THOSE WHO have suggested that the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid
Martin, has had his “wings clipped” and does not see eye to eye with
Pope Benedict XVI vis-a-vis his handling of the Irish church’s sex abuse
crisis may want to think again after reading
Light Of The World , the pope’s new book launched in the Vatican Wednesday.
Based
on six hours of conversation between the pope and German journalist
Peter Seewald, the book attempts to use what senior Vatican spokesman
Father Federico Lombardi called “simple, concrete and accessible”
language to provide answers to a wide range of key questions concerning
today’s church.
At one point, Seewald suggests that the evident
episcopal mishandling of abuse cases represents a complete “failure” for
the church. By way of response, Pope Benedict says: “The Archbishop of
Dublin told me something very interesting about that. He said that
ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950s; admittedly, it
was not perfect – there is much to criticise about it – but
nevertheless it was applied. After the mid-sixties, however, it was
simply not applied any more.
“The prevailing mentality was that
the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather a Church of love:
she must not punish . . . This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even
in very good people.”
Asked by Seewald about the overall impact
of the Irish sex abuse crisis, Pope Benedict says: “In Ireland the
problem is altogether specific – there is a self-enclosed Catholic
society, so to speak, which remained true to its faith despite centuries
of oppression, but in which, then, evidently certain attitudes were
also able to develop. I cannot analyze that in detail now.
“To see
a country that gave the world so many missionaries, so many saints,
which in the history of the missions also stands at the origin of our
faith in Germany, now in a situation like this is tremendously upsetting
and depressing. Above all, of course, for the Catholics in Ireland
itself, where now as always there are many good priests.”
Asked by
Seewald why the sex abuse scandals in the USA and Ireland had not
prompted rigorous preventive investigations in other countries, Pope
Benedict replies: “We responded to the matter in America immediately
with revised, stricter norms.
“In addition, collaboration between
the secular and ecclesiastical authorities was improved. Would it have
been Rome’s duty, then, to say to all the countries expressly: Find out
whether you are in the same situation? Maybe, we should have done that.
For me, in any case, it was a surprise that abuse also existed on that
scale in Germany.”
Referring to his pastoral letter to the Irish
of last March, the pope says that “what was true for Ireland was not
said just to Ireland”.
Thus far, the pope’s book has prompted most
controversy because of his remarks about the circumstances in which the
use of condoms is acceptable.
In the English translation, the
pope says: “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as
perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first
step in the direction of a moralization . . .”
Father Lombardi Tuesday explained that the term “male prostitute” was simply the fruit
of a poor translation from the original German: in fact the pope’s
reference was to prostitutes, male or female.
The point of the
condom remarks is further explained by the pope himself in the book,
when he says: “The Church, of course, does not regard it (the condom) as
a real or moral solution but, in this or that case, there can be
nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first
step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living
sexuality.”
Elsewhere, the pope’s book reiterates traditional
teaching on women priests and the incompatibility of homosexuality with
the priestly vocation.
SIC: IT/IE