Scottish Catholics asked to come up with the cash, fast

Scottish Catholics asked to dig deep this weekend, apparently in part because Pope Benedict XVI attracted 30,000 fewer pilgrims than anticipated. They're being asked to come up with another £800,000 ($1.1 million). That's on the heels of £1.7 million they were asked to come up with prior to the visit.

Pope seeks (somewhat like Southern Baptists) 'renewed evangelization'

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is not alone in its quest for a Great Commission Resurgence, or something somewhat similar:

Pope Benedict XVI announced he is establishing a pontifical council for new evangelization to find ways "to re-propose the perennial truth of the Gospel" in regions where secularism is smothering church practice.

. . .

"I have decided to create a new organism, in the form of a pontifical council, with the principal task of promoting a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of faith has already resounded and where there are churches of ancient foundation present, but which are living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of 'eclipse of the sense of God,'" he said.

No church planting required, reversing secularization is only in part of matter of reversing or at least slowing the decline in church membership and attendance in countries like Austria, Belgium and Germany. Yet as Philip Jenkins recently pointed out in The Christian Century, it is a battle with many fronts, including replenishing the depleting ranks of the priesthood:

Particularly in Western Europe, Catholic countries have been becoming steadily more secular for at least a generation, quite independent of any claims of priestly deviance. In no sense is European religion dying — just witness the continuing popularity of pilgrimage and other popular devotions — but loyalty to the institutional church has weakened disastrously. Rates of mass attendance have declined steeply, as have the numbers of those admitting even notional adherence to the church. Today, fewer than half of French people claim a Catholic identity. The number of priestly vocations has been in free fall since the 1960s, leaving many seminaries perhaps a quarter as full as they were in the time of Pope John XXIII.

Failure of atavistic movements like the SBC's GCR and the pope's pontifical council for new evangelization is probably foreordained by the degree to which the secularization they attack is embedded in the cultures to which they speak. Again, as Jenkins observes regarding secularization and the Roman Catholic Church:

One gauge of transformed Catholic attitudes has been the sharp drop in fertility rates and family size. Since the 1970s women increasingly pursued careers and higher education, and the use of contraception spread rapidly, despite stern church disapproval. Fertility rates plummeted, such that Spain and Italy today have among the lowest fertility rates in the world, far below the level needed for population replacement. Catholic Germany stands about the same level. German sociologist Ulrich Beck notes wryly that in Western Europe today, the closer a woman lives to the pope, the fewer children she has. Ireland's fertility rate today is less than half what it was in 1970.

There is no reason a couple with few or no children should not be fervently pious. But the trend away from large families reflects broader social changes. A society in which women have more economic autonomy is less likely to accept traditional church teachings on moral and sexual issues. The resulting conflicts have steadily pushed back the scope of church involvement in public life. Abortion became legal in Italy in 1978 and in Spain in 1985. The Irish church suffered a historic defeat in 1997 when a referendum narrowly allowed the possibility of divorce. Today, across Catholic Europe, same-sex marriage is the main moral battlefield—with Spain in the vanguard of radical secularism and sexual liberation. The Catholic Church struggles to present its views to a society suspicious of institutional and traditional authority of any kind and quite accustomed to ideas of gender equality, sexual freedom and sexual difference.

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.

Papal fall guy

Archbishop of Munich Joseph Ratzinge, now Pope Benedict XVI, was it seems not blameless in the case of pedophile priest Peter H. Conny Neumann of Der Spiegel wrote on Monday:

Catholic Church officials assigned full responsibility for the reassignment of a known pedophilic priest to retired vicar general Gerhard Gruber who served as deputy to Joseph Ratzinger when he was archbishop. Gruber is now challenging a Church statement that he "acted on his own authority," a claim he says was never discussed with him.

Paddy Agnew, Derek Scally and Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times wrote:

A former vicar-general in the archdiocese of Munich has claimed that he was pressurised last month into taking the blame for a mistake made 30 years ago by the then Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), concerning the case of a paedophile priest.

