{"id":5425,"date":"2006-10-05T13:22:51","date_gmt":"2006-10-05T13:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/all-you-need-to-say.html"},"modified":"2006-10-05T13:22:51","modified_gmt":"2006-10-05T13:22:51","slug":"all-you-need-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/all-you-need-to-say.html","title":{"rendered":"All you need to say"},"content":{"rendered":"

An excellent, concise column from the Irish Exaxminer on the BBC\/Panorama special:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Many canon law experts agree that this document did not prevent bishops from reporting abuse cases to the secular authorities. In so far as they did fail to inform the police of such crimes, the bishops were wrong, but their error stems from misplaced clericalism, not Church policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, rather than fostering cover-ups, the document itself mandates that anyone aware of such allegations of solicitation must report them to the relevant bishop or face excommunication themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger reserved exclusive Church jurisdiction over such cases to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, primarily with the aim of speeding up the defrocking of priests. Five priests have already been dismissed in the Ferns diocese alone as a result of this new procedure.<\/span><\/p>\n

snip<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

If Colm O\u2019Gorman were correct that this Pope is responsible for a massive cover-up of child abuse cases, he has a strange way of showing it in practice. On two separate occasions within the first 13 months of his papacy he imposed strict penalties on famous founders of religious orders accused of abuse. The first was Fr Gino Burresi, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Largely unknown in Ireland. He was immensely popular in Italy and recruited 150 men to his order in little more than a decade. But neither his apparent success nor his advanced age of 73 made him immune to sanction by Pope Benedict. Following an investigation into allegations of abuse, the Pope banned him practising as a priest in any context whatsoever. For a priest, especially the founder of an order, this is a stunning Church penalty.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same happened a year later in the case of 86-year-old Mexican Fr Marcial Maciel , the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. Hugely influential in the Church, his order was one of the fastest growing worldwide and has an associated lay group with tens of thousands of members. As a cardinal, Ratzinger initiated an investigation into accusations against Maciel; as Pope he imposed a ban on public practice as a priest and a requirement to live a life of penance. Many Catholics believe Fr Maciel to be innocent, and indeed he may be \u2013 there was no Church trial or judgement of his guilt or otherwise because of his advanced age and poor health.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Pope Benedict still took a consistently hard line even when there was only a question mark of suspicion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both of these cases were made public by way of official Vatican pronouncements and not by leaks or investigative journalists. Does tackling two cases of high-profile founders of religious orders and imposing one of the most serious penalties possible look like a cover-up?<\/span><\/p>\n

How objective can O\u2019Gorman and Panorama really be given that they never even mentioned either case? Were they aware of these cases? If not, their investigative journalism is not up to much. If they were aware, why did they leave them out? Surely it couldn\u2019t be because it would spoil a one-sided character assassination of Pope Benedict?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

h\/t Jimmy Mac<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excellent, concise column from the Irish Exaxminer on the BBC\/Panorama special: Many canon law experts agree that this document did not prevent bishops from reporting abuse cases to the secular authorities. In so far as they did fail to inform the police of such crimes, the bishops were wrong, but their error stems from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAll you need to say - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/10\/all-you-need-to-say.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All you need to say - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An excellent, concise column from the Irish Exaxminer on the BBC\/Panorama special: Many canon law experts agree that this document did not prevent bishops from reporting abuse cases to the secular authorities. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}