Pope Links Clerical Abuse to 1960s Reform, The Journal, November 24, 2010

Pope Links Clerical Abuse to 1960s Reform

The Journal
November 24, 2010

http://www.thejournal.ie/pope-links-clerical-abuse-to-1960s-reform-2010-11/

POPE BENEDICT XVI has spoken about Ireland’s clerical child sex abuse crisis, saying the abandonment of ecclesiastical law in the 1960s led to “an odd darkening” in the minds of many people.

The pope said that this point of view was first presented to him by the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, writes Paddy Agnew of the Irish Times.

Benedict’s comments are contained in a new book, for which he was interviewed by German journalist Peter Seewald, Light of the World.

Benedict is quoted as saying:

The Archbishop of Dublin told me something very interesting about that. He said that ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950s; admittedly, it was not perfect – there is much to criticise about it – but nevertheless it was applied. After the mid-sixties, however, it was simply not applied any more.

He added:

In Ireland the problem is altogether specific – there is a self-enclosed Catholic society, so to speak, which remained true to its faith despite centuries of oppression, but in which, then, evidently certain attitudes were also able to develop…

To see a country that gave the world so many missionaries, so many saints, which in the history of the missions also stands at the origin of our faith in Germany, now in a situation like this is tremendously upsetting and depressing.

The details of the book have caused a stir – not least of all because Benedict appears to have performed a U-turn on his stance on the use of condoms. He said that under certain circumstances their use was acceptable, and used the example of male prostitutes using condoms to prevent the spread of the HIV virus.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi has said that the term “male prostitute” was a poor translation from German, and that Benedict had meant both male and female prostitutes.

The pope expanded on his views on the use of condoms within the book, saying:

The Church, of course, does not regard it (the condom) as a real or moral solution but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.