BishopAccountability.org
	Vatican Loud on Paedophiles but Silent on Genocidal Priests By Tom Ndahiro The Independent June 7, 2010 http://www.independent.co.ug/index.php/column/guest-column/68-guest-column/3008-vatican-loud-on-paedophiles-but-silent-on-genocidal-priests- In the Vatican the word "sex" makes the city's insiders shudder. Pope Benedict XVI's legacy is endangered as the scandal is sucking him in. His role in the "mismanagement" of sex abuse cases in the 1980s - as the archbishop of Munich, and as head of the Vatican's disciplinary Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – has put him in a weaker position. Imagine when the Vatican claims the bishops are neither officials nor employees of the Vatican. A remarkable defence! Many people, including myself, had always thought the Pope and the bishops were in the same chain of command, but this clarity is being challenged by the present case against the institution for a decades-long cover up of priests sexually abusing children in the U.S. On his way to Portugal, on May 11, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said: "The greatest persecution of the church doesn't come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sins within the church." In 1985, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was involved in a cover up of a sex abuse scandal. Now that he is the Pope, the case has not gone anywhere. Pope Benedict's appeal for expiation after the shame brought by paedophile priests is a serious thing in this world of technology and sophisticated news coverage. He is worried that the conduct of the impenitent within the Church may cause it to perish like the barren fig tree. (Luke 13:1-9 or Mathew 21:18-20) Five days after his election Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his papal inauguration mass on April 24, 2005. Exactly five months later, on September 24, the Pope met with Father Hans Kung in Castel Gandolfo, outside Vatican city. The Swiss-born theologian, Fr Kung has taught theology in Germany for many years. He has challenged official Catholic Church positions. Like Ratzinger, Kung was a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council, but he questions papal infallibility, birth control, priestly celibacy and the all-male priesthood. Concerning sex, Kung advises: "If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors." Kung notes that there are other scandals than sex within the church: "Time and again we see leaders and members of religions incite aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia - even inspire legitimate violent and bloody conflicts." His opinion is especially relevant today, when the Pope admits the problem is from within. If the "Holy Father" had listened to people like Kung, maybe the situation would be better. Instead, in 1979 the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith revoked permission for Father Kung to teach as a Catholic theologian. That did not silence him. On April 16, 2010 Fr Kung wrote an open letter to the world's Catholic bishops accusing Pope Benedict of betraying the modernising reforms proposed by the Vatican Council II, and engineering, a "worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics." The last being when he was a Cardinal. Earlier in March, Kung had said that from 1981 to 2005, on grounds of discretion, the "secretive" Vatican department of Doctrine claimed exclusive jurisdiction for all significant cases of sexual offences by clerics. All of these cases landed on the desk of its prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. To be precise Kung said on May 18, 2001, Ratzinger sent to all the bishops around the world a solemn epistle concerning serious crimes (Epistula de delictis gravioribus), in which cases of abuse were put under "papal secrecy" (Secretum Pontificium), the violation of which entails severe ecclesiastical penalties. "Have the cover-up specialists of the past suddenly become credible un-coverers? Must not independent commissions be established to deal with such cases?" In Rwanda, the most serious crime is not the clergy in "sex scandals". It is the church's role in genocide, and now its activism in denial. But unfortunately, this is of little concern to the Vatican. Despite the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, mass murders in churches, and the involvement of churchmen in this odious crime, the Catholic Church appeared to have lost nothing. The significance of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was not evident at the Vatican. On Christmas day, 1994 Pope John Paul II offered his Christmas wishes from the central loggia of St Peter's Basilica. The Pope's words on Rwanda, reported by L'Osservatore Romano on January 4, 1995 were elusive and disingenuous. The Pontiff avoided the word genocide and the ideology behind it; instead he described Rwanda as one of several "new centres of tension," affected by "persistent forms of selfishness and violence" and the "tragedy of war" caused by "irrational passions." After the genocide, like other institutions with influence, the church had a responsibility, for the future of Rwanda, to develop a new awareness and to confront the ideology of ethnic hatred that had led to the genocide. Regrettably, certain authorities in the Church opted for escapism and to maintain its ideological status quo, at any price. It treated the new government which had defeated the genocidaires as a scapegoat, and reduced it, wrongly, to the Tutsi and the RPF. This attitude was reflected in the official documents of the Episcopal Conference of Rwanda (CEPR) and of the office of the Apostolic Nuncio in Rwanda. They exhibited enormous complacency, and a desire to veil the evidence of the historical responsibility of the church in the genocide. Yet, the Papacy has nothing to say about them, though it has much to say about condoms, and is now feeling obliged to talk about paedophile priests. Does the Vatican consider genocide to be an offence? So far not! The "G"-word has found no place, in a line or paragraph in the books of the Canon Law. In September 2000, I wrote an article (in Imvaho Nshya, N0. 1354): "Icyaha Cyugarije Kiliziya no kuli Altari" meaning, "The sin had dominated the Church to the altar". It still does! To deny the obvious is to promote impunity and to insult the survivors' memory. To deny the Church's involvement in the genocide against the Tutsi is to deny the genocide itself. Contact: tndahiro@gmail.com
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.