Rigidity and Tolerance within the Vatican

ope Francis with a child on his shoulders – graffiti in Rome

“The Roman curia suffers from spiritual Alzheimer [and] existential schizophrenia; this is the disease of those who live a double life, the fruit of that hypocrisy typical of the mediocre and of a progressive spiritual emptiness which no doctorates or academic titles can fill. […] When appearances, the colour of our clothes and our titles of honour become the primary object in life, [it] leads us to be men and woman of deceit. […] Be careful around those who are rigid. Be careful around Christians – be they laity, priests, bishops – who present themselves as so ‘perfect’. Be careful. There’s no Spirit of God there. They lack the spirit of liberty [..] We are all sinners. But may the Lord not let us be hypocrites. Hypocrites don’t know the meaning of forgiveness, joy and the love of God.”
Pope Francis I

STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Feb 8 2023 (IPS) – When the Pope Emeritus Benedict XIV/Ratzinger died on the last day of 2022 it did not cause much of a stir in the global newsfeed. Maybe a sign that religion has ceased to play a decisive role in modern society Nevertheless, religious hierarchies are still highly influential, not least for the world’s 1, 4 billion baptized Catholics, and a pope’s policies have a bearing not only on morals, but also on political and economic issues. By contrast, there are more Muslims in the world, 1.9 billion, though adherents are not so centrally controlled and supervised as Catholics and hierarchies do not have a comparable influence on global affairs.

When Benedict abdicated in 2013 he retained his papal name, continued to wear the white, papal cassock, adopted the title Pope Emeritus and moved into a monastery in the Vatican Gardens. It must have been a somewhat cumbersome presence for a new, more radical pope, particularly since Benedict became a symbol of traditional values and served as an inspiration for critics of the current papacy.

By the end of his reign, John Paul II was suffering from Parkinson’s disease and Cardinal Ratzinger was in effect running the Vatican and when he was elected Pope in 2005, his closest runner-up was Cardinal Bergoglio from Buenos Aires. What would have happened if Borgoglio, who eventually became Francis I, had been elected? Would he have been able to more effectively deal with clerical sexual abuse and Vatican corruption?

When Joseph Ratzinger became pope, he had for 27 years served John Paul II by heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), investigating and condemning birth control, acceptance of homosexuals, “gender theory” and Liberation Theology, a theological approach with a specific concern for the poor and political liberation for oppressed people.

Under Cardinal Ratzinger the CDF generally overlooked an often shady economic cooperation financing Pope John Paul II’s successful battle against Communism, while covering up clerical sexual abuse and marginalizing “progressive” priests. Several Latin American liberation theologians agreed that John Paul II in several ways was an asset to the Church, though he mistreated clerics who actually believed in Jesus’s declaration that he was chosen to “bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” John Paul II and his “watchdog” Joseph Ratzinger were considered to have “armoured fists hidden in silk gloves.”

Ratzinger censured and silenced a number of leading “liberal” priests, like the Latin American Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff and the American Charles Curran, who supported same sex marriages. Both were defrocked. Under Ratzinger’s CDF rule, several clerics were excommunicated for allowing abortions, like the American nun Margaret McBride, and the ordination of women priests, among them the Argentinian priest Rómulo Braschi and the French priest Roy Bourgeois.

Ratzinger/Benedict wrote 66 books, in which a common theme was Truth, which according to him was “self-sacrificing love”, guided by principles promulgated by the Pope and implemented by the Curia, the administrative body of the Vatican:

“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labelled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting one be tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.”

A strict adherence to Catholic Doctrine meant bringing the Church back to what Benedict XVI considered as its proper roots. If this alienated some believers, so be it. Numerous times he stated that the Church might well be healthier if it was smaller. A point of view opposed to the one expressed by Francis I:

“Changes need to be made […] Law cannot be kept in a refrigerator. Law accompanies life, and life goes on. Like morals, it is being perfected. Both the Church and society have made important changes over time on issues as slavery and the possession of atomic weapons, moral life is also progressing along the same line. Human thought and development grows and consolidates with the passage of time. Human understanding changes over time, and human consciousness deepens.”

Benedict XVI allowed the issue of human sexuality to overshadow support to environmentalism and human rights. He wanted to “purify the Church” in accordance with rules laid down in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992 and written under direction of the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The Catechism might be considered as a counterweight to “relativistic theories seeking to justify religious pluralism, while supporting decline in general moral standards.”

