{"id":27,"date":"2010-07-06T09:07:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T09:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/the-pope-and-the-times.html"},"modified":"2010-07-06T09:07:30","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T09:07:30","slug":"the-pope-and-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/the-pope-and-the-times.html","title":{"rendered":"The Pope and the Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Notwithstanding Michael Sean Winters at
\nNCR<\/a>, R.R. Reno at
\nFirst Thoughts<\/a>, Rod Dreher at
\nBeliefnet<\/a>, and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at GetReligion<\/a>, the big
\ntakeout<\/a> by Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger in last
\nFriday’s NYT is no hatchet job. It is, by my lights, a piece of
\nbalanced, well contextualized reporting that added some essential
\ninsider commentary and a couple of very important evidentiary pieces to
\nthe jigsaw puzzle being put together to show how the Vatican has handled
\nthe sexual abuse scandals of the past quarter-century.<\/p>\n

Let’s
\nbegin by stipulating that with the scandals having come home to roost in
\nRome, it is essential journalistic business to get the best possible
\nfix on the record of Pope Benedict, going back to the days when as Joseph
\nRatzinger he was archbishop of Munich and, especially, Prefect of the
\nCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). Here’s what the
\ncurrent archbishop of Adelaide, Australia, Philip Edward Wilson, had to
\nsay to Goodstein and Halbfinger about how the Vatican dealt with sexual
\nabuse issues on Ratzinger’s watch: “There was confusion everywhere.”
<\/a><\/p>\n


\nThe
\ncore question raised by the article is posed by Geoffrey Robinson, a
\nretired auxiliary bishop from Sydney:<\/p>\n

“Why did the
\nVatican end up so far behind the bishops out on the front
\nline, who with all their faults, did change — they did develop,” he
\nsaid. “Why was the Vatican so many years behind?”\t\t<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The
\nanswer, according to the Times<\/i>:<\/p>\n

Supporters say
\nthat Cardinal Ratzinger would have preferred to take
\nsteps earlier to stanch the damage in certain cases.\t\t<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

\nBut the future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of
\nnonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright
\nobstruction. More than any top Vatican official other than John Paul, it
\nwas Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the
\n1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after
\ncountry, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume
\nhis own papacy.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do the critics claim otherwise? No
\nthey don’t. The most they can manage is to suggest that Ratzinger was
\nfaced with a difficult situation, that he was the best of a bad lot, and
\nthat given John Paul II’s resistance, he did the best he could. Maybe
\nso, but the most detailed example of his handling of a case we
\nhave–that of the child-abusing Oakland priest Stephen Kiesle–indicates
\notherwise. That’s my
\nassessment<\/a> based on a close reading of documents from the case
\nfile. The Times <\/i>article does not discuss, but does allude to,
\nRatzinger’s performance in the Kiesle case. The evidence is that the
\ncase was moving along with all deliberate speed until Ratzinger took
\ncharge of the CDF. Then it slowed to a crawl. <\/p>\n

Much of the
\nconfusion over the handling of sexual abuse cases in the Vatican during
\nthe 1980s and 1990s resulted from uncertainty throughout the hierarchy
\nover which office had responsibility, what the extent of that
\nresponsibility was, and what to do about the 5-year statute of
\nlimitations enunciated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. The Times<\/i>‘
\nrevelation that the supposedly new regime put in place by Ratzinger in
\n2001 was in fact little more than a reassertion of norms set forth in a
\ndocument quietly promulgated in 1922 and reiterated in 1962 is highly
\nsignificant. It is now evident that the CDF all along had responsibility
\nfor all sexual abuse cases and that there was no statute of
\nlimitations.<\/p>\n

Were Ratzinger and his staff aware of this? And if
\nthey were, why didn’t they so inform the bishops, some of whom were
\ndesperately looking to the Vatican to take charge of the situation, and
\nto extend what they thought was a woefully short statute of limitations?
\nOver on dotCommonweal, canon lawyer Nicholas P. Cafardi (emeritus dean
\nof the Duquesne Law School) expands on what he told the Times<\/i>,
\nkicking off a fascinating discussion<\/a> of
\nhow best to understand the failure of the CDF to take the situation in
\nhand. Cafardi is prepared to cut Ratzinger some slack in this regard. As
\na theologian rather than a canon lawyer, the cardinal was dependent on
\nothers to tell him what was what. Archbishop Wilson told the Times <\/i>that
\nhe had raised the issue of the 1922 document with the CDF in late
\n1990s. Did the staff he talked to keep their boss in the dark until
\nWilson brought up the matter at a hitherto unreported meeting of bishops
\nfrom English-speaking countries in 2000?  <\/p>\n

The critics beat up
\nthe Times <\/i>for pointing out that, under Ratzinger, the CDF was
\ndevoting itself to such matters as cracking down on liberation
\ntheologians, sorting out marriage annulments, and determining the
\nlegitimacy of apparitions of the the Virgin Mary. This, they say, is
\nunwarranted editorializing. But surely it’s important to know what else
\nthe CDF had on its plate, and what Ratzinger’s priorities were. Isn’t
\nthis the kind of context the lack of which media criticism is always
\nlamenting?  <\/p>\n

Would it have made a difference if the CDF had gotten its act together,
\nas Goodstein and Halbfinger allege? The answer is yes. Sure, much of the
\nactual abuse uncovered over the past couple of decades had already
\ntaken place by the time Ratzinger took over the CDF. But much of the
\ncovering up by bishops had not. Had the Vatican clearly and publicly
\nissued the norms that were already in place<\/i>, and enunciated new
\nones mandating open dealing and a reporting of charges to the civil
\nauthorities, and been willing to discipline bishops who did the covering
\nup, the crisis of the past decade would have been substantially
\nmitigated.  <\/p>\n

Thanks in no small measure to the investigative
\nefforts of the Times<\/i> in recent months, a portrait is emerging of
\nPope Benedict as someone who (in contrast to others in the Vatican)
\ngrasped the seriousness of child sexual abuse and was prepared to bring
\nthe hammer down on abusers, up to and including the monstrous Marcial
\nMaciel Degollado. But from his days running the CDF to his papacy, he
\nhas not been willing to challenge the curial system and its determined
\ncommitment to circling the wagons. Indeed, when push comes to shove, and
\nhe perceives that it is threatened, his reaction is to jump into the
\narms of the likes of Cardinal Sodano, who epitomizes all that is wrong
\nwith that system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notwithstanding Michael Sean Winters at NCR, R.R. Reno at First Thoughts, Rod Dreher at Beliefnet, and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at GetReligion, the big takeout by Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger in last Friday’s NYT is no hatchet job. It is, by my lights, a piece of balanced, well contextualized reporting that added some essential…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Pope and the Times - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/the-pope-and-the-times.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Pope and the Times - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Notwithstanding Michael Sean Winters at NCR, R.R. Reno at First Thoughts, Rod Dreher at Beliefnet, and Mollie Ziegler Hemingway at GetReligion, the big takeout by Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger in last Friday’s NYT is no hatchet job. It is, by my lights, a piece of balanced, well contextualized reporting that added some essential…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/the-pope-and-the-times.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-07-06T09:07:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Pope and the Times - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","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\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/07\/the-pope-and-the-times.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Pope and the Times - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Notwithstanding Michael Sean Winters at NCR, R.R. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}