Despite checking and double checking page numbers and order of pages and 
highlighting and comparing it to the liturgical books, I read the wrong Passion on Saturday. The problem was with the source that I was using. It had two mistakes in it. Instead of a 1 it had a 0 and instead of the 0 it had a 9 in the title. But perhaps it was prophetic. A line came screaming off of the page and grabbed my attention.
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be dispersed.”’”
At that moment I could not help but think about Pope Benedict. As you are probably painfully aware he has been accused have playing a role in the abuse scandal. Earlier a faithful lady of the parish had come to me with the articles that she cut out concerning the matter. “Are you going to speak on this?” she rightfully asked. I didn’t and do not plan to until after Easter. It is a judgment call. During this holiest season of the year our attention is on Christ and what He did for us and the salvation of our souls. The next week perhaps if the story is still a story we will touch on it.
The whole thing came to my attention at the breakfast table. I was nibbling on my peanut butter toast sipping my milk when a picture of Pope Benedict in the morning paper caught my eye. The news was anything but heartening. A while later Fr. Pfeiffer sat down with his breakfast. “Did you see the paper yet?” I asked.
“No. Anything interesting?”
I flipped through a couple of pages, opened it up to the picture of the pope and slid it over to him. “Have you ever noticed,” I asked him, “How these revelations always seem to correspond with Holy Week? Year after year there is some huge revelatory expose that the papers scream what will finally pu
t an end to the Church, or the faith, or the pope. Every single year.”
What was last year’s? Was that the discovery of the tomb of one of Jesus’ brothers or son or some such thing that “expert scientist” had determined was authentic? That would certainly put a damper on the Catholic Church and her teaching. Then after Holy Week and the brouhaha died down it suddenly died on the twelfth page of section X in a tiny article under an ad for flatulence prevention that the tomb was a fraud.
“Oh magic phone,” Fr. P said, holding up his small electrical device in his hand like an oracle stone, “tell me the inside story on the pope.” The phone then looked into alternative news sources that started to systematically tear apart the story. Not that abuse did not happen but that the further accusations intimated do not add up the way the paper assembled it.
What will come of this? It’s hard to say but the winds seem to be changing a bit alrea
dy. The articles concerning it in the local major papers are already moving further and further back into the paper. Will everything disappear magically again a couple of weeks after Easter? Or will it boil over? We shall see. In the meantime I’m not going to get my alb in a bunch until more information comes out. Right now I am focusing on the resurrection.
This is supposed to be a diary day I know and it has somewhat missed the mark but this needed to get out of my system. So here is one last thing that keeps popping up in my mind. The paper yesterday or the day before mentioned how upset people are that certain priests are not “kicked out” or laicized for their misconduct. Quite readily people jump on the bandwagon. I
don’t know if they think it is a greater punishment to be laicized or if justice is better served or what. But it does seem to be a common thought that this must be done.
IMHO: Stupidest thing in the world.
Think about it this way: So a guy is laicized. Now what? Now there are less people keeping an eye on him. He is free to move anywhere. He is free to get a job where he pleases. Sure there are legal restrictions. But he is out there doing as he will for the most part and nobody is watching 24/7.
What would happen if he were still an active priest? First he would have to have a job where does not come on contact with children. That means a position such as in an office or as a chaplain for a cloistered order of nuns or some such thing. His living and working arrangements are more closely monitored and he is surrounded by people who know him and why he is there and who have a vested interest in making sure he keeps his nose out of trouble.
But instead he has his collar taken off and is shooed out into the world. Does not seem to make much sense to me and the greater punishment would be in remaining a priest but barely doing priestly work. That would be the killer at least for me.
For those of you who would like some other sources of information on this year’s Holy Week scandal perhaps you could look here and here and here for starters.
highlighting and comparing it to the liturgical books, I read the wrong Passion on Saturday. The problem was with the source that I was using. It had two mistakes in it. Instead of a 1 it had a 0 and instead of the 0 it had a 9 in the title. But perhaps it was prophetic. A line came screaming off of the page and grabbed my attention.“Then Jesus said to them, ‘All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written, “I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be dispersed.”’”
