Ouch! Just imagine you write the top story on the front page of the New York Times — and it gets promptly denied. That’s what happened today. Time had the same story, too, but only on their Web site. In both cases, the journalists were trying to pin down what if anything comes now, after Pope Benedict has spoken so strongly about the shame of the sexual abuse scandal and his determination to bar pedophiles from the priesthood. The victims who met him felt very strongly that Benedict’s gesture was a promise of more steps to come. But what? We had a story examining this question yesterday but we were not among the few at a closed lunch with Cardinal William Levada organised by Time for a few U.S. journalists.
The story the NYT and Time took away from that session was that Levada, who succeeded the pope as the Vatican’s top doctrinal official, had hinted that the Catholic Church was considering changing its laws to pursue more abuse cases. More specifically, he was supposed to have said it was considering lengthening the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases. Under current canon law, an abuse victim has to report within 10 years of his or her 18th birthday. Levada said some victims took longer to come to grips with the issue and should be able to report abuse and see it investigated even if it happened more than a decade ago.
We saw the NYT report on Friday evening and it didn’t seem watertight. We’d also been told that Time was going to post the transcript of Levada’s remarks, but it wasn’t posted late Friday evening. So we left it over for Saturday.
The first opportunity to check this was after the pope’s Mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The chief Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, gave a briefing and was asked right away what Levada had said about the reports. Here are the operative quotes from a lively session in Italian and English:
“This morning, Cardinal Levada told me they hadn’t understood it correctly. There is no change coming … Levada said the norms he spoke of were already in force.”
“He told me this this morning after reading the article in the New York Times.”
“He said we didn’t talk about anything new. The things we spoke about are already in force.”
Asked if Levada meant the journalists had misunderstood him, Lombardi said, “That is what I understood.”
So if the statute of limitations has already been extended, nothing new is coming there. Talk about changes to canon law were already in the air yesterday and I asked a specialist what he thought could happen. “I haven’t seen what law could be put into place that hasn’t already been put into place,”Mgr. Charles Guarino, a canon lawyer in the Rockville Centre diocese on Long Island, told me. “It’s already in the code of canon law in terms of what precautions need to take place and what responsibilities exist for seminary rectors and local bishops.” Guarino used to work with the pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger at the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (the job Levada has now). He focused especially on the U.S. sexual abuse cases and he works on those cases in the Rockville Centre diocese now.
Something else came out of the Levada lunch and Beliefnet’s blogger David Gibson zeroed in on it. He said the U.S. cardinal
bristled at a suggestion that some bishops had “aided and abetted” priest-abusers by not acting to remove them.
“I don’t believe that,” Levada said. “I know bishops who have said to me, if I had known then what I know now, I would have acted differently.” But he said the bishops who moved abusers around to other parishes or did not remove them from ministry were acting on bad advice from experts and psychiatrists.
“So it [the scandal] has been a learning experience for bishops,” the cardinal said.
“I personally do not accept that there has been a broad base of bishops guilty of aiding and abetting pedophiles … If I thought there were, I would certainly want to talk to them about that.”
Some critics have said the Church should not only remove pedophile priests but also the bishops that shuffled them around and tried to cover up the problem. In his comments above, Levada disputes the contention that many bishops did this. Guarino also did in his comments to me. So that doesn’t look like a place to expect changes either.
Another suggestion from critics has been that Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Boston archbishop who resigned at the height of the sexual abuse scandal, be removed from the senior post he was given in Roman exile. Law is archpriest of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, a prestigious post that is quite public. He has several other responsibilities at the Vatican, but they are internal.
What do you think about how the Church has handled this scandal? Should some bishops have to carry the can for it? Would you think Law should step down from his public post?
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I am an Alaska Native (Yup’ik) from Nelson Island and I was ordained into deaconate on November 23, 1985. I serve as one of the two deacons in my community. My wife and I are blessed with 5 children and 4 adopted. We are also blessed with 27 grandchildren and 2 great grand sons.
- Posted by Rev. Mr. James CharlieAlthough I was not near the Holy Father on his recent journey to United States, I am touched, and yet ashamed, of the past priests who have abused our brothers and sisters in faith. It may well happen again and the only solution that I can think of is the question of celebacy. If the Catholic Church could allow married priests, it would hopefully improve the situation we are facing.
Many of us would also be Native Priests in Alaska where shortage of priest is very much experienced. Right now, we have only five priests that serves what we call Yukon/Kuskokwim Delta as visiting priests. Thank you.