Pope Benedict endeavoured to reintegrate hard-core traditionalists back into the fold, maintaining and strengthening traditional qualms related to sexual conduct and abortion. He declared that modern society had diminished “the morality of sexual love to a matter of personal sentiments, feelings, [and] customs. […], isolating it from its procreative purposes.” Accordingly, “homosexual acts” were in the Catechism described as “violating natural law” and could “under no circumstances be approved.”

Papal condemnation of homosexuality may seem somewhat strange considering that it is generally estimated that the percentage of gay Catholic priests might be 30 – 60, suggesting more homosexual men (active and non-active) within the Catholic priesthood than within society at large.

In 2019, Frédéric Martel’s In the Closet of the Vatican sent shock waves through the Catholic world. Based on years of interviews and collaboration with a vast array of researchers, priests and prostitutes, Martel described the double life of priests and the hypocrisy of homophobic cardinals and bishops living with their young “assistants”. He pinpointed members of the Catholic hierarchy as “closet gays”, revealed how “de-anonymised” data from homosexual dating apps (like Grindl) listed clergy users, described exclusive homosexual coteries within the Vatican, networks of prostitutes serving priests, as well as the anguish of homosexual priests trying to come to terms with their homosexual inclinations.

According to Martel, celibacy is a main reason for homosexuality among Catholic priesthood. For a homosexual youngster a respected male community might serve as a safe haven within a homophobic society.

By burdening homosexuality with guilt, covering up sexual abuse and opaque finances the Vatican has not supported what Benedict proclaimed, namely protect and preach the Truth. Behind the majority of cases of sexual abuse there are priests and bishops who protected aggressors because of their own homosexuality and out of fear that it might be revealed in the event of a scandal. The culture of secrecy needed to maintain silence about the prevalence of homosexuality in the Church, which allowed sexual abuse to be hidden and predators to act without punishment.

Cardinal Robert Sarah stated that “Western homosexual and abortion ideologies” are of “demonic origin” and compared them to “Nazism and Islamic terrorism.” Such opinions did in 2020 not hinder Pope Emeritus Benedict from writing a book together with Sarah – From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church. Among injunctions against abortion, safe sex, and women clergy, celibacy was fervently defended as not only “a mere precept of ecclesiastical law, but as a sharing in Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross and his identity as Bridegroom of the Church.” This in contrast to Francis I, who declared:

“It is time that the Church moves away from questions that divide believers and concentrate on the real issues: the poor, migrants, poverty. We can’t only insist on questions bound up with abortion, homosexual marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. It is not possible … It isn’t necessary to go on talking about it all the time.”

The current pope is not condoning abortion, though does not elevate it above the fight against poverty, climate change and the rights of migrants, which he proclaims to be “pro-life” issues in their own right. In 2021, Francis I stated that “same-sex civil unions are good and helpful to many.” He is of the opinion that Catholic priests ought to be celibate, but adds that this rule is not an unchangeable dogma and “the door is always open” to change. Francis propagates that women ought to be ordained as deacons; allowed to do priestly tasks, except giving absolution, anointing the sick, and celebrate mass and he has recruited women to several crucial administrative positions within the Vatican. Furthermore, he ordered all dioceses to report sexual abuse of minors to the Vatican, while notifying governmental law enforcement to allow for comprehensive investigations and perpetrators being judged by common – and not by canon law.

Just hours after Benedict’s funeral on 5 January Georg Gänswein’s memoir Nothing but the Truth — My Life Beside Benedict XVI, was distributed to the press. Gänswein, who was Benedict’s faithful companion and personal secretary, writes that for the Pope Emeritus the Doctrine of the Faith was the fundament of the Church, while Francis is more inclined to highlight “pastoral care”, i.e. guidance and support focusing on a person’s welfare, social and emotional needs, rather than purely educational ones.

In 2013, Gänswein entered in the service of Benedict XIV. He was professor in Canon Law, fluent in four languages, an able tennis player, excellent downhill skier and had a pilot’s licence. He was also an outspoken conservative and often critical of Francis I.

Shortly before his abdication, Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Gänswein archbishop and made him Prefect of the Papal Household, deciding who could have an audience with Pope Francis I, while he at the same time was responsible for Benedict’s daily schedule, communications, and private and personal audiences. The Italian edition of the magazine Vanity Fair presented Gänswein on its cover, declaring “being handsome is not a sin” and calling him “the Georg Clooney of the Vatican”. Six years before Donatella Versace used Gänswein as inspiration for her fashion show Priest Chic.

