Catholic Cover Up of Sexual Abuse By Priests Track to the Vatican

The Vatican has tried desperately to pretend that it has no control over the misdeeds of sexual predator priests and that it played no role in directing Catholic dioceses around the world in not turning over sexual predator priests over to police authorities.  The truth, of course, is something quite different as outlined in a piece in the Newcastle Herald that tracts the policy of cover up and the obstruction of justice all the way back to papal actions dating to 1917. Once again, facts collide headlong with the PR spin being spewed by the Vatican.  Here are some excerpts:

THE Catholic Church for some 1500years recognised that simply stripping a priest of his status as a priest was not a sufficient punishment for the sexual abuse of children. 

Canon law from the 12th century decreed that he should be dismissed from the priesthood and handed over to the civil authority for punishment in accordance with the civil law. 

 

A commission set up by Pope Pius X in 1904 drafted a uniform code of canon law by discarding papal and council decrees that were no longer relevant, modifying others and creating new ones. 

The 1917 Code of Canon Law discarded the decrees requiring priests who sexually assaulted children to be handed over to the civil authorities.

Five years later, Pope Pius XI issued his 1922 decree, Crimen Sollicitationis, imposing the “secret of the Holy Office”, a “permanent silence” on all information the Church obtained through its canonical investigations of clergy sex abuse of children. There were no exceptions allowing the reporting of these crimes to the civil authorities.

 In 1962, Pope St. John XXIII reissued Crimen Sollicitationis. In 1974, Pope Paul VI, by his decree, Secreta Continere renamed ‘‘the secret of the Holy Office’’ ‘‘the pontifical secret’’, and it continued to apply to the sexual abuse of children under the new 1983 Code of Canon Law.

In 2001, Pope St. John Paul II confirmed the pontifical secret under some new procedures, and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI expanded its reach by applying it to allegations of priests having sex with intellectually disabled people.

In most parts of the world, and in every state of Australia, apart from NSW, there is no such requirement to report in the vast majority of cases. The pontifical secret still applies where there are no such reporting laws.

In November 2009, the Murphy Commission in Ireland examined all the above matters, and found that ‘‘the structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated’’ the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Dublin, and severely criticised the secrecy imposed by canon law and its capacity to discipline priests. 

 In March 2010, Pope Benedict wrote a Pastoral Letter to the people of Ireland, and ignored the Commission’s criticisms of canon law. Instead he blamed the bishops for the cover-up, and for not applying ‘‘the long-established norms of canon law’’.

[T]here is hard evidence that six popes since 1922, two of them now saints, maintained and expanded a system of cover-up of child sexual abuse by clergy through canon law, in order to save the Church’s reputation.  These were not “bad popes” of the Renaissance kind. 

An unintended consequence of this policy was an increase in damage done to children, a crime that the Church’s founder thought was so bad that those responsible should be thrown in the sea with millstones around their necks.

Members of the Catholic Church who continue to stick their heads in the sand and refuse to acknowledge the Vatican's role in the worldwide sex abuse scandal are themselves complicit in the sexual molestation of children and youth. Yes, it is a harsh judgment, but sadly it is true.  Closing one's mind to the rape of children does NOT absolve one from complicity.