{"id":849,"date":"2010-04-04T20:21:30","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T01:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=849"},"modified":"2010-12-19T22:02:49","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T03:02:49","slug":"the-church-in-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/?p=849","title":{"rendered":"The Church in Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Previous I Read The News Today Entry<\/a> | Next I Read The News Today Entry<\/a><\/p>\n

The Church in Darkness<\/h2>\n

I write these words sitting at the back of my church at Easter Vigil.\u00a0 As we do each year, we have processed into the dark building, candles in hand, and lit them, spreading the light suddenly, dramatically, and we hope, emblematically.\u00a0 Yet this year my heart is not in it.\u00a0 This year I cannot recognize in the brightened room the sign of my faith.\u00a0 Rather, I feel like Isaiah when he observed<\/a> that clouds cover the earth, and darkness the peoples.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am still reeling from the report<\/a> that the Pope\u2019s personal preacher has devoted part of his Good Friday sermon to comparing the Pope and the church, under pressure to account for their complicity in the abuse of who knows how many children committed to its care over the years, to the Jews in the Holocaust.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0The comparison is far, far worse than mindless.\u00a0 It is willfully blind.\u00a0 It casts the Pope and the hierarchy in the role of victims, and those seeking accountability in the role of persecutors.\u00a0 This precisely reverses the reality.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To be sure, there can be times when demands for accountability can be a form of persecution.\u00a0 In American politics, we have seen phony outrage and claims that someone has to account for something raised to an art form.\u00a0 We have seen it so often that we know very well what the manufactured version looks like.\u00a0 What is happening in the Church is nothing of the sort.<\/p>\n

Instead, for the longest time, priests have been engaging in rape and abuse.\u00a0 Not all of them, certainly not anything like the majority of them.\u00a0 But lots of them.\u00a0 And the Church has systematically covered up for them.\u00a0 I blogged last time about two cases of coverup in which the Pope was involved<\/a>.\u00a0 Since then we have learned of another two cases in Arizona<\/a>. \u00a0One involved Rev. Michael Teta, of whose case then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger took control in 1992 \u2013 and continued to sit on the case until 2004, while Rev. Teta remained on the church payroll and worked with young children outside the church.\u00a0 The other involved a Msgr. Robert Trupia, whose case stretched out over twelve years while his superior bishops continued to sound the alarm and ask for him to be removed from contact with children. Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge of the case for at least the last year and a half, from February 2003 to August 2004, when Trupia was finally laicized.<\/p>\n

It is not victimizing Benedict to insist that he finally tell, in full detail, what happened.\u00a0 Rather, every day that passes without Benedict and the others involved confessing their roles perpetuates the victimization.\u00a0 The victimization of the true victims, that is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am fortunate enough personally never to have been sexually abused by my religious preceptors.\u00a0 But I have met several who were.\u00a0 And the one thing which is common to all of them is that they crave acknowledgment \u2013 maybe not public identification but acknowledgment.\u00a0 It would do them tremendous good to have their tormentors unmasked, with their deeds named.\u00a0 Some wish the abuser would face them personally and acknowledge his crimes; others would never willingly have anything to do with abuser ever again.\u00a0 Some need financial aid for counseling or compensation for more serious emotional injury.\u00a0 But common to all of them is the desire to have the truth known, in some way.<\/p>\n

The canonical trial process the Church used to address charges of priestly sexual abuse was designed, as far as humanly possible, to frustrate that desire for public acknowledgment of the truth.\u00a0 As we have learned from a secret 1962 protocol<\/a> in force until 2001<\/a>, the canonical trials that occurred were themselves to be carried on in secret.\u00a0 All church personnel who participated were required to maintain secrecy on penalty of excommunication. \u00a0Complaining witnesses too were sworn to secrecy about the proceeding.\u00a0 The 2001 substitute protocol is not explicit about secrecy enjoined upon accusers, but includes the piquant phrase: \u201cCases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 And, as if one could not have guessed, Ratzinger\u2019s signature is at the bottom of the 2001 document.<\/p>\n

What Benedict and his hierarchy have done, then, is not merely delaying or frustrating accountability; they are prolonging the victimization.\u00a0 And for the Pope\u2019s personal preacher to compare demands for accountability, the only means of ameliorating the victimization which goes on right to this day, with genocide, is to equate opposites.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is grotesque for perpetrators to put themselves on the same moral plane as victims of any sort, let alone victims of one of the greatest wrongs ever committed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If anything, it is even more grotesque for them to put the media, where the calls for accountability thrive and the secrets are revealed despite a Church determined to withhold them, on the same moral plane as mass-murdering Nazis.\u00a0 As James Madison recognized two centuries ago<\/a>, and as modern life teaches again and again, the press\u2019s proper role is to provide the information the public needs to make wise decisions.<\/p>\n

In gradually ferreting out detail by detail, and in assembling the mosaic of this international pattern of abuse of children and young people, the press is only doing the work that the Church itself should have been doing all these years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Good Friday this year, many of the faithful around the world heard the account of the Passion according to St. John.\u00a0 They heard Jesus\u2019 words to Pilate: \u201cFor this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.\u201d\u00a0 John 18:37<\/a>.\u00a0 By withholding the truth in service to Heaven only knows what supposedly higher priority, Benedict and the hierarchy have therefore placed themselves not merely on the wrong side of history, but very likely on the wrong side of the Master Himself.\u00a0 Those who put Him to death \u2013 they too were all about a coverup, let us recall.<\/p>\n

It is that wrong side of history that has me worried most at the moment, though.\u00a0 It is all very well to denounce how the hierarchy has handled things, another to see how they could be replaced.\u00a0 Yet if they are allowed to continue their refusals to come clean, and to continue as well simply holding office, the anger will continue to grow.\u00a0 It seems unlikely to me to stop growing.<\/p>\n

Something explosive is therefore gathering force.\u00a0 I do not know what the blast will look like when it happens.\u00a0 Isaiah says that the darkness covering the peoples is strictly a temporary thing.\u00a0 As I sit in the darkened church tonight, I hope he was right.\u00a0 But I am afraid of explosions.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) Jack L. B. Gohn<\/p>\n

Previous I Read The News Today Entry<\/a> | Next I Read The News Today Entry<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is grotesque for perpetrators to put themselves on the same moral plane as victims of any sort, let alone victims of one of the greatest wrongs ever committed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791],"tags":[903,913,918,922,919,923,283,914,916,920,924,915,921,917],"class_list":["post-849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-i-read-the-news-today","tag-benedict-xvi","tag-child-abuse","tag-crimen-solicitationis","tag-good-friday","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-isaiah","tag-james-madison","tag-michael-teta","tag-msgr-robert-trupia","tag-nazis","tag-pontius-pilate","tag-rev-michael-teta","tag-rev-raniero-cantalamessa","tag-robert-trupia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebigpictureandthecloseup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}