There was an air of vanity and conservatism surrounding the acolytes of Benedict. Gänswein writes that working with both popes, the active one and the ”Emeritus” was a great challenge, not only in terms of work but in terms of style. Benedict XIV was a pope of aesthetics recognising that in a debased world there remain things of beauty, embodied in a Mozart sonata, a Latin mass, an altarpiece, an embroidered cape, or the cut of a cassock. The male-oriented lifestyle magazine Esquire included Pope Benedict in a “best-dressed men list”. Gänswein states that when Pope Francis in 2022 restricted the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass “I believe it broke Pope Benedict’s heart”.

Pope Francis is now 86, not much time remains for him as sovereign of the Catholic Church. Hopefully he will be able to change the Curia by staffing it with people who share his ambition to reform the Church by navigating away from doctrinal rigidity, vanity and seclusion towards inclusion, tolerance, human rights, poverty eradication and environmentalism.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023

Dramatic fall in church attendance in Poland, official figures show

By Daniel Tilles

The proportion of Catholics in Poland attending mass has fallen from 37% to 28% in two years, according to the new figures published by the church’s statistical institute.

The church notes that the latest data – which come from 2021 – are likely to have been affected by the pandemic. But it also admits that “socio-cultural factors” have played a part in the decline.

While the vast majority of Poles are officially identified as Catholic, recent years have seen the status of the church dented by its support for an unpopular near-total ban on abortion and by revelations of child sex abuse by members of the clergy and negligence by bishops in dealing with the issue.

Since 1980, the Catholic church in Poland has conducted an annual study of how many people attend mass and take communion. On one Sunday each year, every parish in the country records figures and submits them to the Institute for Catholic Church Statistics (ISKK).

The ISKK then calculates nationally what proportion of Catholics required to attend mass – meaning people aged over seven and excluding the bedridden and elderly with limited mobility – actually did so on that day.

The latest figures show that 28.3% attended mass in 2021, which was down from 36.9% in 2019 (the survey was not conducted in 2020 due to the pandemic). In 2011, the number stood at 40%; in 2001 at 46.8%; in 1991 at 47.6%; and in 1981 at 52.7%.

Meanwhile, the proportion who took communion fell to 12.9% in 2021, having stood at 16.7% in 2019. In contrast to attendance figures, those taking communion had previously been rising: from 8.1% in 1981 to 10.8% in 1991, 16.5% in 2001 and 16.1% in 2011.

“The [2021] numbers were influenced by the pandemic situation,” notes ISKK’s deputy director Marcin Jewdokimow. “It should be remembered that in 2020, due to COVID-19 restrictions, no data were collected. In 2021, we collected data despite the fact that some restrictions were [still] in force.

The latest data were gathered on 26 September 2021, at a time when entry to churches was restricted to 50% capacity and attendees were obliged to wear masks.

“In previous years, the declines in the dominicantes [mass attendance] index were constant,” added Jewdokimow, quoted by the Polish Press Agency (PAP). “This time we’re dealing with a collapse. Therefore, I believe that next year we will have a rebound, the statistics will show an increase.”

At the same time, Jewdokimow admitted that “socio-cultural factors” had also had an impact on church attendance. But he noted that the ISKK does not conduct research into the reasons behind changes in the numbers it records.

“In the long term, we are dealing with processes of socio-cultural changes,” said Jewdokimow. “On the other hand, there is a certain reconfiguration of Catholicism and the place of religion in public space. People’s religious needs are changing and the way religious institutions function is changing.”

Other research has also indicated a decline in religious practice over recent years. Polling by CBOS, a state research agency, found that in August 2021 43% of Poles said they practice their religion at least once a week, down from 69.5% in 1992. However, 87% still declared themselves to be believers.

Among those aged 18-24, religious practice fell from 69% in 1992 to just 23% in 2021. Young Poles have been particularly prominent in protests against the church. An IBRiS poll in 2020 found that just 9% of those aged 18-29 held a positive view of the church.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

February 3, 2023February 3, 2023

How is Spain facing up to its Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal? Access to the comments

By Carlos Marlasca

For a long time, Fernando Garciá-Salmones found it hard to accept his own reflection in the mirror.

