Is the Pope guilty of sexual abuse cover up?

[Ulick]

Exactly Ulick now we are getting somewhere. The guy is obviously a biased reporter, you've as much as admitted it. You have no love for the catholic church yet you continue  to paste stories with a bias to the catholic church. Half the time you don't paste the link but this time you did because it was from the telegraph. All I did was inform people that it was another catholic newspaper you were effectively pasting. Now you are getting touchy

For a lad with no love for the catholic church you read a hell of a lot of their papers!

What do you mean a "biased reporter" - it's a blog, an opinion piece. That is evident from the link I posted, if not blindingly obvious from the piece itself.

[theskull1]

Just putting info in the public domain for you. I always like to know the background of the journalist I read so I can understand who butters his bread.

Erm... if you click on the link I provided it'll tell you exactly who he is. The point of posting the piece was to illustrate that the Church isn't the single unitary organisation as some of you seem to think it is.

What should I have learned from that far from impartial link Ulick in regards to this topic?

Who said it was impartial? If you read it you will see it's very partial. The clue is in my post that you quoted.

I never said you did. I was commenting on my own view of the piece. Now I'm just confused what this opinion piece brings to this discussion?

[Ulick]

Just putting info in the public domain for you. I always like to know the background of the journalist I read so I can understand who butters his bread.

Erm... if you click on the link I provided it'll tell you exactly who he is. The point of posting the piece was to illustrate that the Church isn't the single unitary organisation as some of you seem to think it is.

What should I have learned from that far from impartial link Ulick in regards to this topic?

Who said it was impartial? If you read it you will see it's very partial. The clue is in my post that you quoted.

I never said you did. I was commenting on my own view of the piece. Now I'm just confused what this opinion piece brings to this discussion?

Sorry skull that's the second time I've replied to you without reading your post fully. My apologies - too busy trying to watch telly as well.

I posted it because I thought it was an interesting viewpoint which illustrates perfectly that there are lots of different blocs within the Church, each with competing viewpoints and criticisms of how things were handled. This contrasts with most of the contributors to these thread who seem to believe that the Church is some sort of monolithic entity where everyone knew what was going on, everyone is implicated and everyone is to blame. Now I'm not saying that is not the case, but the evidence is not there to substantiate it. Similarly there is no evidence there to implicate the current Pope but plenty to suggest that he has done more than anyone else before him to deal with the problem. That doesn't prove he is completely without blame or hasn't colluded in a cover-up but at the very least it earns him the presumption of innocence in my book.

It also illustrates the point I made on this thread or the other one that there is a lot of opposition to the Pope within the Church and this is why I think most of the bishops would be quite happy to get rid of him and why they'd be happy for him to take the fall for the abuse.

[theskull1]

Sorry skull that's the second time I've replied to you without reading your post fully. My apologies - too busy trying to watch telly as well.

I posted it because I thought it was an interesting viewpoint which illustrates perfectly that there are lots of different blocs within the Church, each with competing viewpoints and criticisms of how things were handled. This contrasts with most of the contributors to these thread who seem to believe that the Church is some sort of monolithic entity where everyone knew what was going on, everyone is implicated and everyone is to blame. Now I'm not saying that is not the case, but the evidence is not there to substantiate it. Similarly there is no evidence there to implicate the current Pope but plenty to suggest that he has done more than anyone else before him to deal with the problem. That doesn't prove he is completely without blame or hasn't colluded in a cover-up but at the very least it earns him the presumption of innocence in my book.

It also illustrates the point I made on this thread or the other one that there is a lot of opposition to the Pope within the Church and this is why I think most of the bishops would be quite happy to get rid of him and why they'd be happy for him to take the fall for the abuse.

It illustrates to me that yer man is a hard core catholic who wants a stricter regime to lay down the law on lazy ministries. It is totally unrelated to the child abuse scandal.

You are not properly representing the opinions people have made on this thread and others. People have described the catholic church as a hierarchical rather than a monolithic structure. People have not said catagorically that "everyone" is implicated or to "blame" but they have said that from an institutional point of view that the numbers concerned makes the institution corrupt (when you add up those who perpetrated, those who covered up and those who knew but remained silent). There is also some evidence that has implicated the popes role in the cover up so why suggest otherwise. And the fact that he may have (your opinion) done more than anyone else before him to deal with the problem would only suggest that the media, the law and society are only now not prepared to stomach the way the church is dealing with this issue any longer and only through persistent pressure have the church been lurching forward on the issue. I am at a loss why, for the reasons outlined above, you reckon we should presume he is innocent (i.e not perpetrator, not one of those who covered up and not one who knew but remained silent) when he has had such a long life at the upper echelons of the orginisation?

