Forgive my French. But are you surprised by this:
According to law firm Westphal Spilker Wastl (WSW), which conducted the investigation, Benedict failed to prevent abuse of minors during his tenure as archbishop of Munich and Freising from 1977 to 1982.
‘In a total of four cases, we reached a consensus there was a failure to act,’ said attorney Martin Pusch, who presented the WSW report.
Two cases involve priests who were legally charged with child abuse and were allowed to continue their work in the church as pastors. The church also took no official disciplinary action against the clergymen, and it appears that no care was given to their victims.
(Deutsche Welle (DW), January 20, 2022)
In other words, just as other investigations around the world over the past decade found, Benedict acted, or failed to act, just as every other archbishop did. Which of course explains the pandemic of pedophilia little children have suffered in the Catholic church, hell, since time immemorial.
Now, lest you think I’m just some born-again critic beating a dead horse, here is what I wrote about Benedict’s complicity and culpability in “Pope Accused of Harboring Pedophile Priest,” March 16, 2010:
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A few years ago, revelations about the nature and scope of sexual abuse by priests gave the impression that the Catholic Church in America was being run by a syndicate of pedophile enablers. By contrast, the moral indignation European priests cast at their brethren in America back then gave the impression that the Catholic Church in Europe was wholly without sin in this respect.
Indeed, here’s how Pope Benedict himself expressed his pastoral concern:
It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen. It is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betray in this way their mission … to these children.
I am deeply ashamed, and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future. I do not wish to talk at this moment about homosexuality, but about pedophilia, which is another thing.
We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry. It is more important to have good priests than many priests. We will do everything possible to heal this wound.
(Pope Benedict XVI)
In commenting on this unfolding scandal, I noted that faithful Catholics might find the pope’s expression of concern more troubling than comforting. Here, in part, is what I wrote back then:
A cabal of homosexuals in the Vatican continues to indulge and cover up the serial sexual exploits of gay priests, including pedophiles…
And I’m sure the pope is acutely mindful that disabusing Americans of this suspicion is critical to getting them to replenish the billions the Church has lost in payoffs and tithing withheld as a result of the sex abuse scandal.
(“The Pope Comes to America,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 16, 2008)
Well, there are dirty little secrets coming out of the closet in churches all over Europe today – most notably in the pope’s home country of Germany. And these revelations give the impression that the ecumenical council of the Catholic Church not only condoned but actually enabled a culture of pederasty that would make Sodom and Gomorrah seem chaste. Which gives a whole new meaning to Christ’s exhortation to ‘suffer the little children to come on to Me.’
Even worse, no less a person than the Pope has been implicated. Specifically, reports are that the pope, in his position as Archbishop Josef Ratzinger of diocese of Munich, harbored a known pedophile priest, who continued his predatory sexual abuse of little boys under the pope’ pastoral supervision. This, of course, is exactly what the pope condemned American bishops for doing a few years ago …
Not surprisingly, the Vatican is deflecting blame from the pope by summoning his former deputy at the Munich diocese to claim complete responsibility for housing this notorious pedophile. Unfortunately, this deflection was undermined by the fact that his former diocese had already put out the patently specious claim that the pope ‘unwittingly approved the housing.’ And nothing has laid this scandal at the feet of the pope quite like his own brother, The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, admitting recently that he not only flagellated little boys but also ignored their cries when they were being abused by other bishops.
Nevertheless, the pope himself has joined in this open conspiracy to deflect blame. No doubt this explains his tact of announcing earlier this week that he will be issuing a pastoral letter to facilitate ‘repentance, healing and renewal’ among Irish Catholics instead of issuing one to help German Catholics clean up the mess he left behind.
Somehow ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ doesn’t quite convey the hypocrisy inherent in this papal tact. I will note, though, that he seems to be deploying the psychological defense mechanism of projection. Moreover, one wonders about the categorical imperative of issuing similar pastoral letters to countries from Asia to the Caribbean as well as all those in between, where revelations of endemic sexual and physical abuse by priests are rocking the foundations of the Catholic Church.
In any case, whatever the moral relativism that governs the way the pope deals with the sexual (mis)conduct of priests, the Church is clearly abiding a moral hazard:
Much has been made of the moral hazard the US government created by bailing out big banks. Because this effectively gave investment bankers carte blanche to continue their high-risk financial transactions knowing full well that the government will be there to catch them if they fall; i.e., before their banks fail.
By the same token, the fact that the Church has been covering up the perverted (and criminal) behavior of Catholic priests from time immemorial suggests that a similar moral hazard is inherent in the conduct of Vatican affairs. Never mind what it says about the moral authority of a Church that invariably showed greater empathy and compassion towards these sexual predators than it showed towards their adolescent victims.
I remain intrigued, however, by the pope’s allusion (in the quote above) to a moral distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia. For in this he seems to have ‘unwittingly’ conveyed a papal indulgence of the former, while censuring of the latter.
Not to mention that such a distinction would make a mockery of the Church’s purported practice of clerical celibacy; i.e., refraining from all sexual activity, including masturbation… Father, forgive them, even though they know well what they do…. Celibacy…? Yeah right!
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Clearly reports abounded over a decade ago to give me just cause to condemn Vatican leaders, including this former pope himself, for the systemic nature of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. So, but for the cardinal sin of billable hours, I’m not sure why it took this German law firm two years and nearly 2000 pages to merely affirm those reports.
[This report] points to at least 497 abuse victims over the decades and at least 235 suspected perpetrators, though the authors said that in reality there were probably many more. …
In 2018, a church-commissioned report concluded that at least 3,677 people were abused by clergy in Germany between 1946 and 2014. More than half of the victims were 13 or younger, and nearly a third served as altar boys.
(CNBC, January 20, 2022)
But I’ve written so many commentaries decrying the institutionalized criminality of Catholic priests raping little boys, I see no point in commenting any further. I refer you, for example, to “Justice Begins for Victims of Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church…,” June 23, 2012, “Sexual Abuse Allegations Against Pope’s Adviser Damns Papacy,” June 29, 2017, “Confirmation! ‘Pedophile Priests’ Is Redundant,” August 15, 2018, and “More Catholic Depravity: Nuns Pimping Orphans to Priests,” February 26, 2021.
With that, I shall end by noting that this report merely provides more proof that most so-called men of God do not believe God exists. Because they know no God would allow them to cover up and perpetrate the rape and abuse of innocent children in his name the way it seems they have always done.
Related commentaries:
Pope Benedict… God does not exist… catholic depravity…