When he was a schoolboy, aged just 14, a priest named José María Pita da Veiga began to sexually abuse him. Fernando says, “the vulture made the little mouse feel guilty”.

“The priest came to me one rainy day and asked me to go upstairs to dry off in his room and that’s when it started,” he said.

The abuse lasted almost a year. Speaking with Euronews, Fernando explained that much of the after-effects of sexual abuse are indelible.

“There is a destruction of the capacity to love, a complete differentiation between sexuality and affection, mistrust, a permanent feeling of guilt, a devastating fear of loneliness,” he revealed.

Groundbreaking media investigations

In October 2018 the Spanish newspaper El País launched the first investigation into sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. At the time, only 34 victims had been registered.

Three years later it opened a comprehensive database that counted more than 1700 survivors of abuse.

Julio Nuñes, a journalist with El País told Euronews “The main driver was the creation of the mailbox set up by the newspaper El País. It created an umbilical cord that linked the victims to someone who could articulate and corroborate their story.”

The Spanish Bishops’ Conference says it has no authority over the different Catholic orders where cases of abuse have occurred. It admits that the response has been “slow”, but insists they’re doing everything it can to help, including the creation of two hundred offices to help victims.

“Whatever society does, whatever the Church does, it is a pain that they carry in their hearts and that must be respected,” said José Gabriel Vera, Director of Communications for the Bishops’ Conference.

The Church is proposing to meet with each of the victims face to face to know their case and their story, to know their names, and to understand how they can be helped. Either from a pastoral point of view, which is the role of the Church, or from a legal point of view.”

Creating a ‘complete picture’ of pederasty in the Catholic Church

The Spanish Church has discovered a total of 506 cases. In March last year, the Spanish Congress of Deputies commissioned an independent Ombudsman to begin work on a report on cases of pederasty in the Catholic Church and the role of the public authorities. It is the first official investigation to be carried out in Spain.

He has set up a panel of independent experts to achieve this goal. The commitment goes beyond what has been agreed with the political representatives.

“It’s also a report for the victims themselves so they can see their own situation and see that measures will be taken demanding responsibility and seeking reparation,” explained Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo.

The Ombudsman hopes that the Spanish Church will fulfil its promise to collaborate and help to create a complete picture of these crimes.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 26, 2023January 25, 2023

Pope Benedict Reaches from Beyond the Grave to Claim ‘Gay Clubs’ Exist in Priesthood

Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges the crowd during an audience in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on Oct.24, 2007. A January 2022 report faulted his handling of several sex abuse cases.

Pope Benedict XVI may have died a month ago, but is reaching beyond the grave to shade Pope Francis, according to The Telegraph.

“In a blistering attack on the state of the Catholic Church under his successor’s papacy, Benedict, who died on Dec 31 at the age of 95, said that the vocational training of the next generation of priests is on the verge of ‘collapse.'”

He also said gay “clubs” operate openly in Catholic seminaries, the institutions that prepare men for the priesthood, and that some bishops allow trainee priests to watch pornographic films as an outlet for their sexual urges.

“Benedict gave instructions that the book, ‘What Christianity Is,’ should be published after his death. It is one of a handful of recent books by conservative Vatican figures which have poured scorn on the decade-old papacy of Francis, who was elected after his predecessor’s historic resignation in 2013,” The Telegraph said.

“The existence of ‘homosexual clubs’ is particularly prevalent in the US, Benedict said in his book, adding: ‘In several seminaries, homosexual clubs operate more or less openly.'”

Benedict also claimed his books were targeted as being “dangerously traditionalist” by more liberal elements in the Church.

“In not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books are considered unworthy for the priesthood. My books are concealed as dangerous literature and are read only in hiding.”

In October, Pope Francis spoke out against church members watching porn, including nuns. “He made the remarks in October, saying that indulging in porn is a danger to the soul and a way of succumbing to the malign influence of ‘the devil.'”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

January 16, 2023January 15, 2023

A school principal gave up everything to blow the whistle on a paedophile priest.

— George Pell hung up on him

‘He rang me up and he said “what do you want?”’: ex-principal Graeme Sleeman recalls the day George Pell called him and then hung up.

Graeme Sleeman resigned in disgust after complaining about Father Peter Searson in the 1980s and suspects he was then blacklisted

By Christopher Knaus

Former Catholic school principal Graeme Sleeman says he still remembers the day George Pell hung up on him.

