quote:

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
Is there really nothing more to it than that people apparently find a Polish actor and an Argentine night club bouncer more approachable than a German academic?

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus:
It's a fairly simple question, and one that I've never really understood. Why was Benedict XVI so unpopular with so many non-Christians and lukewarm Catholics (I actually get the feeling he was more popular with devout non-Catholic Christians).

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus: I know he was seen as conservative, but then so was John Paul II. In fact, I thought the two men were very much of the same cloth theologically, although Benedict was the better theologian of the two.[…] But it seems bizarre to me that JPII was, generally although far from universally, beloved and BXVI so widely hated.

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Well, JPII was cuddly, smiling, and he had great personal charm. BXVI is a quiet, shy, cerebral professor and *gasp* he is German.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
In particular it was the latter which pissed much of the media off.

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus: There were allegations about his alleged involvement in covering up cases of sex abuse, but nothing that could easily be pinned to him directly. And it's not as though John Paul II was never associated with groups that were worse than dubious in this regard (Legionaries of Christ, anyone?).

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Originally posted by S. Bacchus: Is there really nothing more to it than that people apparently find a Polish actor and an Argentine night club bouncer more approachable than a German academic? If so, what does that say about the current state of the Papacy as an institution?

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Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan: Benedict is more of a quiet thinker / judger, which often gets you mistaken for a grump.

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Precisely. If I may add, a priest (died recently, much missed ) who was a good friend of my family was one of Ratzinger’s “Schülerkreis” , i.e. the circle of his former students who had kept in touch with him –and he with them- for decades, and into his papacy (he’d invite them to Castel Gandolfo). The picture we got from his reports and tales of earlier times in academe is one of a quiet and slightly shy, immensely learned and cultured man who has a very fine sense of humour and who was known for his gentle ways. Someone who likes to laugh and does so often, who likes good food and beer (he’s from Bavaria, after all), and someone who is a loyal friend; as Pope he would remember details of his students’ life; enquire after their families, remember someone’s parish issues etc. A man, in short, who cares, and to whom friendship is important.

I thought I’d add this to the general picture.

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Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
By the time Pope BXVI could really make a dent in the results of the widespread abuses, they were already a quagmire. He did what he could and persisted.
All in all, a good pope, if not one with gobs of personal magnetism.

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Originally posted by SeraphimSarov:
Pope Benedict is a profound theologian and I'm very glad for the "push" he gave for the liturgical "Reform of the Reform " which was much needed Otherwise, I believe he would have been better remaining a theology professor at Tubingen. He obviously felt called to a different path (or in humility , accepted it )

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Originally posted by marsupial.: He had an oddly tin ear when it came to expressing himself to the wide world.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem: Get ready for the cult of personality mark two.

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I’m not sure it is always the most worthy of thinkers who get their personality cult in the RCC. I shudder to see a lot of cheap sentimentalist hysteria (“santo subito!” etc.) at work. But I guess religion is always walking along folklore.

May I also add a remark concerning BXVI/Ratzinger’s “conservatism”. I think one has to see this in biographical/ historical context. I try to explain: The young Ratzinger was actively participating in the Vatican II council, and that, as many people know, on the rather more “progressive” side. Then he went back to Tübingen, working at the university, when “1968” happened. This was nothing short of a cultural revolution. And young prelate Ratzinger saw the excesses of it. In other words: much as he had been, and still was, an advocate of “aggiornamento” during Vatican II, he now saw that what the masses understood by it was a tearing down of everything, to be replaced by the Great Cult of Total Relativism, total “Freedom” in everything. In other words, the pendulum had swung to the other extreme. And that scared him.

The Aggiornamento had been a middle way. Ratzinger saw that in an age of mass communication and –consumption, an age driven by convenience, the middle ways, the art of reflection, discernment, and intelligent adjustment, are doomed to oblivion. He understood this, but his middle way between the extreme conservatives-(e.g., he curtailed JPII’s beloved Opus Dei’s role in the Vatican) and the extreme libertarian anything-goes wing of the RCC , was just not heard in all that noise.
This, I think, was to become the bane of his later years.

Aggiornamento and Inculturation are one thing, dumbing-down to the Lowest Common Denominator quite another.

[ 04. December 2013, 07:35: Message edited by: Desert Daughter ]
 

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Posted by Mudfrog (# 8116) on :
 
Very simple answer really - and this reflects the shallowness of the world, not my own opinion - he never seemed to smile (I know he DID but it's not the image that is widespread). His face seemed to be frozen in a permanently bemused 'what am I doing here?' expression and he couldn't walk very well and had no personality.

In a world where image is everything - hence the popularity of JPII and Francis, Benedict was a non-starter.

Plus the ongoing accusations that he was a Nazi
 

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Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :
 
As an academic theologian Benedict was and is amongst the very best.

But as a leader, a figurehead, and the person who more than almost any other person is seen as representing Christ to the world he was poor. He lacked, for want of a better word, heart. He could give perfect analyses of RCC theology and explain in painstaking detail why some things are considered sinful, but he never once appeared to give a shit about the actual people who were affected by those pronouncements. He simply didn't strike me as Christlike.

There is a place for the academic theologians in the Church. But I don't think "Pope" is that place.
 

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Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :
 

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
He lacked, for want of a better word, heart.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
I second what Desert Daughter wrote above, in both posts. Couldn't have said it better, really.

I would add however that BXVI's love of liturgy very much extended to the "extraordinary form" (the pre-VII "Latin" mass), which he de faco re-legalized (though the official line is that it was never forbidden). This also largely drove his own "reform of the reform" agenda for the "ordinary form". Finally, part and parcel of that was his attempt to re-integrate the SSPX (something he was involved with already in 1988). His inability to close that deal in my opinion also contributed mightily to his early retirement.

I think that in many parts of the RCC these activities were not popular at all. I also think that he will eventually be remembered precisely for them.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Perhaps it's unseemly to say, but I am starting to feel put off by the current pope's ostentatious displays of humility, as much as the media loves it.

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Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
Then we can add the ongoing silencing of dissent about the church's attitude to women

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But the question asked in the OP is not, "Is B XVI a good pope?" but "Why is he so unpopular?" He isn't as popular as JP2 or Francis because he didn't come across as being as personable as they do. Is that hard to accept?

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Originally posted by CL:
A prophet is despised in his own land.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
quetzalcoatl

I think there also was a feeling, right or wrong, that B16 while in charge of the office of the inquisition tried to cover up sex scandals. Or "he was in in this position of authority so he should have caught it and made a big public stink about it" or something like that. It's probably not fair, but I think it did contribute to his unpopularity.

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
To me Pope Francis comes across as 'look how humble I am compared with those other nasty Catholics', which I find very unappealing but the media and lots of other people love it so he must be on the right track I suppose.

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Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
Someone who understands, accepts, and lives out the Catholic faith is not going to "fit" into any of Western secular culture's boxes, but the media has to present them in one of those boxes. Benedict got placed in the "guys who want to enforce obscure and obsolete rules" box. Frances is being placed in the "guys who are nice to other people" box. What the media doesn't get (or doesn't present to the public) is the fact that the rules, the actions, and the theology are informed by each other, and that it does not make sense from a Catholic perspective to separate them.

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Well said. And so true.

 

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Posted by Rev per Minute (# 69) on :
 
I'm a liberal ex-Catholic whose heart sank when Ratzinger's name was announced after the 2005 conclave. But the reality of Pope Benedict was far more nuanced. I don't think he understood the public desire for a very public approach to the discovery and punishment of clerical sex abuse, even though he pushed the process forward. The creation of the Ordinariate was a policy mistake which managed to annoy Anglicans and loyal Catholics, and then it failed to be a notable success (no major moves from Canterbury to Rome). The return of the Tridentine Rite was all of a piece with Benedict's approach, but was probably 20 years too late to be a meaningful reform. And as for relationships with other denominations (sorry, 'ecclesial communities') and faiths...

But he was always on a loser following John Paul, though the final 5-10 years of that pontificate were very difficult. He always seemed to be honest in his approach, even when he stepped into trouble. The tat-queen in me loved the return of red shoes and Santa capes. I despaired that we would ever see progress towards Christian unity but Benedict was a symptom of that, not the cause. In the same way as no elected Labour Prime Minister will bring in a socialist paradise, no one elected in the Sistine Chapel will bring about sudden change and a new direction in the Catholic Church.

Finally, any discomfort with Benedict was removed by his decision to resign because he could no longer carry on. The humility shown by this decision and the relief he displayed were touching. So no, I didn't hate Benedict and never did, and beyond the reflexive anti-Catholic brigade I don't think that many people did. In fact, I would say that JP2 had a great number of 'haters' than did Benedict.
 

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Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :
 

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Originally posted by Rev per Minute:
I'm a liberal ex-Catholic whose heart sank when Ratzinger's name was announced after the 2005 conclave. But the reality of Pope Benedict was far more nuanced. I don't think he understood the public desire for a very public approach to the discovery and punishment of clerical sex abuse, even though he pushed the process forward. The creation of the Ordinariate was a policy mistake which managed to annoy Anglicans and loyal Catholics, and then it failed to be a notable success (no major moves from Canterbury to Rome). The return of the Tridentine Rite was all of a piece with Benedict's approach, but was probably 20 years too late to be a meaningful reform. And as for relationships with other denominations (sorry, 'ecclesial communities') and faiths...

