The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.
The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.
The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.
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But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.
Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.
The information in the article sickens me, but I'm running out of words on the pope's role in the cover-up of child abuse. What's next? What sort of revelations will it take before the Vatican stops circling the wagons and hunkering down?
I'd add that there's something very wrong with the criminal laws when a person who ties up and molests young children can plead guilty to a misdemeanor and get off with no jail time and only three years probation.
H/T to Box Turtle Bulletin for the link to the article. Jim Burroway has more commentary there.
Yes, I heard this report on NPR this afternoon.
ReplyDeleteI was sickened. Of course, I was sickened when Ratzinger was elected in the first place.
Ellie, even without the cover-up of child abuse, the pope had a long history of being bad news for the RCC. He wasn't called The Enforcer for nothing. Too bad he didn't discipline the abusers, instead of those who lived the radical Gospel and served the poor and the finest minds in the church. My heart sank with a thud when I heard the news of Ratzinger's election.
ReplyDeleteAnd now the stream of sickening revelations! The institution always came before the people Ratzinger was called to serve, even the little ones.
My heart, too, Mimi. I knew he was the Grand Inquisitor at the time.
ReplyDeleteHere are my posts about him on my political blog. (Start at the bottom):
Concerning Ratzinger
Yup, Smoking Gun.
ReplyDelete[...and this time, it's personal. My brother was born in Oakland. I was born in Walnut Creek---where the ex-priest sex offender now lives.]
It just BOGGLES MY FREAKING MIND, that Ratzinger could have been concerned about the "young age" . . . of the abusive PRIEST! And not the children he was molesting!
Finally: as a priest, he abused boys. In 2004, defrocked Kiesle was convicted of (and FINALLY sent off to prison for) molesting a girl. Pedophilia ain't about sexual orientation. It's a crime of POWER, and merely what kind of child (the power-less) one has access to.
RATZINGER RESIGN!!! >:-0
wv, "gonguff": we've had enuff "guff", Ratzinger. Be "gon"!
All to easy to forget that Ratzinger was widely recognized and disliked as the Vatican's rigid, doctrinaire conservative enforcer during the quarter century he headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office/Inquisition). Nothing cuddly about the man.
ReplyDeleteThe cardinals knowingly elected a one-time member of the Hitler Youth and they've got what they paid for. What goes around .....
The front page of this weeks Der Spiegel (one million copies) which I read in Frankfurt airport says it all: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I believe that Ratzinger will have to go, but John Paul II had 20 years to appoint conservative cardinals, so I don't know how much the church would change.
ReplyDeleteI cannot imagine this man resigning on his own. We've already seen how those in power around him are attacking everyone in sight instead of dealing with the problem at hand, which alienates more of their followers every day.
ReplyDeleteThough it's interesting that, when it comes to their own power, they no longer seem to have concern for the "good of the universal church."
No way will Ratzinger resign. (Has any Pope ever resigned? Would it not be unprecedented?)
ReplyDeleteThere is an interesting article in the Guardian today by a woman from the Austrian catholic church saying that one of the reasons the RCC did not act more decisively on this issue earlier is because the church authorities naively believed that therapy would "cure" these priests - is that true?...
For health reasons? Perhaps, Ratzinger will not go.
ReplyDeleteCathy, after the second or third repeat offense, you'd think that the powers might have a clue that "cures" don't come easily. In the RCC's own terms, their's was vincible ignorance - "a moral or doctrinal matter that could have been removed by diligence reasonable to the circumstances."
Not unprecendented Cathy, but almost 600 years since it last occured. There were then and are people NOW who believe that there are 'cures'. They were then and are now, complete bollocks. This does not mean that offenders cannot be rehabilitated safely into communities and not re-offend. The approach taken in the letter is not surprising in anyway, however much revulsion we care to harbour against the offence itself. It is in the nature of organisations to protect themselves.
ReplyDeleteIt is in the nature of organisations to protect themselves.
ReplyDeleteTrue, TheMe, but at some point, for the sake of its own survival, the organization will need to change direction or fall apart.
Cathy, after the second or third repeat offense, you'd think that the powers might have a clue that "cures" don't come easily. In the RCC's own terms, their's was vincible ignorance - "a moral or doctrinal matter that could have been removed by diligence reasonable to the circumstances."
ReplyDeleteOh totally, but in the 20th century psychology as a profession did appropriate a largeish portion of the cultural authority that the church possessed, and I can envisage a situation where if the church authorities sought advice on these questions from psychologists they would have been reassured with utter conviction that the "talking cure" could solve the problem.
I'm not saying that makes it any more excusable - just that the guilt perhaps extends to others beyond the church walls, as it were.
