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	Beyond Shame By Dr. James Jenkins National Survivor Support Working Group May 19, 2008 http://www.snap-greatplains.org/My_Homepage_Files/Page4.html Even before his airplane touched down in the United States this past April (2008), it was widely reported by the world's media that Pope Benedict XVI, commenting on the clergy sex abuse scandal, stated: "We feel great shame." Later during the visit, it was both heartening and hopeful for Benedict to have a personal encounter with survivors of clergy sexual abuse during a private audience. Thankfully, healing may now begin for these survivors. Sadly, thousands more around the globe are still waiting. Essentially, Benedict has done nothing more than what has been enacted across American Catholic dioceses the last several years where bishops and priests have publicly asked for forgiveness. Unfortunately, there are still too many dioceses where this kind of necessary and heartfelt gesture has yet to occur. While emotionally moving for surely all the participants in this encounter between pope and victimized people, it is still not the accountability necessary to repair and heal the gaping wounds of the betrayal of trust that these sexual assaults have made upon the Body of Christ, the people of the church. For twenty-five years during the papacy of his predecessor, John Paul II, as the abuse grew and festered in Catholic communities around the globe, the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, was the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (previously known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition), the watchdog curial agency charged with ensuring Catholic orthodoxy and morality. Is it reasonable to believe that this esteemed intellectual and astute clerical politician was somehow unaware of the abuse and corruption running rampant among the clergy and bishops? It assaults credulity that Ratzinger, or John Paul for that matter, were that out-of-touch, that insulated from what was common knowledge within the Vatican Curia. We must assume that most, if not all, of the Vatican curia knew the abuse had occurred and was ongoing. And among them, the well-placed Ratzinger did nothing to stop it. Only after the abuse scandal exploded in Boston, did American bishops adopt minimal standards of priestly behavior and still-too-weak enforcement mechanisms. It staggers the imagination, but all of these men who have dedicated their entire lives to proclaiming the Gospel - pope, cardinals and bishops - became complicit in the serial rape and sodomy of children. No wonder, Benedict feels great shame. If Benedict is to prevent this shame from overwhelming and engulfing the entire global Catholic community, then he must summon the collective courage to set the ark of the church on a new course of reform and renewal. The antidote to this shame and fear has been with us for a long time: An inexorable evolution toward a peoples' church has already begun. Our course forward, set by the star charts of Vatican II, especially Lumen Gentium (Light of the Nations), can be distilled to a single paradigmatic guiding principle: Let the People Decide! If Benedict and his brother bishops fail to steer bravely into the winds of change, the Roman Catholic Church could well beach on the shifting and rocky shoals of time and history.
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