[Ulick]

It illustrates to me that yer man is a hard core catholic who wants a stricter regime to lay down the law on lazy ministries. It is totally unrelated to the child abuse scandal.

You are not properly representing the opinions people have made on this thread and others. People have described the catholic church as a hierarchical rather than a monolithic structure. People have not said catagorically that "everyone" is implicated or to "blame" but they have said that from an institutional point of view that the numbers concerned makes the institution corrupt (when you add up those who perpetrated, those who covered up and those who knew but remained silent). There is also some evidence that has implicated the popes role in the cover up so why suggest otherwise. And the fact that he may have (your opinion) done more than anyone else before him to deal with the problem would only suggest that the media, the law and society are only now not prepared to stomach the way the church is dealing with this issue any longer and only through persistent pressure have the church been lurching forward on the issue. I am at a loss why, for the reasons outlined above, you reckon we should presume he is innocent (i.e not perpetrator, not one of those who covered up and not one who knew but remained silent) when he has had such a long life at the upper echelons of the orginisation?

1. he is a liturgical conservative at odds with the vast majority of priests, bishops and cardinals who make up the current Church 'personnel' and one who is probably more in line with the Popes thinking than any of those other priests, bishops and cardinals. It illustrates how the Pope is out on his own within the Church due to his reforms and for this reason much of the current hierarchy are happy enough to see him scapegoated.

2. there is no evidence, that has stood up to scrutiny, to implicate the Pope in any cover-up and an unbiased examination of this thread shows that. On the other hand there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the current Pope took steps to deal with the problem when it came under his remit in Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

[Main Street]

Now we have the Pythonesque silly approach of  'the cocoon argument' to deny that the Vatican even knew of the sex abuse cover up, never mind participate. I suppose there is some irony there.
It has a  kid like innocence about it, hands firmly on ears, screaming ' they didn't know', 'they didn't know'.
When my dog performs some thing like swipe half an avocado from the kitchen. I come to her and see the skin nearby her den, she looks the other way as if to say  'not me master',  'it wasn't me', 'can you prove it was me?'

By 2001 the sex abuse storm had blown up to such a proportion that not even the Vatican could avoid the issue.
It was not until 2003 that the first evidence emerges that Ratzinger acted with appropriate conviction, when Marcial Degollado the founder of the Legion of Christ, held in high esteem by Pope JP2, to a monastery. Marcial had sexually abused minor seminarians.

We have already met the unique phenomena called the 'flexible defense' with its peculiar contradictions used by defenders of the Vatican.
Excuse of  'only following orders'  alternating with 'they didn't follow orders' alternating with 'the deputy acted alone'.
I'd admit the 'cocoon theory' has some merit but one has to examine how the Vatican acted when the cocoon was pierced and when the bishops informed (with complete documentation) the Vatican directly, the CDF and Ratszinger himself of serious abuse cases.

So far there is no higher case than the appointment of Groer to Cardinal in Austria by Pope John Paul in 1995.
Here we have a man appointed to Cardinal, whose rampant well known sexual abuse proficiency reached some 2,000 cases, where the Bishops united along with millions of people  signed a petition to get him sacked, the Pope stuck by him to the end calling the attack on Groer's good character a violation of "ecclesiastical dignity" and part of a broader "strategy" of "suspicion and criticism." designed to attack the church.
Truly an utter idiotic statement which insults the abused and all rationality.

The Pope/ Ratzinger and the Vatican were living in a cocoon of ignorance and denial which amounts to cover up. When required to act they did so with a Canon Law snail speed sluggishness. But it was through one aspect of Canon Law advocacy the Vatican excelled, Canon Law was used with lightening speed when a sex abused victim needed to be silenced and the abuser moved on. The oil on that machine was slick.

[Ulick]

The NY Times and the facts of the Kiesle case

Posted by : John Coverdale | 21 Apr 2010
http://www.mercatornet.com/justb16/view/7084/

Law professor John Coverdale wrote this letter to the New York Times. It has not been published.

"Like many other people, I have felt in recent weeks that some news outlets have unfairly targeted Pope Benedict XVI in connection with sexual abuse by priests.

In part this is a question of emphasis, with daily coverage of what may or may not have been minor mistakes in judgment decades ago and almost no attention to the major efforts Pope Benedict has made to remedy what is undeniably a horrible situation.

With some frequency, however, I have observed what strikes me as deliberate distortion of the facts in order to put Pope Benedict in a bad light. I would like to call your attention to what seems to me a clear example of this sort of partisan journalism: Laurie Goodstein and Michael Luo's article "Pope Put Off Move to Punish Abusive Priest" published on the front page of the New York Times on April 10, 2010. The story is so wrong that it is hard to believe it is not animated by the anti-Catholic animus that the New York Times and other media outlets deny harboring.

