{"id":73,"date":"2010-09-24T08:32:01","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T08:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/09\/what-the-pope-knew-cnns-documentary-on-the-catholic-church-child-sex-abuse-scandal-airs-this-weekend.html"},"modified":"2010-09-24T08:32:01","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T08:32:01","slug":"what-the-pope-knew-cnns-documentary-on-the-catholic-church-child-sex-abuse-scandal-airs-this-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/09\/what-the-pope-knew-cnns-documentary-on-the-catholic-church-child-sex-abuse-scandal-airs-this-weekend.html","title":{"rendered":"“What the Pope Knew,” CNN’s documentary on the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal airs this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow (Saturday\/Sept. 25 @ 8:00 PM ET) CNN will air an investigative documentary on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal called What the Pope Knew. <\/i>The
\nhour-long report is anchored by Gary Tuchman.  This is the conclusion
\nof my three-part interview with Mr. Tuchman about what he found. <\/p>\n

JWK:<\/b> How would you compare Pope Benedict XVI with his predecessor?<\/p>\n

TUCHMAN:  <\/b>They’re
\ncertainly very different. In the history of the Roman Catholic Church
\nthere’s been no one like John Paul – who traveled as much as he did. I
\nmean even many non-Catholics considered him like a grandpa. <\/p>\n

Pope
\nBenedict isn’t that kind of folksy guy. He was a lot older when he took
\nover — but he’s doing more for the victims of child molestation than
\nany pope before him and there’s been a lot of popes before him. <\/p>\n

JWK:<\/b> But Church sex abuse scandals weren’t even on the radar before Pope John Paul II.<\/p>\n

TUCHMAN:<\/b> 
\nOnly Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have ever dealt with this in any
\npublic fashion. You can be assured that molestation with any
\ninstitution — or families in this country — there’s nothing new about
\nit.<\/p>\n

We’re just grateful — we should all be grateful — that
\nthis is brought to our attention. For people to think — and this is
\nwhat many people thought even just a few years ago — that this is only
\nunique to the American priesthood are only kidding themselves.<\/p>\n

The
\nproblem is we’re gonna see in the decades to come — in countries where
\nthe press is closed and where you’re not able to have free reporting —
\nit will eventually come out that this is not just in the United States.
\nIt’s not just in Germany. It’s not just in Belgium. And it’s not just
\nthe Catholic Church. <\/p>\n

That’s what The Kite Runner<\/i><\/a>
\nis about in Afghanistan. It’s a huge problem in Afghanistan, child
\nmolestation. They have so many other problems they can’t deal with that
\nright now. Just like here, the Afghan people are good people but
\nthere’s some bad people there. It’s a problem everywhere. To try and
\n(portray it) as just Americans trying to grub money is very unfair.   <\/p>\n

JWK:<\/b>
\nIt seems to me that the fact that decades worth of cases all popped in
\na short period of time made everything worse. For one thing, if the
\ncases were dealt with as they came along you wouldn’t have had so many
\nrepeat offenders.  <\/p>\n

TUCHMAN:<\/b> There’s no question about it. Isn’t that always the problem with anything? You know we hesitate to use the word cover-up <\/i>particularly
\nwith regard to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or
\nCardinal Ratzinger — because that’s a strong allegation.  We don’t
\nknow if he covered it up. It’s a possibility. We don’t know if he tried
\njust to ignore it or thought that prayer was the answer — and the sole
\nanswer. We don’t know. We do know it was a mistake — and even the
\nVatican acknowledges that today.<\/p>\n

JWK: <\/b>What would you like viewers to take away from this documentary?<\/p>\n

TUCHMAN:<\/b>  What I want viewers to know is that this is not an indictment of the Church — the institution, <\/b>the great people within it, the great people who go to church. <\/b>But
\nthis is an indictment of molesters who know they can get away with
\nmolesting because…they were comforted in the fact that their bosses
\nwouldn’t report them. And that is so sad. <\/p>\n

And we hope that
\nthrough awareness and through documentaries like this that that culture
\nchanges — not just in the Church but elsewhere too.

Tomorrow: My review of What the Pope Knew <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tomorrow (Saturday\/Sept. 25 @ 8:00 PM ET) CNN will air an investigative documentary on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal called What the Pope Knew. The hour-long report is anchored by Gary Tuchman.  This is the conclusion of my three-part interview with Mr. Tuchman about what he found. 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Kennedy\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"What the Pope Knew,\" CNN's documentary on the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal airs this weekend - Catholics Media and Culture","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/2010\/09\/what-the-pope-knew-cnns-documentary-on-the-catholic-church-child-sex-abuse-scandal-airs-this-weekend.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"What the Pope Knew,\" CNN's documentary on the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal airs this weekend - Catholics Media and Culture","og_description":"Tomorrow (Saturday\/Sept. 25 @ 8:00 PM ET) CNN will air an investigative documentary on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal called What the Pope Knew. 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Kennedy","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/d80\/d801bc09698c0995d9ae402b4b55ab61x96.jpg","caption":"John W. Kennedy"},"description":"John W. Kennedy is the founder and Dir. of Development of The Creative Universe Entertainment\u2122, a media consultation and development company focusing on the creation, development and support of high-quality mainstream entertainment that upholds positive timeless values, including trust in God. Current projects include \"Bryant Park\" (an uplifting romantic-comedy) and \"Photo Finish\" (an award-winning sci-fi TV pilot). He has written over 100 children's novels based on episodes of the Cartoon Network series \"Ben 10\", \"Ben 10: Alien Force\", \"Ben 10: Ultimate Alien\", \"Ben 10: Omniverse\" and \"Generator Rex\" among others. He also writes Beliefnet\u2019s \"Faith, Media & Culture\" blog. Previously, he has produced successful news and talk programming for CNN, Fox News, Pax TV and SiriusXM. Specialties: Script Writing, Movie\/TV Novelizations & Adaptations, TV Content Creation and Development, Creative Consultation, Producing and Booking News and Talk shows. He can be reached for writing, producing and consulting services at 516-640-1182.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/author\/jkennedy"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/catholicsmediaandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}