According to Der Speigel:

Peter H., a vicar from the western German city of Essen who had molested boys on several occasions, was sent to Munich in 1980, where he was assigned to work as a pastor again. As a result, he was able to abuse even more boys. The archbishop and chairman of the diocesan council, which approved H.'s appointment, was Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Ratzinger also chaired a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, in which the pedophile priest's living arrangements and therapy were discussed. He must have been familiar with H.'s criminal past. Because of this, the diocese has, in recent weeks, left no stone unturned in its effort to explain why the current pope could not be held accountable for H.'s continued service in his diocese.

Indeed.

Smoke enough around Pope Benedict, but a gun?

The case of Stephen Kiesle raises questions about whether and if so why then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delayed for years the action requested to protect young Catholics from a predator.

Michael Sean Winters, writing for the Jesuit magazine American, excoriates the secular press and defends Vatican handling of the case in which "the priest who tied up young boys and molested them sexually and whose request to be defrocked came before" Ratzinger.

Grant Gallicho at dotCommonweal strips Winters' defense to the bone today. At the heart of the scandal, Gallicho finds damning questions:

So, why shouldn’t we raise questions about Rome’s role in the Kiesle case? Because the local bishop didn’t do enough, and besides Ratzinger didn’t receive a sufficiently detailed description of the priest’s crimes, and besides the process didn’t engage the proper canonical technicality? But we don’t have to choose to be troubled either by the local bishop or Ratzinger. We need not view the [Ratziner-headed Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith] CDF’s shortcomings in indirect proportion to the local bishop’s, so that the CDF is absolved to the extent that the local bishop failed. The same pattern of argument emerged in the Murphy case. “What about Weakland’s responsibility?” Benedict’s defenders asked, as though that swept away the questions that remained about the pope’s role in the case. Yes, why didn’t Weakland restrict Murphy sooner? Why did he wait three years after learning of Murphy’s egregious sins before sending the case to Rome? Why didn’t Kiesle’s bishop restrict him sooner? But they appealed to Rome, so: why did the CDF wait three years after receiving all the information it requested from Cummins to reply? Why was a Vatican official unable to grasp what the Kiesle’s superiors meant when they gently referred to his abuse of minors, even going so far as mentioning his criminal conviction? Why wasn’t the conviction determinative?

And then there are the larger questions: Why was Ratzinger on this case? Benedict’s defenders have claimed that he shouldn’t be blamed for Rome’s failure to address abuse claims promptly because he wasn’t officially responsible for such cases until 2001. Obviously that isn’t the whole story. Why not? Why was Ratzinger not really engaged in the Murphy case, which involved the abuse of as many as 200 deaf boys, but he was directly responsible for the decision not to release Kiesle from the full obligations of the clerical state? When Kiesle was finally fully laicized at age forty, whose decision was that? Ratzinger’s?

Certainly smoke enough to imply a gun as we struggle with questions Benedict could answer but does not.

Arrest the pope? Not exactly

That Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens arrest-the-pope campaign we referred to earler was, Dawkins suggestes, not altogether as advertised. Dawkins writes:

Needless to say, I did NOT say "I will arrest Pope Benedict XVI" or anything so personally grandiloquent. You have to remember that The Sunday Times is a Murdoch newspaper, and that all newspapers follow the odd custom of entrusting headlines to a sub-editor, not the author of the article itself.

What I DID say to Marc Horne when he telephoned me out of the blue, and I repeat it here, is that I am whole-heartedly behind the initiative by Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens to mount a legal challenge to the Pope's proposed visit to Britain. Beyond that, I declined to comment to Marc Horme, other than to refer him to my 'Ratzinger is the Perfect Pope' article.

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]

Statute of limitations on child sex abuse (the pain doesn't stop)?

Vatican guidelines of clerical sex abuse at last clearly require church-wide obedience to civil law, the New York Times reported today, while Connecticut bishops fight to limit the coverage of that civil law.

In Canada, there is no statute of limitations after which civil or criminal liability expires. As Child Abuse Effects explains:

When it comes to child abuse, there is no statute of limitations in Canada. Whether the child abuse occurred 5 minutes ago, 5 weeks ago, 5 or 50 years ago, an offender can still be charged. Nowhere is the latter more evident than with our Aboriginal people: more than 7,000 lawsuits have been filed against the Canadian Federal Government claiming sexual, physical and cultural abuse suffered at Residential Schools.