But he was always on a loser following John Paul, though the final 5-10 years of that pontificate were very difficult. He always seemed to be honest in his approach, even when he stepped into trouble. The tat-queen in me loved the return of red shoes and Santa capes. I despaired that we would ever see progress towards Christian unity but Benedict was a symptom of that, not the cause. In the same way as no elected Labour Prime Minister will bring in a socialist paradise, no one elected in the Sistine Chapel will bring about sudden change and a new direction in the Catholic Church.

Finally, any discomfort with Benedict was removed by his decision to resign because he could no longer carry on. The humility shown by this decision and the relief he displayed were touching. So no, I didn't hate Benedict and never did, and beyond the reflexive anti-Catholic brigade I don't think that many people did. In fact, I would say that JP2 had a great number of 'haters' than did Benedict.

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I'm more liberal than many of them but really did not like all the Pope and Church bashing that I heard all the time. Now many (but not all) of them are having a love affair with Pope Francis, but they still will call the Church or any individual bishop/priest they don't like bigoted/hateful/evil at the drop of a hat.

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Enoch: I'm not a liberal in either the US sense or in the way the word is used here as a theological categorisation - those two uses of the same word have next to no semantic overlap.

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Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Which is the old name for Ratzinger's department.

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Originally posted by LutheranChik:
This outsider's observation: I think Benedict's introversion simply didn't play well in the media. And I also think he was perceived as a "company man," someone more interested in drawing protective wagons in a circle around the Church than in reform of the Church.

Our former ELCA Presiding Bishop (a cleric who could also be perceived as cerebral and nerdy and culturally distanced from rank and file, flyover-country laypeople) seemed to have an especially good relationship with Benedict. (It will be interesting to see if our new PB, Elizabeth Eaton, will have a similarly friendly relationship with Rome.)

The media doesn't get introverts. They just don't. And Americans as a people tend not to get introverts either. So I think quiet and reflective people in public life tend to be at a media disadvantage.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Which is the old name for Ratzinger's department.

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No, it isn't. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith used to be known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Roman Inquisition for short - precisely as distinct from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, which were essentially instituted and controlled by the monarchies of Spain and Portugal, respectively. Of course, these also had official papal blessings for their existence, but they were rather independent institutions.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Frank Mitchell:
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Which is the old name for Ratzinger's department.

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No, it isn't. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith used to be known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Roman Inquisition for short - precisely as distinct from the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, which were essentially instituted and controlled by the monarchies of Spain and Portugal, respectively. Of course, these also had official papal blessings for their existence, but they were rather independent institutions.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
You have a lot of work to do to convince people that the Roman Inquisition is different and better than the other Inquisisions, especially when you're apologizing for the Roman Inquisition making Galileo recant. From outside, it all looks like much of a muchness. "Not as bad as the Spanish Inquisition" is not likely to win hearts and minds.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
If it's a mistake, it's a mistake millions of people made.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
If it's a mistake, it's a mistake millions of people made.

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Probably. Of course, most people would have not made the connection of Ratzinger with the CDF and of the CDF with the Inquisition at all, without some helpful journalist prompting the association. At any rate, I wasn't particularly addressing the OP, but simply correcting Frank's mistake.

And yes, Palimpsest, the Spanish and the Roman Inquisition were not that much of a muchness and for that matter the story of what happened to Galileo is quite a bit more complicated than the usual story of scientific martyrdom lets on (see for example the article by Prof. Owen Gingerich in Scientific American (1982) 247: 132-143, abridged but free version here).

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Of course, most people would have not made the connection of Ratzinger with the CDF and of the CDF with the Inquisition at all, without some helpful journalist prompting the association.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
So much nicer than the Spanish Inquisition who killed and expelled many many more.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
You may think saying Benedict was head of the organization that descended from the Roman Inquisition and not the Inquisition or the Spanish is a rousing defense.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It is nitpicking to outsiders who lack your subtle theological insights. That's the hazard of not letting the church ban books and newspapers anymore so people can be protected from being informed of these links.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
So much nicer than the Spanish Inquisition who killed and expelled many many more.

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Indeed. I know you are desperately trying to be ironic here, but actually the Roman Inquisition was a lot better (i.e., less bad) than the Spanish one. If something nobody expects came around to my house, then I for one would much prefer it to be Roman, not Spanish.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
You may think saying Benedict was head of the organization that descended from the Roman Inquisition and not the Inquisition or the Spanish is a rousing defense.

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Actually, I simply think that it is a fact. I like facts. When I see someone making a factual error, I often feel inspired to correct them. So here. I also do not think that BXVI requires a defence, much less a rousing one. From all I know about him so far, I would say that he is a good and intelligent man who became a weak pope. The most questionable act of his entire ecclesiastic career was most likely ... resigning as pope. And not just because we got a loose-talking populist Jesuit next.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
It is nitpicking to outsiders who lack your subtle theological insights. That's the hazard of not letting the church ban books and newspapers anymore so people can be protected from being informed of these links.

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Being as old as the ruins of Rome has some disadvantages, for example that everybody can find some issue with you to exercise their anachronism against. Speaking of which, it might interest you that there is a field of intellectual inquiry called "history" (Wikipedia has a helpful article that will explain more). I mention this because my contribution here was what people would call "historical", rather than "theological". Perhaps you think that "theological" means "having to do with religion", but that's also not quite accurate. Again, you could start with the Wikipedia article to understand the term better.

See, I told you that when I see factual error, I often feel inspired to correct it.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
We outsiders would not be happy if the Roman Inquisition came around to our house to call. You're a true believer and could help them with their fact finding. We outsiders would be heretics. Less bad than the Spanish Inquisition has plenty of room to be quite horrible.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The Roman Inquisition's history is one of executions, imprisonments and book banning.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Thanks for explaining you were only nitpicking.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Benedict ran an organization that has a nasty history and an infamous name before they changed it.

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Originally posted by deano:
It seems to me – and I’m NOT a catholic – that after Galileo, the Catholic Church actually started to move toward embracing and supporting science. Not quickly, but she’s a big leviathan to turn around. But the Church became a great source of patronage for scientific research.

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Maffeo Barberini was an accomplished man of letters, who published several volumes of verse. Upon Galileo's return to Florence, in 1610, Barberini came to admire Galileo's intelligence and sharp wit. During a court dinner, in 1611, at which Galileo defended his view on floating bodies, Barberini supported Galileo against Cardinal Gonzaga. From this point, their patron-client relationship flourished until it was undone in 1633. Upon Barberini's ascendance of the papal throne, in 1623, Galileo came to Rome and had six interviews with the new Pope. It was at these meetings that Galileo was given permission to write about the Copernican theory, as long as he treated it as a hypothesis. After the publication of Galileo' s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief Systems of the World, in 1632, the patronage relationship was broken. It appears that the Pope never forgave Galileo for putting the argument of God's omnipotence (the argument he himelf had put to Galileo in 1623) in the mouth of Simplicio, the staunch Aristotelian whose arguments had been systematically destroyed in the previous 400-odd pages. At any rate, the Pope resisted all efforts to have Galileo pardoned.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Actually, to the extent that one can talk of supporting science at all in the past, the RCC has always been one of the foremost patrons and it would be more accurate to say that her patronage has only diminished with modernity, when secular funding has ramped up massively.

<snip>

The big problem of the Galileo affair was not what happened to Galileo, who got off rather lightly by the standards of the time, but that through the Inquisitorial reaction to him the Church clamped down unduly on heliocentrism.

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Originally posted by deano:
Imagine a Sheldon Cooper in 17th Century Rome and you begin to see the problem.

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Originally posted by deano:
I do wonder if Galileo, brilliant scientist that he was, was also a poor diplomat at a time when people like that were not tolerated as they are now.

Imagine a Sheldon Cooper in 17th Century Rome and you begin to see the problem. If Galileo had been better able to explain himself to the powers of the day then perhaps he wouldn't have run foul of the papacy.

I'm not saying he should have denied his findings, but that he was probably not the best person to explain them.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Shorter IngoB: Aside from its multi-century attempt to suppress of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church was a big supporter of science.

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Originally posted by Jade Constable:
Not sure a deeply pious RC and father of several children out of wedlock could be much of a Sheldon Cooper type!

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Shorter IngoB: Aside from its multi-century attempt to suppress of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church was a big supporter of science.

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A discovery that was made by Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon and doctor of canon law in the RCC.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
But yes, there was the Galileo affair, and it took the the RCC more than a hundred years (till 1758) to lift the general prohibition against heliocentrism.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
(And as an aside, Protestants should tread rather carefully on the subject of heliocentrism. Rather unsurprisingly, it wasn't just Catholics who worried about its apparent contradiction of scripture.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Shorter IngoB: Aside from its multi-century attempt to suppress of one of the most important scientific discoveries of the Renaissance, the Roman Catholic Church was a big supporter of science.

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A discovery that was made by Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon and doctor of canon law in the RCC. Pope Clement VII and selected cardinals attended lectures on the Copernican ideas in Rome, and one of those cardinals wrote to Copernicus, urging him to publish. He finally dedicated his work to Pope Paul III, and at the end of his life was buried in Frombork Cathedral.

But yes, there was the Galileo affair, and it took the the RCC more than a hundred years (till 1758) to lift the general prohibition against heliocentrism. This - no doubt - was a grave mistake. But it simply is not by and in itself a demonstration that the RCC was an enemy of science throughout history. She was not, and she is not. (And as an aside, Protestants should tread rather carefully on the subject of heliocentrism. Rather unsurprisingly, it wasn't just Catholics who worried about its apparent contradiction of scripture.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The Roman Inquisition's history is one of executions, imprisonments and book banning.

