HOW THE CATHOLIC CHURCH CRIMINALLY AIDED AND ABETTED THE OFFENDERS

Posted on December 24, 2010 by Jeffrey Newman

James Carroll, writer, former priest and outspoken commentator on the Catholic Church and its future, speaks in today’s Daily Beast. His words on the sexual abuse crisis are worth reading. As Europe is seeing fresh priest abuse scandals like here 8 years ago, Carroll points out that Bishops and other leaders within the Church, not only obstructed justice by shielding perpetrators from civil law but they also became criminal abettors by enabling the perpetrators to continue their abusive behavior–everywhere. This was our experience in massachusetts where offending priest after offending priest was allowed to continue in service and have access to children despite specific knowledge of the Boston Archdiocese of their sexual misdeeds. The Vatican ordered that Church officials were forbidden from referring such criminal behavior to the civil legal authorities. This is a startling point, when you think about it. If this was ordered by management of any corporation, it would be significant grounds for criminal prosecution for conspiracy to violate criminal laws. Why then, has the Vatican not been brought to task. It is not because of the statute of limitations because fraud and concealment can toll that from running. Carroll points out that in 2001, the present Pope, then Joseph Ratzinger the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered that crimes perpetrated with a minor by a cleric fall under church jurisdiction, not civil law enforcement. “Cases of this kind,” he said, ” are subject to the pontification secret” the violation of which is punishable by excommunication. The meaning of this is if a pedophile priest was reported to the civil authorities, the reporter would be excommunicated. Why then should Ratzinger not be prosecuted for what has happened? This type of crimes upon the children of our nation by an entity which has the status of a foreign state, requires the intervention and involvement of our federal government at the level of the Department of Justice. As we approach the year’s end and learn of more and more abuse in different nations, it becomes obvious that very little has changed. The reason is that so little was done to punish those in power who enabled, allowed and fostered this abuse on children. Those within the Vatican. Without such action, these wrongs, committed over years and years despite specific knowledge they were happening, will never see those individuals at the top of the organization punished. It will remain an open wound in our world’s history.