Connecticut bishops don't want their state to emulate Canada, out of concern for the church as a financial entity. As NBC Connecticut reported, "Church officials say it could have devastating financial effects and could result in claims that are more than 50-years old which would be impossible to defend in court. Currently, victims have until their 48th birthday to file lawsuits."

Impossible to defend? No. The burden of proof cuts both ways. So as Mark Silk observed with considerable irony, we're left with the money bishops still don't want to spend healing victims.

Hear one victim

Arthur Budzinski, one of the victims of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, describes the pain of having been abused as a youth at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin:

Deist and cradle Catholic welcomes 'arrest the pope' campaign

Deist and cradle Catholic Libby Purves welcomes the Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens arrest-the-pope campaign. "Not just because of what bad priests did and bad bishops hid," Purves writes:

What troubles me even more is that in doing this, church authorities repeatedly dragged other people into collusion and thus into what — in more convenient circumstances — they themselves would call sin. Young victims, particularly of sexual crimes, badly need to know that they are absolutely accepted as innocents betrayed: the crime is not their burden and does not define them. One of the ways in which societies achieve this is by openly punishing the perpetrator. Too often, that didn’t happen. In some of the most infamous Irish cases the children who suffered were sworn to secrecy, with all the dusty, incense-smelling, habit-rustling impressiveness of canonical process. They were made to collaborate in the shame, by men round whose necks hung the cross they had been taught to revere.

Read the entire piece here.

What did the Rev. Kiesle do while Cardinal Ratzinger delayed?

The Rev. Stephen Kiesle remained a priest for years while then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger "bucked pleas from the Oakland, Calif., diocese to defrock him." The Associated press has obtained a copy of 1985 letter signed by Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), delaying a decision for "the good of the Universal Church."

The Contra Costa Times reports:

The letter came five years after Kiesle himself requested removal from the priesthood, and the diocese recommended it to the Vatican, following Kiesle's no-contest plea in 1978 on a misdemeanor charge for tying up and molesting two preteen boys in the rectory of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Union City.

Kiesle, now 63 and recently released from prison, lives in the Rossmoor senior community in Walnut Creek and wears a Global Positioning System anklet. He is on parole for a different sex crime against a child. A self-described "Pied Piper of the neighborhood," he is perhaps the most notorious among dozens of East Bay clergy accused of sex abuse over decades.

Numerous accusers have claimed he abused them as children at Our Lady of the Rosary, Santa Paula (now Our Lady of Guadalupe) in Fremont and Saint Joseph in Pinole, where he served in the mid-1970s, then returned in 1985 to volunteer as a youth minister.

What comprehensible "good" was there in delay of a decision on this?

[H/T: Eric Bugyis]

About that 'smear' campaign directed at the Pope

Mary Kate Cary, former White House speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, writes in U.S. News & World Report:

For the hierarchy of the church to imply that the controversy is a "challenge" coming from outside the community of believers is just wrong. The people who are most worked up about the charges of sexual abuse are not the so-called enemies of the church, but the young Catholic victims and their families, the lay parishioners and parents of children being raised in the church, and the good priests whose reputations are being tarred by this. At another Easter Mass in my neighborhood, at a parish so full of young families they have overflow seating in the gym every Sunday, the monsignor got a standing ovation after saying he thought the children would have been better protected if women had been in the leadership of the church in the first place, and that the bishops involved should resign. I've never seen a standing ovation in church in my life. It's the community of believers who are as mad as hell. Really, it's heartbreaking.

Here they went again

Accused of molesting two girls in the United States, Father Joseph Jeyapaul, has for the last five years worked for Catholic schools in India:

Bishop Victor Balke of Minnesota first reported the allegations to the Vatican and the priest's Indian bishop in 2005, according to a letter released by a lawyer representing the victim in a civil lawsuit.

