Freedom to Express Your Views – Unless You Are Catholic?

There seems to be some shoddy reasoning going around the Internet regarding Catholics in the political arena.  Generally, the attacks are along the line that those who are Catholic either have no right to participate in the arena due to the sins of some of her members, or else that whenever the Church speaks out, it is imposing an ideological agenda on the rest of the nation.

Neither one of these ideas have any basis in reason, but are instead making an appeal to emotion, using charged words to frighten or anger people.  In the past, it was the "Catholic politicians are taking orders from Rome."  Now it is, "Catholic politicians don't have to listen to the Church, and if they are acting according to what they believe is right, it means the Church is controlling them."

Let's look at some of the errors of assumption.

PART I: "Clean up your own Mess first."

There are many variants of this attack.  Right now, it is the false reports of the cover-ups which are being thrown in our faces.  There have been others in the past.  The Galileo case was used for quite a long time when the Church spoke on the moral issues of science.

The main flaw with the argument is that even if the charges are just (and they certainly aren't in this case), it has absolutely no bearing on whether one should speak out on another related issue.  It's an ad hominem attack, akin to the defense lawyer seeking to remove the credibility of a mob informer by pointing out he is a criminal.  Very true, he is a criminal.  However, that has no bearing on whether or not his information is true.

It is also poisoning the well.  A negative example is used to poison the minds against whatever the opponent says instead of considering the facts of the matter.

Finally, it is a Red Herring, in that it actually is irrelevant to the case at hand.

So let's take a real example, the issue of Nancy Pelosi voting in a way which entirely defies Church teaching.  One person who agrees with Pelosi argues to the effect of, the Church should clean up its own mess before trying to tell others how to live.  That the Church may need to clean up a scandal is true.  However, it is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand: Nancy Pelosi is a Catholic voting in a way which is in defiance of what the Church she professes to be a member of actually teaches.

Really, this kind of attack is just a cheap shot to appeal to the emotions of the audience.

PART II: "The Church shouldn't tell others how to vote."

This argument is essentially a straw man fallacy.  The Church isn't telling people how to vote.  Rather, the Church is saying that if one professes to be a Catholic they are required to live in accordance with the teachings of the Church.  Now a person may not be automatically excommunicated if they do not, but the Church can exact penalties aimed at bringing the erring Catholic back to the proper understanding of what Christian behavior.  Pelosi is free to go on voting to kill unborn infants of course.  The Supreme Court made it legal, and that is unlikely to change.  However, she does not have the right to call her behavior Catholic, and the Church does have the right to tell her, that she either follows Church teaching or change her religion.

Of course this brings us to another objection some pose: That the politician votes in order to represent the population which elected him or her, and therefore cannot do anything different.

This sounds nice of course, and Mario Cuomo exploited it back in the 1980s.  The problem was, Cuomo often did other things (like commute death sentences) against the will of the people who elected him… Cuomo, in those cases, because he felt them the right thing to do.  Let's not get sidetracked here on the issue of the Death Penalty and abortion.  In terms of this article, Cuomo invoked the will of the voters only when it suited him.

There is a third attack which is often used: The Church moral teaching is often treated as a narrow ideology, and when the Church opposes a certain policy (for example, so-called Homosexual marriage), Catholics are told that their view is pushing ideology on people who don't believe it.  [Cuomo also used this excuse when he made his "personally opposed but…" argument.]

The irony here is that we could easily use the same argument against the proponents of homosexual marriage.  It is something new which a small group of radicals are trying to foist on the people of a state.

Exactly who decides what is justice and what is ideology?  Unless there is an absolute we can look to, any person can label their opponent's position as "pushing their views on others."  So Muslims in certain nations oppress women, and the West is considered trying to push a decadent ideology on them.  South Africa in the apartheid era and China in terms of its dissidents today accused the West of interfering with their own values.   ALL of these examples were quite real.

So here is the flaw with the "pushing ideology" argument.  Unless there is a set of moral absolutes to begin with, everything is an ideology and the strongest can impose their will, while the others are suppressed.

Now this view may seem fine when it is your view on top.  The problem is, if anyone can use this argument, you have no argument if an Islamist government or a Fascist [in the sense of the philosophy of fascism, not what liberals label moderate conservatives as] government imposes their views on you.

Conclusion

The examples I gave in this article are quite common on the internet, and are being used to negate the rights of Catholics from practicing their freedoms of speech, religion and others, making use of logical fallacies and shoddy appeals to emotions to make people fear the old Nativist view of Catholicism as a power just waiting to take over America and make it a property of the Pope.

Personally, I'm tired of it.  If a person honestly thinks the Catholic Church is wrong on an issue, they have the right to use their freedom of religion and freedom of speech as well.  Such a person does NOT have the right to deprive Catholics of these rights.

Freedom to Express Your Views – Unless You Are Catholic?

There seems to be some shoddy reasoning going around the Internet regarding Catholics in the political arena.  Generally, the attacks are along the line that those who are Catholic either have no right to participate in the arena due to the sins of some of her members, or else that whenever the Church speaks out, it is imposing an ideological agenda on the rest of the nation.

Neither one of these ideas have any basis in reason, but are instead making an appeal to emotion, using charged words to frighten or anger people.  In the past, it was the "Catholic politicians are taking orders from Rome."  Now it is, "Catholic politicians don't have to listen to the Church, and if they are acting according to what they believe is right, it means the Church is controlling them."

Let's look at some of the errors of assumption.

PART I: "Clean up your own Mess first."

There are many variants of this attack.  Right now, it is the false reports of the cover-ups which are being thrown in our faces.  There have been others in the past.  The Galileo case was used for quite a long time when the Church spoke on the moral issues of science.

The main flaw with the argument is that even if the charges are just (and they certainly aren't in this case), it has absolutely no bearing on whether one should speak out on another related issue.  It's an ad hominem attack, akin to the defense lawyer seeking to remove the credibility of a mob informer by pointing out he is a criminal.  Very true, he is a criminal.  However, that has no bearing on whether or not his information is true.

It is also poisoning the well.  A negative example is used to poison the minds against whatever the opponent says instead of considering the facts of the matter.

Finally, it is a Red Herring, in that it actually is irrelevant to the case at hand.

So let's take a real example, the issue of Nancy Pelosi voting in a way which entirely defies Church teaching.  One person who agrees with Pelosi argues to the effect of, the Church should clean up its own mess before trying to tell others how to live.  That the Church may need to clean up a scandal is true.  However, it is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand: Nancy Pelosi is a Catholic voting in a way which is in defiance of what the Church she professes to be a member of actually teaches.

Really, this kind of attack is just a cheap shot to appeal to the emotions of the audience.

PART II: "The Church shouldn't tell others how to vote."

This argument is essentially a straw man fallacy.  The Church isn't telling people how to vote.  Rather, the Church is saying that if one professes to be a Catholic they are required to live in accordance with the teachings of the Church.  Now a person may not be automatically excommunicated if they do not, but the Church can exact penalties aimed at bringing the erring Catholic back to the proper understanding of what Christian behavior.  Pelosi is free to go on voting to kill unborn infants of course.  The Supreme Court made it legal, and that is unlikely to change.  However, she does not have the right to call her behavior Catholic, and the Church does have the right to tell her, that she either follows Church teaching or change her religion.

Of course this brings us to another objection some pose: That the politician votes in order to represent the population which elected him or her, and therefore cannot do anything different.

This sounds nice of course, and Mario Cuomo exploited it back in the 1980s.  The problem was, Cuomo often did other things (like commute death sentences) against the will of the people who elected him… Cuomo, in those cases, because he felt them the right thing to do.  Let's not get sidetracked here on the issue of the Death Penalty and abortion.  In terms of this article, Cuomo invoked the will of the voters only when it suited him.

There is a third attack which is often used: The Church moral teaching is often treated as a narrow ideology, and when the Church opposes a certain policy (for example, so-called Homosexual marriage), Catholics are told that their view is pushing ideology on people who don't believe it.  [Cuomo also used this excuse when he made his "personally opposed but…" argument.]

The irony here is that we could easily use the same argument against the proponents of homosexual marriage.  It is something new which a small group of radicals are trying to foist on the people of a state.

Exactly who decides what is justice and what is ideology?  Unless there is an absolute we can look to, any person can label their opponent's position as "pushing their views on others."  So Muslims in certain nations oppress women, and the West is considered trying to push a decadent ideology on them.  South Africa in the apartheid era and China in terms of its dissidents today accused the West of interfering with their own values.   ALL of these examples were quite real.

So here is the flaw with the "pushing ideology" argument.  Unless there is a set of moral absolutes to begin with, everything is an ideology and the strongest can impose their will, while the others are suppressed.

Now this view may seem fine when it is your view on top.  The problem is, if anyone can use this argument, you have no argument if an Islamist government or a Fascist [in the sense of the philosophy of fascism, not what liberals label moderate conservatives as] government imposes their views on you.

Conclusion

The examples I gave in this article are quite common on the internet, and are being used to negate the rights of Catholics from practicing their freedoms of speech, religion and others, making use of logical fallacies and shoddy appeals to emotions to make people fear the old Nativist view of Catholicism as a power just waiting to take over America and make it a property of the Pope.

Personally, I'm tired of it.  If a person honestly thinks the Catholic Church is wrong on an issue, they have the right to use their freedom of religion and freedom of speech as well.  Such a person does NOT have the right to deprive Catholics of these rights.

