Given my history, I suppose many of those who know it and who know something of my views on the Catholic Church will have been expecting me to post something on this issue. In fact, I had decided not to do so, on the grounds that there are enough sensible people who have been commenting on what has been going in the
The Irish Times reported today: ‘Referring to the sexual abuse of children as “not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image”, he pointed to “the more general crisis of faith affecting the church” and its role in the abuse issue. This “weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors”, he said.’
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0217/breaking18.html
Now, I will admit that I haven’t read the whole statement; frankly, I just don’t have the stomach for it. What I find simply amazing is Ratzinger’s monumental confusion of cause and effect evident in the last sentence quoted.
The reports published in
We are talking of an environment which developed and was perfected when the country still – oh what an irony! – regarded itself as “holy Catholic Ireland,” a country which was repeatedly told by its clerical leaders that it was special because it did not follow the way of godless Britain or the continent, a country in which it was fatal for the career of any politician to question the supremacy of the church (remember Noel Browne?), a country in which state law regarding matters of marriage, sexuality and family was carefully framed so as to completely reflect Catholic teaching. A country where almost every Catholic attended mass every Sunday, where the churches were full for novenas and annual retreats, where the majority of families went to their knees every evening to pray the rosary together. A country in which legislation was introduced little more than thirty years ago to liberalise(!) availability of contraception by allowing the sale of condoms to married couples only.
Indeed, it was only in the context of a “weakening of faith,” a growth in openness with regard to sexual matters, the spread of pluralism, that an atmosphere began to develop within which victims slowly started to gain the courage; no, more fundamentally, acquire the language and concepts with which they could begin to describe their martyrdom. It was only in a society where the dominance of the Church was beginning to weaken that public and civil society was able to hear the horrific accusations and start to bring at least a few of the perpetrators to justice, despite a general lack of cooperation from Church authorities.
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