Attorney Jeffrey Anderson "presented documents from the Crookston, Minnesota, diocese and from local police that accuse Father Joseph Jeyapaul of molesting two teenage girls starting six years ago:"

A girl who was considering becoming a nun was threatened by Jeyapaul if she did not accept his advances, according to the documents. They say he arranged to be with his victims alone -- usually at his rectory.

Anderson says the bishop and the Vatican kept the problem a secret, permitting the priest to flee to India, to protect the reputation of the church.

Remind you of anything?

Not a word about the children in Pope Benedict XVI's Easter Message

What of the children? No mention. Silence to the "petty gossip." Seek to still truthful critics. The reputation of the church (and of the Pope) comes first. Always.

Reuters terse, "Factbox" roundup is for those not comfortable studiously looking the other way.

The full, English text of the Pope's message.

Why are the abused angry with Pope Benedict XVI?

Andrew Sullivan gives an example in plain English.

Condomonium goes to school in Rome

The Vatican is displeased with Kepler scientific secondary school in Rome's decision Wednesday to install condom vending machines for students. To be in the girls' and boys' toilets, they will sell condoms at half the usual retail price.

They didn't do it just to provoke the Vatican. The London Daily Mail reports:

In a recent survey of 7482 students in Italy by the Ministry of Health on sexual knowledge, 18 per cent admitted regularly having intercourse without using a condom, which officials said had contributed to rises in sexually transmitted diseases.

Other Italian schools and British schools are considering the same action. The British have an additional reason, again from the Daily Mail:

According to he latest figures available from the Italian Ministry of health the teenage pregnancy rate is six per 1000 girls aged between 15 and 19, compared to 26.4 in the United Kingdom - one of the highest in Europe.

Meanwhile, the long and sometimes strident epidemiology/theology debate continues, literally.

Condom faceoff in the Philippines

The Philippines National Press Club has agreed to host the condom debate between Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral and Archbishop Ramon Arguelles and Bishop Deogracias Ynigue. The two bishops challenged her after calling for a ban on condom ads and warnings on condom packages. As a condition of her acceptance, Harvard Medical School trained Cabral insisted that the focus of the debate be scientific, not religious beliefs.

This will be interesting, and perhaps so much more so for those who can actually be there.

The Anglican Church in American to the Pope: Yes, please

The Anglican Church in American (ACA), with some 100 dioceses and 5,200 members, swim the Tiber. The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, Traditional Anglican Communion, announced Thursday:

We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the "Anglican Use" Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.

At this meeting, the decision was made formally to request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

They are the first major U.S. exodus to join the 68,115,001 Catholic Church, U.S.

The ACA was formed from conservative breakaways from the Episcopal Church )United States), which is part of the nAnglican Communio that is headed by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Whereas the ACA is a branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion -- the group which from the outset was expected to be the first to accept Pope Benedict XVI's October offer.

Facing HIV epidemic, Catholic priests in the Philippines call for ban on condom ads [Update]

President Nereo Odchimar of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) also called for warning labels saying "Condoms may fail to protect from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases."

ABC-CBN News reported:

Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral has come under fire from the CBCP for promoting condoms as part of the battle against HIV-AIDS. The health secretary said the distribution of condoms is part of the health department's 3-pronged approach to combat the spread of HIV in the country.

Data from the Department of Health (DOH) showed a total of 4,400 HIV/AIDS cases from 1984 to December 2009. Since the Philippines started monitoring the disease, the number of cases has gone up from 1 to 4,424 confirmed cases.

. . .

"At the rate we are going, in 3 years, we are going to have more than 30,000 people with HIV/AIDS in the Philippines," the health secretary said.

The CBCP position is in keeping with that of Pope Benedict XVI, albeit not with the conclusions of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Ga. Specifically regarding epidemiology, the CDC concludes:

Overall, the preponderance of available epidemiologic studies have found that when used consistently and correctly, condoms are highly effective in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV infection and reduce the risk of other STDs.

No, the world leader in matters epidemiological is not recommending a warning label or otherwise somehow supporting CBCP attempts to suppress condom use in the Philippines.