Contradictory Reports: The Case of Fr. Jeyapaul

Sources: Vatican covered up abuse in Minnesota, lawyers say - CNN.com,

The Associated Press: Priest accused of US abuse won't fight extradition,

Vatican lawyer's statement on Indian priest | National Catholic Reporter

I find it interesting to see how the newest reports of abuse come tailored to overcome the challenges to the previous story.  In face to the rejections of the Milwaukee story, we now see a case come forward which took place after the new rules came into effect, seeking to imply that the old practices are still in play.

The facts of the matter seem to be somewhat different.

What is Alleged

The allegations is that priest Fr. Jeyapaul abused two teenage girls during his time in Minnesota.  One of them was reported to the diocese just before he left for India, while the other seems to have come forward after the priest had left America.

The claim is that the CDF was notified of the abuse but did nothing.  CNN and ABC reports that Cardinal Levada did nothing.

What is not Mentioned

What the stories do not mention is that when the Vatican was notified, it contacted the diocese in India and recommended the priest be laicized.  Most of the stories do not mention the priest is not contesting extradition to the United States to stand trial.  Nor do they mention that it was the Vatican which reported to authorities where he was to be found. 

It seems the diocese in India did not laicize the priest but gave a lesser penalty.

The Vatican attorney in the US, Jeffery Lana made this statement:

The decision regarding the canonical penalties imposed upon Father Jeyapaul was made by the Bishop of Ootacamund, whose diocese is located in the Nilgiris district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested in this matter that Father Jeyapaul agree to laicization, demonstrating that the Congregation believed that the accusations were serious enough to merit dismissal from the clerical state. However, as a matter of longstanding canon law, such decisions are made by the local bishop, who is deemed to be generally in the best position to adjudicate the case relating to the priest in question.

It is important to note that the canonical proceeding involving Father Jeyapaul was wholly separate from any pending civil or criminal proceeding. The Holy See has cooperated with the requests of law enforcement authorities seeking the extradition of Father Jeyapaul to the United States, and in fact provided his exact location in India to assist such efforts.

It is interesting that these facts were not reported in the Mainstream Media.

The Significance for the Media

The media is reporting something untrue [The Vatican was covering up] as if it were true, omitting facts which go against the attacks on the Pope and the Vatican.  This is entirely unethical of course.  Fair and accurate reporting requires giving all the facts, and not merely one slanted side of it to promote an agenda.

The fact that the reporting continues to "evolve" in the face of news stories being debunked indicates not a concern for victims of abuse, but a desire to attack the moral authority of the Catholic Church.

The fact that the media has not really reported the actions of the Church, but instead seek to employ an argument from silence fallacy [The Minnesota diocese did not know the events in India.  Therefore the Vatican did nothing] to claim inaction or coverup. 

These two charges are contradictory of course.  The first would be inaction.  The second would be action to conceal.  Meanwhile reports indicate the Vatican neither was inactive nor concealing.

The media could have been defenders of the truth if it had reported this story fairly.  In that case it would have done a good service in helping the Church be aware of further repairs to the system it needed to implement.  Instead it attempted to portray this whole incident as the fault of the Vatican.

This leaves us with this question: How much trust can we place in the media to fairly and accurately report abuse allegations?

If the media is supposed to be serving us by reporting these things, I believe we can validly ask: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who polices the police?)

Significance in Legal Terms

Also in terms of the accused priest, it is important to make sure justice is done.  We have reports of abuse.  It has not yet been established the abuse is true.  If it is true, of course justice requires the priest should face the legal consequences.  If it is not true, justice requires his name be cleared.  Trial by media should not be tolerated however.

Significance for the Church

What troubles me in this case is that there seems to be more room for reform of the current system.  That a bishop can choose to ignore what the CDF suggests in terms of laicization indicates that the Code of Canon Law can use reform to prevent this in the future.  If the priest was in fact guilty of what he was accused of, clearly the diocese in India erred in the position he was given.  However, the Vatican did not cover up, though it would need to strengthen its laws for the future.

It is good to see they did recommend laicization and to see they did cooperate with the authorities to bring the priest forward.  However, this case indicates that perhaps we need to institute a policy where the CDF can override the decision of the Bishop in such cases. 

Of course we need to be certain that such an action does not remove the rights of the accused for a fair hearing as well, and does not create a bottleneck which slows cases down so much that the delay enables injustice.

Conclusion

Contrary to media claims, this is not a failure on the part of the Church.  Rather it shows us how the system currently works, and gives us evidence of further reforms the system needs to make in terms of procedure and tightening up canon law.  The Church needs to investigate where weakness is in the current system and make sure future cases cannot exploit the same situation.

Contradictory Reports: The Case of Fr. Jeyapaul

Sources: Vatican covered up abuse in Minnesota, lawyers say - CNN.com,

The Associated Press: Priest accused of US abuse won't fight extradition,

Vatican lawyer's statement on Indian priest | National Catholic Reporter

I find it interesting to see how the newest reports of abuse come tailored to overcome the challenges to the previous story.  In face to the rejections of the Milwaukee story, we now see a case come forward which took place after the new rules came into effect, seeking to imply that the old practices are still in play.

The facts of the matter seem to be somewhat different.

What is Alleged

The allegations is that priest Fr. Jeyapaul abused two teenage girls during his time in Minnesota.  One of them was reported to the diocese just before he left for India, while the other seems to have come forward after the priest had left America.

The claim is that the CDF was notified of the abuse but did nothing.  CNN and ABC reports that Cardinal Levada did nothing.

What is not Mentioned

What the stories do not mention is that when the Vatican was notified, it contacted the diocese in India and recommended the priest be laicized.  Most of the stories do not mention the priest is not contesting extradition to the United States to stand trial.  Nor do they mention that it was the Vatican which reported to authorities where he was to be found. 

It seems the diocese in India did not laicize the priest but gave a lesser penalty.

The Vatican attorney in the US, Jeffery Lana made this statement:

The decision regarding the canonical penalties imposed upon Father Jeyapaul was made by the Bishop of Ootacamund, whose diocese is located in the Nilgiris district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested in this matter that Father Jeyapaul agree to laicization, demonstrating that the Congregation believed that the accusations were serious enough to merit dismissal from the clerical state. However, as a matter of longstanding canon law, such decisions are made by the local bishop, who is deemed to be generally in the best position to adjudicate the case relating to the priest in question.

It is important to note that the canonical proceeding involving Father Jeyapaul was wholly separate from any pending civil or criminal proceeding. The Holy See has cooperated with the requests of law enforcement authorities seeking the extradition of Father Jeyapaul to the United States, and in fact provided his exact location in India to assist such efforts.

It is interesting that these facts were not reported in the Mainstream Media.

The Significance for the Media

The media is reporting something untrue [The Vatican was covering up] as if it were true, omitting facts which go against the attacks on the Pope and the Vatican.  This is entirely unethical of course.  Fair and accurate reporting requires giving all the facts, and not merely one slanted side of it to promote an agenda.

The fact that the reporting continues to "evolve" in the face of news stories being debunked indicates not a concern for victims of abuse, but a desire to attack the moral authority of the Catholic Church.

The fact that the media has not really reported the actions of the Church, but instead seek to employ an argument from silence fallacy [The Minnesota diocese did not know the events in India.  Therefore the Vatican did nothing] to claim inaction or coverup. 

These two charges are contradictory of course.  The first would be inaction.  The second would be action to conceal.  Meanwhile reports indicate the Vatican neither was inactive nor concealing.

The media could have been defenders of the truth if it had reported this story fairly.  In that case it would have done a good service in helping the Church be aware of further repairs to the system it needed to implement.  Instead it attempted to portray this whole incident as the fault of the Vatican.

This leaves us with this question: How much trust can we place in the media to fairly and accurately report abuse allegations?

If the media is supposed to be serving us by reporting these things, I believe we can validly ask: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who polices the police?)

Significance in Legal Terms

Also in terms of the accused priest, it is important to make sure justice is done.  We have reports of abuse.  It has not yet been established the abuse is true.  If it is true, of course justice requires the priest should face the legal consequences.  If it is not true, justice requires his name be cleared.  Trial by media should not be tolerated however.

Significance for the Church

What troubles me in this case is that there seems to be more room for reform of the current system.  That a bishop can choose to ignore what the CDF suggests in terms of laicization indicates that the Code of Canon Law can use reform to prevent this in the future.  If the priest was in fact guilty of what he was accused of, clearly the diocese in India erred in the position he was given.  However, the Vatican did not cover up, though it would need to strengthen its laws for the future.

It is good to see they did recommend laicization and to see they did cooperate with the authorities to bring the priest forward.  However, this case indicates that perhaps we need to institute a policy where the CDF can override the decision of the Bishop in such cases. 

Of course we need to be certain that such an action does not remove the rights of the accused for a fair hearing as well, and does not create a bottleneck which slows cases down so much that the delay enables injustice.

Conclusion

Contrary to media claims, this is not a failure on the part of the Church.  Rather it shows us how the system currently works, and gives us evidence of further reforms the system needs to make in terms of procedure and tightening up canon law.  The Church needs to investigate where weakness is in the current system and make sure future cases cannot exploit the same situation.

Change of Tactics: Taking Offense at our Being Offended

I'm noticing a change of tactics on the internet. With the NYT essentially discredited, except among the mob, I am seeing an approach of "taking offense with our being offended."  Essentially, the fact that many Catholics did take offense with the attempts to smear the Pope is being twisted into meaning that Catholics didn't care when abuse happened, but only care because the Pope is the target.

This is a false charge.

The cases in which the Pope was attacked involved cases where the case had long since been resolved but the media had insinuated that the cases had taken a long time to resolve because of the actions of Pope Benedict XVI.

