Nihil Obstat

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s Essay on the Sex Abuse

On April 10, 2019 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI released an essay, The Church and the Scandal of Sex Abuse. It was published in an obscure Bavarian priests’ newsletter.  Almost immediately ultra-conservative North American Catholic news outlets published an English translation.  Benedict said he began drafting the essay shortly after Pope Francis announced that the world’s bishops’ conferences would meet in Rome in February 2019 to discuss the sex abuse crisis, and how to protect minors and vulnerable adults.

“Since I myself had served in a position of responsibility as shepherd of the Church at the time of the public outbreak of the crisis, and during the run-up to it,” Benedict writes, “I had to ask myself – even though as emeritus, I am no longer directly responsible – what could I contribute to a new beginning.”

Benedict’s 6,000-word essay did not address many key questions:  How much did he know and refuse to say about how these issues were handled in his pontificate and that of Pope John Paul II? Why didn’t he do more about clerical sex abuse and its cover up in his three decades as a high official in the Vatican? Why was all his anti-gay rhetoric never applied to Vatican prelates and bishops, only to homosexual men and women in secular society?

A woman who is internationally known for her support of LGBT Catholics, and one who was persecuted for her views by the future Pope Benedict XVI, spotted him on a commercial flight to Rome.  Cardinal Ratzinger had refused every one of her requests to meet.  Seeing an opportunity, she waited until a seat opened up next to him and went over and sat down. He was stuck. She tried every which way to get him to talk to her about the love and faith of gay and lesbian Catholics. She said he was a gentle man, polite and soft-spoken, but not for one minute would he entertain any view other than his own. The supremacy of the Church and its teachings did not leave room for discussion or doubt.

“Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict blames the cultural upheavals and sexual revolution of the 1960s for most of the problems in the Catholic Church.  In his view, the roots of the sexual abuse crisis lie in a steep decline in public “respectability,’ and theologians who challenged the Church’s opposition to birth control.  Together they opened the floodgates to other sexual sins, dissent and the abandonment of God. But, there are some gigantic holes in Benedict’s reasoning. How is secular society to blame for the cover up of clerical sex abuse by bishops, Vatican officials and popes? How did the Legionaries of Christ founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a serial rapist and molester, operate freely and without fear at he highest levels of the Vatican?  He was protected and his victims were ignored and harassed.

Was the Church swept away with all the sexual taboos? No, it was The Pill.  A bitter pill for many Catholics who turned away from the Church after Humane Vitae.  I was a teenager in the 1960s, and I recall talking to my parents at the dinner table about the Pope Paul’s decision.  My parents felt the church had made a terrible mistake.  Humanae Vitae, while a beautiful document, wasn’t based on common sense.  The church lost a lot of credibility with ordinary Catholics and their children.

“The mental collapse was also linked to a propensity for violence. That is why sex films were no longer allowed on airplanes because violence would break out among the small community of passengers.”

What! I never knew they showed dirty movies on airlines! When was that?! Passengers would see the dirty movies and start a riot on the plane! Wow!

“Faith is a journey and a way of life.”

That is a very Vatican II statement on the progress of faith.  I was surprised.

“In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in seminaries. In one seminary in Southern Germany, candidates for priesthood and candidates for the lay ministry of pastoral specialist lived together.  At the common meals, seminarians and pastoral specialists ate together, the married among the laymen sometimes accompanied by their wives and children, and on occasion by their girlfriends. The climate in this seminary could not provide support for preparation to the priestly vocation. The Holy See knew of such problems, without being informed precisely.”

This is a very strange passage. The sentence about “homosexual cliques” is Benedict’s one reference to homosexuality in his essay. If he feels that homosexuality is a major reason behind the sex abuse crisis, why does he only allude to it in one sentence about a few seminaries? If the Vatican felt that “homosexual cliques”–especially ones who were open and active–were changing the character of the seminaries, why didn’t they do anything about it? What is also odd, given Benedict’s fixation on homosexuality as a root cause of everything bad, is why he objected to the presence of women and children having dinner with seminarians? Why was this “climate” (mixed company–married men, women, children, lay ministers) inappropriate for priestly candidates?  As priests, wouldn’t they work and socialize with a variety of people? Or, is it the notion that seminarians should be separated from lay people, to give them the feeling they are special, set apart, above the law and other norms? 

“There were–not only in the United States of America–individual bishops who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole and sought to bring about a kind of new, modern “Catholicity” in their dioceses.  Perhaps it is worth mentioning that in not a few seminaries, students caught reading my books were considered unsuitable for the priesthood. My books were hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk.”

What a whiny, self-pitying remark from a man that spent his career rooting out and punishing free-thinkers and Church critics. Hans Kung, Leonardo Boff, liberation theology, feminist theologians, Elizabeth Johnson, U.S. women’s religious communities, Jeannine Gramick, Bob Nugent, and many others all felt his disapproval and heavy, censoring hand.  They handled themselves with more dignity.

“The question of pedophilia, as I recall, did not become acute until the second half of the 1980s. In the meantime, it had already become a public issue in the U.S., such that the bishops in Rome sought help, since canon law, as it is written in the new (1983) Code, did not seem sufficient for taking the necessary measures.”