It was the 1990s and Sleeman was in Grafton, New South Wales, more than 1,500km away from the small Victorian Catholic school he had resigned from in disgust years earlier.

He had given up everything – a lauded, successful career as an educator – to blow the whistle on a notorious paedophile priest, Father Peter Searson, who was abusing children at his school, Doveton Holy Family primary school, in the mid-1980s.

The principal had fought tirelessly to protect his children from the predations of Searson, a paedophile he describes as a “serial offender”, who was known to the diocese for offending in his last parish in Sunbury.

“They knew that he sexually abused children in Sunbury and then he was sent to Doveton,” Sleeman said.

He wrote repeatedly to parish and archdiocese officials, warning them of the priest’s sexual advances towards children and his other violent and disturbing conduct, including carrying a gun around the school.

Sleeman’s pleas for action came to naught.

He resigned and was exiled from the Catholic school system. No one would give him another job. He suspects he was blacklisted for his complaints about Searson.

Former school principal Graeme Sleeman — Graeme Sleeman, a former school principal who blew the whistle on clergy abuse, says he has been reduced to living in a caravan after his career as an educator was destroyed.

In the following years, his mental health and his family’s financial security both deteriorated badly.

He began to write to Pell, then the archbishop of Melbourne, explaining how the church had treated him and asking for help.

“Can you imagine the inner turmoil and anguish I had to contend with on a daily basis when I had concrete evidence of immoral and dishonest activities being perpetrated by Father Searson and yet no one from the archbishop down would believe me?” he wrote in one letter to Pell, dated March 1998.

Sleeman, who still receives counselling and now lives in a caravan on a property in Queensland, told Pell he had paid an “immeasurable price for my effort and loyalty, and the past 12 years have been like hell”.

After a series of unreturned correspondence, Sleeman’s phone rang, out of the blue.

It was the archbishop.

“He rang me up and he said ‘what do you want?’,” Sleeman told the Guardian. “I said ‘I want you to make a public statement that the stance I took in Doveton was the correct one, I want you to do that in all the national printed media and all the national television and radio’.”

“He said ‘I can’t do that’ and hung up.”

What Sleeman did not know at the time was that Pell, in his former role as auxiliary bishop for Melbourne in the 1980s, knew of a complaint of sexual impropriety by Searson and did not act to investigate it.

The royal commission heard in March 2016 that Pell and other bishops had been briefed about a generalised allegation of sexual misconduct against Searson in 1989.

Pell told the commission he did not act because he thought the Catholic Education Office had dealt with it.

“I didn’t have a belief that I had an investigator capacity or role,” Pell said at the time. “That was a role which I believed primarily in the schools was taken by the Education Office.”

Pell had also been handed a list of incidents and grievances about Searson in 1989, which included reports Searson had abused animals in front of children and was using children’s toilets.

The commission found that “these matters, in combination with the prior allegation of sexual misconduct, ought to have indicated to Bishop Pell that Father Searson needed to be stood down”.

“It was incumbent on Bishop Pell, as an auxiliary bishop with responsibilities for the welfare of the children in the Catholic community of his region, to take such action as he could to advocate that Father Searson be removed or suspended or, at least, that a thorough investigation be undertaken of the allegations,” the findings, released in 2020, said.

During his evidence to the royal commission, Pell conceded he should have been a “bit more pushy” about Searson.

He also said he had thought Sleeman to be a “rude and a difficult person”, but acknowledged that the former principal had been right about Searson.

“What I now know of course is that Sleeman was basically justified,” he told the royal commission.

Searson died in 2009 before facing any child sex charges.

Sleeman is now suing the church, represented by Ken Cush and Associates. His case alleges his ruined career in education was brought about by the church’s inaction on his legitimate complaints about Searson.

His lost career cost him and his family.

“My whole family has suffered from this, including my grandchildren. My nine-year-old said to me the other day, you’re famous. I thought she was referring to my prowess as a footballer, but she wasn’t.”

Between 1984 and 1986, while Sleeman was principal, he said he complained so many times to parish and diocesan officials that they described him as “obsessed”.

“Well, wouldn’t you be?” he told the Guardian.

Sleeman says he spent 99% of his time at the school trying to protect his children from the paedophile priest.

“I used to say to [church officials], ‘I won’t back down because this is little children’,” he said.

“My contract to be a principal says ‘[protect] the safety of children’ and you put the biggest wolf possible into the school. That’s the crazy part.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!