How did it all go so wrong
Ratzinger is back, telling us the rapey priests problem is all the fault of liberalism.
“Why did paedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God,” Benedict wrote in the 6,000-word essay published on Thursday in the German monthly Klerusblatt, the Catholic News Agency and other conservative media.
No. What was absent was recognition that other people are not Things for one’s own sexual gratification. What was missing was the minimal decency to refrain from traumatizing children for personal pleasure.
Benedict also faulted church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests. During the 1980s and 1990s, he wrote, “the right to a defence [for priests] was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible”.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict spearheaded reforms of those laws in 2001 to make it easier to remove priests who abused children. Benedict took a hard line against clerical sex abuse as the Vatican’s conservative doctrinal chief and later as pope, defrocking hundreds of priests accused of raping and molesting children.
Francis has blamed the scandal on a clerical culture in the church that raises priests above the laity.
At his retirement in 2013, Benedict had said he would devote his remaining life to penance and prayer, leaving Francis to guide the church. He said in the introduction to the essay that Francis and the Vatican secretary of state had given him permission to publish. The Vatican confirmed it was written by Benedict.
Church historian Christopher Bellitto questioned if Benedict, who turns 92 next week, was being manipulated by others. He said the essay omitted the critical conclusions that arose from the pope’s February sexual abuse summit in Rome, including that “abusers were priests along the ideological spectrum, that the abuse predated the 1960s, that it is a global and not simply western problem, that homosexuality is not the issue in pedophilia”.
Emphasis mine. The abuse long predates the 60s, which suggests to me that it probably goes all the way back, because why wouldn’t it? We’re surely well familiar with the fact that some men feel perfectly entitled to use other people for their personal sexual jollies, with no compunction or concern about what those other people might prefer. We’re also well familiar with the fact that being a Catholic priest seems to do nothing to prevent that entitled feeling…and probably only encourages it because priests have such power over believers, as I gather Francis is arguing.
So, no. It ain’t the 60s and it ain’t the absence of god.
OB, I disagree. To the best of my theological knowledge, God is omnipowerful, omnipresent, and omniknowing. There is no hiding from Him.
Consequentially, wherever on His Earth He becomes aware of an innocent child being abused, tortured, injured or murdered, He never intervenes. Never. Not indisputably once has He ever done so, since He created the Earth and everything in it.
Which means that He could not give a Holy Shit. Or worse: has a bit of a chuckle and says something like “goes to show. Eve should not have listened to that talking snake, now should she?”
But as Leibniz would say, “That is the best of all possible responses!”
That’s good as far as it goes, but did Ratz also hand over the evidence against those people to police for criminal investigation? If not, then he only went as far as was needed to protect the church’s reputation association with those priests. He stopped short of measures that would protect the victims from those priests.
Abuse not only predates the 1960’s, it also predates the 1690’s.
Also … how can there possibly be any such thing as the “absence of God”? Is God in charge, or is he not? Whatever happened to “God is everywhere”?
God is everywhere when it is convenient. He is there to watch and make sure you are not having sex with the wrong person, that you are not having sex in the wrong position, that you are not controlling your own reproductive life, and that you are not having an abortion.
God is absent whenever bad things are done by people who claim to be our moral leaders; at that point, they must by definition be godless, because if they were truly godly, they would not do bad things. Therefore, absence of God in the minds of these men, in the minds of society, and in the minds of those who call these bad things to the attention of people.
In short, because God has been kicked out of every public space (yeah, right) and is not present anywhere that people gather (yeah, right) and prayer in public is forbidden (on pain of death, I suppose?), God has left us to our own devices. He would like to be everywhere, but apparently he isn’t able to be where any liberal ideas exist.
That basically summarizes what I was taught growing up in a “godly” household where my parents beat their kids (in a godly way, of course), overlooked sexual abuse by their oldest son (because son, and God, and something something blah blah), and in general made life miserable for their daughters (because God said to). That’s the wonderful good that can be done when God is present; when God is absent (since I kicked him out of my life – like I’ve kicked out several other imaginary beings), I am (gasp gasp) free to smile. I am (gasp gasp) free to hike in boots that are “unfeminine”. I am (gasp gasp) free to control my own reproduction. Therefore, God is absent, and any day now I will probably begin molesting children, then roasting them and eating them. (I’ve been without God for 40+ years now and haven’t molested or eaten any babies yet, but it’s really only a matter of time, you know).