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Of course, if you are an Anabaptist and Zwingli's or Elizabeth I's men came knocking on your door, you would be in much better shape. Or a RC in the English Reformation. Or an Old Believer among Russian Orthodox.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
(And as an aside, Protestants should tread rather carefully on the subject of heliocentrism. Rather unsurprisingly, it wasn't just Catholics who worried about its apparent contradiction of scripture.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by deano:
Imagine a Sheldon Cooper in 17th Century Rome and you begin to see the problem.

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Exactly. The other thing people forget is that all this happened at the same time as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), the biggest military showdown of Protestant and Catholic forces in the wake of the Reformation, which wiped out up to 40% of the population in Germany and surrounds. At the time of Galileo's condemnation, Gustavus Adolphus was trashing the forces of the Holy Roman Empire. It was not a good time to openly challenge the authority of the RCC on interpreting scripture and of the pope personally. The end of this war, a mere six years after Galileo's death, de facto ended the political power of the papacy. And the cracks began to show during Galileo's house arrest, when Catholic France attacked Catholic Habsburg. The pope was - one imagines - rather too busy with serious political and military concerns than to worry much about what he had done to the relationship between Church and science. Yet that is all he is remembered for now, the personification of Church as anti-science...

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Originally posted by Tommy1:
A couple of points. Firstly criticising Ratzinger for the Galileo is rather like criticising David Cameron because of Charles I's Star Chamber.

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Secondly there is a serious side to this issue of Francis being more media savvy than Benedict. I have a horrible suspicion that we would have heard rather more about this story in the media

http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-francis-accused-of-cover-up-dominican-republic-pedophile-scandal

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/158234,Vatican-refuses-to-extradite-Polish-archbishop-accused-of-child-sex-abuse

if the Pope at the time had not been media star Francis.

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Originally posted by ken:
So no silly theories about shy nerds! He knew what he was doing and so did his opponents.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I guess it depends on whether the credit for discovering something goes to the initial theoretical formulator (Copernicus) or the person making the practical demonstration (Galileo).

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
And the ban on certain works that were originally placed on the Index of Forbidden Books because they advocated heliocentrism (e.g. Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and Copernicus' On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) persisted well into the nineteenth century. That's quite the vendetta to be based on an argument with one uppity Italian.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
And I'm hesitant to consider any organization that maintains something like an Index of Forbidden Books a "supporter of science".

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
But I'd also argue that "more tolerant of dissent than John Calvin" is setting the bar so low you can't even see it anymore.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The usual explanation is that he didn't want to deal with any backlash from religious objections. Not so good for the rapid progress of science, but a lot safer when dealing with the Church.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The end of the reformation certainly started the weakening of Papal political power. What ended the political power of the papacy was the Capture of Rome in 1870.

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Originally posted by Tommy1:
... Secondly there is a serious side to this issue of Francis being more media savvy than Benedict. I have a horrible suspicion that we would have heard rather more about this story in the media

http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-francis-accused-of-cover-up-dominican-republic-pedophile-scandal

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/158234,Vatican-refuses-to-extradite-Polish-archbishop-accused-of-child-sex-abuse

if the Pope at the time had not been media star Francis.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
It was Galileo's work with the telescope that provided the observational evidence (e.g. the phases of Venus) that geocentrism was wrong. I guess it depends on whether the credit for discovering something goes to the initial theoretical formulator (Copernicus) or the person making the practical demonstration (Galileo).

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Copernicus was - among many other things - a practical astronomer, and Galileo did not provide a practical demonstration of heliocentrism. The first real experimental "proof" in terms of measuring a star's parallax was obtained by Bessel in 1838 (after a failed earlier attempt by Bradley).

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
And I'm hesitant to consider any organization that maintains something like an Index of Forbidden Books a "supporter of science".

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. . . (One can of course ask whether there should be any censoring of books, and one can certainly argue that the Church should never have had an Index at all. But this simply was not primarily an anti-science tool.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The Church could have acted much better in the Galileo case, even by the measure of the day, but it simply remains nonsense to project 21stC sensibilities onto that period.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
But I'd also argue that "more tolerant of dissent than John Calvin" is setting the bar so low you can't even see it anymore.

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Perhaps, with anachronistic hindsight across the centuries... I really think that this is the wrong attitude. It is one thing to say that something was wrong in the past, perhaps horribly so. It is another thing entirely to judge people of the past by present standards. Everybody at all times is a child of their time. When we say that someone is a genius or pioneer or saint, we do measure them primarily against their time, not ours. In the same way, we have to judge negative performances by the baseline of their time, not by ours. Likewise, if we wish to judge rather than to state principles of what we think is right or wrong, then we do have to take circumstances into account. It simply is relevant what was happening all around people, if we want to judge their actions.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The usual explanation is that he didn't want to deal with any backlash from religious objections. Not so good for the rapid progress of science, but a lot safer when dealing with the Church.

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Sure, but what point do you believe to be making there? We are talking about the very beginnings of modern science there. You may think that it is perfectly obvious just what authority scientific findings have. But that was far from obvious back then, and certainly there were no ready-made prescriptions on how to resolve apparent conflicts with scripture. In particular, the standard of what it means to demonstrate something was being re-written.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Of course, most people would have not made the connection of Ratzinger with the CDF and of the CDF with the Inquisition at all, without some helpful journalist prompting the association.

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Gotta go with Palimpsest on this one. The media will dig up your skeletons and your half-skeletons and your things that look like skeletons. Boo fucking hoo.

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Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:

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Originally posted by Tommy1:
... Secondly there is a serious side to this issue of Francis being more media savvy than Benedict. I have a horrible suspicion that we would have heard rather more about this story in the media

http://www.examiner.com/article/pope-francis-accused-of-cover-up-dominican-republic-pedophile-scandal

http://www.thenews.pl/1/10/Artykul/158234,Vatican-refuses-to-extradite-Polish-archbishop-accused-of-child-sex-abuse

if the Pope at the time had not been media star Francis.

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I'd not heard this story before. But before we all say 'how dreadful', answer this question. Do you really think that the US, or any other government would have handed over its ambassador to the Dominican Republic is it had been their representative who was being accused of child abuse, rather than whisked them out of the country under a cloud?

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quote:

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“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Ladies and gentlemen, the Catholic case for moral relativism! It's interesting/appalling how insistence on the existence of changeless, objective morality goes out the window as soon as history is discussed, particularly the history of a beloved institution.

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Originally posted by Dogwalker:
The January Scientific American has an article about the non-religious reasons for resistance to Copernicus. It's previewed here: The Case Against Copernicus.

Two issues stood out for me: based on then current knowledge, stars would have to be much too large in the heliocentric system. The other is more practical: they knew approximately how big the earth was, and about what it weighed. Knowing how hard it is to move a cubic meter (say) of rock, how the heck did the earth keep moving? (The celestial bodies were clearly made of something different from earth: they moved.)

A competing model, with the earth unmoving in the center, and the other planets revolving around the sun revolving around the earth, fit observations better.

Laws of motion and gravitation, and atmospheric effects on star visibility solved these issues later.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Tommy1

I see no real evidence that you are right about the easy ride

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Without means of measurement, Tommy1, it's just opinion. How do you know the bias is not in your head or mine?

The difference between us is that I think there is a good deal more evidence in the public domain to justify my view of the prevailing media tendencies re idolising/iconoclising than there is to support your view of either the Pope or the alleged fawning of the press. Your accumulated data so far do not impress me.

I'm holding an open mind on the topic, pending further information. Don't see the need for any such judgment yet. YMMV, but I'm not convinced. End of.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I re-included the bit of my post that you obviously missed the first time through. I didn't say Galileo demonstrated heliocentrism was right, just that he demonstrated that geocentrism was almost certainly wrong. That's probably why he called his seminal work in this area Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, not Dialogue Concerning All Possible World Systems.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
That is, in fact, what I am arguing. The deliberate suppression of knowledge is anti-science insofar as science is a form of knowledge. I'm also not sure the ". . . but the Church suppressed other forms of knowledge too!" argument is much of a mitigator.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Ladies and gentlemen, the Catholic case for moral relativism! It's interesting/appalling how insistence on the existence of changeless, objective morality goes out the window as soon as history is discussed, particularly the history of a beloved institution.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
It probably didn't help that Francis Bacon's work in this area was also placed on the Index.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Galileo certainly was heaping on the pressure, but geocentrism wasn't dead until Bessel measured the parallax in 1838.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
That is, in fact, what I am arguing. The deliberate suppression of knowledge is anti-science insofar as science is a form of knowledge. I'm also not sure the ". . . but the Church suppressed other forms of knowledge too!" argument is much of a mitigator.

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The purpose of the Index was never to suppress knowledge.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The purpose was to suppress the spread of heresy and immorality, and thus what the Church considered as religious / moral misinformation. You can disagree with the judgement of the Church, in specific cases or with the policy in general. But you cannot simply claim that they were trying to suppress knowledge.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The reason why relatively few "scientific" works ended up on the Index is precisely because relatively few "scientific" results were threatening in a religious / moral sense.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
If you wish to say that this censorship was a bad idea, then I will agree. But it was not censorship aimed against knowledge production, but against heresy / immorality threatening the religious hegemony of the Church (an issue of pressing importance in the 16th and 17th century).

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Originally posted by Trisagion:
If you can't make that sort of proper distinction, perhaps you should to stick to something more suited to your debating skills...sudoku perhaps, or carpentry.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Just out of curiosity, can you name any astronomer of note who still used a geocentric model in 1837, but who switched over to heliocentrism in 1838? Your insistence on a sharp, definite cut-off date would imply a certain geocentric faction still existed in 1837 but vanished sometime in the subsequent year.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The purpose of censorship is always the suppression of knowledge. Sure, it's been dressed up in the tattered rags of various justifications through the centuries, but that's what it always boils down to.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Why the scare quotes around "scientific"? Are you trying to imply that Galileo's work (or Copernicus') don't really qualify as scientific in nature?

