Hi Everyone,

Did any of you see or read the article:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/08/06/eveningnews/main566978.shtml

How true is this?

If this is true then I am ashamed to be Catholic today. My Church is supposed to stand for justice and right not cover ups and lies.

I hope and pray this is not true.

-- James Xwing (james_xwing@hotmail.com), August 07, 2003

Answers

Bill Donohue, prez of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, was on cable TV last night -- more boiling mad at CBS than I have ever seen him before. Those mindless jerks completely misinterpreted the purpose and meaning of the document. It is not about civil crimes (sex abuse or otherwise), and thus it is not about hiding information from civil authorities. As I understand it, the document is about maintaining confidentiality concerning improprieties that could occur in a confessional (especially the extremely rare case of improper advances, made by a priest toward a female penitent).

A.

-- Art (ars@gratia.artis), August 08, 2003.

Here's what one of the realiably anti-LC former legionaries has to say about this document which James Xwing is so upset about. I think his analysis is fair and informed. The document is no "smoking gun" and it's no admission of some institutional hyprocisy of the Church or some secret instruction to protect criminals from civil responsibility as the lawyers (only a lawyer could misunderstand documents!) are desperately trying to read it as.

"Crimes of solictation to sexual sin in confession

[after scanning the first couple of pages only]

This document may be 'news' to the un-initiated but has been known to Catholic clergy for ever. There has always been something in Canon Law about this serious crime which is basically: the priest/ministrer/presbyter using the sacrament of penance to solicit or induce the penitent to have sex of any kind with him, i.e. for his own sexual pleasure.

The fact that it is to be stored in secret archives is not new either. The Vatican has many secret archives. This document was sent to all bishops the world over. So its not 'top secret'. It's an instruction about how bishops -the overseers- should operate.

As I begin to scan the document from the Holy Office, now the Defense of the Faith [Ratzinger] i believe the intention at the time was to 'tighten up' church discipline in this area by giving the bishops power to intervene over any priest in their diocese, be they religious or diocesan [thus preventing 'religious order' priests from slipping through the cracks] and giving every Catholic the power to bring these cases directly to the Holy Office for examination.

The concept of 'avoiding scandal' has always been strongly present in Chruch tradition. This is certainly an ambigious concept but i dont think this document invents this concept.

It may be hard for American catholics to realize that the Church has always had its own internal judicial system, parallel to-and independent of- the civil system. This is a document that defines how this internal system should function and how to prevent and punish priests who commit these crimes.

At the time this document was written, at the beginning of Vatican II the Church did not envision the intervention of civil courts into the Church's internal forum.

As far as I can see this is not about pedophilia as such but about priests taking advantage of the sacrament of Penance =confession to satisfy their own 'carnal desires'. It is a particularly grave sin/ crime from the Church's point of view not so much of the sex in and of itself because it is an abuse of a sacrament, a sin committed in the context of a sacrament, i.e. A SACRILEGE!

I'm not sure how much the Church refers directly to the abuse of power, which we associate with abuse and sexual abuse. Nevertheless, I think the idea is present that the 'penitent' is in a very vulnerable position as such and that the priest abuses this vulnerability.

The punishment for this 'crime' is the strongest the Church can hand down: 'Excommunicatio ipso facto' which means that the priest is automatically excommunicated [pre process] and is prohibited from exercising his priestly functions.

Let us be clear that this law is against any sex of any kind in the context of the sacrament of penance and does not refer specifically to pedophilia. If pedophilia were the case then we would have a crime on top of a sacrilege"

-- Withheld 2 (withheld@yahoo.com), August 08, 2003.