Is pedophilia in the Church only an issue when it’s acute? “Acute” in this instance means the number of cases and accusations coming to the attention of the public. Why did the Vatican delay in addressing the inadequacy of canon law to investigate, judge and impose significant ecclesiastical sanctions on credibly accused clergy and religious? Benedict knew about thousands of sexual abuse cases and accusations, but his highest priority was to protect the Church from scandal, not children or teenagers.

One of the most stomach-turning incidents in his tenure is the case of the Wisconsin priest, Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. (See my comments on the case in this post.) Murphy molested around 200 boys during his time at the school.  Nowhere in his essay does Benedict express any shame or regret for his role in the Murphy case, or apologize for official delays or inaction in other cases. His silence is instructive to his frame of mind, priorities and values.

“A balanced canon law that corresponds to the whole of Jesus’ message must therefore not only provide a guarantee for the accused, the respect for whom is a legal good. It must also protect the Faith, which is also an important legal asset.”

This “double guarantee” is missing a provision.  It protects the rights of the accused. Fine. It protects “the Faith” as a “legal asset.” Good. But he never mentions justice or mercy for the victims and bereaved–certainly an integral part of Jesus’ message.  It appears this part is missing in the canon law Benedict cites.  In John’s Gospel Jesus protected a woman accused of adultery by suggesting a man without sin cast the first stone.  But in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Jesus is very clear that if anyone harmed children their punishment would be dire–“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

“Why did pedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately the reason is the absence of God.”

The absence of God in men with personality disorders and mental health issues which incites them to sexually molest children; or just the absence of God?  Does Benedict believe pedophilia is ultimately a spiritual evil that we can pray to God to purify away?

“A young woman who was a (former) altar server told me that the chaplain, her superior as an altar server, always introduced the sexual abuse he was committing against her with the words: “This is my body which will be given up for you.” It is obvious that this woman can no longer hear the very words of consecration without experiencing again all the horrific distress of her abuse.  Yes, we must urgently implore the Lord for forgiveness, and first and foremost we must swear by Him and ask Him to teach us all anew to understand the greatness of his suffering, His sacrifice. And we must do all we can to protect the gift of the Holy Eucharist from abuse.”

What exactly is Benedict saying?  Is he implying a connection between the abuse of the liturgy and sexual abuse? If people would only approach communion in a reverent way most of the problems in Catholicism will clear up? Why do “we” need to implore the Lord for forgiveness, when “we” have not committed this terrible sin and violation?  The priest in question, and his superior if he protected him, are the people who need to beg for forgiveness.  Not only to our Lord, but first to the girl, her family, and all the people whose faith he has ruined by his terrible actions.  Of all the sections in the essay, this passage is the most emotionally remote and bleak. It horrified me to see such a distance between our highest spiritual leader and the people he was supposed to serve.

“Indeed, the Church today is widely regarded as just some kind of political apparatus. One speaks of it almost exclusively in political categories, and this applies even to bishops, who formulate their conception of the church of tomorrow in almost exclusively in political terms.”

Did Benedict have the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in mind?  We have a hard core of loud conservative bishops and some liberal bishops.  With the election of Pope Francis, the demographics have sifted slightly, as more moderate, pastoral bishops have been added. Early in his pontificate, Francis scolded the USCCB for their preoccupation with gay marriage and abortion.  For the last two decades, a conservative subset of U.S. bishops has focused on abortion and religious liberty (freedom to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples, women who use birth control) to the marginalization of many other social and economic issues. They were comfortable in the Republican party tent. The smaller minority of liberal bishops promoted government support for the poor, immigrants and health care. They tended to line up with the Democratic party. Some conservative bishops urged people not to vote for pro-choice politicians, or politicians that supported gay marriage–no matter what their views and voting record on other issues.  They also obliged the Republican party by torpedoing any moderate or liberal Catholic presidential and congressional candidates. If Francis continues to appoint bishops with a more pastoral vs. conservative political focus, the USCCB’s activity in the public square will be less politically polarizing.

“The idea of a better Church, created by ourselves, is in fact a proposal of the devil, with which he wants to lead us away from the living God, through a deceitful logic by which we are too easily duped.”

Should Catholicism be a smaller and more tradition-minded community or a larger and more inclusive church of imperfect believers at various stages in their spiritual journey?  Who does a smaller, purer church exclude?  People who reject libertarian economics and individualism in favor of the poor and marginalized; or people who are concerned primarily with sexual morality?  I am not immune to this feeling.  How many times have I longed for a church of like-minded believers.  But I also recognize that making the church an ideologically purer place will inevitably extinguish it.  We can help shape it, but we cannot remake it. It is not ours to remake.

In 2016, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput said in a speech delivered at the University of Notre Dame that the Church should “do everything we can to bring tepid Catholics back to active life in the church.”  But, he continued, “we should never be afraid of a smaller, lighter church if her members are also more faithful, more zealous, more missionary and more committed to holiness.”

Cardinal Joseph Tobin, in  a 2018 talk at Villanova University, urged Catholics to resist allowing “the individualism that permeates our culture” to infect the church. “Even from ancient times, there have been individuals and movements who have tried to define and delimit what it means to be a Catholic Christian,” the Newark, NJ archbishop said. “Nevertheless, the universal church has always repudiated such attempts. It is only the Lord who ultimately judges who belongs and who does not belong.”

Domine, quo vadis? 

In the meantime, Pope Emeritus Benedict needs to put down his pen.