Tag: Discontent

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Benedict woes come as German church reform pressure rises

The Sept. 22, 2011 file photo shows Pope Benedict XVI, left, who retired in 2013, speaking to Berlin’s Archbishop Rainer Maria Woelki, right, at a mass at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany. On Friday, Jan 6, 2012 A report on decades of sexual abuse that shone an unflattering spotlight on retired Pope Benedict XVI has come on top of already strong pressure in Germany to reconsider Catholic rules on issues including homosexuality and women’s roles, adding to a mounting sense of impatience in the country’s church.

By Geir Moulson

A report on decades of clergy sexual abuse in Germany that shone an unflattering spotlight on retired Pope Benedict XVI has added to already strong pressure there for the church to reconsider Catholic rules on issues including homosexuality and women’s roles, creating a mounting sense of impatience.

The latest flare-up of the sexual abuse scandal in the German church, one of the world’s richest, comes as a trailblazing reform process launched in 2019 in response to the abuse crisis begins to call for concrete changes.

The “Synodal Path,” which brings together Catholic bishops and lay representatives, approved at an assembly last week calls to allow blessings for same-sex couples, married priests and the ordination of women as deacons. It also called for church labor law to be revised so that gay employees don’t face the risk of being fired.

Many of those reform plans still need formal approval at future assemblies, but they put the German church on a potential collision course with the Vatican, whose approval would in most cases be needed to implement them.

The increasing pressures for reform coincides with a turbulent year in the German church. First came a furor over the conservative Cologne archbishop’s handling of reports on how church officials dealt with abuse cases, which led to Pope Francis granting him a “spiritual timeout.”

Then, last month, came a long-anticipated independent report commissioned by the Munich archdiocese into decades of abuse cases there. It faulted their handling by a string of church officials past and present, including Benedict, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop there from 1977 to 1982.

The German-born Benedict on Tuesday asked forgiveness for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but denied any personal or specific wrongdoing.

Reform advocates and victim support groups criticized what they saw as a tone-deaf response that evaded responsibiity. The head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, put out a tight-lipped tweet saying Benedict “deserves respect” for having responded.

And the bishop of Essen, Franz-Josef Overbeck, told the Catholic newspaper Neues Ruhrwort that he fears Benedict’s statement won’t help abuse victims work through what happened to them.

Overbeck said he notes with concern that “people affected by sexual violence have reached with disappointment and in some cases also indignation to the former pope’s comments on his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising.”

The current Munich archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, welcomed Benedict’s response and again stressed that he himself takes the report “very seriously.”

Marx is a prominent reformist ally of Francis. A major thrust of his response to the report, in which he was faulted himself, has been to insist that the church needs “really deep renewal” to emerge from the abuse crisis.

Last week, Marx made his clearest call yet for loosening the celibacy requirement for priests, saying there is a “question mark” over “whether it should be taken as a basic precondition for every priest.” Another top European progressive, Jesuit Cardinal Jean Claude Hollerich, archbishop of Luxembourg and head of the commission of EU bishops conferences, called for changes in the Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality and priestly celibacy.

Meanwhile, the German Bishops’ Conference welcomed an initiative last month by 125 church employees who publicly outed themselves as queer, saying they want to “live openly without fear” in the church and pushing demands for reform.

At its weekend meeting, delegates to the “Synodal Path” strongly backed calls for a “change of culture” in church labor law, Baetzing said. They also called for the faithful to be given more of a say in choosing new bishops.

However, it’s unclear how many of the reforms proposed by the “Synodal Path,” whose next assembly is scheduled for Sept. 8-10, will become reality.

Sessions so far have pointed to a clear pro-reform majority, including among German bishops. But the process has sparked fierce resistance inside the church, primarily from conservatives opposed to opening any debate on hot-button issues.

It is being watched closely in Rome, where Francis has encouraged such “synodal” deliberations by national churches but has also sent out a strong warning to not go beyond established Catholic doctrine.

