Posted 2:29 PM by Floyd

Jeff Jarvis posted about an order by Pope John XXIII in 1962 ordering that sexual abuse cases be covered up.

The Vatican instructed Catholic bishops around the world to cover up cases of sexual abuse or risk being thrown out of the Church....
The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication.
They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.' ...
Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'.

What I find dismaying about the Catholic sex abuse scandal is the people who can't accept that the Church is at fault. They complain about media bias and anti-Catholic bigotry. They make excuses -- which under these circumstances can only be very lame excuses. They enable the molestation of children because they don't want their side to look bad.

Consider the responses to Jeff's post:

Chuck C stated:

The document in question deals with the crime of
solicitation within the context of sacramental
confession. The secrecy provisions apply because
the seal of confession requires absolute secrecy.
Victims are required to denounce a priest who has
solicited them

It is not particularly important that the coverup pertains to confessions only. The privacy of the confessional is probably a reasonable protection, to be placed on a par with medical and legal privacy -- but only when the person hearing the confession is the confessor's agent, a spiritual advisor. Allowing a person to hear his subordinate's confession and to keep it confidential is a blank check for abuse and conspiracy. The Catholic Church cannot be given a free pass on antisocial behavior that fits its belief system, any more than we give a free pass to Islamic modesty enforcers who beat girls in burning buildings when they try to escape without veils.

Furthermore, it is ludicrous to state, in adjacent sentences no less, that "the seal of confession requires absolute secrecy" and "Victims are required to denounce a priest who has solicited them."

In a later comment, Chuck C introduced us to the topsy-turvy world of the Vatican's justiciary:

In fact, the Instruction from Cardinal Ottaviani stresses (in section 18) that every Catholic has a solemn duty to bring canon-law charges against a priest who attempts to solicit sex through the confessional. The importance of that obligation is underlined by the fact that a Catholic who fails to report solicitation is subject to excommunication. Moreover, the penitent remains under this solemn obligation to report solicitation even if the priest has already confessed his crime.

There's blaming the victim. Then there's capital punishment of the victim.

Cathy stated:

Yes, the document has been gleefully misrepresented by media folks with a reflexive hatred for organized religion, and a Watergate hangover that says everything is a conspiracy.

A wonderfully balanced take on the media's fault AND the Church's, concerning this document at John Allen's Letter from Rome column:

Wonderfully balanced, as defined by the faithful: The Church is at fault for enabling its employees to molest children. The media is at fault for reporting on same.

Digging deeper, I followed a link provided by the aforementioned Chuck to a Catholic World News article that tried to explain away the coverup with the "sanctity of the confessional" excuse. There were about 30 comments at the end of the article, all but one complaining about the awful biased media. Here are the most egregious:

If you haven't seen it yet, I call your attention to a CNS story of Aug. 7 that reports on a Vatican official stating that the 1962 norms were suspended, superceded by the 1983 Code of Canon Law revision.l

This technicality is supposed to impress me how? Were the victims' memories of being molested during this period were also "suspended" and "superceded"?

The world we live in is odd. A Vatican document is found that says that priests who solicit sex in confession are to be sent to Rome to face a secret trial by the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition, and the news media says that means Rome doesn't object to their actions.....

It's such an odd world that some people are at risk of having their felonies prosecuted by civil authorities!

An attack on the church is an attack on Christ.

Then is molestation by an official of the church an act of molestation by Christ?