At that moment I could not help but think about Pope Benedict. As you are probably painfully aware he has been accused have playing a role in the abuse scandal. Earlier a faithful lady of the parish had come to me with the articles that she cut out concerning the matter. “Are you going to speak on this?” she rightfully asked. I didn’t and do not plan to until after Easter. It is a judgment call. During this holiest season of the year our attention is on Christ and what He did for us and the salvation of our souls. The next week perhaps if the story is still a story we will touch on it.
The whole thing came to my attention at the breakfast table. I was nibbling on my peanut butter toast sipping my milk when a picture of Pope Benedict in the morning paper caught my eye. The news was anything but heartening. A while later Fr. Pfeiffer sat down with his breakfast. “Did you see the paper yet?” I asked.
“No. Anything interesting?”
I flipped through a couple of pages, opened it up to the picture of the pope and slid it over to him. “Have you ever noticed,” I asked him, “How these revelations always seem to correspond with Holy Week? Year after year there is some huge revelatory expose that the papers scream what will finally pu
t an end to the Church, or the faith, or the pope. Every single year.”What was last year’s? Was that the discovery of the tomb of one of Jesus’ brothers or son or some such thing that “expert scientist” had determined was authentic? That would certainly put a damper on the Catholic Church and her teaching. Then after Holy Week and the brouhaha died down it suddenly died on the twelfth page of section X in a tiny article under an ad for flatulence prevention that the tomb was a fraud.
“Oh magic phone,” Fr. P said, holding up his small electrical device in his hand like an oracle stone, “tell me the inside story on the pope.” The phone then looked into alternative news sources that started to systematically tear apart the story. Not that abuse did not happen but that the further accusations intimated do not add up the way the paper assembled it.
What will come of this? It’s hard to say but the winds seem to be changing a bit alrea
dy. The articles concerning it in the local major papers are already moving further and further back into the paper. Will everything disappear magically again a couple of weeks after Easter? Or will it boil over? We shall see. In the meantime I’m not going to get my alb in a bunch until more information comes out. Right now I am focusing on the resurrection.This is supposed to be a diary day I know and it has somewhat missed the mark but this needed to get out of my system. So here is one last thing that keeps popping up in my mind. The paper yesterday or the day before mentioned how upset people are that certain priests are not “kicked out” or laicized for their misconduct. Quite readily people jump on the bandwagon. I
don’t know if they think it is a greater punishment to be laicized or if justice is better served or what. But it does seem to be a common thought that this must be done.IMHO: Stupidest thing in the world.
Think about it this way: So a guy is laicized. Now what? Now there are less people keeping an eye on him. He is free to move anywhere. He is free to get a job where he pleases. Sure there are legal restrictions. But he is out there doing as he will for the most part and nobody is watching 24/7.
What would happen if he were still an active priest? First he would have to have a job where does not come on contact with children. That means a position such as in an office or as a chaplain for a cloistered order of nuns or some such thing. His living and working arrangements are more closely monitored and he is surrounded by people who know him and why he is there and who have a vested interest in making sure he keeps his nose out of trouble.
But instead he has his collar taken off and is shooed out into the world. Does not seem to make much sense to me and the greater punishment would be in remaining a priest but barely doing priestly work. That would be the killer at least for me.
For those of you who would like some other sources of information on this year’s Holy Week scandal perhaps you could look here and here and here for starters.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION: W. had a couple more good sources to check out here and here.
11 comments:
Father, these articles are an excellent start (h/t to Fr. Pf.). Many articles detail the sequence of events correctly. Some of these cases happened many years before Cardinal Ratzinger's office was even informed of them. Local ordinaries may not have handled the matter the way we would like. In some cases, they were told to send the priest into rehab. That was the prevailing "expert" recommendation of the era. Anyway, keep posting those articles. "The truth: it's [already] out there."
These things that happened are horrible,and the Holy Father rightly called it "filth." Many in the secular media are not concerned with the victims or with justice as they are with attempting to destroy the Church.
Other articles of note...