Yes, there have been abusers among the priests.  Yes I am sure that some of them have escaped the dragnet going through the Church.  Yes I believe that a hundred years from now, some abuser will have found his way through the safeguards the Church may have set in place.  It is the tragic consequence of sin that some men may seek to use the priesthood to carry out vile acts.

However, just because Catholics are ashamed of those abusers and the bishops who concealed the problem rather than coming forward with it does not mean we forfeit the right to demand a truthful reporting of the scandals when they come forward.

The attacks of the New York Times and London papers, as well as the smaller papers who carried these stories, did not report these stories truthfully.  American libel laws, concerning a "public figure" makes it unlikely that the NYT will ever suffer legal consequences for their actions of course [New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan established that the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth ("actual malice") — which makes it almost impossible to prove].

Catholics have a right to be angry at the gross misconduct of the media in this case.  This does not mean we don't care about the fact that victims suffered.  It means we do not believe that the abuse cases which exist permits the Church to be treated unjustly.

I expect that ultimately we will see the myth of "the silence of Benedict XVI" arise despite the truth.  However, why not watch the comments in the various internet discussions.  How many times will the accusation come that we do not care about the victims, but only for protecting the Pope?

What scares me the most of this sort of attack is how closely it mirrors the statement of a European Ruler in the 1930s.  "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

That ruler was Adolf Hitler

Change of Tactics: Taking Offense at our Being Offended

I'm noticing a change of tactics on the internet. With the NYT essentially discredited, except among the mob, I am seeing an approach of "taking offense with our being offended."  Essentially, the fact that many Catholics did take offense with the attempts to smear the Pope is being twisted into meaning that Catholics didn't care when abuse happened, but only care because the Pope is the target.

This is a false charge.

The cases in which the Pope was attacked involved cases where the case had long since been resolved but the media had insinuated that the cases had taken a long time to resolve because of the actions of Pope Benedict XVI.

Yes, there have been abusers among the priests.  Yes I am sure that some of them have escaped the dragnet going through the Church.  Yes I believe that a hundred years from now, some abuser will have found his way through the safeguards the Church may have set in place.  It is the tragic consequence of sin that some men may seek to use the priesthood to carry out vile acts.

However, just because Catholics are ashamed of those abusers and the bishops who concealed the problem rather than coming forward with it does not mean we forfeit the right to demand a truthful reporting of the scandals when they come forward.

The attacks of the New York Times and London papers, as well as the smaller papers who carried these stories, did not report these stories truthfully.  American libel laws, concerning a "public figure" makes it unlikely that the NYT will ever suffer legal consequences for their actions of course [New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan established that the statement must have been published knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard to its truth ("actual malice") — which makes it almost impossible to prove].

Catholics have a right to be angry at the gross misconduct of the media in this case.  This does not mean we don't care about the fact that victims suffered.  It means we do not believe that the abuse cases which exist permits the Church to be treated unjustly.

I expect that ultimately we will see the myth of "the silence of Benedict XVI" arise despite the truth.  However, why not watch the comments in the various internet discussions.  How many times will the accusation come that we do not care about the victims, but only for protecting the Pope?

What scares me the most of this sort of attack is how closely it mirrors the statement of a European Ruler in the 1930s.  "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

That ruler was Adolf Hitler

An Enemy is a Friend Who Wants to Kill You? Reflections on Noonan's Defense of the Media

Sources: Peggy Noonan: The Catholic Church's Catastrophe - WSJ.com

Anti-Benedict Media Sharks: Best Friends *and* Enemies? | Blogs | NCRegister.com

Peggy Noonan is a Catholic, former Reagan speech writer and an author (she wrote a book on John Paul II) who generally seems to be loyal to the Church.  So when it comes to her criticisms, it is clearly a different case than the New York Times or the attacks of "Cafeteria Catholics."

Reading her article, The Catholic Church's Catastrophe I am inclined to think that she fundamentally misses the point regarding Catholic's anger over the recent attacks.

Her thesis seems to be essentially:

In both the U.S. and Europe, the scandal was dug up and made famous by the press. This has aroused resentment among church leaders, who this week accused journalists of spreading "gossip," of going into "attack mode" and showing "bias."

But this is not true, or to the degree it is true, it is irrelevant. All sorts of people have all sorts of motives, but the fact is that the press—the journalistic establishment in the U.S. and Europe—has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on this issue. Let me repeat that: The press has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on the scandals because it exposed the story and made the church face it. The press forced the church to admit, confront and attempt to redress what had happened. The press forced them to confess. The press forced the church to change the old regime and begin to come to terms with the abusers. The church shouldn't be saying j'accuse but thank you.

This is the fallacy known as Non causa pro causa. The reason I think she is wrong is that she makes an error over what the case is about.  It is not about denying any sort of abuse took place.  It is not about the fact that some bishops did horrible wrong in kicking it under the carpet instead of following the Church rules on the subject at the time the abuse was known.  It is not even about whether some cases were handled in a way slower than should have been.

The reason there is anger from Catholics over the media bias is that in the recent news stories of Milwaukee, Munich and Arizona, there was a concerted effort to attack the person of Pope Benedict XVI with no evidence in favor of, and in fact much evidence against, their claim.

Noonan, in attributing anger over the false attacks against the Pope as anger over reporting abuse at all is attributing a non-cause as a cause.

An Enemy Is A Friend Who Wants To Kill You

I also think Noonan errs over the claim that the media forced "the Church" to deal with the issues.  She says:

Without this pressure—without the famous 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight series with its monumental detailing of the sex abuse scandals in just one state, Massachusetts—the church would most likely have continued to do what it has done for half a century, which is look away, hush up, pay off and transfer.

However, the facts are against her.  In Milwaukee, the case was moving forward until the time of the death of the defendant.  In Arizona, the priests accused were suspended and barred from priestly ministry and had appealed the verdict, taking several years to resolve. In Munich, the vicar general made a decision on his own behalf without consulting then Archbishop Ratzinger.

Indeed, Noonan seems to be making a fallacy of equivocation here.  "The Church" was indeed working on this before the 2002 scandal of Cardinal Law.  She could perhaps say that the Church in America was forced to confront the issue, but this is a far different issue than the accusing of Pope Benedict.

The Principle of Subsidiarity

The thing is, the Church operates under the principle of Subsidiarity, which is described in the Catechism as:

1883 Socialization also presents dangers. Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

1884 God has not willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life. The way God acts in governing the world, which bears witness to such great regard for human freedom, should inspire the wisdom of those who govern human communities. They should behave as ministers of divine providence.

1885 The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order.

In the idea of subsidiarity, the higher gets involved in the affairs of the lower when there is a failure in the lower to police itself.  This is what the Church did, once reports of the abuse began crossing its desk.  It reformed its former rules on the subject.

One could make a case that certain media reports helped alert the Magisterium to a breakdown in subsidiarity in the lower levels in America, however, I suspect that the media did not have as big a role as Noonan thinks.

The media may have publicized it.  However, it does not follow that they caused the investigations to begin.  The issue of course is the objectivity of the media.  There were 3,000 cases dating back to 1950 which had to be investigated.  Much of the media had made it sound as if there were many more cases annually.

If The Media Is Alarmed Over Abuse, Why Does It Ignore the Largest Offender?

I think it is a valid charge that the public schools has a exponentially larger number of cases of sexual abuse of minors, and doesn't pick up a fraction of the coverage, even though the Church has put in place of protections the public schools still lack.  Such behavior speaks against concern for victims of sexual abuse and speaks more for bias in the media in an attempt to attack the whole Church.

This is not a tu quoque of course.  The evils in the Public schools do not make for a defense of abusers in the Church.  However, if the media is concerned about the children, why does it continue to report on old cases within the Church instead of reporting on the ongoing problems within the public schools and the utter lack of reform and the ongoing practices which the Church is in the process of eliminating.

The fact that the media continues to report on cases from the 1950-2000 era even though the Church has reformed itself and is clearing the backlog of cases, and ignores the schools utter lack of reform seems to indicate an agenda.

If the Church Makes a Policy Change and Nobody Reports it, is it still the fault of the Church?

That kind of coverage was not helpful, and in fact obscured the real issues to be dealt with.  The Church made a careful investigation at the time the media was making accusations of stonewalling, and policies were enacted.  People with homosexual tendencies were restricted based on the investigation into those most likely to be victimized.  Rules were made concerning the policies to be carried out in parishes and dioceses.

Much of the time, the media made much of the charges, but said almost nothing of the Church actions in response to the abuse.  Were it not for the Catholic media reporting, nobody would have been aware that the Church had acted.

The Media is Hardly a "Friend"

Mark Shea writes an article about the view that the media is the friend of the Church which brings home all the flaws of the defense of the media in the latest frenzy.  In it, he writes:

Look.  I can grant that *God*, who orders all things for the good of those in Christ Jesus, can use bitter enemies of the Church to bring about redemption and healing.  But please: let’s make up our mind.  Are journalists who do slipshod hatchet jobs on Benedict “the Church’s best friend” or are they “enemies of His people”?  I think it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, whatever God may have in mind, the authors of this war on Benedict do not regard themselves as “best friends of the Church” and that the self-congratulation of journalists for their shoddy reportage is as repulsive as the self-congratulation of abusers who lectured their victims to sit there, shut up and take it due to the abusers’ sanctity as priests and as mediators of Truth.  Spare me.

It is an excellent point.  The Holy Week attacks on the Pope were not done with the good of the Church in mind.  The attacks attempted to link the culpability of those who had in fact done evil (the abusers) with Pope Benedict XVI — without a shred of proof.

Shea goes on to write:

But please. This group of frenzied MSM sharks bent on destroying Benedict and engaging in their annual Holy Week Church Bash on the flimsiest charges are not the Church’s"friends”, nor do they give a tinker’s damn about the good of the Church or abused children who are not usefully Catholic.  You might as well tell me that Mehmet Ali Acga (whom these sharks did not fail to consult for his expert opinion) was just trying to help John Paul II grow closer to Christ Crucified when he shot him.  Jimmy Akin has methodically taken apart the NY Times crapalicious reporting.  Real “friends” at the Times (London and New York) would acknowledge they did a lousy job and apologize (as for instance, NBC did when they libeled the Pope as a child molester).  Enemies, however, admit nothing.  And enemies of the Church is just what these people act like.  God will, of course, bring life out of the sins of pervert priests, bad bishops *and* bad reporters.  But with the exception of a few journalists with actual integrity and knowledge of the facts like John Allen, the spectacle leading up to the annual MSM Bash Christianity for Holy Week Fest has been a depressingly ignorant and ideology-driven affair.  To be sure, what the MSM meant for evil, God means to turn to good.  But they do indeed, largely mean to do evil in this recent spate of hatchet jobs on Benedict.

This is the difference between enemies and friends.  If the attacks were made in good faith, those who made these reports would have acknowledged their errors and corrected them.  The media in these cases did not do this.

Conclusion: Why Noonan Erred

This is why Noonan has erred in her claims that the media is the friend of the Church, even though she seems to seriously believe it.  By falsely linking the justified investigations of actual abusers with the attempts to insinuate Pope Benedict XVI was guilty, she makes a false accusation that those of us who are angered at the attacks on the Pope are actually angry that abuse was reported at all.

The truth is, we would not be angered at objective reporting, and the admission of errors made in this reporting.  We do object to the smearing of our Pope and the attempts to push an ideology onto the Church using the abuse cases as an excuse [The inevitable calls for women priests and the end of celibacy among other things].

Shea is correct: God may use these attacks for good (it certainly woke up American Catholics to the problems within the American Church).  However, let's knock off the claim that the media did good because change happened.  That's a post hoc fallacy.  Change happened because the Church cared about what happened, and change was happening even before the 2003-2004 reporting of the abuse scandals.

[Edited to correct a typo which changed the meaning of one sentence from what I intended]

An Enemy is a Friend Who Wants to Kill You? Reflections on Noonan's Defense of the Media

Sources: Peggy Noonan: The Catholic Church's Catastrophe - WSJ.com

Anti-Benedict Media Sharks: Best Friends *and* Enemies? | Blogs | NCRegister.com

Peggy Noonan is a Catholic, former Reagan speech writer and an author (she wrote a book on John Paul II) who generally seems to be loyal to the Church.  So when it comes to her criticisms, it is clearly a different case than the New York Times or the attacks of "Cafeteria Catholics."

Reading her article, The Catholic Church's Catastrophe I am inclined to think that she fundamentally misses the point regarding Catholic's anger over the recent attacks.

Her thesis seems to be essentially:

In both the U.S. and Europe, the scandal was dug up and made famous by the press. This has aroused resentment among church leaders, who this week accused journalists of spreading "gossip," of going into "attack mode" and showing "bias."

But this is not true, or to the degree it is true, it is irrelevant. All sorts of people have all sorts of motives, but the fact is that the press—the journalistic establishment in the U.S. and Europe—has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on this issue. Let me repeat that: The press has been the best friend of the Catholic Church on the scandals because it exposed the story and made the church face it. The press forced the church to admit, confront and attempt to redress what had happened. The press forced them to confess. The press forced the church to change the old regime and begin to come to terms with the abusers. The church shouldn't be saying j'accuse but thank you.

This is the fallacy known as Non causa pro causa. The reason I think she is wrong is that she makes an error over what the case is about.  It is not about denying any sort of abuse took place.  It is not about the fact that some bishops did horrible wrong in kicking it under the carpet instead of following the Church rules on the subject at the time the abuse was known.  It is not even about whether some cases were handled in a way slower than should have been.

The reason there is anger from Catholics over the media bias is that in the recent news stories of Milwaukee, Munich and Arizona, there was a concerted effort to attack the person of Pope Benedict XVI with no evidence in favor of, and in fact much evidence against, their claim.

Noonan, in attributing anger over the false attacks against the Pope as anger over reporting abuse at all is attributing a non-cause as a cause.

An Enemy Is A Friend Who Wants To Kill You

I also think Noonan errs over the claim that the media forced "the Church" to deal with the issues.  She says:

Without this pressure—without the famous 2002 Boston Globe Spotlight series with its monumental detailing of the sex abuse scandals in just one state, Massachusetts—the church would most likely have continued to do what it has done for half a century, which is look away, hush up, pay off and transfer.

However, the facts are against her.  In Milwaukee, the case was moving forward until the time of the death of the defendant.  In Arizona, the priests accused were suspended and barred from priestly ministry and had appealed the verdict, taking several years to resolve. In Munich, the vicar general made a decision on his own behalf without consulting then Archbishop Ratzinger.

Indeed, Noonan seems to be making a fallacy of equivocation here.  "The Church" was indeed working on this before the 2002 scandal of Cardinal Law.  She could perhaps say that the Church in America was forced to confront the issue, but this is a far different issue than the accusing of Pope Benedict.

The Principle of Subsidiarity

The thing is, the Church operates under the principle of Subsidiarity, which is described in the Catechism as:

1883 Socialization also presents dangers. Excessive intervention by the state can threaten personal freedom and initiative. The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to co- ordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good."

1884 God has not willed to reserve to himself all exercise of power. He entrusts to every creature the functions it is capable of performing, according to the capacities of its own nature. This mode of governance ought to be followed in social life. The way God acts in governing the world, which bears witness to such great regard for human freedom, should inspire the wisdom of those who govern human communities. They should behave as ministers of divine providence.

1885 The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism. It sets limits for state intervention. It aims at harmonizing the relationships between individuals and societies. It tends toward the establishment of true international order.

In the idea of subsidiarity, the higher gets involved in the affairs of the lower when there is a failure in the lower to police itself.  This is what the Church did, once reports of the abuse began crossing its desk.  It reformed its former rules on the subject.

One could make a case that certain media reports helped alert the Magisterium to a breakdown in subsidiarity in the lower levels in America, however, I suspect that the media did not have as big a role as Noonan thinks.

The media may have publicized it.  However, it does not follow that they caused the investigations to begin.  The issue of course is the objectivity of the media.  There were 3,000 cases dating back to 1950 which had to be investigated.  Much of the media had made it sound as if there were many more cases annually.

If The Media Is Alarmed Over Abuse, Why Does It Ignore the Largest Offender?

I think it is a valid charge that the public schools has a exponentially larger number of cases of sexual abuse of minors, and doesn't pick up a fraction of the coverage, even though the Church has put in place of protections the public schools still lack.  Such behavior speaks against concern for victims of sexual abuse and speaks more for bias in the media in an attempt to attack the whole Church.

This is not a tu quoque of course.  The evils in the Public schools do not make for a defense of abusers in the Church.  However, if the media is concerned about the children, why does it continue to report on old cases within the Church instead of reporting on the ongoing problems within the public schools and the utter lack of reform and the ongoing practices which the Church is in the process of eliminating.

The fact that the media continues to report on cases from the 1950-2000 era even though the Church has reformed itself and is clearing the backlog of cases, and ignores the schools utter lack of reform seems to indicate an agenda.

If the Church Makes a Policy Change and Nobody Reports it, is it still the fault of the Church?

That kind of coverage was not helpful, and in fact obscured the real issues to be dealt with.  The Church made a careful investigation at the time the media was making accusations of stonewalling, and policies were enacted.  People with homosexual tendencies were restricted based on the investigation into those most likely to be victimized.  Rules were made concerning the policies to be carried out in parishes and dioceses.

Much of the time, the media made much of the charges, but said almost nothing of the Church actions in response to the abuse.  Were it not for the Catholic media reporting, nobody would have been aware that the Church had acted.

The Media is Hardly a "Friend"

Mark Shea writes an article about the view that the media is the friend of the Church which brings home all the flaws of the defense of the media in the latest frenzy.  In it, he writes:

Look.  I can grant that *God*, who orders all things for the good of those in Christ Jesus, can use bitter enemies of the Church to bring about redemption and healing.  But please: let’s make up our mind.  Are journalists who do slipshod hatchet jobs on Benedict “the Church’s best friend” or are they “enemies of His people”?  I think it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that, whatever God may have in mind, the authors of this war on Benedict do not regard themselves as “best friends of the Church” and that the self-congratulation of journalists for their shoddy reportage is as repulsive as the self-congratulation of abusers who lectured their victims to sit there, shut up and take it due to the abusers’ sanctity as priests and as mediators of Truth.  Spare me.

It is an excellent point.  The Holy Week attacks on the Pope were not done with the good of the Church in mind.  The attacks attempted to link the culpability of those who had in fact done evil (the abusers) with Pope Benedict XVI — without a shred of proof.

Shea goes on to write:

But please. This group of frenzied MSM sharks bent on destroying Benedict and engaging in their annual Holy Week Church Bash on the flimsiest charges are not the Church’s"friends”, nor do they give a tinker’s damn about the good of the Church or abused children who are not usefully Catholic.  You might as well tell me that Mehmet Ali Acga (whom these sharks did not fail to consult for his expert opinion) was just trying to help John Paul II grow closer to Christ Crucified when he shot him.  Jimmy Akin has methodically taken apart the NY Times crapalicious reporting.  Real “friends” at the Times (London and New York) would acknowledge they did a lousy job and apologize (as for instance, NBC did when they libeled the Pope as a child molester).  Enemies, however, admit nothing.  And enemies of the Church is just what these people act like.  God will, of course, bring life out of the sins of pervert priests, bad bishops *and* bad reporters.  But with the exception of a few journalists with actual integrity and knowledge of the facts like John Allen, the spectacle leading up to the annual MSM Bash Christianity for Holy Week Fest has been a depressingly ignorant and ideology-driven affair.  To be sure, what the MSM meant for evil, God means to turn to good.  But they do indeed, largely mean to do evil in this recent spate of hatchet jobs on Benedict.

This is the difference between enemies and friends.  If the attacks were made in good faith, those who made these reports would have acknowledged their errors and corrected them.  The media in these cases did not do this.

Conclusion: Why Noonan Erred

This is why Noonan has erred in her claims that the media is the friend of the Church, even though she seems to seriously believe it.  By falsely linking the justified investigations of actual abusers with the attempts to insinuate Pope Benedict XVI was guilty, she makes a false accusation that those of us who are angered at the attacks on the Pope are actually angry that abuse was reported at all.

The truth is, we would not be angered at objective reporting, and the admission of errors made in this reporting.  We do object to the smearing of our Pope and the attempts to push an ideology onto the Church using the abuse cases as an excuse [The inevitable calls for women priests and the end of celibacy among other things].

Shea is correct: God may use these attacks for good (it certainly woke up American Catholics to the problems within the American Church).  However, let's knock off the claim that the media did good because change happened.  That's a post hoc fallacy.  Change happened because the Church cared about what happened, and change was happening even before the 2003-2004 reporting of the abuse scandals.

[Edited to correct a typo which changed the meaning of one sentence from what I intended]

Milwaukee Canonical Judge Speaks On What NYT Ignored

Source: Catholic Anchor Online » Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy

With all the smears about the Milwaukee case, isn't it odd that nobody actually sought to contact the people who took part in the case to defrock Fr. Murphy?

I find this article interesting, as it makes more clear information which seemed muddled when taken out of context (learning that it was the Rota which had the competency to oversee the case prior to 2001 was new to me)

Fr. Thomas Brundage, who was the judge [In the sense of the canonical trial… not civil prosecution] in the case of Fr. Murphy has come forward to speak about his involvement in the case.  He describes his purpose in doing so:

I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth.

The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

My intent in the following paragraphs is to accomplish the following:

To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;

To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;

To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

I find it interesting to note that contrary to the claims of the NYT, Fr. Brundage considers that his own actions have been misquoted in this feeding frenzy of the media, and explicitly denies that the CDF had halted the case.  Let's look at what he says about the case.

Considering the Claims the Vatican Halted the Trial

The NYT had alleged that Fr. Murphy wrote to the Vatican and the Vatican stopped the trial.  Fr. Brundage contradicts this claim directly.

In the summer of 1998, I ordered Father Murphy to be present at a deposition at the chancery in Milwaukee. I received, soon after, a letter from his doctor that he was in frail health and could travel not more than 20 miles (Boulder Junction to Milwaukee would be about 276 miles). A week later, Father Murphy died of natural causes in a location about 100 miles from his home

So we see some falsehoods about the allegations that Fr. Murphy wrote to then Cardinal Ratzinger in January and then Ratzinger had the trial ended.  Fr. Brundage points out that in the summer of 1998, the deposition was scheduled, but Fr. Murphy's doctor said he could not travel more than 20 miles due to health… far too short a travel range to bring him to Milwaukee.

He also denies that it was the CDF that caused the trial to end.  Fr. Brundage says:

Additionally, in the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy. Father Murphy, however, died two days later and the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this. Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer.

Notice that it was Archbishop Weakland telling the CDF that he gave the order to Fr. Brundage to abate the trial.  Also that Fr. Brundage says that when Fr. Murphy died, he was still a defendant, and that Archbishop Weakland had not told him to abate the trial.  Indeed, if the archbishop had told him to abate the trial, he would have appealed to Rome.

This is quite damning for the NYT indeed.  So much for the accusation that now Pope Benedict XVI halted this.

NYT Wrongly Attributes Documents to Fr. Brundage

I find it significant that Fr. Brundage flat out denies that the documents attributed to him were written by him.  He writes:

With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people. “ Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.”

The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct. [Emphasis added]

I find it rather damning that the NYT never bothered to ask any questions of the person they cited as a source.  In most places, this would be considered negligence.  If the story is so badly flawed in facts, it casts doubts on the accuracy of the whole thing.  Combined with the rejection of the idea that the CDF prevented this, the NYT seems to be either guilty of gross incompetence or malicious intent.

Conclusion

The story is being denied by both Rome and those involved in America.  It seems we have a problematic scenario:

1. Certain individuals, who oppose the Church and the Pope, have created a false story.
2. Their news organizations, through neglect or through malice gave the ok for these stories to go forward.
3. Numerous news organizations repeated the stories of this newspaper
4. People with a hatred of the Church took advantage of this story to promote their personal agendas.

I don't doubt some will allege some huge Church conspiracy and that Fr. Brundage is lying.  However, this requires proof… something the NYT has yet to provide.

Milwaukee Canonical Judge Speaks On What NYT Ignored

Source: Catholic Anchor Online » Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Father Lawrence Murphy

With all the smears about the Milwaukee case, isn't it odd that nobody actually sought to contact the people who took part in the case to defrock Fr. Murphy?

I find this article interesting, as it makes more clear information which seemed muddled when taken out of context (learning that it was the Rota which had the competency to oversee the case prior to 2001 was new to me)

Fr. Thomas Brundage, who was the judge [In the sense of the canonical trial… not civil prosecution] in the case of Fr. Murphy has come forward to speak about his involvement in the case.  He describes his purpose in doing so:

I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth.

The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

My intent in the following paragraphs is to accomplish the following:

To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;

To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;

To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

I find it interesting to note that contrary to the claims of the NYT, Fr. Brundage considers that his own actions have been misquoted in this feeding frenzy of the media, and explicitly denies that the CDF had halted the case.  Let's look at what he says about the case.

Considering the Claims the Vatican Halted the Trial

The NYT had alleged that Fr. Murphy wrote to the Vatican and the Vatican stopped the trial.  Fr. Brundage contradicts this claim directly.

In the summer of 1998, I ordered Father Murphy to be present at a deposition at the chancery in Milwaukee. I received, soon after, a letter from his doctor that he was in frail health and could travel not more than 20 miles (Boulder Junction to Milwaukee would be about 276 miles). A week later, Father Murphy died of natural causes in a location about 100 miles from his home

So we see some falsehoods about the allegations that Fr. Murphy wrote to then Cardinal Ratzinger in January and then Ratzinger had the trial ended.  Fr. Brundage points out that in the summer of 1998, the deposition was scheduled, but Fr. Murphy's doctor said he could not travel more than 20 miles due to health… far too short a travel range to bring him to Milwaukee.

He also denies that it was the CDF that caused the trial to end.  Fr. Brundage says:

Additionally, in the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy. Father Murphy, however, died two days later and the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this. Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer.

Notice that it was Archbishop Weakland telling the CDF that he gave the order to Fr. Brundage to abate the trial.  Also that Fr. Brundage says that when Fr. Murphy died, he was still a defendant, and that Archbishop Weakland had not told him to abate the trial.  Indeed, if the archbishop had told him to abate the trial, he would have appealed to Rome.

This is quite damning for the NYT indeed.  So much for the accusation that now Pope Benedict XVI halted this.

NYT Wrongly Attributes Documents to Fr. Brundage

I find it significant that Fr. Brundage flat out denies that the documents attributed to him were written by him.  He writes:

With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people. “ Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.”

The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct. [Emphasis added]

I find it rather damning that the NYT never bothered to ask any questions of the person they cited as a source.  In most places, this would be considered negligence.  If the story is so badly flawed in facts, it casts doubts on the accuracy of the whole thing.  Combined with the rejection of the idea that the CDF prevented this, the NYT seems to be either guilty of gross incompetence or malicious intent.

Conclusion

The story is being denied by both Rome and those involved in America.  It seems we have a problematic scenario:

1. Certain individuals, who oppose the Church and the Pope, have created a false story.
2. Their news organizations, through neglect or through malice gave the ok for these stories to go forward.
3. Numerous news organizations repeated the stories of this newspaper
4. People with a hatred of the Church took advantage of this story to promote their personal agendas.

I don't doubt some will allege some huge Church conspiracy and that Fr. Brundage is lying.  However, this requires proof… something the NYT has yet to provide.

The Misrepresentation of Crimen sollicitationis

Source: Instruction on the Manner of Proceeding in Causes involving the Crime of Solicitation

Introduction

Crimen sollicitationis [Hereafter referred to as CS] is the document concerning sexual solicitation in the confessional, which was in effect until the Church updated its rules in 2001, with the release of Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela.  It also concerned actual acts of abuse apart from the confessional, as evidenced in paragraphs 71-74.

There are a good deal of myths concerning this document, and considering how Pope Benedict XVI is being smeared on account of the misrepresentation of it, I figured I should take a look at the document.

A Note: The references to canon law in CS refers to the 1917 code, not the 1983 code.

The Issue of Misrepresentation

With this latest round of false accusations against the Pope, we hear much of the so-called secret document of 1962 dealing with sexual solicitation in the confessional.  Even though the translation is found on the Vatican website, we hear constantly of how some individual "discovered" it and is "making it public for the first time" with all the typewritten graphics… in English even though the document of 1962 was in Latin.  This PDF which is going around has all these supposed top secret warnings, about how nobody was to distribute it or comment on it.

Since it has been released on the Vatican website for all to see (if they bother to look), this isn't an issue.  We can read it and comment on it.  However it is how the Church interprets its own laws and not how the average reader interprets it that is relevant here.

This is the problem of course.  There are many false interpretations out there, which the Church did not sanction.  These false interpretations are not the fault of the Church however.  If, for example, someone takes my series of articles refuting the claims of an "evil Bible" and cites them as if to claim I believed the Bible was evil, I'd refute it if I was aware of the site that misrepresented me.  However, it would not be my fault I was misrepresented.

The Church is in the same situation.  The laws of the Church are what the Church understands them to be.  Many people may misinterpret (or misrepresent) what the Church teaches.  However, the Church is not to blame for these misrepresentations of what it teaches.

The Church Did Not Forbid the Reporting of Sexual Abuse to Civil Authorities

The main misrepresentation of CS seems to come from paragraph #11 which reads:

11. Since, however, in dealing with these causes, more than usual care and concern must be shown that they be treated with the utmost confidentiality, and that, once decided and the decision executed, they are covered by permanent silence (Instruction of the Holy Office, 20 February 1867, No. 14), all those persons in any way associated with the tribunal, or knowledgeable of these matters by reason of their office, are bound to observe inviolably the strictest confidentiality, commonly known as the secret of the Holy Office, in all things and with all persons, under pain of incurring automatic excommunication, ipso facto and undeclared, reserved to the sole person of the Supreme Pontiff, excluding even the Sacred Penitentiary. Ordinaries are bound by this same law ipso iure, that is, in virtue of their own office; other personnel are bound in virtue of the oath which they are always to swear before assuming their duties; and, finally, those delegated, questioned or informed outside the tribunal, are bound in virtue of the precept to be imposed on them in the letters of delegation, inquiry or information, with express mention of the secret of the Holy Office and of the aforementioned censure. (emphasis in original)

The misrepresentation is that it forbade people who were reporting abuse to file criminal charges.  This simply is not true. This document solely dealt with the canonical penalties to be given to the offender.  Rev. Scicluna of the CDF described it this way:

A bad English translation of the text made people think that the Holy See had imposed secrecy in order to hide the facts, but it wasn’t like that. Procedural secrecy served to protect the good names of everyone involved, first of all the victims themselves, and then the accused clergy, who have the same right as everyone else to the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. The Church doesn’t like to make a spectacle of justice. The canonical rule on sexual abuse, however, was never understood as a ban on reporting [crimes] to the civil authorities. [Emphasis added]

In other words, it was the procedure of the Church investigation which one was forbidden to comment on, not the abuse itself.  So if a witness was asked in a trial what one witnessed at the time of the abuse, that could be answered.  If a member of the tribunal was asked what was discussed at the tribunal that could not be answered. 

A major distinction to be sure.  Those who report CS as preventing reporting to civil authorities misrepresent the Church law.

The Responsibility of the Victim

Another misrepresentation was that there was a time limit of one month.  This was not the case.  Rather, because a person who was soliciting in the confessional was behaving in a monstrous manner, the Church would want a person to bring it forward as soon as possible.  Hence the document stating:

15. The crime of solicitation is ordinarily committed in the absence of any witnesses; consequently, lest it remain almost always hidden and unpunished with inestimable detriment to souls, it has been necessary to compel the one person usually aware of the crime, namely the penitent solicited, to reveal it by a denunciation imposed by positive law. Therefore:

16. “In accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions and specifically the Constitution of Benedict XIV Sacramentum Poenitentiae of 1 June 1741, the penitent must denounce a priest guilty of the crime of solicitation in confession to the local Ordinary or to the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office within one month; and the confessor must, by an obligation gravely binding in conscience, warn the penitent of this duty.” (Canon 904).

17. Moreover, in the light of Canon 1935, any member of the faithful can always denounce a crime of solicitation of which he or she has certain knowledge; indeed, there is an urgent duty to make such a denunciation whenever one is compelled to do so by the natural law itself, on account of danger to faith or religion, or some other impending public evil.

18. “A member of the faithful who, in violation of the (aforementioned) prescription of Canon 904, knowingly disregards the obligation to denounce within a month the person by whom he or she was solicited, incurs a reserved excommunication latae sententiae, which is not to be lifted until he or she has satisfied the obligation, or has promised seriously to do so” (Can. 2358, § 2)

In other words, if a person knew of their obligation to report this (and this would be important to report this to prevent more victims), and refused to report it, they would be guilty of enabling this priest to continue.  The person who knowingly refused to report the crime would be excommunicated until they reported it.

Kind of different than it's been portrayed isn't it?  Perhaps if this had been followed, there would have been fewer abusers.

It's like this.  If I know a person is a murderer, I have a duty to report it in order to ensure justice is done and to ensure the murderer does not target another victim.  If I know this duty and refuse to do it, I am partially to blame if, because of my silence, another suffers.

No Anonymous Accusations

Now, since the Church recognized the possibility of false denunciations, it had rules on how the act was to take place, saying:

20. Anonymous denunciations are generally to be disregarded; they may however have some corroborative value, or provide an occasion for further investigations, if particular circumstances make the accusation plausible (cf. Can. 1942, §2).

21. The obligation on the part of the penitent who has been solicited to make a denunciation does not cease as a result of a possible spontaneous confession by the soliciting confessor, or his transfer, promotion, condemnation, presumed amendment or other such reasons; it does cease, however, upon the death of the latter.

Note that even if the priest was transferred elsewhere (one of the complaints against the Church) the obligation was not lifted.

Now of course I am not going to say that all those who waited years to speak up acted in bad faith.  If one, in good faith, did not know of the obligation to speak up, they were not under the penalty.

The Obligation of the Bishop and Investigators

I do find it interesting to note that for the abuse to have taken place like this, it indicates certain priests and bishops were negligent in failing to take action.  Especially when we see the document tell us:

27. Once any denunciation has been received, the Ordinary is bound by a grave obligation to communicate it as soon as possible to the promoter of justice, who must declare in writing whether or not the specific crime of solicitation, as set forth in No. 1 above, is present in the particular case, and, if the Ordinary disagrees with this, the promoter of justice must defer the matter to the Holy Office within ten days.

In other words, if the promoter of the cause did not agree with the promoter of justice, the promoter was obligated to report this to the Holy Office [Predecessor of the CDF].  The intent of this was to prevent such cases from being kicked under the carpet.

I find this interesting.  The investigation was to determine if solicitation did in fact occur.  If both agreed it happened, the investigation began.  If the Ordinary [Bishop] and the Promoter disagreed, it was to be forwarded to the Holy Office.  Only if both agreed solicitation did not happen (#28) that it would be set aside.

In retrospect, we do see a weakness in this document of course.  If the Ordinary and the Promoter were corrupt, it could indeed mean justice blocked.  However, this was not a planned weakness, but was based on the assumption that those in authority would recognize their responsibility under God to do what was right and just.  If there was collusion, the Holy Office would not be notified of the case.  If the Ordinary and the Promoter wrongly decided the victim was untrustworthy, the Holy Office would not be notified.

This is of course tragic.  However it was not deliberate, and the Church did change the law once it became clear CS was inadequate to handle these cases.

The Church wanted Credible Allegations

We do need to keep in mind that in the confessional there was the problem of no witnesses which meant the Church needed to assess the credibility of the witnesses.  If the evidence was vague or uncertain, the records were to be kept for future reference.  If entirely unfounded, the accusations were to be destroyed (See #42 a and b).

The Ordinary was to report the conclusions of the Holy Office within ten days and the Promoter, if he thought there was a miscarriage, was to report to the Holy Office as well (see #45)  The accused also had a right to appeal (see #58)

What Happened to the Convicted?

Paragraph 61-63 tells us what is to be happened to a convicted priest:

61. “One who has committed the crime of solicitation... is to be suspended from the celebration of Mass and from the hearing of sacramental confessions and even, in view of the gravity of the crime, declared disqualified [inhabilis] from hearing them. He is to be deprived of all benefices, dignities, active and passive voice, and is to be declared disqualified [inhabilis] from all these, and in more grievous cases he is even to be subjected to reduction to the lay state [degradatio]”. Thus states Canon 2368, §1 of the Code of Canon Law.

62. For a correct practical application of this canon, when determining, in the light of Canon 2218, §1, fair and proportionate penalties against priests convicted of the crime of solicitation, the following things should be taken into particular account in evaluating the gravity of the crime, namely: the number of persons solicited and their condition – for example, if they are minors or specially consecrated to God by religious vows; the form of solicitation, especially if it might be connected with false doctrine or false mysticism; not only the formal but also the material turpitude of the acts committed, and above all the connection of the solicitation with other crimes; the duration of the immoral conduct; the repetition of the crime; recidivism following an admonition, and the obdurate malice of the solicitor.

63. Resort is to be had to the extreme penalty of reduction to the lay state – which for accused religious can be commuted to reduction to the status of a lay brother [conversus] – only when, all things considered, it appears evident that the Defendant, in the depth of his malice, has, in his abuse of the sacred ministry, with grave scandal to the faithful and harm to souls, attained such a degree of temerity and habitude, that there seems to be no hope, humanly speaking, or almost no hope, of his amendment.

The Church, believing in the possibility of redemption and repentance has to practice what it preaches of course.  However, if they believe that the defendant is unrepentant, they can indeed take strong steps.

The Responsibility of the Ordinary

Paragraphs 66-70 tell us of he obligation to report to the Holy Office that such an investigation was being made:

66. No Ordinary is ever to omit informing the Holy Office immediately upon receiving any denunciation of the crime of solicitation. If it happens to concern a priest, whether secular or religious, having residence in another territory, he is at the same time to send (as already stated above, No. 31) to the Ordinary of the place where the denounced priest currently lives or, if this is unknown, to the Holy Office, an authentic copy of the denunciation itself with the diligences carried out as fully as possible, along with appropriate information and declarations.