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Have you considered the "don't publish anything to piss off the Pope" rule in itself serves to suppress knowledge? Especially given that you wouldn't necessarily know in advance what would piss off the Pope? Looking at it in advance you wouldn't think "a new theory of orbital mechanics" would be something the Pope would particularly care about, but obviously Galileo was wrong. So your typical scientist [or poet or diarist or composer of useful hints on animal husbandry or whatever] has to start wondering "if the Church can end the career of one of the most prominent men of the era and lock him up, what are they likely to do to me, someone much less prominent?"

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But the question boils down to, on what grounds should the Holy See be making decisions about what constitutes science?

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But the question boils down to, on what grounds should the Holy See be making decisions about what constitutes science?

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Past tense, surely? Unless they are still doing it that is - presentism being the besetting sin of such discussions frequently.

Croesos - your definition of censorship appears to be inadequate.

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There's a complaint in this thread that it's anachronistic to hold the judge the actions of the historical past by modern standards. What opens that door is the claim that the Church has theories and laws made in the past that are eternally true and not subject to modification over time.

If you insist that these are eternally correct and apply now, then the historical consequences should be correct as well.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
But the question boils down to, on what grounds should the Holy See be making decisions about what constitutes science?

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Past tense, surely? Unless they are still doing it that is - presentism being the besetting sin of such discussions frequently.

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Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Granted, Gildas. But you wouldn't have to be a raving rad-trad to think the Church might have over-egged the chest-beating.

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Fine. What right DID IT HAVE to make those decisions? If any, what are they? If none, why is IngoB defending them?

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The purpose of the Index was never to suppress knowledge. The purpose was to suppress the spread of heresy and immorality, and thus what the Church considered as religious / moral misinformation. You can disagree with the judgement of the Church, in specific cases or with the policy in general. But you cannot simply claim that they were trying to suppress knowledge. From a neutral, non-believing point of view they were rather trying to suppress contrary religious / moral opinion. That is simply not the same thing as knowledge. The reason why relatively few "scientific" works ended up on the Index is precisely because relatively few "scientific" results were threatening in a religious / moral sense. If you wish to say that this censorship was a bad idea, then I will agree. But it was not censorship aimed against knowledge production, but against heresy / immorality threatening the religious hegemony of the Church (an issue of pressing importance in the 16th and 17th century).

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Originally posted by ken:
Kepler. It was Kepler who worked out what our solar system looks like. Not Galileo, and certainly not Copernicus. He did it by doing hard sums. Which Galileo and Copernicus wouldn't have been capable of probably. (Though Newton would have of course)

There was no real room for doubt after Kepler, at least not for those who understood his work. And what possible remaining doubt there was was abolished by Newton (and dozens of other lesser scientists of his time) and the famous laws of motion, which neatly explain Keplers laws.

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Originally posted by ken:
But really it was all a done deal in the 17th century. The idea that it wasn't "proved" till the 19th is just a cultural preference for manipulative experiment over observation, for deterministic systems over probabilistic ones, for laboratory work over field work, for calculus over statistics, which is perhaps strongest among physicists. (And dare I say it was a big part of the German invention of the modern academic system and research university in the 19th century, and perhaps persists so strongly because of the amazing success of that system).

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quote:

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Originally posted by ken:
But seriously anyone who could understand Kepler's maths (I can't) should have been convinced by Kepler. And everybody else by Newton. No room for doubt remained after that. By the century every scientist was already a heliocentrist.

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Originally posted by ken:
And anyway, we no more really understand what gravity is or how it relates to other physical forces now than we did in 1838.

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Originally posted by Gildas:
So the Galileo was wrong meme derives from contrarians like the late Colin Wilson and Arthur Koestler, people who can never, never, ever admit the Magisterium was wrong under any circumstances ever, and a handful of wild and wacky traditionalists who are convinced that, actually, the sun really does revolve around the earth.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Fine. What right DID IT HAVE to make those decisions? If any, what are they? If none, why is IngoB defending them?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gildas:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:
Granted, Gildas. But you wouldn't have to be a raving rad-trad to think the Church might have over-egged the chest-beating.

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How is it that Jesus comes to us preaching a Gospel of humility and contrition and you get upset when his Vicar and the Successors of His Holy Apostles display humility and contrition? In real life, when you fuck up, you generally get points for putting your hands up and saying "my bad". Why should the Church be exempt? To save a great deal of bandwidth I acknowledge that I am not personally very good at this but one does, rather, expect Jesus' representative on earth to be somewhat better.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The purpose of censorship is always the suppression of knowledge. Sure, it's been dressed up in the tattered rags of various justifications through the centuries, but that's what it always boils down to.

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This is mere assertion, not argument.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
It also relies on ambiguities concerning what we call "knowledge". Obviously all censorship suppresses knowledge at least of that which is being censored. But this is simply not the same as saying that the censorship targets knowledge as such. For example, if a dictatorship censors the news that some rebel group has successfully attacked a government building, then this removes a piece of knowledge, namely this news. But the aim is not the general suppression of news about attacks on buildings, but rather to deprive that rebel group of publicity which might fuel its popularity.

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Originally posted by Honest Ron Bacardi:
Croesos - your definition of censorship appears to be inadequate.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
I hope it is clear from this that the Tychonic system is perfectly compatible with Kepler's laws - if one assumes that they are valid on one hand for the trajectory of the sun around the earth, and on the other hand for the trajectory of the other planets around the sun.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
So to mention Newton is the right idea. Because Kepler's system can be seen as an approximation of the system under universal Newtonian gravitation, if the sun is much heavier than the planets.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
It took till the end of the 17th and into the early 18th century before the Tychonic models were finally laid to rest by the scientific community at large.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Nevertheless, one could have maintained some version of geocentrism until the measurement of the parallax in 1838.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Benedict's history of condoning the concealing Child Abuse from temporal authorities so it would be subject only to "internal discipline" is consistent with the theory that the Church is an independent peer of Temporal Authorities.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Yes, and something (censorship = suppression of knowledge) that I'd thought was trivially true by definition.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
That it's not really suppressing knowledge unless you're suppressing all knowledge of anything about everything? I'm guessing it's this last one, which seems to sort of track your rationalizations, but I'm not sure since your argument is all over the place.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
The problem with the Tychonic system from the philosophical perspective is that it's a kludge and, even worse, an obvious one. Of course not every aspect of nature has to be elegant, but if you're going to insist on the historical importance of philosophical considerations to Renaissance-era thinkers the inherent "clunkiness", both conceptually and as something to work with, of the Tychonic system would seem a barrier. The unpopularity of Tycho's model prior to Galileo would seem to indicate its later popularity to be more an assertion of the wrongness of heliocentrism rather than the correctness of Tycho's only marginally geocentric system. (Is a system that centers everything except the Earth, and possibly the sphere of fixed stars, on the Sun truly "geocentric"?)

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
More importantly, Kepler's three laws of planetary motion "pop out" of Newtonian gravitational theory (Kepler's third law has to be given a slight tweak if the two bodies are of similar mass, but that's not the case for most orbital pairs in our Solar System.).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Insisting that measurable stellar parallax is the only legitimate way to demonstrate heliocentrism is kind of like insisting that the only valid demonstration that the Earth is spherical is direct observation from great distance, so therefore it would have been scientifically respectable to insist on a flat Earth model until the Apollo 8 astronauts reported their visual confirmation of Earth's shape.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CL:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Benedict's history of condoning the concealing Child Abuse from temporal authorities so it would be subject only to "internal discipline" is consistent with the theory that the Church is an independent peer of Temporal Authorities.

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That is a vicious libel.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CL:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Benedict's history of condoning the concealing Child Abuse from temporal authorities so it would be subject only to "internal discipline" is consistent with the theory that the Church is an independent peer of Temporal Authorities.

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That is a vicious libel.

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In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel. The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings.

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So no meás given to brittle people given absolute power over the poor and uneducated.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
... To tie the tangent back to the thread, modern society increasingly believes the Church should have no temporal authority to impose itself on those who are non-believers. Benedict's history of condoning the concealing Child Abuse from temporal authorities so it would be subject only to "internal discipline" is consistent with the theory that the Church is an independent peer of Temporal Authorities. That is increasingly not the view of an increasingly secular society.

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What does this mean?

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Originally posted by Gildas:
Well, if you are happy with that particular line of tack presumably you have no objection to the Socialist Workers Party in the UK declining to report an allegation of rape to the police on the grounds that they could do better than bourgeois justice? [A clue: they did not]

The irony is that Benedict was pretty hot on sticking it to the nonces and one of the reasons that much of the aggro kicked off during his pontificate was because instructions were issued along the lines of "do something about this" and "report this stuff to the civil power". If he had insisted on a policy of strict Omerta then he wouldn't have received half the flack he got. Quite a lot of people have tried quite hard to pin the child abuse cover up on Pope Benedict and, to my knowledge, no-one has yet been able to point to a smoking gun. Based on the facts in the public domain I would say that Benedict hated child abuse like the devil and tried to do something about it. I would add that this was not a view universally shared by the senior Catholic hierarchy, which, to my mind makes Benedict's attitude more admirable. The case for Benedict does not require us to go all Rev'd J. C. Flannel on the subject of child molestation. He never did.

