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How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition? Joseph Ratzinger attempted to do just that for the Roman Catholic Church during a grandiose display of Vatican penance — the Day of Pardon on March 12, 2000, a ritual presided over by Pope John Paul II and meant to purify two millenniums of church history. In the presence of a wooden crucifix that had survived every siege of Rome since the 15th century, high-ranking

Pope Benedict sporting his red leather shoes, a far cry from the sandals and lowly garb Jesus might have worn.

Cardinals and bishops stood up to confess to sins against indigenous peoples, women, Jews, cultural minorities and other Christians and religions. Ratzinger was the appropriate choice to represent the fearsome Holy Office of the Inquisition: the German Cardinal was, at the time, head of its historical successor, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church’s premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said “that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.”

If you detect ambivalence in those words, you are on the road to understanding the difficulty Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — faces in leading the Catholic Church to properly atone for another stain on its history: the decades of cases of child abuse by priests and cover-ups by their bishops. And while a well-placed Cardinal has publicly speculated that Benedict will deliver a mea culpa in early June, the words of that apology — if that is what it proves to be — will be severely limited by theology, history and the very person and office of the Pope. It is unlikely to satisfy the many members of Benedict’s flock who want a very modern kind of accountability, not just mealymouthed declarations buttressed by arcane religious philosophy. “Someone once told me that if the church survived the Inquisition, it can survive this,” says Olan Horne, 50, an American victim of priestly abuse. “But these are different times. And right now, the modern world is wrapping its head around the Catholic Church in a major way.”

The crisis facing the church is deeply complicated by the fact that in 1980, as Archbishop of Munich, the future Benedict XVI appears to have mismanaged the assignment of an accused pedophile priest under his charge. That revelation — and questions about Ratzinger’s subsequent oversight of cases as a top Vatican official — has been the trigger in turning a rolling series of national scandals into an epic and existential test for the universal church, its leader and its faithful alike. It has blunted Benedict’s ambitious enterprise of re-evangelizing Europe, the old Christendom. Over the past two months, the Pope has led the Holy See’s shift from silence and denial to calls to face the enemies from within the church. What is still missing, however, is any mention of the Holy Father’s alleged role in the scandal. Can the Pope, the living embodiment of the ancient Gospel and absolute spiritual leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, publicly atone for his sins and yet preserve the theological impregnability of the papacy?

Without alluding to the crisis, Benedict told his May 26 audience in St. Peter’s Square that “not even the Pope can do what he wants. On the contrary, the Pope is the guardian of obedience to Christ, to his Word.”

Benedict now seems to understand the stakes. But Alberto Melloni, a church historian at the University of Modena, says other power brokers in the Vatican think the church can just ride out the storm. “They don’t realize the deep bitterness among the faithful, the isolation of the clergy. We can’t predict where this is going to wind up.” Speaking to TIME, a senior Vatican official foresees immense consequences for the entire church. “History comes down to certain key episodes,” he says. “We’re facing one of those moments now.” 

At the Heart of the Darkness
In the end, the test is not about doctrine or dogma, not even about the wording of mea culpas and the resignation or prosecution of prelates. It is, rather, about the voices of children finally crying out, long after their childhood. Listen to Bernie McDaid’s story and you will know why St. Peter’s trembles.

“He grabbed me, tickling and wrestling like I did with my dad, and I thought at first it was fun,” McDaid, who grew up in Salem, Mass., says of a parish priest. “But then something changed … He started grabbing my genitals. I felt him rubbing against me from behind … I was so scared. I knew this was so wrong. I looked out the window. I started praying.” That would happen again and again over three years. McDaid’s devout mother was delighted whenever the priest arrived to pick up her son, just 11 when the abuse started, to join other boys on trips to the beach. But, recalls McDaid, now 54, “the last boy out of the car was the one who would get molested.” He finally spoke to his dad, who then took him to a priest from the next town to report what had happened. “We waited for months. Then there was a rotation of priests. He left, but they made it look like a natural progression. They celebrated him with cake and ice cream.” The boy was left in silence and with his secret shame. The priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, went on to abuse boys in three other parishes in the Boston area before he died in 1989.

