Thursday, May 04, 2006
THE BISHOPS WERE FOLLOWING ORDERS
A monk turned whistleblower is the author of a book on the sexual abuse crisis.
From an article at the Guardian:
Now Wall, along with two other former priests turned whistleblowers, has written a book called Sex, Priests and Secret Codes: the Catholic church's 2,000-year paper trail of sexual abuse. The book, he says, contains previously unpublished documents detailing the Vatican's longstanding awareness of the problem of sexual abuse. Its conclusion is that the recent scandals in the US, Ireland and Britain are nothing new, but simply the latest chapter in a story that stretches right back to the founding of the church. And the authors say they have found evidence of deliberate cover-up by the church.
Exhibit A is a hitherto secret document called Crimen Sollicationis - Latin for "the crime of solicitation" - issued in 1962 by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), an office attached to the Vatican. Described as a "blueprint for deception and concealment" by lawyers investigating the worldwide sex-abuse scandals, Crimen Sollicationis contains strict instructions for dealing with what the Vatican calls the "worst crimes" - such as allegations of paedophilia and bestiality. Rather than report these offences to the civil authorities, the CDF instructs bishops to investigate them "in the most secretive way" or face the "penalty of excommunication".
Then, in 2001, the CDF followed this document up with a second directive, which ordered bishops to send their reports directly to Rome, where they would be kept safely under lock and key along with other so-called Pontifical Secrets. Wall and his co-authors argue that it is this and not the Da Vinci Code that is the "real conspiracy" at the heart of modern Catholicism. They say it is no coincidence that the person responsible for the promulgation of the second document was none other than the head of the CDF, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.
Great. How does a Catholic respond to that?
Blogger credit to New Oxford Review.
