QUICKSWOOD

Benedict XVI: Shame by Omission

 

 

            Let me be perfectly clear on this: I despise all religions equally. However, truth be told, I think that deep in my limbic system, I harbor a special zone for Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. 

            Now don’t get me wrong; Islam is way up there with Christianity on my despicable list.  Perhaps, my particular dislike of the Catholic Church stems from the fact that I was educated in a Catholic school system and so have had a much closer brush with it.

            Fortunately, my father was an enlightened intellectual who early in his life was able to cast aside the Catholic myths and disinformation he was born into and replace them with the loving, humanistic views I so admired in him.  Most importantly, dad bequeathed to me a moral compass that has never led me astray; he also inculcated in me the belief that the abandonment of reason is the lowest form of human indignity.

            There are many things my father could not abide about the Catholic Church but I suspect that if he were alive today, the ongoing child abuse scandal and the Catholic Church’s shameful mishandling of it would surely be the worst.  That priests have been abusing their young charges should come as no surprise to anyone who understands even the basics of human nature.  Animals develop aberrant behavior when placed in unusual circumstances that differ drastically from those for which they have adapted.  This is particularly true of social animals, humans being the best example.

            The Catholic Church has created one such unusual circumstance.  Young men are invested with spiritual authority by the Vicar of Christ, a dangerous and magical fabrication in itself, and are then required to remain celibate, a breach of basic human biology. These now deluded and deprived (if not depraved) men are given as charges young and impressionable children who have been brainwashed from birth to obey and follow without question the earthly representatives of an (imaginary) almighty being in the sky.  That aberrant behavior in the form of child molestation results from this arrangement is inevitable. That the Church has all but closed a blind eye to it is an abomination.

 

            From 1981 to 2005, Pope Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church body that, among other things, had jurisdiction over matters of clerical sexual misconduct.  It has now come to light that under his watch, claims of sexual abuse by clerics were dealt with largely in a fashion to shield the Church as well as the accused. Canon Law, the Church’s legal system steeped in secrecy and veiled in silence, all but forced bishops to cover-up any allegations that might in any way sully the Church’s image. Benedict’s failure to deal with the predators in his organization in a definitive manner, in my mind, is criminal.  To Christians, his failure should be seen as nothing less than a Sin by Omission. Judge for yourself if the following definition taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia applies:

Omission

"Omission" is here taken to be the failure to do something one can and ought to do. If this happens advertently and freely a sin is committed.  Moralists took pains formerly to show that the inaction implied in an omission was quite compatible with a breach of the moral law, for it is not merely because a person here and now does nothing that he offends, but because he neglects to act under circumstances in which he can and ought to act. The degree of guilt incurred by an omission is measured like that attaching to sins of commission, by the dignity of the virtue and the magnitude of the precept to which the omission is opposed as well as the amount of deliberation. In general, according to St. Thomas, the sin of omission consisting as it does in a leaving out of good is less grievous than a sin of commission which involves a positive taking up with evil. There are, of course, cases in which on account of the special subject matter and circumstances it may happen that an omission is more heinous.

 

            I hope you will agree with me that when it comes to cases involving the sexual molestation of children, omission is just as heinous as commission.  Benedict should be prosecuted for his failure to act.

 

            It will be interesting to observe Benedict and his minions as the scandals get closer and closer to home.  The USA, Canada, Brazil and Australia may have seemed far away but then came Ireland, Germany and now Verona. To make matters worse for the pontiff, claims of sexual abuse have just surfaced against the Regensburger Domspatzen boys’ choir in Germany that, until 1964, was run by Georg Ratzinger (now Monseigneur), his brother.  Fortunately, abused members of this choir are sure to find a sympathetic ear or two in the most famous choir in the world, The Vienna Boys’ Choir, itself now caught up in the German paedophile scandal.

 

 

 

Well done, President Obama.

President Obama's health care reform.