While progressives cheer calls for changes to church positions on celibacy and homosexuality, conservatives have voiced alarm that the German church is heading to schism, or a formal break from Rome. And while Francis has issued groundbreaking gestures of openness and welcome to gay Catholics, he has not altered the church’s teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered.”

Francis also has dodged taking a stand on allowing married priests or on women deacons.

Phyllis Zagano of Hofstra University, who served on Francis’ first study commission on women deacons, cheered the German vote in favor of them and said the church as a whole needs them. The vote, she said, “comes at a time when the church continues to struggle against its history of abuse and its embedded clericalism, which combine to drive away women and their families.”

But the papal nuncio in Germany, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, offered no encouragement to the synodal assembly in a statement that emphasized the importance of the broader global church, the German news agency dpa reported.

He noted that “the pope is, so to speak, the point of reference and the center of unity for over 1.3 billion Catholics worldwide, 22.6 million of whom live in Germany.”

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Retired pope asks pardon for abuse, but admits no wrongdoing

This Dec. 8, 2015 file photo shows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI sitting in St. Peter’s Basilica as he attends the ceremony marking the start of the Holy Year. Retired Pope Benedict XVI asked forgiveness Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but admitted to no personal or specific wrongdoing after an independent report criticized his actions in four cases while he was archbishop of Munich, Germany.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

Retired Pope Benedict XVI asked forgiveness Tuesday for any “grievous faults” in his handling of clergy sex abuse cases, but admitted to no personal or specific wrongdoing after an independent report criticized his actions in four cases while he was archbishop of Munich, Germany.

“I have had great responsibilities in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my pain for the abuses and the errors that occurred in those different places during the time of my mandate,” the retired pope said.

Benedict, 94, was responding to a Jan. 20 report from a German law firm that had been commissioned by the German church to look into how cases of sexual abuse were handled in the Munich archdiocese between 1945 and 2019. Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.

The report’s authors faulted Benedict’s handling of four cases during his time as archbishop, accusing him of misconduct for having failed to restrict the ministry of the priests in the cases even after they had been convicted criminally. The report also faulted his predecessors and successors, estimating that there had been at least 497 abuse victims over the decades and at least 235 suspected perpetrators.

The Vatican on Tuesday released a letter Benedict wrote to respond to the allegations, alongside a more technical reply from his team of lawyers and advisers who had provided an initial 82-page response to the law firm about his nearly five-year tenure in Munich.

The conclusion of Benedict’s advisers was resolute: “As an archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse,” they wrote. Furthermore, they said, the report provided no evidence that Benedict was aware of the criminal history of any of the four priests in question.

Benedict’s response was far more nuanced and spiritual. In the letter, Benedict issued what he called a “confession,” recalling that daily Mass begins with believers confessing their sins and asking forgiveness for their faults and even their “grievous faults.” Benedict noted that in his meetings with abuse victims while he was pope, “I have seen at first hand the effects of a most grievous fault.

“And I have come to understand that we ourselves are drawn into this grievous fault whenever we neglect it or fail to confront it with the necessary decisiveness and responsibility, as too often happened and continues to happen,” he wrote. “As in those meetings, once again I can only express to all the victims of sexual abuse my profound shame, my deep sorrow and my heartfelt request for forgiveness.”

The law firm report identified four cases in which Ratzinger was accused of misconduct in failing to act against abusers: Two cases involved priests who offended while Ratzinger was archbishop and were punished by the German legal system but were kept in pastoral ministry without any limits on their ministry. A third case involved a cleric who was convicted by a court outside Germany but was put into service in Munich; while the fourth involved a convicted pedophile priest who was allowed to transfer to Munich in 1980, and was later put into ministry. In 1986, the priest received a suspended sentence for molesting a boy.

Benedict’s team earlier clarified an initial “error” in their submission to the law firm that had insisted Ratzinger was not present at the 1980 meeting in which the priest’s transfer to Munich was discussed. Ratzinger was there, but his return to ministry was not discussed, they said.