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Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Posted by Augustine:

quote:

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What does this mean?

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It means 'respect'...more or less. The post following also uses Irish, calling Ireland 'Eire' - which you generally wouldn't do unless the rest of the sentences and words are in irish too.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
... To tie the tangent back to the thread, modern society increasingly believes the Church should have no temporal authority to impose itself on those who are non-believers. Benedict's history of condoning the concealing Child Abuse from temporal authorities so it would be subject only to "internal discipline" is consistent with the theory that the Church is an independent peer of Temporal Authorities. That is increasingly not the view of an increasingly secular society.

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I think a lot of the criticism of the Catholic Church on this has consistently failed to appreciate something else which is important. On child abuse, they got this wrong, but one can see why.

The Catholic Church has to function in a large number of states round the world, with all manner of different political and social philosophies. In many of them, the regime has been actively or passively hostile to it. There are a large number of ways in which most of us, even non-Catholics like myself, would accept, agree with and sympathise with its desire both to keep the civil power at arms length or further, and not to wash its dirty linen in public. So it is no wonder that it has a preference for trying as far as possible to deal with things itself.

Until he became Pope in 1978, John Paul II had spent his entire priestly career in Poland, first under German invasion, and then under a puppet Soviet regime. Benedict grew up in Nazi Germany. Although the post war Bundesrepublik was a civilised state, there were several states round it which were not, with one of which, it had a land border.

Although Eire is a civilised state, there is a long tradition there, deriving from attitudes inherited from before 1921 and I believe still prevalent, that however committed a nationalist a person may be, that does not necessarily mean they feel emotionally obliged to be as fully committed to the administrative requirements of the regime as it may prefer its citizens to be.

I get the impression, Palimpsest, from the existence of things like the home school movement, that such suspicions of the state's good intentions are not that unknown even in the US.

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Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
Ronald Binge posts:

quote:

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So no meás given to brittle people given absolute power over the poor and uneducated.

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What does this mean? Could he clarify it? Or are some of the words in Irish?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
I'm not sure where I'm supposed to have gone wrong here or what people are complaining about. Eire is widely used in Britain if one wants to make it clear one means specifically the southern part of Ireland that is independent and not including the northern part that is in the UK. It is what it is called on stamps.


Putting a slightly different cast on my previous post, Palimpsest. I might expect the Catholic Church in England to involve the state in its child abuse investigations. But would you have expected - or do you think other people would have assumed one expects - the Irish Catholic Church to have delated its clergy to the Northern Irish (i.e. Ulster, UK) government, whatever they had done, child abuse, murder, shielding terrorists, covering up bank robberies etc? Unless the argument is 'yes, in all cases and all countries', I think one has to say, 'I can see how they got into a position where their instinct was to cover things up' even if one disagrees with them or is shocked.

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Nobody here has proposed that Galileo was wrong to support heliocentrism, or even that he was wrong in insisting on it as such. Also, the Church clearly handled this badly. However, it is also clear that Galileo wasn't quite the martyr for science that enlightenment hagiography made out of him. And that resistance to Galileo's proposals wasn't simply a matter of ignorance and stupidity. At the time, reasonable doubt was still possible.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Over here, "Eire" used in English is believed to be condescending as we never call the Republic that. Call us either "Ireland" or "the Republic of Ireland". Think of Americans talking about the United Kingdom as "England", not an exact parallel but near enough.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Over here, "Eire" used in English is believed to be condescending as we never call the Republic that. Call us either "Ireland" or "the Republic of Ireland". Think of Americans talking about the United Kingdom as "England", not an exact parallel but near enough.

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There is, of course, history surrounding the use of the word "Ireland" for your country, given that that name is also used to describe the island, and that pre-Good Friday Agreement, your country claimed sovereignty over the entire island.

In that climate, use of the word "Ireland" to describe the country would tend to indicate support for its claims to the North, whereas the word "Eire" is neutral.

It's probably best not to even mention the name of the large city on the river Foyle...
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 
Discussion of Ireland/The Republic of Ireland/Eire and how one should name any of these entities is definitely not directly related to Benedict the XVI, and should be a separate thread, if people want to continue.

Gwai
Purgatory Host
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Well Benedict's blaming Irish child abuse on libruls post Vatican II was a remarkable case of continuing to dig the hole while the sides were caving in.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Well Benedict's blaming Irish child abuse on libruls post Vatican II was a remarkable case of continuing to dig the hole while the sides were caving in.

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I'm confused how you get that from your quote? As far as I can see, BXVI was addressing the tendency to send offenders to therapy and/or shuffle them around to a different parish for a new go, instead of hitting them hard with the appropriate canonical penalties (and thereby taking them out of parish life). This he appears to blame at least in part on the mood after Vatican II. Whether that is accurate or not is perhaps worth a discussion, but it really is not "blaming Irish child abuse on libruls". It rather seems to blame the handling of child abuse cases on Vatican II in some way (where "liberals" can perhaps be inferred as understood for all post-Vatican II failures in the Church...).

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
The letter gives no appearance that there is any understanding of the context. In the most notorious case, that of Brendan Smyth and the handling of his case by the Church authorities, there was nothing liberal or secular in moving him about or the swearing to secrecy of the victims.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Finally, Benedict's prescribed solution of more prayer and attendance to the sacraments, while a praiseworthy activity, failed to connect with the reality that God needs human brains and hands to act on His behalf.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
Too many of us in Ireland grew up on the bromide "Offer it up for the Holy Souls" which inculcated passivity and not action.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
your quote does not in fact deal with child abuse, but rather with the handling of child abuse cases

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Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Full text here

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It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. I appreciate the efforts you have made to remedy past mistakes and to guarantee that they do not happen again. Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence. Clearly, religious superiors should do likewise. They too have taken part in recent discussions here in Rome with a view to establishing a clear and consistent approach to these matters. It is imperative that the child safety norms of the Church in Ireland be continually revised and updated and that they be applied fully and impartially in conformity with canon law.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
BXVI's greatest fault has always been that he was speaking as if talking to a mature, fair, calm, intelligent, informed and interested audience.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Perhaps the real fault people see here is that BXVI did not "name and shame" individuals more directly, and allowed the Church of Ireland to attempt to fix herself, rather than shaking things up from Rome.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
BXVI's greatest fault has always been that he was speaking as if talking to a mature, fair, calm, intelligent, informed and interested audience.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
]That second one is a pretty damned big fault. "You foxes shouldn't be fucking the hens. Now work it out amongst yourselves how to stop it."

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
BXVI's greatest fault has always been that he was speaking as if talking to a mature, fair, calm, intelligent, informed and interested audience.

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Yes, that is quite a fault. Some might even say that a calm, un-angry reaction to revelations of widespread child abuse (coupled with conspiracies to obstruct justice) is morally monstrous. Expecting an audience that has experienced it first- or secondhand to simply shrug and say "Eh, whatevs" shows an almost sociopathic lack of anything resembling empathy.

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quote:

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Yes, that is quite a fault. Some might even say that a calm, un-angry reaction to revelations of widespread child abuse (coupled with conspiracies to obstruct justice) is morally monstrous. Expecting an audience that has experienced it first- or secondhand to simply shrug and say "Eh, whatevs" shows an almost sociopathic lack of anything resembling empathy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Yes, that is quite a fault. Some might even say that a calm, un-angry reaction to revelations of widespread child abuse (coupled with conspiracies to obstruct justice) is morally monstrous. Expecting an audience that has experienced it first- or secondhand to simply shrug and say "Eh, whatevs" shows an almost sociopathic lack of anything resembling empathy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
That second one is a pretty damned big fault. "You foxes shouldn't be fucking the hens. Now work it out amongst yourselves how to stop it."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Or more accurately, "You supposedly celibate priests should not be fucking anyone, let alone children. Half the Church in Ireland is defrocked immediately."

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gildas:
I can see where the guy was coming from and, indeed, sympathise but I can also see that from the point of view of an Irish person who had been sexually abused by a clergyman I would have expected less about proper priestly formation and a bit more about bishops touching base with the Gardai in the event that bishops knew that their clergy were molesting their laity.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
Read what I wrote.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Gee D:
And did Trent wish a common prayer across the Catholic Church, as you assert? IIRC, many of the ancient rites remained, starting with the Ambrosian in Milan.

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quote:

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Originally posted by JoannaP:

quote:

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Originally posted by Gildas:
I can see where the guy was coming from and, indeed, sympathise but I can also see that from the point of view of an Irish person who had been sexually abused by a clergyman I would have expected less about proper priestly formation and a bit more about bishops touching base with the Gardai in the event that bishops knew that their clergy were molesting their laity.

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But wasn't one of the problems in Ireland that, in the past, if somebody did complain to the Gardai, that the latter refused to take any action against a priest? The complicity of the civil authorities doesn't seem to be mentioned much but is surely a factor in historical cases.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Yes, that is quite a fault. Some might even say that a calm, un-angry reaction to revelations of widespread child abuse (coupled with conspiracies to obstruct justice) is morally monstrous. Expecting an audience that has experienced it first- or secondhand to simply shrug and say "Eh, whatevs" shows an almost sociopathic lack of anything resembling empathy.

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I neither said that the events left BXVI personally cold, nor that he expected people to be unconcerned.

