The News-Leader
November 12, 2010
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20101112/OPINIONS02/11120309/Jedrzejewski-Catholic-Church-policies-must-focus-on-protecting-people
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| Anna JEDRZE-JEWSKI |
According to Vatican spokesman priest Federico Lombardi, during his recent visit to London Pope Benedict XVI gave a homily condemning pedophile priests for sexually abusing children and compared the suffering of their victims to the sufferings of martyrs.
According to the BBC Press dated Feb. 10, 2006, reporter Calm O'Gorman, author of "Sex Crimes and the Vatican," stated that for 20 years Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was in charge of enforcing the Vatican's secret instruction called Crimen Sollicitationis. This secret instruction (1962) was issued in order to keep pedophile priests hidden away in monasteries or out-of-the-way churches, to destroy evidence and, uncompromisingly, fight with victims and forbid cooperation with institutions of justice. If the pedophile priests are now being condemned by the church, when does the church plan to officially do away with this secret instruction?
For almost 30 years, the Catholic Church in Ireland stifled this scandalous behavior. Between 1975 and 2004, 46 priests [allegedly] committed sexual crimes against children. The Investigation Committee analyzed 320 reported complaints made by the victims of pedophile priests. One of the priests admitted to sexually abusing 100 boys.
The sexual misconduct of priests is not limited to children. According to the media, some priests had sexual activity with adult men and women, married and single, committing violence against their will. Their victims still keep silent because they feel that such a disclosure causes a negative reaction, unfortunately, often towards the victim rather than the perpetrator; instead of compassion and help, victims often experience skepticism.
Many people are angry and disgusted, but others say that nobody's perfect, that priests are only human. Sometimes, I wonder if these priests who commit such horrendous acts even believe in God.
Throughout the 2,000 years of its existence, the Catholic Church has had many ups and downs and survived. But today, in order for the church to survive, it must start issuing policies that protect people, not harm them. The psychological damage is too great to allow one more innocent child to be sexually molested or one more adult to be intimidated into having sex with a priest.
Many Catholics believe that the Catholic Church needs to reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy because it goes against nature and against the Bible.
Why force good men to prove their love of God by not marrying and having children, while allowing priest with sexual abuse problems to continue to serve the church? I say serve the church, because they don't seem to be serving God.
According to the Bible, marriage is a pure and holy gift from God and it doesn't interfere with the spiritual bond with Him. According to the New Testament, Apostle Peter was married (Matthew 8:14, Corinthians 9:5); Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy that bishops should be faultless and have only one wife (Timothy 3:2).
Ideas that people established a long time ago need to be periodically revised and adjusted to today's life. Only God's truth is invariable.
Editor's Note: John L. Allen Jr., a senior correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, said in 2006 that at least three points were established about Crimen Sollicitationis during a discussion of it that took place several years ago.
- The document, which was supposed to be stored in each diocese's secret archives, was exceedingly obscure. Most canon lawyers and bishops had never heard of it prior to the controversy in 2003, so to suggest it played a crucial role in shaping the church's response to the crisis is an exaggeration.
- As an "instruction," the document's legal force expired in 1983 with the revision of the Code of Canon Law.
- The document was concerned only with secrecy in internal ecclesiastical procedures. There was nothing in it, nor anywhere else in church law, that would have prevented a bishop (or anyone else) from reporting a crime of sexual abuse to the local police or a prosecuting attorney. That bishops failed to do so is indicative of a widespread pattern of damage control, and the Vatican was as guilty of it as anyone else, but this was a matter of culture and institutional psychology rather than formal law.
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