Benedict said he was deeply hurt that the “oversight” about his presence at the meeting had been used to “cast doubt on my truthfulness, and even to label me a liar.” But he said he had been heartened by the letters and gestures of support he had received, including from his successor.

“I am particularly grateful for the confidence, support and prayer that Pope Francis personally expressed to me,” he said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Pope Benedict faulted over sex abuse claims: New report is just one chapter in his

— And Catholic Church’s – fraught record

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.

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An in-depth report released last week alleges that former Pope Benedict XVI allowed four abusive priests in Munich to remain in ministry. The pope, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, led the German archdiocese from 1977 to 1982.

The 1,900-page audit was commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising but conducted by independent investigators. It covers the period from 1945 to 2019 and lists 235 alleged clergy who were perpetrators of sexual abuse and at least 497 minors who were victims.

Given Benedict’s status – he was pope from 2005 to 2013, until his historic resignation due to ill health – the news has put additional scrutiny on top leaders’ roles in allowing abusers to go unpunished. It also raises the classic questions of what Benedict knew, and when.

As a journalist, I covered Ratzinger in Rome in the 1980s and wrote a biography of him in 2006. Today, as director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, I see this episode as an opportunity to understand the church’s fitful evolution on dealing with abuse.

Influential role

After Ratzinger left Munich in 1982, he came to Rome to serve as Pope John Paul II’s top defender of doctrine. For 23 years he led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body tasked with defending Catholic teaching, and arguably the most influential department in the Vatican.

As head, Ratzinger had a say in developing the church’s response to the increasingly public sex abuse crisis. John Paul consulted Ratzinger on important decisions, and major documents from other departments at the Vatican required his approval, or imprimatur, before they could be published.

Pope John Paul II stands beside Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
Pope John Paul II stands beside Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict XVI, in 1979

Ratzinger’s initial responses to abuse cases mirrored his record in Munich. In one case in 1985, for example, he rejected an appeal to defrock, or “laicize,” an American priest who sexually abused children, even though the priest himself, as well as the bishop, requested it.

One of Ratzinger’s successors at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, defended his mentor by arguing that in the 1970s and 1980s, neither the church nor society at large understood child sex abuse properly. “It was thought that therapy could resolve the problem. Today we know that this is useless for these criminals,” he said after the release of the Munich report.

‘Weakness of faith’

Another key factor many critics blame for the hierarchy’s resistance to punishing clergy is an attitude called “clericalism,” or treating priests as superior. The late Rev. Donald Cozzens, a Cleveland priest, seminary director and psychologist who published a book on the priesthood in 2000, defined clericalism as an attitude of “privilege and entitlement” among clergy, elites who “think they’re unlike the rest of the faithful.”

Ratzinger and many other church leaders preferred to view the problem as a spiritual one. “I think the essential point is a weakness of faith,” Ratzinger insisted in 2003. He also blamed the secular world, particularly what he called the “unprecedented” moral breakdown of the 1960s and 1970s, and the acceptance of homosexuality.

Two studies by professors at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice showed that abuse did start to spike in the 1960s and declined sharply in the 1980s. But the researchers note that almost 44% of accused abusers were ordained before 1960 and dismiss the notion that gay men are to blame. Moreover, historians have often pointed out that pedophilia and other sexual abuses by clergy are nothing new but date back to at least the 11th century.

When The Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” series finally broke the scandal wide open in January 2002, American bishops sought to institute a zero-tolerance policy for abusers and to hold bishops who covered up accountable. The Vatican pushed back, though the U.S. bishops were able to adopt a relatively strong system laying out procedures for removing accused priests.

Ratzinger also continued to minimize the extent of the scandal, arguing in November 2002 that “less than one percent” of priests were guilty of abuse and blaming the media for “a planned campaign” to “discredit the church.” The real figure was over 4% nationally.

