OUR VIEW: Reject Vatican disingenuousness
Today’s statement from the Vatican is disingenuous when it isn’t tip-toeing along the edge of plain-vanilla dishonesty.
Notice, for instance, this:
Certainly, the errors committed in ecclesiastical institutions and by Church figures are particularly reprehensible because of the Church’s educational and moral responsibility, but all objective and well-informed people know that the question is much broader, and concentrating accusations against the Church alone gives a false perspective.
This is weak tea, a simpering variation on the “just a few rotten eggs” defense, and exacerbated by sanguine assurances that “objective” and “well-informed” people know the churches are getting a bad rap from ill-informed noisemakers.
No.
The problem of clerical sexual abuse of children is systemic, innate, arising from teachings based upon Paul’s self-loathing asceticism. The problem was in the church 900-years ago, when St. Peter Damien was moved to write his famous letter to Pope Leo, now known as The Book of Gomorrah, and it will remain intact so long as the teachings urge new generations toward rejection of their own humanity.
As Bishop John Spong said somewhere or another, maybe salvation ought to be taught in terms of enhancing your humanity rather than in terms of protecting you from it. Good advice.
And … are memories short enough to fall for this?
In Germany initiatives are now rightly being suggested, promoted by the Ministry for the Family, to call a ’round table’ of the various educational and social organisations in order to consider the question from an appropriate and comprehensive viewpoint. The Church is naturally ready to participate and become involved and, perhaps, her own painful experience may also be a useful contribution for others. Chancellor Angela Merkel had justly recognised the seriousness and constructive approach shown by the German Church.
One supposes, again, that the only bar to productive discussions, sanctioned by respectable folk like Ms. Merkel, is the noisy, ill-tempered rabble.
No.
It was Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, recall, who dismissed the idea with the back of his hand:
The chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference has rejected calls for a roundtable discussion on the child-abuse claims plaguing the Catholic Church in Germany.
“Sexual abuse of children is not a problem specific [to] the Catholic Church,” Robert Zollitsch told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag on Sunday, February 28.
He went on to say that sexual molestation had nothing to do with celibacy, homosexuality, or the Catholic teaching.
Fail.