Canonical procedure punishes priests who have violated Church law in serious ways by "suspending" them from exercising their ministry. This is sometimes referred to as "defrocking." (According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary to "defrock" is to deprive of the right to exercise the functions of an office. )

A priest who has been suspended may request that he be released from his vows of celibacy and other obligations as a priest. If granted, this petition to be "laicized" would leave the former priest free to marry. Laicization (which is altogether different from defrocking and which may apply to a priest who has committed no crime but simply wishes to leave the priesthood) is not further punishment. It is something a priest who has already been punished by being suspended might well desire, as do some priests who have committed no crime and who have not been suspended..

The priest who is the subject of the article had already been punished by being suspended long before his case reached Rome. He asked to be laicized. Cardinal Ratzinger delayed his laicization not his "defrocking" as the article incorrectly says. He had been defrocked years earlier when he was suspended from the ministry. All of this is clear without reference to outside sources to anyone who knows something about Church procedure and reads the article with sufficient care. It is anything but clear, however, to a normal reader.

My complaint here is not that the article misuses the word "defrock" but rather that by so doing it strongly suggests to readers that Cardinal Ratzinger delayed the priest's removal from the ministry. Delaying laicization had nothing to do with allowing him to continue exercising the ministry, from which he had already been suspended.

Not only does the article fail to make these distinctions, it positively misstate the facts. Its title is "Pope Put off Move to Punish Abusive Priest." [italics added] It describes Cardinal Ratzinger's decision as involving whether the abusive priest "should be forced from the priesthood" [italics added]. Even a moderately careful journalist would have to notice that all of this is incompatible with the fact (reported in the second paragraph of the article) that the priest himself had asked for what Cardinal Ratziner delayed.

Had the facts been reported accurately, the article would have said that the priest was promptly punished by being removed from the ministry for his crimes, but that when he asked to be reduced to the lay state, which would have given him the right to marry within the Church, Cardinal Ratzinger delayed granting the petition. That, of course, would hardly have merited front page treatment, much less a headline accusing the Pope of "Putt[ing] off Move to Punish Abusive Priest."

The second half of the article reports that the priest later worked as a volunteer in the youth ministry of his former parish. This is obviously regrettable and should not have happened, but he was not acting as a priest (youth ministers are laymen, not priests).

A careful reader who was not misled by the inaccuracies in the first part of the article would, of course, realize that his volunteering as a youth minister had no factual or legal connection with Cardinal Ratzinger's delaying the grant of laicization. The article does not say in so many words that it did, but an average reader might well conclude that there was some connection when he is told that "while the bishop was pressing Cardinal Ratzinger to defrock Mr. Kiesle, the priest began volunteering in the youth ministry of one of his former parishes."

Any one of these errors might be due to carelessness, but their cumulative effect, coupled with the decision to make this front page news accompanied by a two column photo of Cardinal Raztinger's signature, strongly suggests to me that something worse than carelessness is involved. I urge you to look into whether some major news outlets have indeed been engaged in a campaign to vilify the Pope and into whether their desire to do so has caused them to slip below minimum standards of professional journalism"

John Coverdale is Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law

[Main Street]

 John Coverdale,  Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law
The priest who is the subject of the article had already been punished by being suspended long before his case reached Rome. He asked to be laicized. Cardinal Ratzinger delayed his laicization not his "defrocking" as the article incorrectly says. He had been defrocked years earlier when he was suspended from the ministry. All of this is clear without reference to outside sources to anyone who knows something about Church procedure and reads the article with sufficient care. It is anything but clear, however, to a normal reader.

The eminent law professor should know better
Actually in context, a restriction on duty is not understood as being a defrocking. The Priest is still in ministry.
Defrocking is understood as removing the right to act as a priest with the obligations of the ministry.
The article clearly stated
'Mike Brown, a spokesman for the Oakland Diocese, said that after Mr. Kiesle was convicted, the diocese withdrew permission for him to work as a minister'

The issue of import brought up in the article was
'focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/10/world/europe/10pope.html?pagewanted=1

[Main Street]

Many of you will be pleased to read that the Vatican has issued a guideline earlier this month as part of its policy.
It actually copies much of what the US bishops had already posted some 8 years ago.

The guideline of interest,
"Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,"

This guideline did not appear in a draft  released by the Vatican a few days previous. It appears to have been a late add on.
It is the first time the Vatican have stated this guideline.

Previously they had not instructed that civil should be followed, nor had they said that civil law should not be followed.
In 2001 the CDF/Ratzinger  required bishops to refer all clerical sex abuse cases to the CDF, which then determined how to proceed. He had also instructed that all information obtained in a Canon law investigation be kept strictly secret.

[orangeman]

It's great to see how the Vatican has learned the lessons of the past !