A sudden shift

The previous year, however, Ratzinger had persuaded John Paul to let his office take charge of all abuse cases worldwide to expedite trials and defrock the guilty. The ensuing flood of cases seemed to have an effect: When John Paul died in April 2005 and Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI, he moved quickly to begin laicizing hundreds of abusers. He also apologized to victims and became the first pope ever to meet face to face with clergy abuse victims. This was a sea change for the church, and for Benedict.

But it went only so far. Though Benedict publicly dismissed a bishop whom he considered too liberal, he was not as assertive in taking action against bishops suspected of covering up abuse or being abusers themselves. A key example is the case of Theodore McCarrick, a former Washington, D.C., cardinal.

Allegations that McCarrick had abused children emerged in July 2018 and led to an investigation that showed that Benedict knew of other accusations against McCarrick of sexual misconduct with adults but took no public action.

After Francis was elected pope in 2013, he stripped McCarrick of his cardinal’s title and defrocked him. McCarrick has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexually assaulting a teenager in the 1970s.

Francis also began firing other bishops for covering for abusers and started to institute a system of accountability.

Benedict is nearing the end of his life, living in seclusion in a quiet monastery inside the Vatican walls. Beyond the damage to his reputation, he likely won’t face sanctions for his actions decades ago in Munich.

But this episode helps illustrate how the Catholic Church got to this point and what remains to be done. And it may sway cardinals in the next conclave to choose a pope who has a stronger record on abuse.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Benedict Admits Being at Meeting About Priest Accused of Abuse

A statement by the former pope contradicted a previous statement to a law firm investigating allegations of child sex abuse by priests when he was an archbishop.

Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. A report released last week said the former pope mishandled at least four cases of sexual abuse accusations when he was an archbishop in Germany.Credit…

By Elisabetta Povoledo and Gaia Pianigiani

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said on Monday that he had been at a meeting at which the case of a priest accused of pedophilia had been discussed, contradicting a previous statement he made to a German law firm investigating accusations of clerical sexual abuse.

On Monday, Benedict’s personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, issued a statement saying the former pontiff’s previous assertion about not attending the meeting to the law firm conducting the investigation, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, was “objectively false.”

Last week, the law firm issued a report that found, among other things, that Benedict had mishandled four cases in which priests were accused of sexual abuse, allegations that threaten to tarnish the legacy of the former pontiff.

The firm was investigating how allegations of clerical sexual abuse had been handled in the German archdiocese of Munich and Freiburg between 1945 and 2019. Benedict — then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — was archbishop of the diocese and in charge of its clerics between 1977 and 1982.

At a news conference presenting the findings of the report Thursday, a representative of the law firm said Benedict had denied being at one meeting at which the case of a priest who had been sent to Munich from the diocese of Essen to receive treatment had been discussed, even though minutes of the meeting showed he had been present.

Upon reading the findings of the report, the retired pope said he had been present at the meeting in question “contrary to what was stated,” Archbishop Gänswein said in his statement. He added that Benedict’s previous assertion was not made in “bad faith” but was the result of a mistake in the editing process of an 82-page statement provided to the lawyers.

In Monday’s statement, Benedict, 94, apologized for the error but maintained that, while he had been present at that meeting, “the pastoral assignment of the priest in question was not decided at this meeting.”

In the original statement responding to questions by the lawyers conducting the investigation, Benedict had said he did not know that the priest in question had been accused of sex abuse against minors, and that the documents seeking his transfer to Munich only mentioned health-related issues that required psychotherapy. The priest was described as “very gifted,” and could have been assigned to different tasks, Benedict said.

The transfer request from Essen mentioned that the priest had been “immediately taken out of pastoral care” because of a report coming from the parish community, but did not provide further details or mention suspicions of sexual abuse. Benedict added that he had no memory of being informed about what role the new priest was going to take.

The priest was in fact allowed to return to pastoral work a few weeks after his arrival in Munich, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexually abusing minors in the diocese of Essen and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation. When news of the case made headlines, in 2010, the archdiocese said the decision to let the priest reassume his duties had been made by Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy in Munich.