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/03/scoundrel-times
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDkxYmUzMTQ1YWUyMzRkMzg4Y2RiN2UyOWIzNDVkNDM=
Thanks for the posting, I too have often thought that it is interesting how news potentially damaging to the Church is staged, saved or exploited for Holy Week and Easter. I appreciate your thoughts on the handling of brothers who have sinned grievously and scandalized the Church. Part of me wishes someone would start a penitential order for those who wanted to remained priests after they had served their time for their crime. I really wrestle with current “Pilate” approach of washing our hands of any who have committed such horrid crimes. My temptation is often to cynically think that bishops have traded off listening to psychiatrists for paying head only to lawyers. In the matters surrounding this news event, it is a further attempt to discredit the Holy Father and the work he has done to address the issue of abuse within the Church. Thanks for the blog, I've been following it the last month or so. Have a Blessed Holy Week.
I don't know where everybody else lives, but in the northeast here in the US, I see articles about child abuse at the hands of teachers, parents, clergy from other denominations, etc, in the media on a fairly regular basis. Therefore I don't buy into the argument that the media doesn't really care about child abuse because otherwise it wouldn't hammer only the Church. Where I live, the media simply does NOT limit its coverage of child abuse to the Catholic Church.
The problem is that our Church claims to be the the truth and the light, to have its moral authority handed down by Christ himself, to be the religion through whose intercession every person who ever lived on this earth will be saved. When our Church points fingers and cries, "Other religions do it, too! Our percentages of child abuse are no greater than anybody else's! Why don't you look at THEM? Conspiracy!", people jeer because it doesn't really matter what everyone else in the world does, does it? What matters is that we proclaim we are the One True Church. We should be held to a MUCH higher standard than schools, dysfunctional families, and other religions. Moreover, we have a much more defined hierarchy in this institution, leading right up to the Pope himself, than any of the other religions, schools, etc, have, which gives greater credence to the accusations of wide-spread systemic cover-up.
Of course anti-Catholics will jump on this story to push their own agenda. And sorting through all of the media stories on this scandal requires using reasoning and objectivity that can be very hard to maintain given the visceral reaction so many of us have to this horrible abuse of children.
But the Church's continuing cries of "Conspiracy! We are so persecuted by the media!" really have lost their meaning, especially when you have men like Cardinal Martins claiming such while telling us we shouldn't really be very scandalized by the covering up and shuffling of pervert priests by bishops. It's what every family does, after all, isn't it? Hide their "dirty laundry"? Which does make you wonder about just what kind of "family" our Church is, with this attitude being exhibited by top Vatican officials.
The Church will not gain ground on this issue by accusing the media of conspiracy. The only hope is that for once, the hierarchy will come out with the pure unadulterated truth on this scandal---no matter how ugly, and no matter how high-reaching, which would effectively disarm the so-called "attacks" by the media.
This may be of help too
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0329.htm
I would have to humbly disagree concerning lacitizing abusive priests but I do agree that they need help - maybe remain in the Church - different spot - no collar.
Something like this?
http://www.hprweb.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=213:can-clergy-sex-offenders-be-helped&catid=34:current-issue
Ginger, if your media is reporting all cases of abuse (not just "Catholic" ones), kudos. The New York Times does not report them all--or at least does not report them in glaring headlines on the front page and "above the fold." The NYT could spill a lot of ink merely on the public school teacher cases of abuse, but the teachers' union would balk. So, they don't. Father V. is correct that this particular story falls into the typical pattern of trying to discredit the Church at the time of a major holy season. You need to join the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Read their publications. Then you will have a clearer picture of media bias against the Catholic Church. The Catholic League prints the evidence, so that all fair-minded people can judge what is really happening.
I believe people call for abusive priests to be laicized because they recognize it as one of the highest forms of punishment within the church. In the past, the church has not done a good job of punishing abusive priests, and it's natural for people to want an extreme form of punishment for child abuse.
I can only speak for the Cleveland Diocese, but many policies and procedures have been put into place to prevent cover-ups occurring. My hope is for the Vatican to create a universal policy that deal with reporting to the local authorities as well as reporting to the pastor/bishop. We need to show the world that we are changing and that we are holding people accountable. I do believe the Pope is working to make these policies better.
