Motu proprio issued by Pope John Paul II in 2001 – is ignored, seems to me to warrant the charge of lack of fairness which should be the hallmark of any reputable newspaper. Let me tell you what I think a fair reading of the Milwaukee case would seem to indicate. The reasons why church and civil authorities took no action in the 1960’s and 70’s is apparently not contained in these “newly emerged files.” Nor does the Times seem interested in finding out why. But what does emerge is this: after almost 20 years as Archbishop, Weakland wrote to the Congregation asking for help in dealing with this terrible case of serial abuse. The Congregation approved his decision to undertake a canonical trial, since the case involved solicitation in confession – one of the graviora delicta (most grave crimes) for which the Congregation had responsibility to investigate and take appropriate action. Only when it learned that Murphy was dying did the Congregation suggest to Weakland that the canonical trial be suspended, since it would involve a lengthy process of taking testimony from a number of deaf victims from prior decades, as well as from the accused priest. Instead it proposed measures to ensure that appropriate restrictions on his ministry be taken. Goodstein infers that this action implies “leniency” toward a priest guilty of heinous crimes. My interpretation would be that the Congregation realized that the complex canonical process would be useless if the priest were dying. Indeed, I have recently received an unsolicited letter from the judicial vicar who was presiding judge in the canonical trial telling me that he never received any communication about suspending the trial, and would not have agreed to it. But Fr. Murphy had died in the meantime. As a believer, I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead. Goodstein also refers to what she calls “other accusations” about the reassignment of a priest who had previously abused a child/children in another diocese by the Archdiocese of Munich. But the Archdiocese has repeatedly explained that the responsible Vicar General, Mons. Gruber, admitted his mistake in making that assignment. It is anachronistic for Goodstein and the Times to imply that the knowledge about sexual abuse that we have in 2010 should have somehow been intuited by those in authority in 1980. It is not difficult for me to think that Professor Ratzinger, appointed as Archbishop of Munich in 1977, would have done as most new bishops do: allow those already in place in an administration of 400 or 500 people to do the jobs assigned to them. As I look back on my own personal history as a priest and bishop, I can say that in 1980 I had never heard of any accusation of such sexual abuse by a priest. It was only in 1985, as an Auxiliary Bishop attending a meeting of our U.S. Bishops’ Conference where data on this matter was presented, that I became aware of some of the issues. In 1986, when I was appointed Archbishop in Portland, I began to deal personally with accusations of the crime of sexual abuse, and although my “learning curve” was rapid, it was also limited by the particular cases called to my attention. Here are a few things I have learned since that time: many child victims are reluctant to report incidents of sexual abuse by clergy. When they come forward as adults, the most frequent reason they give is not to ask for punishment of the priest, but to make the bishop and personnel director aware so that other children can be spared the trauma that they have experienced. In dealing with priests, I learned that many priests, when confronted with accusations from the past, spontaneously admitted their guilt. On the other hand, I also learned that denial is not uncommon. I have found that even programs of residential therapy have not succeeded in breaking through such denial in some cases. Even professional therapists did not arrive at a clear diagnosis in some of these cases; often their recommendations were too vague to be helpful. On the other hand, therapists have been very helpful to victims in dealing with the long-range effects of their childhood abuse. In both Portland and San Francisco where I dealt with issues of sexual abuse, the dioceses always made funds available (often through diocesan insurance coverage) for therapy to victims of sexual abuse. From the point of view of ecclesiastical procedures, the explosion of the sexual abuse question in the United States led to the adoption, at a meeting of the Bishops’ Conference in Dallas in 2002, of a “Charter for the Protection of Minors from Sexual Abuse.” This Charter provides for uniform guidelines on reporting sexual abuse, on structures of accountability (Boards involving clergy, religious and laity, including experts), reports to a national Board, and education programs for parishes and schools in raising awareness and prevention of sexual abuse of children. In a number of other countries similar programs have been adopted by Church authorities: one of the first was adopted by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in response to the Nolan Report made by a high-level commission of independent experts in 2001. It was only in 2001, with the publication of Pope John Paul II’s Motu proprio Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela (SST), that responsibility for guiding the Catholic Church’s response to the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clerics was assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This papal document was prepared for Pope John Paul II under the guidance of Cardinal Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Contrary to some media reports, SST did not remove the local bishop’s responsibility for acting in cases of reported sexual abuse of minors by clerics. Nor was it, as some have theorized, part of a plot from on high to interfere with civil jurisdiction in such cases. Instead, SST directs bishops to report credible