{"id":7791,"date":"2004-03-05T08:26:19","date_gmt":"2004-03-05T08:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html"},"modified":"2004-03-05T08:26:19","modified_gmt":"2004-03-05T08:26:19","slug":"whats_to_blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s to Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting article from the UK Tablet on the sexual abuse report, <\/a>focusing on the flashpoint of some of our discussions here. Personal or systemic sin? Or both?<\/p>\n

\u201cPIU difettoso, il migliore,\u201d as they say in Rome: \u201cThe worse, the better.\u201d The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia. If so many parish priests were really violating their vow of celibacy with boys, then a stern reinforcement of clerical discipline from above was all the more necessary. Soon, however, as public outrage became strident, the Holy See backed off, in its usual stately fashion. The Pope suggested that after all only those guilty \u201cas a long-standing practice or with many males\u201d needed be unfrocked; other priests, who had subsequently \u201ccurbed their desires\u201d and \u201catoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance\u201d, might continue in parish ministry. The author of the report responded furiously, for he maintained that the rot ran deep. Not only lecherous clergy but the \u201cdo-nothing superiors of clerics and priests\u201d were \u201cpartners in the guilt of others\u201d by permitting \u201cthe destructive plague\u201d to continue: the Church must be reformed! Rome turned frosty\u2026<\/p>\n

The year was 1050, the report was racily entitled Liber Gomorrhianus<\/em>, its author was Peter Damian, the Pope was Leo IX. <\/p>\n

Which of them was right? Peter and Leo are both saints now, yet Peter and Leo were at loggerheads about what to do with pederastic priests, because they were at loggerheads about what the scandal meant: whether it was merely slackness in discipline, or whether it was the sign of a crisis deep in the soul of the Church. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interesting article from the UK Tablet on the sexual abuse report, focusing on the flashpoint of some of our discussions here. Personal or systemic sin? Or both? \u201cPIU difettoso, il migliore,\u201d as they say in Rome: \u201cThe worse, the better.\u201d The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia.…<\/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-7791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's to Blame? - 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\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What's to Blame? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Interesting article from the UK Tablet on the sexual abuse report, focusing on the flashpoint of some of our discussions here. Personal or systemic sin? Or both? \u201cPIU difettoso, il migliore,\u201d as they say in Rome: \u201cThe worse, the better.\u201d The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia.…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-05T08:26:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What's to Blame? - Via Media","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\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What's to Blame? - Via Media","og_description":"Interesting article from the UK Tablet on the sexual abuse report, focusing on the flashpoint of some of our discussions here. Personal or systemic sin? Or both? \u201cPIU difettoso, il migliore,\u201d as they say in Rome: \u201cThe worse, the better.\u201d The very awfulness of the report made it, at first, welcome reading within the Curia.…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-03-05T08:26:19+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html","name":"What's to Blame? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-03-05T08:26:19+00:00","dateModified":"2004-03-05T08:26:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/whats_to_blame.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"What’s to Blame?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. 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\/7791","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=7791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}