67. Any Ordinary who has instituted a process against any soliciting priest should not fail to inform the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and, if the matter concerns a religious, the priest’s General Superior as well, regarding the outcome of the cause.

68. If a priest convicted of the crime of solicitation, or even merely admonished, should transfer his residence to another territory, the Ordinary a quo should immediately warn the Ordinary ad quem of the priest's record and his legal status.

69. If a priest who has been suspended in a cause of solicitation from hearing sacramental confessions, but not from sacred preaching, should go to another territory to preach, the Ordinary of that territory should be informed by his Superior, whether secular or religious, that he cannot be employed for the hearing of sacramental confessions.

70. All these official communications shall always be made under the secret of the Holy Office; and, since they are of the utmost importance for the common good of the Church, the precept to make them is binding under pain of grave sin.

This cannot be overlooked.  The document requires many things that were not followed by certain bishops.  The Holy Office must be informed.  Compare this to what Rev. Scicluna tells us:

Between 1975 and 1985, I’ve found that no report of cases of pedophilia involving clergy arrived to the attention of our congregation. [Emphasis added]

Because of this, we see that there was a problem of many bishops failing to do what they were obligated to do.

Looking At The Accusations Against the Pope In Light of This Document

This document was in effect from 1962-2001. so it would have been the document in effect with both the accusations of Munich and of Milwaukee.  At this time, it was the ordinary of the diocese the priest was a resident of who was to investigate cases.

In the Milwaukee case, the investigation concerned events which took place thirty years prior but were not reported to the CDF (successor of the Holy Office).  In the Munich case, we have incidents where the Bishop of Essen was obligated to report the charges to Rome when having the priest undergo treatment in Munich.

In neither case did now Pope Benedict XVI act against the obligations of the document.  In the Milwaukee case, we have the case of bishops of Wisconsin acting to defrock the priest thirty years after the alleged incidents (once removed from his post in 1974, Fr. Murphy did not take part in an active ministry again, though on occasion he was given a task to do).

Fr. Murphy wrote to the CDF that he had long ago repented of his acts and was not involved in active ministry.  In light of CS 61-63, one could legitimately ask whether or not this procedure now was necessary.  The Ordinary did see this as necessary and the CDF did not halt the proceedings against Fr. Murphy.  Fr. Murphy did in fact have the right to appeal to the CDF, as we see in paragraph 58.

In the Munich case, we have a priest whose prosecution was the duty of the Diocese of Essen.  Then Archbishop Ratzinger was to be informed of the case against him.  Now, we know Rev. Gruber did assign the priest to doing certain work.  This would have been against the requirements of CS.  Rev. Gruber would have been obligated to report to the Archbishop.  However, he says he did not do so.  This means the wrong was done by Rev. Gruber, not the then Archbishop Ratzinger.

Claims he did know otherwise is to be proven, not assumed.

Conclusion

Crimen sollicitationis has been grossly misrepresented.  It was not to keep the accusations out of the light, but to protect both the accuser and the accused from scandal until the truth was known.  It was not a document which sought to evade prosecution of the priest, but to merely deal with the canonical penalties for such an act.

With all the misinformation out there, one has to make a strong effort not to give in to the appeal of the mob and their desire for scandal.  The document recognized the problem of the false accusations.  It did require the notification of the Holy Office/CDF of these accusations.  Yet certain bishops failed in their duties.

Such people do have an obligation to justice.  As the Pope said in the case of the Irish bishops:

11. To my brother bishops

  It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognise how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. [Emphasis added]

The Church now is recognizing the failure of many bishops to do what they were required to do.  Some bishops may have erred.  Some may have been negligent.  Such cases need to be investigated.  However, it cannot be said that the document Crimen sollicitationis caused the abuse or caused it to be kept hidden.

Those who misrepresent this document or what it means are not official interpreters.  Nor do abuses or errors by some do not mean all bishops were this way.

In light of these current accusations it is the truth, not the hysteria, which needs to be studied.  False accusations of what Crimen sollicitationis required must be rejected in dealing with the current news stories.

The Misrepresentation of Crimen sollicitationis

Source: Instruction on the Manner of Proceeding in Causes involving the Crime of Solicitation

Introduction

Crimen sollicitationis [Hereafter referred to as CS] is the document concerning sexual solicitation in the confessional, which was in effect until the Church updated its rules in 2001, with the release of Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela.  It also concerned actual acts of abuse apart from the confessional, as evidenced in paragraphs 71-74.

There are a good deal of myths concerning this document, and considering how Pope Benedict XVI is being smeared on account of the misrepresentation of it, I figured I should take a look at the document.

A Note: The references to canon law in CS refers to the 1917 code, not the 1983 code.

The Issue of Misrepresentation

With this latest round of false accusations against the Pope, we hear much of the so-called secret document of 1962 dealing with sexual solicitation in the confessional.  Even though the translation is found on the Vatican website, we hear constantly of how some individual "discovered" it and is "making it public for the first time" with all the typewritten graphics… in English even though the document of 1962 was in Latin.  This PDF which is going around has all these supposed top secret warnings, about how nobody was to distribute it or comment on it.

Since it has been released on the Vatican website for all to see (if they bother to look), this isn't an issue.  We can read it and comment on it.  However it is how the Church interprets its own laws and not how the average reader interprets it that is relevant here.

This is the problem of course.  There are many false interpretations out there, which the Church did not sanction.  These false interpretations are not the fault of the Church however.  If, for example, someone takes my series of articles refuting the claims of an "evil Bible" and cites them as if to claim I believed the Bible was evil, I'd refute it if I was aware of the site that misrepresented me.  However, it would not be my fault I was misrepresented.

The Church is in the same situation.  The laws of the Church are what the Church understands them to be.  Many people may misinterpret (or misrepresent) what the Church teaches.  However, the Church is not to blame for these misrepresentations of what it teaches.

The Church Did Not Forbid the Reporting of Sexual Abuse to Civil Authorities

The main misrepresentation of CS seems to come from paragraph #11 which reads:

11. Since, however, in dealing with these causes, more than usual care and concern must be shown that they be treated with the utmost confidentiality, and that, once decided and the decision executed, they are covered by permanent silence (Instruction of the Holy Office, 20 February 1867, No. 14), all those persons in any way associated with the tribunal, or knowledgeable of these matters by reason of their office, are bound to observe inviolably the strictest confidentiality, commonly known as the secret of the Holy Office, in all things and with all persons, under pain of incurring automatic excommunication, ipso facto and undeclared, reserved to the sole person of the Supreme Pontiff, excluding even the Sacred Penitentiary. Ordinaries are bound by this same law ipso iure, that is, in virtue of their own office; other personnel are bound in virtue of the oath which they are always to swear before assuming their duties; and, finally, those delegated, questioned or informed outside the tribunal, are bound in virtue of the precept to be imposed on them in the letters of delegation, inquiry or information, with express mention of the secret of the Holy Office and of the aforementioned censure. (emphasis in original)

The misrepresentation is that it forbade people who were reporting abuse to file criminal charges.  This simply is not true. This document solely dealt with the canonical penalties to be given to the offender.  Rev. Scicluna of the CDF described it this way:

A bad English translation of the text made people think that the Holy See had imposed secrecy in order to hide the facts, but it wasn’t like that. Procedural secrecy served to protect the good names of everyone involved, first of all the victims themselves, and then the accused clergy, who have the same right as everyone else to the presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. The Church doesn’t like to make a spectacle of justice. The canonical rule on sexual abuse, however, was never understood as a ban on reporting [crimes] to the civil authorities. [Emphasis added]

In other words, it was the procedure of the Church investigation which one was forbidden to comment on, not the abuse itself.  So if a witness was asked in a trial what one witnessed at the time of the abuse, that could be answered.  If a member of the tribunal was asked what was discussed at the tribunal that could not be answered. 

A major distinction to be sure.  Those who report CS as preventing reporting to civil authorities misrepresent the Church law.

The Responsibility of the Victim

Another misrepresentation was that there was a time limit of one month.  This was not the case.  Rather, because a person who was soliciting in the confessional was behaving in a monstrous manner, the Church would want a person to bring it forward as soon as possible.  Hence the document stating:

15. The crime of solicitation is ordinarily committed in the absence of any witnesses; consequently, lest it remain almost always hidden and unpunished with inestimable detriment to souls, it has been necessary to compel the one person usually aware of the crime, namely the penitent solicited, to reveal it by a denunciation imposed by positive law. Therefore:

16. “In accordance with the Apostolic Constitutions and specifically the Constitution of Benedict XIV Sacramentum Poenitentiae of 1 June 1741, the penitent must denounce a priest guilty of the crime of solicitation in confession to the local Ordinary or to the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office within one month; and the confessor must, by an obligation gravely binding in conscience, warn the penitent of this duty.” (Canon 904).

17. Moreover, in the light of Canon 1935, any member of the faithful can always denounce a crime of solicitation of which he or she has certain knowledge; indeed, there is an urgent duty to make such a denunciation whenever one is compelled to do so by the natural law itself, on account of danger to faith or religion, or some other impending public evil.

18. “A member of the faithful who, in violation of the (aforementioned) prescription of Canon 904, knowingly disregards the obligation to denounce within a month the person by whom he or she was solicited, incurs a reserved excommunication latae sententiae, which is not to be lifted until he or she has satisfied the obligation, or has promised seriously to do so” (Can. 2358, § 2)

In other words, if a person knew of their obligation to report this (and this would be important to report this to prevent more victims), and refused to report it, they would be guilty of enabling this priest to continue.  The person who knowingly refused to report the crime would be excommunicated until they reported it.