allegations of abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is able to provide a service to the bishops to ensure that cases are handled properly, in accord with applicable ecclesiastical law. Here are some of the advances made by this new Church legislation (SST). It has allowed for a streamlined administrative process in arriving at a judgment, thus reserving the more formal process of a canonical trial to more complex cases. This has been of particular advantage in missionary and small dioceses that do not have a strong complement of well-trained canon lawyers. It provides for erecting inter-diocesan tribunals to assist small dioceses. The Congregation has faculties allowing it derogate from the prescription of a crime (statute of limitations) in order to permit justice to be done even for “historical” cases. Moreover, SST has amended canon law in cases of sexual abuse to adjust the age of a minor to 18 to correspond with the civil law in many countries today. It provides a point of reference for bishops and religious superiors to obtain uniform advice about handling priests’ cases. Perhaps most of all, it has designated cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics as graviora delicta: most grave crimes, like the crimes against the sacraments of Eucharist and Penance perennially assigned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This in itself has shown the seriousness with which today’s Church undertakes its responsibility to assist bishops and religious superiors to prevent these crimes from happening in the future, and to punish them when they happen. Here is a legacy of Pope Benedict that greatly facilitates the work of the Congregation which I now have the privilege to lead, to the benefit of the entire Church. After the Dallas Charter in 2002, I was appointed (at the time as Archbishop of San Francisco) to a team of four bishops to seek approval of the Holy See for the “Essential Norms” that the American Bishops developed to allow us to deal with abuse questions. Because these norms intersected with existing canon law, they required approval before being implemented as particular law for our country. Under the chairmanship of Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago and currently President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, our team worked with Vatican canonical experts at several meetings. We found in Cardinal Ratzinger, and in the experts he assigned to meet with us, a sympathetic understanding of the problems we faced as American bishops. Largely through his guidance we were able to bring our work to a successful conclusion. The Times editorial wonders “how Vatican officials did not draw the lessons of the grueling scandal in the United States, where more than 700 priests were dismissed over a three-year period.” I can assure the Times that the Vatican in reality did not then and does not now ignore those lessons. But the Times editorial goes on to show the usual bias: “But then we read Laurie Goodstein’s disturbing report . . .about how the pope, while he was still a cardinal, was personally warned about a priest … But church leaders chose to protect the church instead of children. The report illuminated the kind of behavior the church was willing to excuse to avoid scandal.” Excuse me, editors. Even the Goodstein article, based on “newly unearthed files,” places the words about protecting the Church from scandal on the lips of Archbishop Weakland, not the pope. It is just this kind of anachronistic conflation that I think warrants my accusation that the Times, in rushing to a guilty verdict, lacks fairness in its coverage of Pope Benedict. 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. ||||| always 
 
 Pope Benedict XVI has said that in special cases, such as that of prostitutes trying to prevent HIV infection, condoms could be justified under Catholic ethical thinking, especially if their use leads to an awareness that engaging in such a "banalization of sexuality" is morally harmful.Many reports portrayed the pope's statements as a stunning reversal for the church, although Benedict was actually articulating longstanding Catholic tradition on the morality of preventing HIV and was not approving condoms for birth control. But his remarks were important for the extent of their explanation of this complex matter -- and because they come from the pope, which makes them more authoritative than other church proclamations.Benedict's views on condoms were among the many controversial and revealing comments contained in a new book-length interview titled "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times." The book is the result of a series of conversations the pope had last July with a German journalist he trusts, Peter Seewald, and it reads like a brief for the defense of Benedict's gaffe-prone reign -- a defense that seems to be the main goal of the project.The book is to be published on Tuesday but the Vatican newspaper ran excerpts on Saturday and news outlets began reporting the contents of the volume.In the book, the pope also confirms that gay men, even if chaste, cannot be priests and says they should not reveal their sexual orientation if they have already been ordained. He also discusses the clergy sexual abuse crisis at length though without criticizing bishops who covered up the abuse and thereby allowed it to fester.Regarding the furor last year over Benedict's decision to lift the excommunications of four right-wing schismatic bishops, one of whom -- Richard Williamson -- is a Holocaust-denier, Benedict says that if he had know about Williamson's views he would have separated him out from the papal pardon. "Unfortunately," Benedict says, "none of us went on the Internet to find out what sort of person we were dealing with."But he defends the decision to lift the excommunications, saying that whatever their views on a range of topics he had no choice under canon