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quote:

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For politicized people or people with gay/female/Anglican friends it was what he said and did that made him unpopular and nothing to do with how he looked or how he courted the media

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
No, you didn't. I believe the exact word you used was "calm". You suggested the Benedict XVI expected people to be "calm" about child abuse. In fact, you went on to contrast it with an "angry" reaction, implying that either Benedict or you (or both) consider such a reaction either unwarranted or outside the scope of the Papal office to deal with.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Augustine the Aleut:
George Spigot writes:

quote:

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For politicized people or people with gay/female/Anglican friends it was what he said and did that made him unpopular and nothing to do with how he looked or how he courted the media

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I would differ. I think that his presentation was singularly unsuccesful-- a late-baroque cat-loving German scholar using very cadenced language rubbed so many people the wrong way. Indeed, only a week ago I had a conversation over cocoa and panettone with a gay female franco-ontarian photographer (whose fine arts degree has a minor in theology) whose concern over clerical sexual abuse is linked to a family member's experience. She had prepared a timeline on this case and matched it to a timeline of various papal decisions and, by the end of her work, B16 had come out very well in comparison with J2P2. The two Canadian bishops involved in the case did not come out well.

But she still didn't like him very much.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
That second one is a pretty damned big fault. "You foxes shouldn't be fucking the hens. Now work it out amongst yourselves how to stop it."

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You may wish to consider that the RC situation is not as different from the Orthodox one as you apparently believe.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, then it's okay. Look, you are all about the central authority of Rome being one of its superiorities over orthodoxy, then in the one case where it might have PREVENTED CHILDREN FROM GETTING RAPED, your head honcho doesn't use it, and your'e fine with that, and would rather slag off the Orthodox than have the pope do his fucking job.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, then it's okay. Look, you are all about the central authority of Rome being one of its superiorities over orthodoxy, then in the one case where it might have PREVENTED CHILDREN FROM GETTING RAPED, your head honcho doesn't use it, and your'e fine with that, and would rather slag off the Orthodox than have the pope do his fucking job.

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I wasn't slagging off the Orthodox, I was pointing out practical limitations to the powers of the pope by comparison to the Orthodox situation. The pope does not govern >1 billion Catholics directly, and he cannot simply step in for a Church of Ireland governing 5 million Catholics either. Unlike spiritual exhortation, and the occasional modifications of doctrine and liturgy, Church governance and judicial process cannot be merely promulgated from Rome, they have to be delegated to people and exercised by them. Anyway, you seem to be of the opinion that something BXVI could have done but did not do "might have prevented children from getting raped". Care to elaborate what exercise of the papal office you are thinking of, and when it should have occurred?

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quote:

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Questioned about an instance from 2001, when Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, a then senior Vatican official, praised French bishop Pierre Pican for not reporting to civil authorities a priest in his diocese who had raped a boy, Charles Scicluna, a former sex crimes prosecutor for the Vatican and auxiliary bishop of Malta, indicated this was an area on which the Holy See knew the approach had to change

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quote:

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But his words did not convince Pam Spees, of the US-based advocacy group the Centre for Constitutional Rights, who said the Vatican's "performance" was unsurprising. "The Vatican attempted to relegate the issue to the past and claim it is a new era, that they now 'get it,' but they continue to refuse to turn over records for prosecution, punish higher-ups that covered up the crimes, or provide any real evidence that they are now putting the safety of children above the reputation of the Church," she said.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
I most definitely did not suggest that BXVI expected people to be "calm" about child abuse! Neither did I in any way or form state that anger is unwarranted in this case, or that the pope does not have to deal with such anger.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
This is what I actually said: "BXVI's greatest fault has always been that he was speaking as if talking to a mature, fair, calm, intelligent, informed and interested audience.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
He never really understood how to manipulate a more regular crowd, much less an angry or sensation-hungry one." If you wish, you can see a certain longing in this for a world where a pope could get away with being a competent speaker only in the Professorial mode. Or with having an quiet chat with crowds, rather than having to manipulate them for the ends of the Church.

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quote:

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Benedict was unpopular for all the reasons Augustine listed above. He was also unpopular for his Prada slippers and his reputed fondness for obscure items of Papal clothing, for Gorgeous George and the appearance of being in the closet with the door open. He was unpopular for his apparent eagerness to rehabilitate the Society of St Pius X. He was unpopular for having been Cardinal Ratzinger.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh, then it's okay. Look, you are all about the central authority of Rome being one of its superiorities over orthodoxy, then in the one case where it might have PREVENTED CHILDREN FROM GETTING RAPED, your head honcho doesn't use it, and your'e fine with that, and would rather slag off the Orthodox than have the pope do his fucking job.

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I wasn't slagging off the Orthodox, I was pointing out practical limitations to the powers of the pope by comparison to the Orthodox situation. The pope does not govern >1 billion Catholics directly, and he cannot simply step in for a Church of Ireland governing 5 million Catholics either.

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quote:

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This is the institution that told us that it was unable to control child rapists in its ranks because it couldn’t just issue orders. Remember Cardinal Cahal Daly writing to the parents of a victim of the hideous abuser Brendan Smyth: “There have been complaints about this priest before, and once I had to speak to the superior about him. It would seem that there has been no improvement. I shall speak with the superior again.” Remember the stuff about how bishops were lords in their own dioceses and religious orders were their own kingdoms?

When priests were raping children, the institutional hierarchy was wringing its hands and pleading “what can we do?” The Vatican was very busy and very far away. But when a priest makes some mild suggestions that women might be entitled to equality, the church is suddenly an efficient police state that can whip that priest into line. The Vatican, which apparently couldn’t read any of the published material pointing to horrific abuse in church-run institutions, can pore over the Sunday World with a magnifying glass, looking for the minutest speck of heresy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The examples cited in this article about UN Panel grills Catholic hierarchy is a good starting point.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The legality of transferring the assets to shield them is part of ongoing law suits against the diocese. Dolan was then appointed Archbishop of New York and later Cardinal by Pope Benedict.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The argument that it can't be promulgated from Rome falls apart when the Pope and the Vatican have the power to appoint and remove and reward or punish all of the leadership of the organizations of the national churches and the organizations in the Vatican.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Benedict not only failed to do so, he rewarded those who failed at the next level down.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As for the argument that it was all the fault of John Paul II and not Benedict, the process of reward continues with his hasty beatification.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
I guess you're right. We can conclude from you assertion either that Pope Benedict actually expected people to be calm about child abuse or that he understood that they'd be angry and chose to pretend they were calm anyway. I'm not sure which would be worse; sociopathically not understanding why child abuse makes people angry, or manipulatively pretending not to understand.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Your suggestion that Benedict understood and expected people's angry reactions over the abuse of children but nonetheless addressed them "as if talking to a . . . calm . . . audience" sounds pretty manipulative to me. It's a fairly standard way of suggesting that people's outrage either isn't warranted or isn't genuine.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Care to elaborate what exercise of the papal office you are thinking of, and when it should have occurred?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
It could have been as simple as this in the first instance.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
From an Irish Times editorial I linked to about a year and a half ago on the extent and limitations on Vatican authority in Ireland. ...

quote:

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... But when a priest makes some mild suggestions that women might be entitled to equality, the church is suddenly an efficient police state that can whip that priest into line. The Vatican, which apparently couldn’t read any of the published material pointing to horrific abuse in church-run institutions, can pore over the Sunday World with a magnifying glass, looking for the minutest speck of heresy.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
What did Francis do to the millionaire priest or bishop or whatever in Austria? Was that not his prerogative? Was he out of line?

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The examples cited in this article about UN Panel grills Catholic hierarchy is a good starting point.

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I would not typically expect the Guardian to be an unbiased source concerning RC matters. But I'm certainly not going to play apologist for the handling of the RC Church of sexual abuse, past and even present. My knowledge of these matters is quite limited, as is my interest. I believe other RCs on these boards (TripleTiara, Trisagion, ...) have in the past provided more competent commentary on these matters. Maybe you can get them to engage with this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The legality of transferring the assets to shield them is part of ongoing law suits against the diocese. Dolan was then appointed Archbishop of New York and later Cardinal by Pope Benedict.

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quote:

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The hearing in Geneva happened on the same day that Pope Francis celebrated morning Mass alongside an American cardinal who was widely disgraced last year in the abuse scandal. At the Mass, Francis delivered a homily about scandal in the church, never mentioning sexual abuse, but speaking of “those failings of priests, bishops, laity.”
“But are we ashamed?” Francis said, according to a Vatican Radio transcript. “So many scandals that I do not want to mention individually, but all of us know.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The argument that it can't be promulgated from Rome falls apart when the Pope and the Vatican have the power to appoint and remove and reward or punish all of the leadership of the organizations of the national churches and the organizations in the Vatican.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

How would the pope know whom to appoint instead if he knocks out an entire level of a national hierarchy? Do you expect the Holy Spirit to dictate to him a list of trustworthy and competent men to replace the previous ones? If he has to ask the locals, how would he know who can be trusted and who is a crony of the previous bunch? What effect would it have locally if an entire hierarchy had been knocked down, after the brief applause from the secular media has passed? For that matter, will all of these people being let go simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be lawsuits about employment, bishops simply refusing to leave and trying to take their parishes with them, and whatnot? Is it even fair to ignore all else such a person has done? Decades of service of no value over a mishandling of an abuse case? And what will be the effect worldwide? If the pope is willing to take out one hierarchy over one thing, who knows where he will strike next, and for what reason?

I don't think that these decisions are as simple as some make them out to be. And I also think that many people around the pope are highly skilled at whatever the Italian equivalent of the "Yes, (Prime)Minister" is.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh hey, maybe there was something Benny could have done. And it looks like he did it, or at least some of it. In spite of some here who claim the Pope can't just reach into the Autonomous Catholic Churches and make changes.