Archbishop Gänswein said Benedict had been reading the report, which runs to some 1,900 pages, since receiving it on Thursday, but that it would “take time to read it completely” because of Benedict’s “age and health.” He said Benedict would comment on the report once he had finished reading it.

Archbishop Gänswein said the contents of the report had filled Benedict with “shame and pain” for the suffering caused to victims, and expressed closeness to his home dioceses, “in particular to the victims who had to experience abuse and indifference.”

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Pope Benedict accused of mishandling sex abuse cases: 4 essential reads

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When Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013 – the first leader of the Catholic Church to do so in more than half a millennium – the sexual abuse crisis had already roiled the church for years.

During the conservative theologian’s papacy, the church revised canon law and announced new guidelines in an effort to respond to clergy abuse.

But a new report accuses Benedict of having mishandled at least four cases of sexual abuse when he was an archbishop in Munich, Germany, in the 1970s and 1980s. The investigation, which covers abuse in the diocese from 1945 to 2019, concluded that the former pope failed to properly act on claims or punish priests – claims Benedict has rejected.

The accusations against a living, if retired, pope underscore how dramatically the sex abuse crisis has shaken the church. Here are some of The Conversation’s many articles examining the crisis over the years – both its roots and the potential routes for reform.

1. Years of scandal

High-profile reports have consistently put the crisis in headlines for the past 20 years, particularly The Boston Globe’s famous “Spotlight” investigation in 2002 and the film it inspired in 2015.

But the paper trail documenting patterns of abuse – and cover-ups – goes back to at least the 1950s, according to Brian Clites, an expert on clergy sex abuse. That’s when U.S. bishops began referring priests to church-run treatment centers, rather than reporting abuse to independent authorities. “Hush money” payouts followed.

Victims or their family members react after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report on clergy sex abuse in 2018.

By the 1990s, as lawsuits mounted, “the national outcry forced dioceses across the country to create public standards for how they were handling abuse accusations,” Clites writes, “and American bishops launched new marketing campaigns to regain trust.”

2. Speaking up – and out

Two barriers to bringing abusers to justice, many experts argue, are the church’s hierarchy and canon laws, which regulate the church and its members.

But in 2019, Pope Francis modified the “Rule of Pontifical Secrecy,” which required that sensitive information about the church be kept confidential. Over the years, critics alleged that the policy allowed officials to withhold information about sexual abuse cases, even from victims or legal authorities. Francis’ announcement lifted the rule for three situations: sexual abuse of minors or vulnerable persons, failure to report or efforts to cover up such abuse, and possession of child pornography by a cleric.

Even with this change, however, transparency may prove elusive, argues law professor Christine P. Bartholomew. She outlines other practices that can be used to conceal information and work around mandatory reporting requirements.

3. Celibacy controversy

Other analysts trying to understand the roots of the sex abuse crisis focus on the rules of the priesthood itself – especially that priests be male and celibate.

But it hasn’t always been that clear cut. Kim Haines-Eitzen, an expert on early Christianity, outlines how views on marriage have shifted ever since the first century. The early Christian leader Saint Paul seemed to endorse marriage “reluctantly,” she writes, as “an acceptable choice for those who cannot control themselves.”

The French Baroque painting ‘Saint Paul writing his Epistles.’

Attitudes toward sex and marriage continued to cause controversy for centuries, contributing to schisms between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, and later the Protestant Reformation. This is still the case today, as some Catholics advocate that married men be allowed to become priests.

4. Change is possible

Changing a 2,000-year-old institution is hard, but not out of reach.

As a scholar of religious change, Melissa Wilde pinpoints moments when the Catholic Church changed course. Chief among them was Vatican II, the seminal church council in the 1960s that made significant reforms to worship, such as conducting the Mass in parishioners’ own language, rather than Latin.

With the church mired in crises, “the church needs more than reflection,” she argues. “It needs another council.”

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