Charges, reports, upside-down leadership and belated promises

Brazilian Msgr. Luiz Marques Barbosa was detained Sunday after a congressional hearing provoked by television broadcast of a video which was secretly filmed in January, 2009, by a 21-year-old man who charges Barbosa had abused him since age 12.

In Chile, the Roman Catholic Church on Tuesday said 20 confirmed or alleged cases of child abuse by priests:

Monsignor Alejandro Goic, head of Chile's bishops' conference, said that in five of the cases sentences had been imposed, in another five trials were still under way, and in 10 others priests had been absolved or results were pending.

A Mexican citizen has filed suit against US cardinal Roger Mahony and Mexican cardinal Norberto Rivera for intentionally covering up a pattern of child sex abuse by former priest Nicolas Aguilar. AFP reports:

The case claims that Aguilar demonstrated a pattern of sexual abuse of minors that was known to Rivera, who nonetheless authorized his transfer to the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1987. The suit alleges Rivera sent Mahony a letter detailing Aguilar's "homosexual problems," including information about alleged child sex abuse, but the Mexican priest was allowed to remain in his office.

Canon lawyer and a civil lawyer Thomas J. Paprocki, who the Associated Press reports once blamed the devil for sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church and proposed shielding the church from legal damages, was appointed the new bishop of the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois.

Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in Rome at his weekly audience, promised "action" on abuse by priests.

Anti-abortion politics and pregnant children

Brazil's Archbishop Emeritus Jose Cardoso Sobrinho -- best known for his efforts to prevent a raped nine-year-old pregnant with her stepfather's twins from receiving an abortion and his immediate public declaration of the excommunication of her mother and others involved in the abortion -- proclaimed last week that pro-abortion candidates "cannot represent honest citizens."

That's a long public step beyond the private denial of communion to pro-choice Catholic political figures in this country -- a practice Randall Terry would like to see in widespread use.

Agree or disagree, it is nonetheless an honest expression of the doctrine which underlay the conflict over the nine-year-old Brazilian girl's abortion.

Catholic figures have since protested that there was no medical necessity involved. But it is not clear that for Catholic clergy the debate was fundamentally over medical necessity, as senior Vatican official was quoted as saying at the time:

"We have laws, we have a discipline, we have a doctrine of the faith," the official says. "This is not just theory. And you can't start backpedaling just because the real-life situation carries a certain human weight."

Remember that the Vatican's top bioethics official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who argued in the Vatican newspaper that human and theological "mercy" should have been applied to those involved in the abortion, saw his view rejected in a "clarification."

Remember being 9 with your Easy-Bake Oven (Mom/MDs excommunicated)?

Allison Hantschell writes:

I had an Easy-Bake Oven, when I was 9. It made tiny cupcakes and itty-bitty cookies, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since I read about the girl in Brazil.

I don't know her name, but she's 9 years old, living in Brazil. Brutally raped by her stepfather, multiple times over a period of years, and finally impregnated with twins.

Nine years old. And instead of playing baseball, or learning numbers, or baking tiny cupcakes and itty-bitty cookies, this little girl is at the center of a worldwide controversy over the Roman Catholic Church, its views on abortion, and, above all, the role of mercy and the incoherence of men.

Raped by a parent until precocious adolescence led to pregnancy, and the church at last took action . . . .

[Update] Regarding excommunication of the Brazilian doctors & mother

Anyone (with certain exemptions) who consciously worked to stop a birth excommunicated himself/herself, so:

Brazil’s Catholic bishops conference denied that the archbishop of Recife and Olinda, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, excommunicated the mother and doctors who practiced a legal abortion on a nine-year-old girl that was pregnant with twins after being raped by her stepfather. . . . The secretary general of the bishops conference, Dimas Lara Barbosa, said that the prelate “at no time excommunicated anyone."

Too cunning an attempt at damage-control.

Sunday, Archbishop Rino Fisichella in the Vatican newspaper that the public declaration of the already automatic excommunications associated with the abortion were "hasty" and the nine-year-old girl, whose life was saved by the abortion of twins she was physically unequipped to have, "should have been above all defended, embraced, treated with sweetness to make her feel that we were all on her side, all of us, without distinction."

Since that didn't happen, the matter "has impacted the credibility of our teaching, which appears in the eyes of many as insensitive, incomprehensible and devoid of mercy."

Truly. Continuously, for many of us, we suspect.

Update: Excommunicated doctor hailed as hero

Brazilian Minister of Health Jose Gomes Temporao called on the audience at a national convention on women's health in Brasilia to acknowledge the "brilliant" work done by a medical team in the abortion, performed in Brazil's northeastern city of Recife.

Those in attendance responded with a standing ovation, according to the newspaper O Povo.

But the president, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva, condemned the excommunication and praised the doctors for their decision to perform the abortion on the girl, who was 15 weeks pregnant. "

According to the Telegraph, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva a Christian and a Catholic said, "I deeply regret that a bishop has had such conservative behaviour. In this case, medicine is more right than the Church."

CNN reports:

Dr. Olimpio Moraes, one of the doctors involved in the procedure, said he thanked the archbishop for his excommunication because the controversy sheds light on Brazil's restrictive abortion laws. He said women in Brazil's countryside are victimized by Brazil's ban on abortion.

Conditions for women in Brazil are often brutal.

IPAS, a non-governmental organization that works with the Brazilian health ministry, found in a recent study that more than 1 million women undergo illegal abortions in Brazil each year. About 250,000 women are treated by doctors for botched abortions.

In addition, studies at the Brazilian hospital Perola Byington in Sao Paulo, which is dedicated to treating female victims of violence, indicate that more than 40 percent of its cases involved children.