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quote:

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In 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, arranged for all abuse cases to be sent to his office at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome. After the sexual abuse scandal erupted anew in the United States in 2002, American bishops forwarded about 700 abuse cases to the Vatican during the next few years, said Nicholas P. Cafardi, the former dean of the Duquesne University School of Law, who wrote a book about the church’s response to sexual abuse.

“Since the American eruption, you’ve had eruptions in Ireland and Australia and a number of other European countries,” he said. “The cases could be decades old. So it’s certainly a large number, but when you think of the time frame involved, it’s less impressive.”

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

Why would I ask them to engage? I've heard their excuses before. The Question on this thread was "Why is Benedict so unpopular with outsiders". My opinion is that the way he handled the sex scandal is one big reason. I'm not looking to vindicate him.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Oh hey, maybe there was something Benny could have done. And it looks like he did it, or at least some of it. In spite of some here who claim the Pope can't just reach into the Autonomous Catholic Churches and make changes.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:

Now, that is not a statement that local Churches were "autonomous". But, despite the inconvenience to the Orthodox polemic, the truth is that Rome does not micro-manage. It does, however, step in when there is a significant problem.

Furthermore, local Churches, through their Tribunals, still retain the right to discipline clergy without a direct intervention from Rome. In the instances of child abuse, that can occur and Rome need only to be informed. In other words, it does not need Rome to act directly, only to be informed. Rome acts as a a tribunal of appeal. In legal terms, you might think of Rome as the Supreme Court or Appeal Court, not the court of first instance. And sadly, as has become only too apparent, some of those guilty fight tooth and nail to defend themselves and deny any wrongdoing.

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quote:

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As part of the implementation of the norms enacted and promulgated on April 30, 2001 by Pope John Paul II,[6] on May 18, 2001 Ratzinger sent a letter to every bishop in the Catholic Church.[7][8] This letter reminded them of the strict penalties facing those who revealed confidential details concerning enquiries into allegations against priests of certain grave ecclesiastical crimes, including sexual abuse, which were reserved to the jurisdiction of the Congregation.

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quote:

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Bishop Scicluna said: “It is not the policy of the Holy See to encourage cover-ups. This is against the truth.”

The panel questioned Bishop Scicluna persistently about why the Holy See does not make it mandatory for local dioceses to report abuse to civil authorities. Many countries do not require such reporting. “Our guidelines have always said the domestic law of the country needs to be followed,” he said.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
The latest information about laicisations during the time of Benedict XVI is no surprise.

One of the first things that John Paul II did was tighten up on laicisations, and his Maundy Thursday letter to all priests was about the subject, stressing that once vows were taken the church should do everything in her power to see that they were kept. The precise procedure was hammered out in a covering letter sent out by the then Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Franjo Seper.

Where previously it had been possible for local hierarchies to decide/enact on their own about priests either wanting to be released from their vows or who should be de-frocked because of criminal acts, JP II enforced a procedure that meant ALL priestly laicisations had to go to the papal office, and he and Seper devised a procedure that was cumbersome and unbelievably slow.

In the case of priests who should have been laicised - abusers, for example - it just didn't happen. And it was more than anyone, Benedict during his time at the CDF included, could achieve to get JP II to shift on this one.

Some would argue that his view of eternal priesthood was a good thing: but taking the line that paedophile clergy just needed to (in effect) be given a good talking to and moved elswehere was IMO criminally negligent.

Simply put, John Paul II placed greater emphasis on sticking to the eternal nature of priestly vows, both for those who felt called to marry and for those whose criminal activities brought shame on the church and did great wrong to innocent children, than he did on acknowledging that sometimes there are harms and crimes that must be stopped and for which a priest should forfeit his status.

The lumping together of good priests who wished to marry with criminal paedophiles and abusers is the clearest evidence there can be of just how skewed his moral compass was.

For this man to be on the fast track to sainthood defies belief.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

The local church discipline was not able to reveal details of sexual abuse crimes to the Criminal authorities because they're confidential matters.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Because you want to assert that Rome micromanages because that suits the Orthodox polemic of how the Catholic Church works - that's the real bullshit.

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Oh please cut the Ortho-bashing crap. Or take it to Hell where I can give it the response it deserves.
 

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Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :
 
Well, he wasn't exactly doing nothing...
 

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Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :
 
From the aforementioned:

On one hand, it looks like the Church is saying that if these folks wanted to press criminal charges, there is nothing stopping them.

And on the other, advocates are saying that the church should go farther and defrock people who cover up or inappropriately respond to said accusations.

So, maybe not as clear as the headline made it look, but it's something.
 

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Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :
 
Oh, right. I should read further up the thread...
 

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Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Because you want to assert that Rome micromanages because that suits the Orthodox polemic of how the Catholic Church works - that's the real bullshit.

But yes, 2001 was very late, and by then most of the damage had been done.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Because you want to assert that Rome micromanages because that suits the Orthodox polemic of how the Catholic Church works - that's the real bullshit.

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Oh please cut the Ortho-bashing crap. Or take it to Hell where I can give it the response it deserves.

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I see. When you say something it's debate, when the basis of your argument is revealed it's "Ortho-bashing crap".
 

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Posted by Triple Tiara (# 9556) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ad Orientem:

quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
Because you want to assert that Rome micromanages because that suits the Orthodox polemic of how the Catholic Church works - that's the real bullshit.

But yes, 2001 was very late, and by then most of the damage had been done.

---

The pope does claim immediate jurisdiction over the whole Church.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:

The local church discipline was not able to reveal details of sexual abuse crimes to the Criminal authorities because they're confidential matters.

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Nonsense. The attempt to make this claim has been endless, and somehow it keeps being asserted. It is simply not true: the pontifical secret applies to Church processes and has nothing to do with civil and criminal processes. What goes on in the Church tribunal does not preclude the crimes of a priest being reported to civil authorities: the two processes are quite separate, as are the penalties. A priest may face both civil and ecclesiastical penalties, it does not have to be either or, as the false elision you have made would suggest.

The Catholic Church has been appalling in the way it dealt with the issue in so many ways. But asserting wrong things on the back of that does not suddenly make them true.

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quote:

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a newly disclosed document
reveals that Vatican officials told the bishops of Ireland in 1997 that they had serious reservations about the bishops’ policy of mandatory reporting of priests suspected of child abuse to the police or civil authorities.

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quote:

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It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations. I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that grave errors of judgement were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness. I appreciate the efforts you have made to remedy past mistakes and to guarantee that they do not happen again. Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Well, if it was nonsense, it was widely prevalent nonsense.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
I see. When you say something it's debate, when the basis of your argument is revealed it's "Ortho-bashing crap".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chesterbelloc:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
Well, if it was nonsense, it was widely prevalent nonsense.

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If it was widely prevalent it was almost as widely refuted - including here on the Ship by the likes of Triple Tiara, Trisagion and even my humble self. Somehow, the myth persists. It's almost as if some people have a vested interest in keeping the myth alive.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
To be honest, mousethief, I have less interest in your psyche than I do in the foreign policy of the micronation of Sealand.

You persist, however, in giving a slant and arguing from an angle which holds that Rome is a big bully trying to run everything in the Church, despite those who actually are Catholics giving an account of what is the reality. That's the real presumptuousness and rudeness here. But when you are called on it you get all hoity-toity and cry "Ortho-bashing".

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
I found an article that showed that not only CAN the Pope do that, he DID.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Well, he wasn't exactly doing nothing...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Well, he wasn't exactly doing nothing...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
palimpsest cut the crap! The Pope is not helpless and neither does he go about appointing bishops with a poor record to the Cardinalate. Why do you persist in twisting things?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:

I say again: it's not about the pope's helplessness but about what he ordinarily does - and he ordinarily does not govern particular dioceses - that's in the hands of the bishops of those dioceses. So he has no insight into what goes on in each diocese, apart from what the bishop reports to him. If there is no obligation to report on a particular matter, it does not ordinarily come up.

The fact that particular bishops who were appointed as Cardinals were later revealed to have a poor record in their handling of sexual abuse cases is not the same thing as appointing such a person a Cardinal after he was shown to be a poor handler of the situation.

Your interjections on these matters are in very poor taste indeed.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Triple Tiara:
So he has no insight into what goes on in each diocese, apart from what the bishop reports to him.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Dunno, mousethief. In general, there are gradations in a continuum here.

unconscious neglect - conscious tolerance - wise oversight - heavy shepherding - control-freakery - cult brainwashing.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The proponent of the "The pope can't do anything about the abuse because he's helpless to discipline the National Churches" on this thread is IngoB. Address your criticism of the quality of that theory to him. I would agree with you that the Pope is responsible for the organizations that he appoints leaders, my comment was a jibe at the latest apologia from IngoB.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As I mentioned earlier on the thread Pope Benedict did appoint Timothy M Dolan as Archbishop of New York and later Cardinal. His record of shifting funds from corporation to corporation to avoid paying damages to abuse victims is currently under legal challenge. He also did request Vatican permission to shift the funds, so it's not like it was a secret at the Vatican before he was appointed Cardinal by Benedict. That would be appointing such a person Archbishop of New York and a Cardinal after he was shown to be a poor handler of the situation.