stop already!!!!!!!!my head is spinning with all these "comments." Father V., i must confess your views doth dissapoint--- first of all--yes, i am a Catholic--a TRADITIONAL one to boot---and i am amazed at these myopic viewpoints---now to THE issue--an alleged CRIME has been commited--do we all agree so far---now if this were your neighbor and you knew a suspected crime was being commited to none other than an innocent CHILD--would your solution be to move the suspected wrong doer to another street, village, state, etc.---i don't think so--no, i do believe you would call the POLICE!!!!hello folks--this is an alleged crime which is attatched to an alleged criminal---next an investigation would ensue--charges would be filed--or not---if charged a trial would ensue--the suspect would be found guilty or not guilty--if guilty--the sentencing would occur---ETC--now, if the alleged perpetrator is a holy priest--it is clear he needs the church more than ever---he should never be abandoned---but as you see in my veiw the Church is not attempting to HANDLE the PROBLEM--sorry folks, this is no a PROBLEM but an alleged CRIME--when the Church decides it can handle alleged crimes internally--it gives the onlooking world the idea that Holy Mother Church comes before the safty of innocent Children and or other victims--n.
"I flipped through a couple of pages, opened it up to the picture of the pope and slid it over to him. “Have you ever noticed,” I asked him, “How these revelations always seem to correspond with Holy Week? Year after year there is some huge revelatory expose that the papers scream what will finally put an end to the Church, or the faith, or the pope. Every single year.”
Wherein He Rails Against The Corruptions Of The Roman Court
Rain fire from Heaven down upon thy head,
Thou breaker of Christ, thou Babylonian whore,
Grown fat and rich with making many poor,
Gloating in vice, despising simple bread!
Thou nest of treason where the soul is fed
Of malice and of wormy mischief more
Than pen or tongue may tell, thy stock and store
Is wine and huge sloth on a harlot's bed!
Graybeards and strumpets in thy chambers dance;
There staggers Belzebub, thy loathsome lord,
Amid foul mirrors apeing his advance.
Once wert unsilked, unsheltered and abhorred,
Stripped rather, stretched on straw, that now so plod
In filth, it stinks before the face of God!
Francis Petrarch (1304-1374 AD)
"Then after Holy Week and the brouhaha died down it suddenly died on the twelfth page of section X in a tiny article under an ad for flatulence prevention that the tomb was a fraud."
The words and imagery you chose above has shown your true colors. To trivialize the rape and torture of children under the care of members of your own clergy as something that will, no doubt, die down under an ad for flatulence prevention betrays a vast ignorance. Every single priest in the world should be stumbling to bow their heads in shame in a collective bid of forgiveness. Instead, voices from the Vatican claim "THEY" are the victims of a concerted attack from the media on par with the "collective violence suffered by the Jews"... The corruption within your church has been spreading its rank odor for centuries. The fraud is in the fact of who is defending the filth.
look, this shouldn't even be about the pope! Have you forgotten the children? All of those children who were raped by their priests, they, who's lives have been ruined, they are the ones we need to bring to light.
And for Pope Benedict's personal preacher to say that the "abuse" the Pope (!) has seen from "secular media" can be equated to the collective violence against the Jews. This is the sickest thing I've ever heard! How can he say that?! What, does Papal Infallibility include child rape?
Stop defending the clergy, for the sake of the children most affected by these horrible deeds.
Lion and Atom,
Dear friends,
Might I suggest that your anger and your righteous indigination have colored your reading of this post? The post was not suggesting that there should be any kind of cover up. In fact, quite the opposite. Further I have never, ever excused the abuse of children in any form whatsoever. What I abhor is making it Okay to attack scape goats in order to feed people's anger and the effort of other's to manipulate that otherwise righteous anger to achieve their own political ends. To that end Atom - I agree with you, it shouldn't be about the pope. Thank you. While we chase around this false and manipulated story we waste time (as your have already done) instead of addressing the true crimes and sins of this scandal.
Yes - punish those guilty to the fullest extent of the law both ecclesial and legal. Let us likewise condemn those who let free their anger to unjustly attack those not guilty. They have become what they say they hate - that is attacking others who are not in possition to defend themselves.
Because of your great compassion for the victims in this matter I must beleive that you would also have compassion for those also unjustly vilified.
I would suggest that you use that anger - the quest for justice that you have constructively. First let us clean our house and rid ourselves of this sickness where it truly exists. And then instead of eating ourselves alive let us then turn outward to where this abuse is going on unfettered and unchecked because of unscrupulous people who keep drawing our attention away from it by manipulating your anger to achieve another agenda.
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