It’s a tough time to be a Catholic. Today 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 nuns sent a letter to lawmakers in opposition to bishops claiming the health care bill leaves loopholes for government funded abortions. The Catholic Health Association backs the bill so is siding with the nuns. As for the other denominations, a group of 25 “pro-life Catholic theologians and Evangelical leaders” also sent Congress letters supporting the bill.
NPR had 2 terrific stories on that debate tonight. And there’s good discussion via memeorandum. Then there’s all that juxtaposed with this… The pope says he’ll send a letter sometime soon to help “repentance, healing and renewal” in Ireland. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, I guess. The NYTimes:
The pope, the former Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, was addressing his weekly general audience at the Vatican after days of disclosures concerning the German church, where one case happened on his watch before he became pope in 2005. The pope’s comments on the scandal in Ireland came a day after a top Vatican official acknowledged on Tuesday that, with only 10 people handling such cases, his office might not be adequate for the task. …
The ratio of 10 people handling 300 cases a year did not go over well in some quarters. “It seems like an extraordinarily paltry effort, given the scope of the crisis,” said David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. In a rare interview, by telephone on Tuesday, Monsignor Scicluna acknowledged the concern. Asked if he wanted reinforcements, he said with a laugh: “I would hope we have less work. That’s my hope. Not more people, less work.”
Andrew Sullivan’s betting on more. A quote of the day of his, yesterday, from Süddeutsche Zeitung:
“it doesn’t matter how the Munich case develops–it shows how deep and existentially the church has fallen into crisis… The church is not in a crisis of trust because it is a club of abusers. It is in crisis because it tends ever more towards self-pity instead of helping victims, for example with reparation money. It is in crisis because it will not admit that the priests and brethren attract sexual identity problems. It is in crisis … because until now a closeness and warmth was possible in the church that had disappeared elsewhere in society. This rare quality could now be lost. The pope has to answer for that now as well.”
If all of that were not sad tragic enough, now there’s Brazil, too:
Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police and church officials said Tuesday.
The case came to light after the SBT network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years. Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused by Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa.
Asks Andrew:
How much more do we have to see, how much more damage has to be done to human beings, before the hierarchy cones to terms with its denial about homosexuality, its warped psyche on sexuality, the brutal consequences of its celibacy requirements … and the total iniquity of allowing children and teens in your care, entrusted to men of God, to be raped and abused and molested with impunity for years?
These old men are destroying the church.