law but to rehabilitate them since the bishops wrote him a letter formally recognizing his authority -- the issue that had originally led to their expulsion. The media, he said, were just waiting for an excuse to ambush the pope -- they displayed "a readiness for aggression" -- which he blamed for causing much of the public relations debacle for the Vatican.On another topic, Benedict says he is not afraid of assassination (two of his three predecessors, John Paul II and Paul VI, were attacked, with a gunman almost killing John Paul in 1981) and he is matter-of-fact in stating that he would consider resigning if his physical or mental faculties failed -- even though no pope has retired in 600 years and there is no mechanism for electing a successor while a former pope is alive.The 83-year-old pope, who was raised in Germany during the Nazi era and appears to be in good health, does say he feels "my forces are diminishing" but adds that he does not use the exercise bicycle his doctor set up for him in the papal apartments. He also expresses regret that he must always wear a white cassock, even in the privacy of his apartment, because that is what John Paul always did."The Popewore a cassock, and so must you," one of John Paul's close aides told Ratzinger when he became pope back in April 2005.Benedict also said he opposes the move by many European countries to ban burqas, the full head-and-body covering worn by some Muslim women. And he defends himself in the first great controversy of his papacy, a Sept. 12, 2006 address during a trip to his old university lecture hall in his native Bavaria in which he seemed to equate Islam with violence and fanaticism and thereby prompted violent reactions from some Muslims."I had conceived and delivered the lecture as a strictly academic address" -- Benedict is a career theologian -- "without realizing that people don't read papal lectures as academic presentations, but as political statements," Benedict said, arguing that his words were taken out of context and misconstrued.Moreover, the pope argues -- contrary to the view of many cultural and political conservatives in the West -- that the real "battle lines" today are not between Christianity and Islam but between "radical secularism...and the question of God, in its various forms."The author behind "Light of the World" is journalist Peter Seewald, who had twice in past years sat down with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, conversations that resulted in two book-length interviews, "Salt of the Earth" in 1996 and "God and the World" in 2000. Both produced the kind the headline-making comments that Ratzinger became known for during his more than two decades as the hardline doctrinal watchdog for the late Pope John Paul II.Since his election as Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, however, Ratzinger has shied away from almost any contact with the media beyond tightly-scripted answers to pre-screened questions aboard the papal plane. But as Benedict's papacy has lurched from crisis to crisis, many of them self-inflicted public relations missteps, he has been sharply criticized as out of touch and aloof, even by some of his strongest supporters."Light of the World," especially with its extensive discussion of the sex abuse crisis, is an effort to enlist one of the only journalists Benedict trusts in order to change that dynamic, and throughout the 185 pages of back-and-forth Seewald is an accommodating, at times fawning questioner. (After his first collaboration with Ratzinger, Seewald was so impressed that he returned to practicing the Catholic faith he had abandoned.)In the book, Seewald effusively praises the pope, who tends to look humble with his more modest responses, and he often sets up straw men arguments that Benedict then hedges with a more measured answer.But Seewald also raises all of the most hot-button topics of Benedict's papacy, and while Benedict is rarely as forceful as he was when he was a cardinal, he still strongly defends his record and in doing so provides enough zingers to make the book a fascinating and sometimes provocative read.For example, Benedict tells Seewald that the Legion of Christ, an ultra-conservative, cult-like order whose charismatic founder was exposed as a notorious molester and embezzler, "is sound" and says its members should be encouraged to continue the mission of their disgraced founder, the late Father Marcial Maciel Degollado.Benedict says the victims of abuse should be the church's priority, along with dealing with perpetrators and providing tighter screening for seminarians studying to be priests. But he does not address his own contested role in dealing with specific cases -- nor is he pressed on the issue -- or his management of the crisis."Objectively, I think, everything essential was said," Benedict responds when asked whether he said too little, too late about the tidal wave of revelations of past abuse in the past year. He said he also felt it best for the bishops in each country -- who were often targeted for their own roles in the cover up -- to be the public face of the church's response. "In that respect it was surely not wrong to wait" to speak out.In general, Benedict sticks to a favorite conservative talking point that blames a relaxation of societal mores in the 1960s and 1970s as the root cause of the abuses.Regarding the presence of gays in the priesthood, a topic of much debate, the pope takes an unusually hard line, saying homosexuals cannot be ordained even if they are chaste because gay men do not sacrifice marriage as straight men do. "And the persons who are affected" with homosexuality, he says, "must at least try not to express this inclination actively, in order to remain true to the intrinsic mission of their office."Benedict also says that the presence of homosexuals in holy orders is "one of the disturbing problems" of the church -- a phrase originally translated as one