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CNN interview with Massachusetts Priest who thinks that anyone who helped cover up the rape of children participated in criminal acts.

Read more on the Case for Arresting the Pope

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This article was brought to my attention last week. “Why Humanists shouldn’t join in this Catholic-Bashing” by Brenden O’Neill.

I disagree with O’Neill on a number of views:

1) O’Neill suggests that two factors need to be considered in the Church’s sex scandal “the backward cult of victimhood and the dominant ‘new atheist’ prejudice against any institution with strong beliefs.” I can agree with the first observation that the victims, young children would have been terribly confused as to what to do after being raped. Their parents told them to trust priests and that priests are there as representatives of Jesus, whom they have been told is someone they should worship. Does a child tell her parents, another adult, who does she trust? And when she tells someone, do they believe her? And IF they believe her, do they have the guts to questions their own pastor or religious environment enough to raise a stink?

The second suggestion that there is a prejudice against an “institution with strong beliefs” misses the point of atheism. An atheist’s stance on religion is “show me the evidence”. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Fantastical religions like the Catholic church who believe that they have to eat Jesus’ actual flesh and blood in order to live in a unproven “heaven” after they die comes with no empirical evidence. That is simply the tip of the iceberg when it comes to fantastical claims, believed strongly but completely unsupported by evidence. There is no prejudice against strong beliefs, there is simply an intolerance for fantastical beliefs with no evidence for their validity.

2) O’Neill takes issue with the manner in which the Church’s sex scandal has suddenly come out all at once. He states: “the fact is that sexual abuse by priests is a relatively rare phenomenon.” With 5% of the priesthood being reportedly involved in child molestation, this amounts to an alarmingly high number of priests with often multiple victims. Keeping in mind the “victim mentality” we can gather that there are unreported cases out there that may add to those numbers. Regardless, the point in all this is not “how many” but “how”. How did the Catholic Church handle the 5% of it’s ordained members who raped children? We are now learning, as has been long suspected, that Pope Benedict was for 20 years in charge of disciplining priests that were out of bounds. He was the head guy when it came to handling child abuse cases. He most likely knows more of the intricate details about what priests was moved where and how many children were reportedly raped than any other church official today. This is inexcusable.

To his credit, O’Neill does add: “Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. ” If this were a public school instead of the Catholic Church, would you hear these same arguments? Oh, only 5% of school teachers rape children, not everyone, no big deal. Oh, they didn’t prosecute the rapists and just moved them from one school to another, no big deal. My guess is that from all groups of people you would see a completely different tone, calling for resignations, public apologies and restitution for the victims.

3) This next bit makes my stomach turn: “very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.” Seriously? Would he like to tell that to Jonny who was raped by his kindly school priest. Well, kiddo, you were sexually assaulted at a tender age and will likely have social issues as you get older, take to drugs to get away from the painful memories and have to go through years of counseling in order to be somewhat normal again, but you did receive a great education! This argument is your classic “The end justifies the means”. We can evidently excuse the most heinous crime in our society because the same people that committed those crimes gave our children a “decent standard of education”.

4) His next move is to downplay the severity of the victim’s pain. Perhaps this author has never met an abuse victim and does not realize how overarching the damage can be. When not dealt with properly, it can ruin a persons entire life. Blaming the victims for not talking about their childhood trauma until they were older and perhaps actually then able to deal with the public aspect of their abuse is utterly shallow.

5) Next O’Neill attempts to drag Dawkins into this by quoting his statements suggesting that there are many more children who are mentally abused by priests and religious than there are children abuses physically by them. Dawkins is not suggesting that this is a worse form of abuse, but rather that is it far more prevalent and there is no concern in society for the mental abuse of children brought up to “fear” god and be threatened with eternal fire and brimstone should they disobey their elders. Blind obedience is considered a lauding trait in the religious upbringing. A child is told to do what is asked of him without question. Such a curious mind is labeled as a “doubter” or a “rebel”. Questioning the quackery of religious assumptions should be encouraged, not negated by parents or teachers.