The article does quote Alfred Kinsey saying sex with children does no one any harm. If that was his belief, and it was influential, that is not good.
Not unprecendented Cathy, but almost 600 years since it last occured. There were then and are people NOW who believe that there are 'cures'. They were then and are now, complete bollocks.
ReplyDeleteDidn't know a previous Pope had resigned - you learn something new every day.
Agree with everything else you have said,, Themethatisme. In fact the influence of psychologists has waned in recent years, but the community of psychologists goes on believing in its own importance, a bit like the church.
I'm not saying "the talking cure" is itself a bad thing or unhelpful. It helped me and I can think of a lot of people I know who would also be helped by it. But it doesn't have quite the breadth of application that psychologists themselves sometimes suggest.
Cathy, it was another time, but when I first began to hear whispers of child abuse by priests, I was still a loyal Roman Catholic, yet I was horrified, and thought first of the damage that had been done to the children, rather than the damage to the institution. When I learned of the cover-up, which had been the operative policy for decades, I was more horrified.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think compassion for the children would have kicked in at some point, even amongst the bishops, but sadly most of them saw protecting the institution as their first responsibility.
When History looks back on this, I think they will see "it was the Sixties that did it" . . . but not in the way that the Popoids claim NOW.
ReplyDeleteI don't think that priests have molested children anymore SINCE Vat2 than before, but that "the Spirit of Vat2" produced two phenomena:
1) An ethos of "Talking About It": the people were more likely to REPORT abuse and
2) The Great Disappointment: that "the Spirit of Vat2" didn't live up to the hype. After Humanae Vitae (which good priests knew "wouldn't preach" vis-a-vis birth control and 2) Sacerdotis Ordinarialis [forgive my spelling!] which closed off marriage for priests (as well as the OOW) . . . good priests, straight AND gay began leaving in DROVES. This made the Vatican desperate to HOLD ONTO---at ANY cost---the priests they had left (even if they were NOTORIOUS abusers!).
Ergo . . . where we are today. OCICBW.
You'd think compassion for the children would have kicked in at some point, even amongst the bishops, but sadly most of them saw protecting the institution as their first responsibility.
ReplyDeleteTotally, and it seems that compassion still hasn't kicked in among many. I'm not disagreeing, I'm just wondering to what degree naivety and a trust in bad advice, rather than calculating self-interest, led to the way the situation was mishandled. But obviously that doesn't make a jot of difference to the effect on the victims. (Also, naivety and self-interest can exist together. People looking for a way of escape from dealing with a difficult problem will often seize on anything that seems to offer that, without asking too many questions.)
An ethos of "Talking About It": the people were more likely to REPORT abuse
ReplyDeleteJCF's points are interesting. People (not just Catholics) did begin talking more openly about sex in the sixties. Also, I could be wrong here, but I wonder if a lack of tolerance for abuse on all levels began to make itself felt - not just against children, but also women - after all, before that, and before divorce started to become more acceptable, and before Seventies feminism probably, if a woman married an abusive man she was more or less expected to just put up with him, wasn't she? The harm women suffered in abusive relationships was also not generally acknowledged or dealt with. (And still isn't, in some ways.)
Just more proof that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely! As long as the people in the pews continue to put $$ in the collection plate this abuse will continue. Cut them off at the wallet and watch how quickly things change.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to divorce, my mother stayed with my verbally abusive, alcoholic father, who, more often than not, did not have a job, to her detriment and that of my two sisters and me, partly because divorce was a disgrace.
ReplyDeleteWhiteycat, I could not write a check to my church after I heard about the cover-up in my diocese, and I realized that I had to go.
I didn't read this thread last night so missed your last post, Mimi. That's the exact sort of thing I was meaning, though - abuse from a husband was not seen as abuse then, as we think of it now - it was seen almost as a right. I also wonder how much abusive priests thought that because the office of priest is/was a powerful one, they have/had a right. I'm not saying the two kinds of abuse are similar in everything, but the assumption of privilege is part of it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, sounds really rough for you - I'm sorry to hear your home life when you were a wee thing was so difficult - I hope you and your sisters (and your mother) survived OK in the long run.
The middle sister and I survived OK, if you think of OK as a relative term. We often joked that we were surprised that we were even able to fake sanity, relatively speaking. My youngest sister had a wretched life, a replay of our lives as we grew up, only worse. She married an alcoholic, and she and her three children went through hell, and she didn't leave either.
ReplyDeleteI am the eldest, but both my sisters have passed on.
Very sad stuff.
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say - one of the worst things about difficult childhoods is that people quite often don't let go of them and repeat the whole experience over again as an adult. Even if they don't, and manage to get past it, it's incredibly difficult and a lot of very hard work over a long time to leave it behind.
You seem eminently sane to me, Mimi.