Update

Philippine political figures respond that a ban on condom ads might infringe on freedom of speech. According to INQUIRER.net, Senator Mar Roxas "advised the Catholic church to just prod its followers not to use condoms.

The debate over ads is part of an ongoing furor over contraception in which the bishops earlier called for Cabral's removal from office. They seemed to be especially offended by his Valentine's Day condom distribution effort.

Pope Benedict provokes protest in Belgium

Showing again that he is as conservative as he seems when not calming the waters after a controversial action, Pope Benedict has appointed André-Mutien Léonard archbishop of Brussels.

Léonard is sometimes called “the Belgian Ratzinger” for his conservative views. According to Reuters:

Léonard has beene a controversial figure in Belgium for his critical stands on homosexuality, same-sex marriage and condom use. He has been an outspoken opponent of abortion and euthanasia, both of which are legal in Belgium, and criticised the Catholic universities of Leuven and Louvain for their research into assisted reproduction and embryonic stem cells.

CNA reports that in July, his statements in an interview that homosexuals were “abnormal” led Belgian homosexual activists to pursue (unsuccessfully) charges against him for homophobia -- "a criminal offense in Belgium since the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2003."

Public officials protested the appointment as disruptive. According to Reuters, most outspoken was Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx, who is the country’s health minister. In a radio interview, Onkelinx said:

Church and State are separate in Belgium, but when there are problems in our society, all the social partners sit down around a table, including representatives of secularism and of religion. Cardinal Danneels was a man of openness, of tolerance and was able to fit in there. Archbishop Léonard has already regularly challenged decisions made by our parliament.

. . .

Concerning AIDS, he’s against the use of condoms even while people are dying from it every day. He is against abortion and euthanasia [legal in Belgium] … The pope’s choice could undermine the compromise that allows us to live together with respect for everyone.

Although the controversy is not as intense as over the eventually withdrawn appointment of pastor Gerhard Maria Wagner in Austria last year, Pope Benedict used the same selection process. He ignored the local Catholic hierarchy and chose someone he was confident would be loyal to him.

The editor of the Belgian Catholic weekly KERK&leven (Church and Life), said the choice of Léonard “is clearly a conscious choice for a totally different style and approach: for more radical decisiveness rather than quiet diplomacy, for more confrontation with the secular society instead of dialogue ... .”

Disruptive, pushing toward the political right, as Beligian public officials suggested. And look for more of that.

Israel seeks Vatican archive answers about Pope Pius XII during WWII

Open the Vatican's WWII archives so that questions about the WW II papacy of Pius XII can be answered and Catholic/Jewish tension reduced, was Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom's request to Pope Benedict on Sunday.

This shortly after the pope's visit to the main Jewish synagogue in Rome, Italy, where by way of welcome the president of Rome's Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici, told him "the silence of Pius XII before the Shoah [Holocaust], still hurts because something should have been done.

"Maybe it would not have stopped the death trains, but it would have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, towards those brothers of ours transported to the ovens of Auschwitz," Pacifici said.

The pope replied that the Vatican helped Jews and "provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way." He also asked forgiveness for the church's contribution to anti-Semitism and urged Jews and Christians “to come together to strengthen the bonds which unite us and to continue to travel together along the path of reconciliation and fraternity."

Israel's answer, then, is something like "Good. Prove it." And a review of Reuter's timeline of Vatican-Jewish relations shows how the rising Catholic/Jewish tension of the Joseph Ratzinger papacy led to Israel's request and provoked some (notably Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, president of Italy’s rabbinical assembly) to boycott the pope's visit to the Rome synagogue. They were aware that the pope had been unilaterally invited, but would not accept his "clarification" of the decision to recognize the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII.

Tension over the matter can also be seen in B'nai B'rith Europe's online petition opposing beatification of Pius XII.

The issue also provoked a request in 2005 by Jewish leaders to open the Vatican's WW II archives when Pope Benedict visited the Cologne synagogue.

One need not be Jewish to wonder why the archives would not be opened now when it is clear that there is not only no resolution like well-verified truth, but also no likely resolution to this matter but a public review of those archival materials.