To Thomas Cahill, thanks for several interesting comments. I agree with you that Jack’s comment equating the pope and Saddam Hussein is over the top. We do moderate comments but we try to do it as lightly as possible, weeding out spam, pornographic comments and libelous ad hominem attacks. The pope is a public figure and as such fair game for strong commentary, even if I do not agree with it. We usually have a more informed debate here and I was struck by how emotional some of the responses were.
As for pedophilia, ephebophilia and homosexuality, I think you’re reading too much into this to say we are afraid of a backlash from homosexual readers and their allies. I neither know nor care how many readers are homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, metrosexual or asexual. That’s not the point. And I, like you, know the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia and agree the latter is the more precise term. But pedophilia is the term that has come to be associated with this scandal. When speaking about this issue, that is the word all but a tiny minority of readers will use. It’s like the term “heartburn.” It has nothing to do with the heart, as doctors I know insist, but that’s the word people use. This is what’s behind our use of the term, not anything else.
- Posted by Tom HeneghanWhen a matter is as grave as the molestation of minors by a trusted representative of God it is important that everything brought up in our discussions be rigorously true insofar as the truth can be established. The truth will last the test of time. Some truths are unbearable but must be borne such that justice can be done. In that spirit note the following: Pedophilia is the sexual molestation of a child before they have reached puberty. Cruelty itself. Ephebophilia, no less cruel and disgusting, is applied to minors after puberty. The very great majority (95+% from best independent studies) of the cases wherein Catholic priests were found guilty or plausibly accused of molestation was the homosexual rape of teenagers. The media will not state this although it is hard to see how they could miss it. I surmise this is because of the fear of a backlash from their homosexual readers and their allies. So we blindly echo their term “pedophelia” when “homosexual rape of a minor” is a much more accurate description of the statistical and historical reality.
The Catholic Church is despised by the homosexual movement because of Rome’s forthright but thoughtful and nuanced stand against the practice of homosexuality.
Nothing is excused by my comments here in respect of the RC priests’ molestation and the RC Bishops enabling or facilitating the molestation of children.
- Posted by Thomas CahillJack’s comment above: “the Pope the leader of the Roman Catholic Church is a criminal worst than Saddam Hussein. I also agree that the Vatican City should burn (by using an ICBMs with ten nuclear warheads) and become like Ground zero so that it serves as a warning to any Religion that by using the Bible and the name of God they will not escape from been destroy soon or later.” These exemplars of Jack’s hate-filled rants brings way too much heat and way too little light to this important conversation. It makes me ask what the moderator of this thread feels is unacceptable.
- Posted by Thomas CahillI accept many of the points here. Cardinal Levada as presented in the Reuters interview above utterly fails the simplest “sniff” test of this devoted Catholic. Legal (secualr and canonical)action directed at bishops responsible for moving predatory priests to other parishes, where some continued their depredations, is necessary before God’s sunshine will penetrate this corruption and purify it. The Long Lent of this scandal will continue to plague the Church until her authority is fully exercised on Justice’s behalf in support of these dreadful outrages against injured minors. And further - Justice must not alone be done. It must be seen to be done.
- Posted by Thomas CahillMost people of the American government tend to forget what the Founding Fathers of America wrote;
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The American Government has allow for many years on their own watch the Catholic Priests, Nuns, and member of the Roman Catholic Church to sexually abuse over 60,000 American children in less than 50 years. The Roman Catholic Church is giving a bad name to the American country all over the world but America is so blind that they cannot understand why many countries hate America. The American government do not have the balls to stop associating themselves with the criminal organization of the Pope who use children as sex machines all over the world. The words of the American founding Fathers should be re-written in this 21st century to say:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that the children of man are not created equal, also the children of man can be used as a sex machine to sexually satisfy the wet dreams of Catholic Priest and Nuns, the children do not have the right to life, liberty, and happiness”
What a shame. American will go down into history as the Empire who collapsed because the American government choose to showed more respect to the criminal Pope the leader of the Catholics Priests and Nuns who abused over 60,000 American children. Because America allows the Catholics Priests and Catholics Nuns to use their American children as a sex machine the Catholics Priests and Nuns think that they have a license (permit) to sexually abuse the children of other countries without fear of being punish. What a shame, the American country are selling their own souls to the criminal organization known as the Roman Catholic Church and allows the Pope to walk free on the streets.
- Posted by Jack