Bid to block Pope testimony move
The Vatican is asking a US federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict

Friday June 25 2010

The Vatican is asking a US federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a Kentucky sex abuse lawsuit.

Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church say there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome.

The arguments were filed in US District Court in Louisville. They also say that forcing Benedict to give a deposition would violate international law.
The Kentucky lawsuit accuses the Vatican of orchestrating a cover-up of priests sexually abusing children throughout the US

Louisville lawyer William McMurry has asked to depose Benedict and other Vatican officials.

Mr McMurry has also asked that the Vatican turn over administrative documents and respond to questions related to the abuse scandal in the US.

Press Association

[muppet]

It's great to see how the Vatican has learned the lessons of the past !



Bid to block Pope testimony move
The Vatican is asking a US federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict

Friday June 25 2010

The Vatican is asking a US federal judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a Kentucky sex abuse lawsuit.

Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church say there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome.

The arguments were filed in US District Court in Louisville. They also say that forcing Benedict to give a deposition would violate international law.
The Kentucky lawsuit accuses the Vatican of orchestrating a cover-up of priests sexually abusing children throughout the US

Louisville lawyer William McMurry has asked to depose Benedict and other Vatican officials.

Mr McMurry has also asked that the Vatican turn over administrative documents and respond to questions related to the abuse scandal in the US.

Press Association

Did George W Bush & Donald Rumsfeld not do something similar?

Not condoning it btw.

[muppet]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10417102.stm

Vatican 'indignant' over Belgium police raids
Page last updated at 16:06 GMT, Friday, 25 June 2010 17:06 UK
Prosecutors said the raids were over alleged clerical abuse of minors
The Vatican has expressed shock at raids, including the "violation" of a cathedral crypt, by Belgian police investigating alleged child sex abuse.

As well as searching a couple of main Church offices and a cardinal's home, police had drilled holes in two archbishops' tombs, said the Church.

Prosecutors said the raids were over alleged "abuse of minors committed by a certain number of Church figures".

Belgium is one of many countries where the Church has been hit by sex scandal.

In April, the Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, resigned after admitting he had sexually abused a boy more than 20 years ago.

'Da Vinci Code'
The Vatican has summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to voice anger over Thursday's raids.

Police in Leuven seized nearly 500 files and a computer from the offices of a Church commission investigating allegations of sex abuse.

They also searched the Church's headquarters, the Brussels archdiocese in Mechelen, north of the Belgian capital.

Bishops holding a meeting there were barred from leaving the premises for several hours and had their mobile phones confiscated, said Church officials.

Investigators made holes in the tombs of two former Belgian primates at Mechelen cathedral, and sent down cameras in search of hidden documents, without success, said a Church spokesman.

In a statement, the Vatican expressed "shock over how the searches were carried out by Belgian judicial authorities and indignation over the violation of the graves of the Cardinals Jozef-Ernest Van Roey and Leon-Joseph Suenens," reports AFP news agency.

The raids had been the stuff of "crime novels and The Da Vinci Code", said the Church's leader in Belgium, Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard.

"We are surprised it went as far as drilling into tombs in the cathedral," he told a news conference in Brussels on Friday.

A spokesman for the Belgian prosecutor in the Belgian capital told news agency Reuters that investigators partially opened one tomb in the cathedral after someone mentioned work had recently been carried out on the grave.

Officers also raided the nearby home of the recently retired Archbishop of Belgium, Cardinal Godfried Danneels.

He was not interrogated but a personal computer and some paperwork was confiscated.

The Vatican said the raids had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out".

The Catholic Church in Belgium has apologised for its silence on abuse cases in the past and Archbishop Leonard has promised a policy of zero tolerance.

[longrunsthefox]

the vatican is a joke... sadly a very sick one.

[mylestheslasher]

Maybe the Belgians have learned to have zero tolerance for sick child abusing scumbags (given previous horrific mistakes), unlike in this country. As for the vatican, tough shit lads I look forward to the day that the Pope gets called to a court of law to answer for his inaction.

[magickingdom]

The sight of the disgraced Irish Bishops meeting the Pope in Rome a few weeks ago was sickening.
Watching them curtsey in front of him, and then proceed to kiss his ring like he was some form of royalty was revolting.
Watching this, i'm sure the victims felt like they had support at the highest level.
I'm sure the meeting went into much detail about how they could cover up some more. Share a few idea's and secrets on the art of cover up.

I have a very good friend who was abused by a priest, and knowing about the cover up involved in their case is one very very sad affair. The church is rotten to the core from the top down. Until there are changes from the top down, then the church will continue in free fall.

If any of the loyal supporters of the church on here knew a victim personally, then you would soon change your tune. By supoporting the church and clergy in it's current form, you are on the side of the abusers.

and if you knew a victim of hamas...... what a load of sh1t bla bla bla