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Anaxagoras -> RE: "40 days of prayer" angers anti-Choice movement (4/20/2012 3:43:55 AM)
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FR: fantasies about my health notwithstanding, I do hope the Floridian feels better after the above statement. For anyone that might take a mystifying interest at my request, there is a great deal of material about the subject online so I merely asked a rough time frame such as a year to filter out the ole Google. Surely not a major or unprecedented request?
There has also been a number of claims in the media that don't appear to afford him a fair hearing, for example http://www.nairaland.com/431442/cardinal-ratzinger-b16-did-more
quote:
On March 24, 2010, a report by the New York Times cited the Fr. Murphy case to accuse Pope Benedict XVI of a cover-up while he was head of the CDF in 1996.[163]
However Father Thomas Brundage, the judicial vicar who presided at the Church's internal discipline trial of the case, stated that he has been inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals. He added that "on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial." [164]
The New York Times article apparently used an incorrect translation of the document, according to Paolo Rodari of the Italian newspaper Il Foglio: "The computer-generated English version would support the NYT’s allegations against Bertone and Ratzinger, but that same conclusion is not possible if a correct review of the sources is done." In the English version used by the NYT, not only were some passages omitted, but frequently the contrary was said.[165]
Director of Apologetics and Evangelization for Catholic Answers Jimmy Akin also pointed out, "Back in 1996 the CDF did not have a mandate to handle cases of sexual abuse by priests... The reason that Weakland notified the CDF was not because the abuse of minors was involved but because the abuse of the sacrament of confession was involved." [166]
In April 2010, there were reports of a letter signed by Cardinal Ratzinger in 1985, in which he allegedly dismissed a request to laicize a Father Stephen Kiesle, a California priest accused of molesting boys. The Vatican responded that "At this stage, Father Kiesle was already dismissed from pastoral duties during the investigation, and he had no contact with any parishioners or children."[167]
The Australian transport planning academic Paul Mees wrote, "...Kiesle had already been reported to the police, convicted and sentenced. After completing his sentence, Kiesle left the priesthood and wrote to the CDF asking to be formally defrocked."[168]..
Internal division became public, with Christoph Cardinal Schönborn accusing Cardinal Angelo Sodano of blocking Ratzinger’s investigation of a high-profile case in the mid 1990s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases#United_States_7
It can be argued that there has been over-reporting of the issue too because sexual abuse elsewhere is given little attention. Last year in my part of the world the very media that was constantly criticising the Church was looking the other way when the controversy landed at their own side (cf. Times/David Norris). This has been observed elsewhere too:
quote:
In the spring of 2002, the Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of national surveys by Christian Ministry Resources and concluded: “Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers.”[155]
Some commentators, such as journalist Jon Dougherty, have argued that media coverage of the issue has been excessive, given that the same problems plague other institutions, such as the US public school system, with much greater frequency.[156][157][158]
Tom Hoopes, then National Catholic Register executive editor, observed: "during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools."[159]
Clearly Ratzinger's actions in the past cannot be excused as I stated before but the very same year of the reputed letter from 2001, Ratzinger had begun a policy against that of the Vatican of the time, which led to major changes within the Church, overturning ancient cannon law. The man has apologised repeatedly about the crimes of the past, something that anyone with even a passing familiarity with the church would know was unthinkable before his administration as pope. That isn't an excuse for the past, which must still be addressed, but it should be at least acknowledged that he made major changes after centuries of secrecy. That is the reason I stated it was a bit unfair to call him the "Pedo-Pope".
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