O’Neill suggests that if we start recognizing childhood indoctrination and threats of hell as mental child abuse, we will have to require religions not to indoctrinate children and only begin teaching them until they are “at the age of reason”. Mental child abuse is wrong, no matter what the goal. If a parent were to mentally abuse their child for the purpose of turning that child into a Communist, would polite society be ok with this? Well, the parents want that of their child, so it is ok. No it is not ok! Children are not property and should certainly not be labeled as Communist, Democrat, Republican, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim… Children should be allowed to decide for themselves what they think once they reach the age of reasons. Labeling a child according to his parent’s strongest beliefs is entirely unjust.

Quotes taken from http://spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8360/

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Every 10 years the media re-discovers the Catholic church’s campaign to cover up child rape that occurs in their ranks.  Typically, interest in holding the church’s feet to the fire wanes and the national media forgets about them for a time.  This round, however involves the top dog Pope Benedict.  Prior to being elected Pope, Benedict (known as Cardinal Ratzinger) was head of a disciplinary department for wayward priests.  Dealing with child rape cases was in his job description and he arguably knows more about the intricacies of the cover up than any other Cardinal or Bishop alive today.

New developments on this front come rapid fire.  So here is a brief overview of the last week:

Connecticut Bishops fight sex abuse bill (April.11.2010)

Connecticut legislature is proposing a bill that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases. Conneticut Law currently limits sexual abuse victims 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations, allowing child abuse victims to sue beyond their 48th birthday.

Considering that many previously quiet victims are around the age of 50, the church in conneticut has taken a very vocal stance against this proposal.  Signed by the bishops of Conneticut, a letter posted on their website suggests that this new law would put “all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk.”  This leads us to wonder… how many pedophiles does the Connecticut church have in the closet?  Are there so many child rape victims over the age of 48 that they fear bankruptcy?

Read more: CNN.com

Writing on the Wall: Pope’s signature attached to key letters (April.9.2010)

The Pope’s correspondence in postponing the defrocking of California Priest Rev Kiesle has be discovered linking him to the 5 year wait in defrocking the priest after he was found guilty and sentenced to 3 years probation for molesting two young boys.  Ratzinger wrote that the “good of the universal church” needed to be considered when defrocking a priest, putting the interest of the church before the well being of the victims and Kiesle’s parishioners.

Via the BBC: “Rev Kiesle was sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco. It said the Oakland diocese had recommended Kiesle’s removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.

Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, in 1981.

AP says the 1985 correspondence, written in Latin, shows Cardinal Ratzinger saying that Kiesle’s removal would need careful review.

Cardinal Ratzinger urged “as much paternal care as possible” for Kiesle.

Kiesle was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after admitting molesting a young girl in 1995.

Kiesle is now 63 and is on the registered sex offenders list in California.”

British Scientist Richard Dawkins threatens to arrest Pope Benedict (April.11.2010)

Outspoken Atheist and Biologist Richard Dawkins has set in motion the legal measures necessary to arrest Pope Benedict on his next visit to Britain.

Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.

The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.

Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.

They have commissioned the barrister Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens, a solicitor, to present a justification for legal action.  - timesonline.com

It is shocking how Catholics put the interest of one man, the Pope, above the interests of thousands of children who have been molested and silenced by the machine of the church.  For those of us observing from outside the box, we think what their version of god must think of this scandal and cover up at the highest level.  It certainly seems that Catholics value the personage of the Pope more than they value justice and moral consistency.  The right thing to do in this case is to vote with your feet.

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Since Haiti was hit by the earthquake I have been patiently waiting for any religious person I know to excuse god for the disaster and blame “mother nature”.  I didn’t have to wait very long.  Haiti’s misfortune brings up the blaring inconsistency in religion, especially the monotheistic religions: the problem of good and evil.

Pat Robertson, Christian TV evangelist was so disabled by this conundrum that he publicly claimed the reason Haiti suffered such great misfortune was because they had “made a pact with the devil”. For Pat, this was a sufficient explanation for the recent Tsunami, Hurricane and now Earthquake that has brought this country to its most desperate hour.