Kind of different than it's been portrayed isn't it?  Perhaps if this had been followed, there would have been fewer abusers.

It's like this.  If I know a person is a murderer, I have a duty to report it in order to ensure justice is done and to ensure the murderer does not target another victim.  If I know this duty and refuse to do it, I am partially to blame if, because of my silence, another suffers.

No Anonymous Accusations

Now, since the Church recognized the possibility of false denunciations, it had rules on how the act was to take place, saying:

20. Anonymous denunciations are generally to be disregarded; they may however have some corroborative value, or provide an occasion for further investigations, if particular circumstances make the accusation plausible (cf. Can. 1942, §2).

21. The obligation on the part of the penitent who has been solicited to make a denunciation does not cease as a result of a possible spontaneous confession by the soliciting confessor, or his transfer, promotion, condemnation, presumed amendment or other such reasons; it does cease, however, upon the death of the latter.

Note that even if the priest was transferred elsewhere (one of the complaints against the Church) the obligation was not lifted.

Now of course I am not going to say that all those who waited years to speak up acted in bad faith.  If one, in good faith, did not know of the obligation to speak up, they were not under the penalty.

The Obligation of the Bishop and Investigators

I do find it interesting to note that for the abuse to have taken place like this, it indicates certain priests and bishops were negligent in failing to take action.  Especially when we see the document tell us:

27. Once any denunciation has been received, the Ordinary is bound by a grave obligation to communicate it as soon as possible to the promoter of justice, who must declare in writing whether or not the specific crime of solicitation, as set forth in No. 1 above, is present in the particular case, and, if the Ordinary disagrees with this, the promoter of justice must defer the matter to the Holy Office within ten days.

In other words, if the promoter of the cause did not agree with the promoter of justice, the promoter was obligated to report this to the Holy Office [Predecessor of the CDF].  The intent of this was to prevent such cases from being kicked under the carpet.

I find this interesting.  The investigation was to determine if solicitation did in fact occur.  If both agreed it happened, the investigation began.  If the Ordinary [Bishop] and the Promoter disagreed, it was to be forwarded to the Holy Office.  Only if both agreed solicitation did not happen (#28) that it would be set aside.

In retrospect, we do see a weakness in this document of course.  If the Ordinary and the Promoter were corrupt, it could indeed mean justice blocked.  However, this was not a planned weakness, but was based on the assumption that those in authority would recognize their responsibility under God to do what was right and just.  If there was collusion, the Holy Office would not be notified of the case.  If the Ordinary and the Promoter wrongly decided the victim was untrustworthy, the Holy Office would not be notified.

This is of course tragic.  However it was not deliberate, and the Church did change the law once it became clear CS was inadequate to handle these cases.

The Church wanted Credible Allegations

We do need to keep in mind that in the confessional there was the problem of no witnesses which meant the Church needed to assess the credibility of the witnesses.  If the evidence was vague or uncertain, the records were to be kept for future reference.  If entirely unfounded, the accusations were to be destroyed (See #42 a and b).

The Ordinary was to report the conclusions of the Holy Office within ten days and the Promoter, if he thought there was a miscarriage, was to report to the Holy Office as well (see #45)  The accused also had a right to appeal (see #58)

What Happened to the Convicted?

Paragraph 61-63 tells us what is to be happened to a convicted priest:

61. “One who has committed the crime of solicitation... is to be suspended from the celebration of Mass and from the hearing of sacramental confessions and even, in view of the gravity of the crime, declared disqualified [inhabilis] from hearing them. He is to be deprived of all benefices, dignities, active and passive voice, and is to be declared disqualified [inhabilis] from all these, and in more grievous cases he is even to be subjected to reduction to the lay state [degradatio]”. Thus states Canon 2368, §1 of the Code of Canon Law.

62. For a correct practical application of this canon, when determining, in the light of Canon 2218, §1, fair and proportionate penalties against priests convicted of the crime of solicitation, the following things should be taken into particular account in evaluating the gravity of the crime, namely: the number of persons solicited and their condition – for example, if they are minors or specially consecrated to God by religious vows; the form of solicitation, especially if it might be connected with false doctrine or false mysticism; not only the formal but also the material turpitude of the acts committed, and above all the connection of the solicitation with other crimes; the duration of the immoral conduct; the repetition of the crime; recidivism following an admonition, and the obdurate malice of the solicitor.

63. Resort is to be had to the extreme penalty of reduction to the lay state – which for accused religious can be commuted to reduction to the status of a lay brother [conversus] – only when, all things considered, it appears evident that the Defendant, in the depth of his malice, has, in his abuse of the sacred ministry, with grave scandal to the faithful and harm to souls, attained such a degree of temerity and habitude, that there seems to be no hope, humanly speaking, or almost no hope, of his amendment.

The Church, believing in the possibility of redemption and repentance has to practice what it preaches of course.  However, if they believe that the defendant is unrepentant, they can indeed take strong steps.

The Responsibility of the Ordinary

Paragraphs 66-70 tell us of he obligation to report to the Holy Office that such an investigation was being made:

66. No Ordinary is ever to omit informing the Holy Office immediately upon receiving any denunciation of the crime of solicitation. If it happens to concern a priest, whether secular or religious, having residence in another territory, he is at the same time to send (as already stated above, No. 31) to the Ordinary of the place where the denounced priest currently lives or, if this is unknown, to the Holy Office, an authentic copy of the denunciation itself with the diligences carried out as fully as possible, along with appropriate information and declarations.

67. Any Ordinary who has instituted a process against any soliciting priest should not fail to inform the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and, if the matter concerns a religious, the priest’s General Superior as well, regarding the outcome of the cause.

68. If a priest convicted of the crime of solicitation, or even merely admonished, should transfer his residence to another territory, the Ordinary a quo should immediately warn the Ordinary ad quem of the priest's record and his legal status.

69. If a priest who has been suspended in a cause of solicitation from hearing sacramental confessions, but not from sacred preaching, should go to another territory to preach, the Ordinary of that territory should be informed by his Superior, whether secular or religious, that he cannot be employed for the hearing of sacramental confessions.

70. All these official communications shall always be made under the secret of the Holy Office; and, since they are of the utmost importance for the common good of the Church, the precept to make them is binding under pain of grave sin.

This cannot be overlooked.  The document requires many things that were not followed by certain bishops.  The Holy Office must be informed.  Compare this to what Rev. Scicluna tells us:

Between 1975 and 1985, I’ve found that no report of cases of pedophilia involving clergy arrived to the attention of our congregation. [Emphasis added]

Because of this, we see that there was a problem of many bishops failing to do what they were obligated to do.

Looking At The Accusations Against the Pope In Light of This Document

This document was in effect from 1962-2001. so it would have been the document in effect with both the accusations of Munich and of Milwaukee.  At this time, it was the ordinary of the diocese the priest was a resident of who was to investigate cases.

In the Milwaukee case, the investigation concerned events which took place thirty years prior but were not reported to the CDF (successor of the Holy Office).  In the Munich case, we have incidents where the Bishop of Essen was obligated to report the charges to Rome when having the priest undergo treatment in Munich.

In neither case did now Pope Benedict XVI act against the obligations of the document.  In the Milwaukee case, we have the case of bishops of Wisconsin acting to defrock the priest thirty years after the alleged incidents (once removed from his post in 1974, Fr. Murphy did not take part in an active ministry again, though on occasion he was given a task to do).

Fr. Murphy wrote to the CDF that he had long ago repented of his acts and was not involved in active ministry.  In light of CS 61-63, one could legitimately ask whether or not this procedure now was necessary.  The Ordinary did see this as necessary and the CDF did not halt the proceedings against Fr. Murphy.  Fr. Murphy did in fact have the right to appeal to the CDF, as we see in paragraph 58.

In the Munich case, we have a priest whose prosecution was the duty of the Diocese of Essen.  Then Archbishop Ratzinger was to be informed of the case against him.  Now, we know Rev. Gruber did assign the priest to doing certain work.  This would have been against the requirements of CS.  Rev. Gruber would have been obligated to report to the Archbishop.  However, he says he did not do so.  This means the wrong was done by Rev. Gruber, not the then Archbishop Ratzinger.

Claims he did know otherwise is to be proven, not assumed.

Conclusion

Crimen sollicitationis has been grossly misrepresented.  It was not to keep the accusations out of the light, but to protect both the accuser and the accused from scandal until the truth was known.  It was not a document which sought to evade prosecution of the priest, but to merely deal with the canonical penalties for such an act.

With all the misinformation out there, one has to make a strong effort not to give in to the appeal of the mob and their desire for scandal.  The document recognized the problem of the false accusations.  It did require the notification of the Holy Office/CDF of these accusations.  Yet certain bishops failed in their duties.

Such people do have an obligation to justice.  As the Pope said in the case of the Irish bishops:

11. To my brother bishops

  It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognise how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. [Emphasis added]

The Church now is recognizing the failure of many bishops to do what they were required to do.  Some bishops may have erred.  Some may have been negligent.  Such cases need to be investigated.  However, it cannot be said that the document Crimen sollicitationis caused the abuse or caused it to be kept hidden.

Those who misrepresent this document or what it means are not official interpreters.  Nor do abuses or errors by some do not mean all bishops were this way.

In light of these current accusations it is the truth, not the hysteria, which needs to be studied.  False accusations of what Crimen sollicitationis required must be rejected in dealing with the current news stories.