of the "just one of miseries of the Church," an arresting characterization given the number of gay men serving in the priesthood and the hierarchy who have distinguished themselves through their service.The U.S. publisher of "Light of the World," Ignatius Press, said the wording will be changed in subsequent editions from "miseries" to "disturbing things." The book was rushed into print -- perhaps a sign of the Vatican's anxiety to begin deflecting the pope's bad press, with Ignatius having just a few weeks to translate and print the volume from the original German.The pope's remarks on condoms were among the most controversial in the excerpts printed by the Vatican daily, "L'Osservatore Romano," on Saturday, and drew the most interest."There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility," the pontiff said. (Because prostitute is a masculine noun in German, it was also unclear whether Benedict meant a male sex worker. In the Italian version of the book the noun is feminine.)The condom comments were prompted by Seewald's question to the pope about the uproar he provoked in 2009 when he told reporters, while on his way to Africa, that the scourge of AIDS on the continent could not be resolved by condoms."On the contrary, they increase the problem," he said then.The pope's remarks touched off furious commentary at the time, much of which blasted the pontiff for -- the critics assumed -- putting the church's teaching against contraception over the lives of Africans, especially sex workers and spouses of infected husbands or wives.Benedict's response to the furor was murky, and did not quell the disquiet his remarks had caused. Also, the Vatican did not help his cause when it was learned that church officials in Rome had massaged the official translation in a way that tended to make the pontiff's comments sound less stark. Moreover, many critics failed to read the pope's entire answer for context, and did not appear to take into account studies showing that indiscriminate reliance on condom distribution may not actually help reduce rates of infection.But Catholic teaching has never totally barred the use of condoms to protect people from contracting the HIV virus that causes AIDS. And the Vatican has never issued a formal pronouncement on the matter other than to stress that abstinence is always the best means of prevention, even if it that is often impractical. Earlier this year the Vatican said it had shelved a study to determine whether, or what, Rome should say on the matter, deciding that it was preferable to leave the question open-ended, depending on the circumstances rather than making a blanket judgment.In the interview with Peter Seewald, the pontiff voiced his exasperation with how the media covered -- or exaggerated -- the episode, and he said that while the church does not view condoms "as a real or moral solution... in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality." That said, the pope was in no way condoning the activity of sex workers.Regarding the Africa uproar, Benedict says that, "I was not making a general statement about the condom issue, but merely said -- and this is what caused such great offense -- that we cannot solve the problem by distributing condoms. Much more needs to be done. We must stand close to the people, we must guide and help them; and we must do this both before and after they contract the disease."As for other hot-button topics, the pope not surprisingly reaffirms mandatory celibacy for priests and the ban on the ordination of women -- which he says is not a question of discrimination but just how Jesus set up the church -- and says divorced and remarried Catholics must learn to live with the fact that they cannot receive communion. He also reiterates the church's ban on artificial birth control, but explains how it differ from natural birth control, which the church supports.And Benedict rips into some of his usual bogey men, such as liberation theology and liberal believers in the West who are agitating for reforms. "It is sad that there are what you might call professional Catholics who make a living on their Catholicism, but in whom the spring of faith flows only faintly, in a few scattered drops.""Light of the World" is novel, however, for the glimpses Benedict offers into the intimate life of the pope -- his feelings of dread at the moment of his election at the age of 78, when he wanted nothing more than to retire to Germany to write; his favorite television shows and his heirloom wristwatch; and his spiritual struggle not to be overwhelmed by the pressures and responsibilities of the office."I am no mystic," Benedict says at one point. Noting that he is "a modest figure" following a "giant" like John Paul, Benedict wonders whether it is right "to allow oneself to be regarded as a star.""I simply told myself that I am who I am," Benedict says. "I don't try to be someone else. What I can give I give, and what I can't give I don't try to give, either. I don't try to make myself into something I am not.""I am the person who happens to have been chosen -- the cardinals are also to blame for that -- and I do what I can."
– The Vatican defended Pope Benedict's handling of long-ago abuse cases, lashed out at the New York Times for coverage “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness,” and said the pontiff actually deserved praise instead of condemnation. “We owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors,” wrote a cardinal in a statement on the Vatican website. In Think Progress, meanwhile, Igor Volsky takes the Catholic League to task for calling the problem a "homosexual crisis" instead of a "pedophilia crisis" in a full-page ad. "What the Catholic League is trying to do is imply that there is a connection between homosexuality and molestation, just like segregationists once accused African Americans of raping white women, and Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies."