“I will only resign if asked by the Holy Father.”
Cardinal Séan Brady is resisting calls for his resignation over his involvement in a 1975 canonical inquiry into allegations of sex abuse by Fr Brendan Smyth, during which the complainants, aged 10 and 14, “signed undertakings, on oath, to respect the confidentiality of the information-gathering process.” Brendan Smyth was convicted of 17 counts of sexual abuse 20 years later – and brought down an Irish government in the process. From an iol report
Asked why he did not see it as a moral obligation to ensure the police were alerted, the Catholic primate said today: “Yes, I knew that these were crimes, but I did not feel that it was my responsibility to denounce the actions of Brendan Smyth to the police.”
And from an Irish Times report
Cardinal Brady insisted that responsibility for Smyth was with the head of Smyth’s religious order at the Co Cavan abbey where he was sent after he was stripped of pastoral duties as a priest. “The responsibility for his behaviour rested with his religious superior at Kilnacrott,” he said. The cardinal said he did all that was asked of him by Dr McKiernan in relation to Smyth. “I did act, and act effectively, in that inquiry to produce the grounds for removing Fr Smyth from ministry and specifically it was underlined that he was not to hear confessions and that was very important.”
Meanwhile, as a separate Irish Times report notes – Monsignor Maurice Dooley, former Professor of Canon Law, said Cardinal Daly had “no obligation whatsoever” to report anything to the gardaí. “There is no law in Ireland or statute that requires that clergy report crimes to the police,” he added. Monsignor Dooley pointed to paragraph 1.16 of the Murphy report, saying: “it says quite clearly that the clergy, the bishops and so on, had no obligation to report anything to the police”. “Is it a sin against the law of God not to report matters to the police …no I don’t think so…because there are certain people exempt from this moral obligation to report to the police,” he said. [added fuller quote]Although a BBC report notes Cardinal Séan Brady’s statements in December last year.
However, in an interview with Irish broadcaster RTE last December, the cardinal said he, himself, would resign if he found that a child had been abused as a result of any managerial failure on his part.
“I would remember that child sex abuse is a very serious crime and very grave and if I found myself in a situation where I was aware that my failure to act had allowed or meant that other children were abused, well then, I think I would resign,” he said.
At that time, the cardinal apologised on behalf of the Church after an Irish government report revealed abuse over decades, a systematic cover-up by the Church and a lack of action by Irish police.
He said: “No-one is above the law in this country.
“Every Catholic should comply fully with their obligations to the civil law and co-operate with the Gardai (Irish police) in the reporting and investigation of any crime.”
And, as Crooked Timber’s Maria Farrell notes
The Irish adult voices of raped children are joined by American ones; people now grown up who were raped and abused by Fr. Smith when he was sent away from these shores and off to where he wasn’t known and could start again. A Connecticut woman poignantly asks why she was repeatedly raped by a priest who had been sent to America instead of to the police. An Irish woman asks why no one went to the police. If they had, she might have been saved. Many might have been saved.
Will Crawley widens the story out onto the European stage
Last month, reports began to surface of historic abuse cases in several elite Jesuit boarding schools in Germany.
The German Catholic Church is now dealing with multiplying new reports of physical and sexual abuse, including some linked to a renowned choir once led by Pope Benedict’s brother, Fr Georg Ratzinger.
As the domino effect of reporting continues, the wave of abuse revelations reached the Netherlands by late February, with scores of victims coming forward.
By March, the scandal had spread to Switzerland, where 60 new cases have now come to light.
And in the past few weeks, more abuse cases have emerged in Austria and Poland.
This weekend, a Vatican spokesman denounced “aggressive” efforts by the media to personally implicate the Pope in the unfolding child abuse crisis as questions were raised about the handling of a priest accused of molestation in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising when the future Pope was archbishop in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Last Friday, the Pope met the President of the German Bishops’ Conference to discuss the wider sex abuse crisis, just as an archbishop in Austria was breaking ranks to call for a public discussion about the future of the mandatory celibacy rule for priests.
Some informed Vatican sources now predict that the text of Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter to the Irish church will need to be expanded to include churches across Europe as full realisation dawns that the clerical sex abuse crisis now facing the church is a European problem, not just an Irish one.
\\JoeCanuck: Why would the common parishioner who was kept in the dark about the evil have anything to repent for?
You could say the same for the 99.2% of clergy who are not paedophiles.
That 0.8% has cost the Catholic Church dear, afaik bankrupting the Boston diocese which had to pay out so much compensation to victims because of the hierarchy’s failures to deal with the problem priests.
In the end it will be the parishioners who have to fork out since it is they who pay for the diocese(s) by their contributions.
In the USA there have been a few huge donations from wealthy Catholics to keep things afloat. A couple of days ago there was a US$20 million donation for Catholic Schools in NE USA.
I have just visited a website for survivors of abuse (www.snapnetwork.org). It hasn’t been updated since around 2004. I think what is happening is that all the paedo priest and other abuse stuff is coming out in the open – lancing the boil so to speak. That is pretty yuk, but it will heal and I think is unlikely to recur – at least not at the levels that were reported in the last few years. Too many people are aware of the pain and suffering caused.
I think is unlikely to recur
I think you are in denial, TellMeMa; they never go away. Constant vigilance is needed and, at least, there will be more people watching for it now. That might minimize it but, as I say, it won’t go away.
There have been a few books published on Anti-Catholicism being the last acceptable prejudice. Here is a review of one of them:
“The American media, usually painstaking in their efforts to offend members of no racial, religious or gender category, consistently make one major exception-the Roman Catholic Church. … Though anti-Catholicism arrived with the Pilgrims, only since the 1960s has it been aided by dissenters within the Catholic Church, primarily those who disagree with the church on sexual matters: birth control, feminism, abortion, homosexuality. Copious recent examples of anti-Catholicism [have been] in public protests, movies, television, publishing, the arts, the news media and academia…. Offenses against Catholicism, unlike those against, say, Judaism or Islam, are rarely censored and never considered hate crimes. Similarly, historical offenses by Catholics are treated differently from those against Catholics: “If seizing Christian Syria and Palestine by the Muslim sword was acceptable in the seventh century, why was it so atrocious to try to reclaim them with the Christian lance 400 years later?” … “One does not make light of black heroes and martyrs, of AIDS or gay-bashing, yet when dealing with Catholics, no subject is off-limits.”
My cousin, a devout Catholic and mother of seven children complained to me about a recent Mardi Gras where gay men dressed up as nuns and other Catholic figures. She said it was OK for gays to make fun of her religion, but not OK if Catholics made fun of gays.
I have worked with people who become absolutely **furious** at the mention of the Catholic Church, literally foaming at the mouth. I am amazed and bemused at this reaction. And Richard Dawkins seems to me to be utterly rigid in his opinions. There is only one view: his.
IMHO there is nothing more bigoted than a one-eyed secularist.
JoeCanuck: with regard to your little boy keeping the dyke from collapsing (did you intend the sexual imagery here??) Pope Benedict has stated that it may well be in the future the Catholic Church becomes a very small organisation, but that does not take away the truth of its basic beliefs.
In the end it will be the parishioners who have to fork out since it is they who pay for the diocese(s) by their contributions.
Not at all. They can stop contributing, find another untainted diocese to worship in, even, heaven forbid (for the diehard), find a different sect to go in communion with.
Joe: I am not in denial – just hopeful. And I did add that: “at least not at the levels that were reported in the last few years”
did you intend the sexual imagery here??
Absolutely not, TellMeMa, and shame on you for suggesting it. I trust a moderator will remove that outrageous slur.
TellMeMa
The quote from joe is famous, surely you had heard it before? and to the best of my knowledge had never before been associated in any way with sex.
Im going to bed now, and before what appears to be your overactive imagination runs away with you. It has nothing to do with sex!
Oops. Did not intend an outrageous slur.
I might mention that those gay men dressed as nuns called themselves “the sisters of perpetual indulgence”.
Pippakin: that story about the little Dutch boy was read to me by one of the nuns who taught me, so I do know it well. Just in context on this thread did it become sexual.
TellMeMa
You have got me trying to remember all the correct words now.
Just in context on this thread did it become sexual.
I deny it absolutely. You choose to make it sexual, TellMeMa, and as I said, you should be ashamed. Perhaps you have your own sexual repressions to deal with.
Bah, I’m finished.
joe
I believe you implicitly. I think TellMeMa was having a joke…
joe
I believe you implicitly. I think TellMeMa was having a joke…
Sorry Joe, I thought you were being ironic. I should rephrase “just in context of my reply to Joe did it hint at “dykes” and “little boys”"
Better stop here in case I get into deeper trouble….
Good night (or evening in Canada).
I’d say the thread is finished, but is Sean Brady? The State could finish this blackguard if it if had the moral courage but like the Church protects its peadophiles, the State protects the peadophiles’ protector.
Try an unqualified apology TellMeMa, similar to the one I gave you previously, and maybe then we can resume discussion. Until then, arrivederci!
Sorry Joe.
A week or so ago I made this innocent comment on another thread. “Iris Robinson’s role may have been wee, but it was the tipping point”. A few people thought this was hilarious – and sexual!!
Arrivederci Joe.
You see todays allegations against the bishop of Derry are an example of when this goes over the top. Someone takes a civil case which is settled in 2000 and it’s called a cover up! How is that?
Lionel: you have probably seen this item also from today’s Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/mar/16/religion-catholicism-brady-guilt-resignation
Some of the comments are interesting too.
Lionel: but you don’t seem to get it either. The Derry case illustrates a pattern of lack of transparency in dealing with such cases. IOt is one thing if the child and family want silence but what if they don’t? There is more to come,infact Fr Pat McCafferty today on radio named other cases in which similar pending cases in another locality are asking questions of the now Bisop of Derry.
Two really interesting articles:
http://www.zenit.org/article-28634?l=english
http://www.zenit.org/article-28638?l=english
Is there any chance the holy father will resign?
Procrasnow,
I doubt it, that would require some integrity. And it may also require some sincerity and seriousness about moving the church out of this self-imposed disgrace.
Leaving that aisde, I’m not even certain there is such a facility under church procedures or protocol for resignation per se for Herr Ratzinger however I am certain some of our barrack room canon lawyer correspondents can, ahem, enlighten us on that point.
Listen, O ye petty gossipers:
From the Sunday Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/7532643/Pope-will-not-be-intimidated-by-petty-gossip-over-sex-abuse-scandals.html
In his Palm Sunday address…“the Pope said: “From God comes the courage not to be intimidated by petty gossip.”
From The Sunday Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7079173.ece
“Pope Benedict XVI has opened Holy Week indicating that he will “not be intimidated” by accusations against the Vatican over the clerical sex abuse crisis.
“In his Palm Sunday address the Pope said that Jesus Christ “leads us towards courage which does not allow us to be intimidated by the chatter of dominant opinions, towards patience which supports and sustains others”.”
So folks (some of whom are petty gossipers) the Pope does not intend to resign.
On the paedophile cases, the latest from the Vatican is:
[1] Father Federico Lombardi, acknowledged that the way the Church responded to the abuse scandal would be “crucial for its moral credibility”. He noted that most of the cases that have come to light recently occurred decades ago. He added: “But recognising them, and making amends to the victims, is the price of re-establishing justice and purifying memories that will let us look ahead with renewed commitment together, with humility and trust in the future.”
[2] Monsignor Robert Zollitsch, head of the German bishops’ conference, has said that the Vatican was compiling information from around the world with the aim of setting out new guidelines on abuse.”
On celibacy:
“The Vatican has rejected suggestions that celibacy causes abuse, and Pope Benedict this month reaffirmed it as “a gift to God”.”
Eastern religions agree celibacy is a gift to God. Sexual activity causes a person to have earth bound vibrations which disable him/her from the perception of the more subtle vibrations essential for God-seekers, ie they are drowned out. Christ said something similar: “Be still, and know that I am God”.
Some of you will scoff at the last point, no doubt. But you are likely to be earth-bound, which is quite OK.
Tellmema
Why would God need or be glad of such a ‘gift’ ? More importantly, how can we trust, or even be expected to trust or esteem, humans beings who seem to know not only that there IS a God, without being able to produce a single shred of evidence for such a preposterous idea, but also seem to know what he/she/it ‘wants’ ?
Presumably these are the same people who regard the wearing of hair shirts and self-flagellation as gift-esque ? Morally normal individuals may more probably view these people as having often dangerous degrees of sexual repression and tendencies towards combinations of sadism and masochism, as we have been witnessing.
The catholic religion, along with some of its competitor faiths, should arouse the utmost suspicion from the rest of us on its teaching on human sexuality.
But that of course is not the whole truth of the matter, logically enough the church has provided a tailor-made environment for paedophiles and it seems to me unlikely that it hasn’t attracted undue numbers of perverts of all descriptions over the years precisely because of the way in which the institution mishandles such ‘transgressions’.
S913: “the church has provided a tailor-made environment for paedophiles”
No it hasn’t. I understand that paedos are usually married men with children. There are paedos in the Anglican church, one of whose main differences to the Catholic Church is allowing married clergy. Listen, for example this item (Sunday’s news) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8591534.stm
There is a lot of research which has confirmed that celibates are not paedophiles, nor does the celibate life encourage it.
“The catholic religion, along with some of its competitor faiths, should arouse the utmost suspicion from the rest of us on its teaching on human sexuality.”
It’s OK with me that you do not appreciate celibacy. I tried to explain one of the main reasons for it in my penultimate paragraph in post 24. Celibacy makes life a lot easier for many people, I can tell you!
All Catholic Church religious orders take the vow of celibacy, and had all of them kept to their vows, then there would not have been any paedophilia, or homosexuality, or illegitimate children or other sexual scandals from the Catholic Church. It’s likely these people should not have joined religious orders in the first place as they were not ready for celibacy. Two of my uncles realised this, and they left their religious orders and married. They stayed devout Catholics nevertheless. My aunt remained a nun and so did the third uncle stay a religious brother for the rest of his life.
The central thing is “Peace, be still, and know that I am God”.
No one is forced to become a member of a religious order. If you have paedo tendencies, don’t even think of joining. Get treatment, or go to jail. Vamoose!
Tellmema
You’re missing my point; many paedophiles were drawn to the church precisely because of the the access to children it provided and the abundant trust the role of priest provided to them. The determination of the church to deal with the issue was, if you’ll forgive me, with a ‘Brucie bonus’ in terms of cover.
Your reference to the fact that everything would have been ok had the vow of celibacy actually been adhered to rather affirms the point Ive already made so thanks for that. In that respect, it’s rather like the church’s aproach to contraception, ie ‘AIDS is bad but condoms are worse’ – a profoundly immoral teaching which has caused untold misery, poverty, pain and death across the world.
I am not sure about the respect in which the empty phrase “Peace, be still, and know that I am God” is central to anything, leastways anything worth paying any attention to or discussing.
S913: if you don’t understand, then you don’t understand (and you have just picked bits from my posts rather than actually thinking about the matters I have raised).
Paedos get drawn to any situation where children are – the scouts, choirs, etc. etc. The Catholic Church is (mostly has) rid itself of them (you refuse to accept that). Remember the Catholic Church cases coming to light now happened decades ago, but they are still happening elsewhere, for example at the nursery I mentioned last week; there is also a Rabbi from NY charged with molesting little girls. No one in the cases I have mentioned were celibates.
I guess it’s a pearls before swine situation.
Please don’t reply to my posts if you cannot be bothered thinking about what I have said.
“Peace, be still, and know that I am God” is not an empty phrase. It is central to Christianity. For people who can understand it.
TellMeMa
“The Catholic Church is (mostly has) rid itself of them” – yes I don’t accept that so please explain when this ‘purge’ happened, what specifically was done to achieve it and what safeguards are now in place to prevent recurrence by currently serving clergy i.e by identifying further paedophiles within the institution and how to prevent new priests who are paedophiles being recruited in the first place.
You continue to fail to explain the meaning and derivation of the phrase you continue to quote. I’m happy to be educated as to its meaning, likewise sharing an understanding of its relevance to this thread.
Can I suggest for the meantime though that you address yourself to another biblical gem, also from Psalms, which I think is somewhat less opaque.
“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”.
Verily, ’tis heart-wwarming stuff.
TellMeMa
“The Catholic Church is (mostly has) rid itself of them” – yes I don’t accept that so please explain when this ‘purge’ happened, what specifically was done to achieve it and what safeguards are now in place to prevent recurrence by currently serving clergy i.e by identifying further paedophiles within the institution and how to prevent new priests who are paedophiles being recruited in the first place.
You continue to fail to explain the meaning and derivation of the phrase you continue to quote. I’m happy to be educated as to its meaning, likewise sharing an understanding of its relevance to this thread.
Can I suggest for the meantime though that you address yourself to another biblical gem, also from Psalms, which I think is somewhat less opaque.
“Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”.
Verily, ’tis heart-warming stuff.
Seosamh – your assertion that the Church teaching on contraception as regards AIDS is completely wrong. I would refer you to the example of Uganda.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09032003.html
very interesting line from Psalm 136, and very apt. In the spiritual sense, we dash the little ones of Babylon against the rock, when we mortify our passions, and stifle the first motions of them, by a speedy recourse to the rock which is Christ.
And it is a pity that the paedos did not do it.