Haiti serves as a prime example of the problem of “good and evil”.

Naturalists point out that if a god who is claimed to be omnipotent (all powerful) and omniscient (all knowing) controls the universe, by definition such a god must take credit for EVERYTHING that happens, not just the good stuff.  Such a god would know that an earthquake was about to happen and have the power to prevent it from happening. With this information about the omnipotent, omniscient god, we must conclude at least one of the following:
1. Such a god is intrinsically evil by allowing the disaster to hit
2. Such a god does not exist (omnipotent, omniscient)

A theist will disagree here and say that god does not control the evils in the world because Adam and Eve sinned and the rest of humanity must suffer because of their sin. This leads us to conclude that the omnipotent, omniscient god has no sense of what constitutes a “just” punishment for the “sin” of two humans. We must also consider that if the theist’s argument that “evils like Tsunami’s are not god’s fault” rests on the existence of two storybook characters in Genesis the argument falls apart.  We begin to doubt the historical accuracy of the Adam and Eve  story because it is embedded in a creation myth that sets the earth at 10,000 years old, having been fashioned in 7 days by a sky-god.

But most importantly, the counter argument to those who say “evil is the devil’s doing, not god’s” places the omni-god in a position of NOT being omnipotent.   If the omni-god is not in control of nature, this by definition deems him not omnipotent.  This leaves us to conclude that the omni-god is either:
1. Not actually omnipotent or
2.  Unjust in dealing out his punishments and hence, if he be doing the punishing for Adam’s sin, he IS responsible for earthquakes and natural disasters (omnipotent)

This past weekend I listened to a Catholic homily by a deacon who was trying to help his congregation understand how to reconcile god with the Haiti earthquake. His best shot was to tell a little story about a mother in Haiti who dug her children out of the rubble of her home and saved their lives. All three of her children lived (after extensive medical surgury and the science of medicine).  She told reporters that “now she knew that god loved her”. The deacon pointed out that good can come of such atrocities like this women who finally knew that god loved her. He failed to bring up all the other thousands who perished or the other mothers whose children were crushed and killed. Did ‘god’ love them? It was perhaps the weakest argument of the century. What a fickle god Christians daily defend.

Don’t pray or wish that Haiti be helped, do something to help.  Donate to a non-theistic charity organization dedicated to helping Haiti.

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Remember how worked up Glenn Beck and the Fox News network stars like Bill O’Reilly were when the tapes of ACORN workers giving prostitution advice on hidden camera came out?  And recall how angry O’Reilly gets when he interviews atheist spokesman Richard Dawkins, furious that a person could be so against organized religion.  Then we have Mormon follower Glenn Beck who advocates a religious fanaticism towards “God and Country”.

These guys love juicy stories with dirt and a cover up story.  Well, here’s one that seems to have slipped under their selective hearing.  The Catholic Church is a mulit million dollar supporter of ACORN.

“While Obama has strong ties to ACORN, they were originally established through the U.S. Catholic Church, which has also funded ACORN and similar organizations to the tune of millions of dollars. This is another taboo topic for most of the media.  Even conservative news organizations are afraid of raising the issue, apparently fearing being tagged with the “anti-Catholic” label.”  From AIM

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Did someone say “separation of church and state”?  Oh, right I forgot that the religious only like to bring that up when the state tries to influence and meddle in religious affairs, not visa versa.   When it comes to influencing the state, the Catholic Church wears the schoolyard bully shoes with a smerk.

Today the Washington Post reported that the Catholic Church has threatened that it will not continue offering social service programs in DC if the state passes a same-sex marriage law.  Here we go with the Catholic Church, always obsessed with SEX.  They sound more obessed with SEX these days than a 12 year old boy!  Abstiance only education, celebacy and the Fr. Cutie sex scandal, lying to Africans saying that condoms increase one’s risk of HIV infection, covering up the rape and sexual child abuse of 5% of their clergy, and now they are insessantly trying to intefer with what goes on in the bedrooms of homosexual men and women!  Really?!  Can we drop the sex obsession already, Catholic Church?

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Christopher Hitchens creams the catholic church in this debate.

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