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	Beast File: Catholic Church Sex Scandal Hungry Beast April 11, 2011 http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/stories/beast-file-catholic-church-sex-scandal [with video] The final Beast File for season two looks at the Catholic Church’s response to child sex abuse and the 2000-year paper trail of Church documents showing this first became an issue in the years following Jesus’ death. Over the years, Vatican officials have blamed child sex abuse by priests on everything from homosexuality to the media. Recently, in a letter of apology to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XIV, appeared to blame the abuse on the secularisation and fast-paced change associated with modern society. But as this Beast File shows, modern society has little to do with it and documents linking priests to child abuse go back almost 2000 years. Most of the information for this story was garnered from the following four books, which are great sources for anyone looking for more information. - ‘The Power and the Glory: Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican, David Yallop, Constable & Robinson Ltd, London, 2007. - ‘Sex Priests and Secret Codes: The Catholic Church’s 2,000-Year Paper Trail of Sexual Abuse’, Doyle et al, Volt Press, Los Angeles, 2005. - ‘Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy, and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio’, Karen Liebreich, Grove Press, New York, 2004. - Peter Damian, ‘Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices’, Ed. P Payer, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982. If you want to have a look around online for more information, here is a quick guide. There are a couple of good sites that have translations of and commentary on the Didache. As with many of the documents cited in this Beast File, there are a variety of translations and the usual historical debate over exact dates. If it’s information on the Council of Elvira you’re after, one of the best places to look is here and this is a great source on the scholar and monk Saint Bede. The last book on the list above is the best source around on the ‘Book of Gomorrah’, but this article also provides some fantastic background on Pope Leo IX and his response. The ‘Decree (or Decretum) of Gratian’ by Gratian of Bologna was the first instalment in a series of important canonical texts called the Corpus Iuris Canonici. You can find lots more information and links here. For those interested in the role played by Pope Pius V’s ‘Horrendum’ this commentary in the Independent, helps put it into context. The ‘Sacramentum Poenitentiae’ is considered the definitive Catholic Church document on child sex abuse and solicitation by priests. Plenty of information and links can be found here, and the full Latin text (for those countless people who still learn Latin) can be found here. The 1917 and 1962 documents we refer to in the Beast File are the ‘Code of Canon Law’ and the ‘Crime of Soliciting’ respectively. Information on these texts, as well as former Cardinal Ratzinger’s 2001 ‘Letter of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’ can all be found on the Vatican website. The recently released 2003 guidelines calling for child sex abuse cases to be referred to police can also be found on the Vatican website here. It should be noted that some of these texts deal with issues such as homosexuality and bestiality as well as child sex abuse. There is also debate in many cases over the exact dates of the earlier texts. We tried to take the most conservative or widely supported dates in the piece but we do recognise that not every historian agrees on the timing.
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