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quote:

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As I have pointed out above, you have only one concern here, the compensation of the victims of the sexual abuse. But ++Dolan and BXVI were tasked with keeping a local and the global Church running, respectively. Perhaps you think that the RCC deserves to collapse and die over this, but I don't think so, and certainly they do not think so either. Thus in the context of the US litigation culture, where damages easily become ruinous, they may well have faced dilemmas and made decision that appear immoral to you, but not to them, because you have only one pressing concern, but they have (at least) two.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As I have pointed out above, you have only one concern here, the compensation of the victims of the sexual abuse. But ++Dolan and BXVI were tasked with keeping a local and the global Church running, respectively. Perhaps you think that the RCC deserves to collapse and die over this, but I don't think so, and certainly they do not think so either. Thus in the context of the US litigation culture, where damages easily become ruinous, they may well have faced dilemmas and made decision that appear immoral to you, but not to them, because you have only one pressing concern, but they have (at least) two.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As I have pointed out above, [prosecutors] have only one concern here, the [conviction] of the [perpetrators] of the sexual abuse. But ++Dolan and BXVI were tasked with keeping a local and the global Church running, respectively. Perhaps you think that the RCC deserves to collapse and die over this, but I don't think so, and certainly they do not think so either. Thus in the context of the US [prosecution] culture, where [convictions] easily become ruinous, they may well have faced dilemmas and made decision that appear immoral to you, but not to them, because you have only one pressing concern, but they have (at least) two.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
The proponent of the "The pope can't do anything about the abuse because he's helpless to discipline the National Churches" on this thread is IngoB. Address your criticism of the quality of that theory to him. I would agree with you that the Pope is responsible for the organizations that he appoints leaders, my comment was a jibe at the latest apologia from IngoB.

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I have said nothing of the sort. I have simply pointed out that there is a significant difference between the theoretical power of universal governance that a pope has and the practical execution of that power which is limited for quite a number of reasons. And I've said that this means that the pope is simply not going to give an entire national hierarchy of bishops the chop, or fulfil similar revenge fantasies. Or at least that's certainly not going to happen while a charitable interpretation of the situation suggests mere incompetence and/or reformable bad habits rather than outright crime and debauchery of the local bishops.

The pope simply is not an absolute dictator. He could not be even if he wanted to (the Church considered as an institutional body simply does not have sufficient "muscle" for such centralised control), and most popes sensibly do not want to be that either. The pope remains a bishop, like St Peter remained an apostle. He's supposed to use his "extra power" in emergencies, not for the daily business of the Church.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
As I mentioned earlier on the thread Pope Benedict did appoint Timothy M Dolan as Archbishop of New York and later Cardinal. His record of shifting funds from corporation to corporation to avoid paying damages to abuse victims is currently under legal challenge. He also did request Vatican permission to shift the funds, so it's not like it was a secret at the Vatican before he was appointed Cardinal by Benedict. That would be appointing such a person Archbishop of New York and a Cardinal after he was shown to be a poor handler of the situation.

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As I have pointed out above, you have only one concern here, the compensation of the victims of the sexual abuse. But ++Dolan and BXVI were tasked with keeping a local and the global Church running, respectively. Perhaps you think that the RCC deserves to collapse and die over this, but I don't think so, and certainly they do not think so either. Thus in the context of the US litigation culture, where damages easily become ruinous, they may well have faced dilemmas and made decision that appear immoral to you, but not to them, because you have only one pressing concern, but they have (at least) two.

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The pope said some of these scandals “made us pay a lot of money. Good! One has to do this.”

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Originally posted by IngoB:
He's supposed to use his "extra power" in emergencies, not for the daily business of the Church.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
He's supposed to use his "extra power" in emergencies, not for the daily business of the Church.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As I have pointed out above, you have only one concern here, the compensation of the victims of the sexual abuse. But ++Dolan and BXVI were tasked with keeping a local and the global Church running, respectively. Perhaps you think that the RCC deserves to collapse and die over this, but I don't think so, and certainly they do not think so either. Thus in the context of the US litigation culture, where damages easily become ruinous, they may well have faced dilemmas and made decision that appear immoral to you, but not to them, because you have only one pressing concern, but they have (at least) two.

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Originally posted by Gildas:
Candidly, I think they underestimated the scale of the problem. I currently have two live criminal records checks. One for the day job, one for going into my daughters school to hear children read. If you had gone back in time to, say, the 1980s and said in twenty or so years time a clergyman will require someone to interrogate the national police computer system to establish that he is not a child molester twice so he can do his job and enter a safe environment to hear children read, I think they would assumed you had taken leave of your senses. We all knew that child abuse happened but I think that the extent of it was underestimated.

I doubt that the Pope would have said to the nuncio as he headed off to his new province: "by the way, do check up as to whether the local clergy are tampering with kids" because he would have assumed that it wasn't a problem. The default setting was to assume it wasn't an issue and, obviously, if you're a bishop and you do your regular trip to Rome to kiss the Pope's toe you're not going to break the ice by telling the Pope: "Is it just me, or did my predecessor ordain the entire membership of NAMBLA?" So there was no incentive in the centre to look for a problem and no incentive in the periphery to bring the problem to the Pope's attention.

So the Dioceses managed the problem as best they could, which wasn't very well, and didn't, of course, communicate with one another which might have made them a bit more hip to the issue. Then cases of abuse started getting publicised which caused people in other Dioceses and then in other countries to start coming forward and suddenly the Pope is looking out of the windows of St. Peter's and bearing down on him is a massive Tsunami of shit. Clearly, you are looking at a massive institutional failure but the extent to which the centre was responsible for the failings of the periphery isn't, to my mind, straight forward.

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At last someone has talked some sense on this depressingly predictable thread. Gildas, you get two

 

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Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :
 
I agree with you twice Enoch. Gildas is cooking with gas here. And the tangenting of this thread has had a certain predictability.

Do you think that we might, just might, get back to the main purpose of this thread and away from the oft-rehearsed general search for the guilty over sexual abuse within the Catholic Church?

Not a ruling, just a little plea to remember we were discussing a different topic here. Anyone can start a new thread if they want.

I think I let this tangent go on too long without a reminder along these lines. My bad. Apologies to S Bacchus and others.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

[ 24. January 2014, 00:48: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 

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Posted by Justinian (# 5357) on :
 
Why was Benedict XVI so unpopular compared to Francis I? To me there are three reasons.

1: Joseph Ratzinger was JPII's hatchetman. He had a long history of saying the things that would be disliked so JPII didn't. Becoming pope didn't mean that Benedict XVI suddenly miraculously left his history behind. He came to the papacy as an extremely known quantity and was better than this known quantity would have lead people to believe - but couldn't leave it all behind.

2: He was too entrenched in the Vatican to understand modern media. And didn't have the mindset to become a media darling.

3: Some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church are very good. Some of them are vile. Francis I chooses to talk about the points where the RCC wants to do good and to normally soft-pedal the bad side. Which both means that that side is what will be talked about, and that side is the sort that the RCC itself will consider more important.
 

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Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :
 
People, including many Catholics, just didn't "get" Benedict. A shame, I reckon, and the Roman Catholic Church's loss. Francis is just another cult of personality. It's a shame the bishop of Rome has been reduced to that. Inevitable, perhaps, but a shame nevertheless. The traditionalists have a lot to be worried about. Schism is afoot, mark my words.
 

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Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :
 

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Originally posted by Justinian:
2: He was too entrenched in the Vatican to understand modern media. And didn't have the mindset to become a media darling.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
People, including many Catholics, just didn't "get" Benedict. A shame, I reckon, and the Roman Catholic Church's loss. Francis is just another cult of personality. It's a shame the bishop of Rome has been reduced to that. Inevitable, perhaps, but a shame nevertheless. The traditionalists have a lot to be worried about. Schism is afoot, mark my words.

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Originally posted by Organ Builder:
I've been on the Ship and read your contributions long enough to be fairly certain that the above interpretation is not really what you were trying to argue, so I suspect you simply didn't edit quite as carefully as you usually do. Still, as it stands your paragraph can be seen as dangerously close to suggesting that the evil these priests did to children and the church is less important than that the hierarchy should remain unquestioned and unquestionable.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:

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Originally posted by Justinian:
2: He was too entrenched in the Vatican to understand modern media. And didn't have the mindset to become a media darling.

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Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
People, including many Catholics, just didn't "get" Benedict. A shame, I reckon, and the Roman Catholic Church's loss. Francis is just another cult of personality. It's a shame the bishop of Rome has been reduced to that. Inevitable, perhaps, but a shame nevertheless. The traditionalists have a lot to be worried about. Schism is afoot, mark my words.

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Hold on a second! Isn't that the point of having a single, highly visible leader, like a pope or a monarch? That it gives people the sense of interacting with a person rather than a grey, faceless bureaucracy, even if they are, in fact, interacting with the leader's grey, faceless bureaucratic proxies? Failing to be personally popular ("media darling", "cult of personality", etc.) is failing one of the main requirements of the job.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
However, I did want to raise the point that I do not only consider the plight of the sexual abuse victims, but also the communal life of hundreds of thousands of Catholics in the diocese, and that that can make a difference. And maybe it did to ++Dolan, too, without this being necessarily a sign of wickedness and crime.

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Originally posted by Crœsos:
Once again, I'm not sure most legal systems regard "I hid the money from the court because I'd rather spend it on something other than fines and damages" to be a legitimate mitigating circumstance. I'll leave questions of wickedness aside for the moment and simply note that this sort of thing is usually a crime regardless of wicked intent.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
As far as I can gather form the information provided here, whether ++Dolan's moving money was against the law at all has not been decided yet, in court.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Furthermore, if the court did decide that a crime had occurred, and if ++Dolan were to be persecuted for it, then I'm sure that it would play a significant role for his sentence if he did not move the money for personal gain or out of malice to the victims but to protect the functioning of the Church.

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Originally posted by Palimpsest:
I'm trying hard not to delve into the legal rewards for abuse.

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