.
By Kay Ebeling, also posted at AltnerNet
The office that handled clergy sex crimes was run by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope Benedict, the same office that once carried out the Inquisition. "The public has not recognized that connection," writes scholar Jay Nelson, because "It had become a closely guarded secret." At the end of Vatican 2 "Paul changed the Office name to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). It was to be a kinder, gentler Inquisition," Jay writes.
John Paul II named the Bavarian Bishop Ratzinger Prefect of the CDF two decades later.
"Most ominous but overlooked, the CDF would have a say over all issues that touch on faith and morals, even those traditionally reserved to other Vatican departments," Nelson writes. The CDF now had "the crucial power of judicial review over the entire Roman Catholic Church." I.E., Judicial Review over all Pedophile Priest Crimes.
Ratzinger drafted a new set of secret instructions for handling priest sex crimes:
"Signed by John Paul II in 2001, the decree clandestinely replaced the old Crimes of Solicitation document, as if the latter had remained in force all along. This new policy seems even more repressive than the old one. Whereas the earlier document detailed instructions for a D-I-Y inquisition, this simply mandates the CDF to do its thing.
"It still covers sexual solicitation in the confessional and associated offenses such as priests granting absolution to their lovers or having sex with minors of either gender. But the 'worst crime' of clerical homosexuality is no longer even mentioned at all – perhaps because now, according to some experts, almost half the clergy is gay and probably sexually active?"
So Pope Benedict can't really be "shocked and dismayed" by the Pedophile priest epidemic in the Catholic Church, as he said on his trip to America in Spring of 2009 and again last week. It's more like he has been at the helm of the Church's handling of the crimes for decades, no matter how many times his Office declares him "cleared" of any crimes, in the handling of one pedohpile priest in his Munich diocese when he was a Bishop. Pope Benedict and Bishop Ratzinger's connection to the whole cover-up is much more blatant.
"During the Boston scandals, which brought the crisis to national awareness, (2002) a curious document was found among diocesan legal papers. Known in English generally as Crimes of Solicitation, it was a typed translation of instructions from the Holy Office. Sent secretly to all the world’s bishops with the blessing of Pope John XXIII mere months before the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the document revealed an entirely unsuspected aspect to the ongoing crisis.
"It was nothing less than a guide for bishops on handling clerical sex crimes, laying out a set of do-it-yourself directions to hold secret trials. Though reassuring them that troubling cases could always be sent to Rome."
POPE BENEDICT IS GUILTY:
"Only the pope himself now had more power. In Ratzinger’s hand, this whip to enforce the Council’s decrees would serve to sharply rein them in. Vatican II thus planted not only the seeds of the clergy sex scandals but provided a means for their conclusion. Yet the signs that the council had inadvertently mishandled perpetrator priests did not become apparent until a generation later, when the bitter tree bore its first fruits."
Pedophile priest crimes are not new to the Catholic Church, writes Nelson: "In the mid-seventeenth century, the Roman Inquisition even took down an entire religious order for child sexual abuse. The Piarists, an honored, successful teaching congregation of priests with schools for poor boys across Italy, had been taken over by a pedophile ring. This was largely due to the founder, St. José Calasanz, the ascetic patron saint of Catholic education, covering up molestation like so many later prelates would by quietly promoting and transferring the offenders."
Vatican 2 documents were argued over until the end of the very last session. "When it was done, a single easily-overlooked paragraph buried in the Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests proclaimed an enormous change:
Finally, … priests … are obliged in a special manner toward those priests who labor under certain difficulties. They should give them timely help, and also, if necessary, admonish them discreetly. Moreover, they should always treat with fraternal charity and magnanimity those who have failed in some matters, … and continually show themselves as true brothers and friends.
"Simply put," writes Jay Nelson, "priests caught acting out sexually would henceforth be given therapy, not punishment. Hard to believe, but this coded bit of pious banality is therefore the smoking gun of the Catholic sex scandals."
***
Jay Nelson, a writer whose research on the pedophile epidemic in the Catholic Church is at his Renegade Catholic Website, is also one of the tens of thousands of adult victims of pedophile priests, living in New Mexico.
Jay Nelson's Website: Renegade Catholic
Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer of City of Angels Network
Cut Paragraph: Young Ratzinger was initially a liberal, but "the upset of student rebellions in 1968 decisively spurred his defection to the conservative camp," writes Nelson. "By the time the Polish Pope was elected a decade later, now-Cardinal Ratzinger’s reactionary transformation was complete.
******
PLUS
It’s “no surprise” that the Pope knew about pedophiles before last week
(We got this letter yesterday from Joey Piscitelli about his attempts to reach the Pope about his pedophile priest case in San Francisco:)
I told Pope and Levada About SF Perpetrator, and They Ignored It, Says San Francisco Victim of Salesian Pedophile Priest
It’s “no surprise” that the Pope knew about pedophiles before last week, says plaintiff Joey Piscitelli, who won a long-drawn out civil case in San Francisco last year regarding Fr. Steven Whelan. He writes:
In 2006, I was involved in a lawsuit against a molester Salesian San Francisco Priest, Fr. Steven Whelan, who was Intentionally placed in ministry by Cardinal William Levada, at St. Peter and Pauls in San Francisco. Fr. Whelan was kept in ministry with children, for 3 years, all the way up to the verdict in my jury trial against him.
I met Levada for the first time on the sidewalk across the street from the San Francisco Chancery. Cardinal Levada called me a "fucking idiot".
He then continued to leave Fr. Whelan in ministry, knowing Whelan was being sued as a child rapist.
I wrote a letter to Cardinal Levada, and also to the Pope, who then promoted Levada to the "Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith," so Levada was placed with the Pope at the Vatican.
I reiterated to the two of them that Fr. Whelan was a child molester and a rapist, and the Pope and Cardinal Levada still refused to remove the abusive Priest from the Church, and they ignored me.
I also told Bishop John Wester, who also refused to remove the Priest. Another letter was left at the Chancery with the Diocese, to be forwarded to the Pope, and the Pope again refused to remove the molester Priest from ministry.
As a result the predator was left with access to children as a church Pastor.
The Pope and the Cardinal had knowledge of the court case, and the details of the abuses, and I won the case.
It comes as no surprise that in Europe, the Pope had knowledge of similar circumstances.
The Pope was made aware several times that the abusive Priest in San Francisco should not be left in ministry, and he, and Cardinal Levada cannot claim they were unaware. The current disgrace in Europe is no surprise to me.
Catholic worldwide should wake up to the negligence of these two men, who do not have the safety of children at the forefront of their agenda.
Sincerely, Joey Piscitelli
San Francisco Bay Area Adult Victim of Pedophile Priest (Survivor)
**
This story also posted at AltnerNet on Page One under SoapBox
.
No comments:
Post a Comment