SEX CRIMES AND THE VATICAN

Many bishops unaware obscure missive was in their archives

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.

Rome

A 1962 Vatican document ordering secrecy in cases of sexual misconduct by priests is not, according to canon lawyers, a "smoking gun" providing evidence of a cover-up of sex abuse orchestrated by Rome.

Civil attorneys handling lawsuits against the Catholic church have pointed to the document as evidence of obstruction of justice.

For one thing, canon lawyers say, the document was so obscure that few bishops had ever heard of it. For another, they say, secrecy in canonical procedures should not be confused with refusal to cooperate with civil authorities. The 1962 document would not have tied the hands of a bishop, or anyone else, who wanted to report a crime by a priest to the police.

The 39-page document, titled in Latin Crimen Sollicitationis, was issued in March 1962 by the Holy Office (today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). It established a procedure for canonical cases in which priests were accused of abusing the confessional to sexually proposition penitents. Four concluding paragraphs extend the procedure to the crimen pessimum, or "worst crime," meaning homosexual acts contrary to a priest's celibate commitment.
The document was not designed to address sexual abuse of minors, but would include many such violations.

Paragraph 11 of the document stipulates that such cases are covered by the "secret of the Holy Office," today known as pontifical secrecy, the strictest form of secrecy in church law. Excommunication is prescribed for anyone who violates this secrecy.

The document was itself to be kept secret. Instructions on Page One direct that it be stored in the secret archives of each diocese, and that it not be published or commented upon. Msgr. Thomas Green, canon law expert at The Catholic University of America, told NCR Aug. 4 that unlike most church legislation, Crimen Sollicitationis was never published in the official Vatican bulletin Acta Apostolicae Sedis.

The document recently came to light because it was referenced in a footnote to a May 18, 2002, letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation, to the bishops of the world regarding new procedures for sex abuse cases.

Boston attorney Carmen L. Durso sent a copy of the document July 28 to U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, arguing that it may prove the Catholic church has been obstructing justice.

"This document may provide the link in the thinking of all of those who hid the truth for so many years," Durso said, as quoted by the July 29 Worcester Telegram and Gazette. "The constant admonitions that information regarding accusations against priests are to be deemed 'a secret of the Holy Office' may explain, but most certainly do not justify, their actions," Durso told the federal attorney.

Oblate Fr. Francis Morrisey of St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, told NCR Aug. 4 that he doubts the document had such an effect, because few bishops knew Crimen Sollicitationis even existed.

"The document was so secret that it couldn't even be mentioned," Morrisey said. "I'm inclined to believe that most bishops were unaware of its existence and contents until a situation arose, and so it never crossed their mind to take cover under this text."

Crimen Sollicitationis dealt with canonical cases against a priest that could lead to removal from ministry or expulsion from the priesthood. Its imposition of secrecy thus concerned the church's internal disciplinary process. It did not, according to canonical experts, prevent a bishop or anyone else from reporting a crime against a minor to the civil authorities.

"Of course, a bishop couldn't use this document to cover up denunciation of an act of sexual abuse," Morrisey said. "The document simply wasn't made for that purpose."

Green said the document was issued by the Holy Office because it had responsibility for dealing with "serious violations of the sacrament of penance."

Canon lawyers told NCR that secrecy in canonical cases serves three purposes.

First, it is designed to allow witnesses and other parties to speak freely, knowing that their responses will be confidential.

Second, it allows the accused party to protect his good name until guilt is established.

Third, it allows victims to come forward without exposing themselves to publicity. The high degree of secrecy in Crimen Sollicitationis was also related to the fact that it dealt with the confessional.

Those motives for confidentiality, experts say, must be distinguished from a widespread "mentality" that sought to protect the church from scandal by not reporting sexual abuse by priests to the police.
As a matter of canon law, the obligation of secrecy in canonical cases does not prohibit a bishop or other church officials from reporting crimes to the proper authorities.

Conflicts may arise, however, if civil authorities seek access to the secret acts of canonical procedures.

That Crimen Sollicitationis was not designed to "cover up" sex abuse, canonists say, is clear in paragraph 15, which obligates anyone with knowledge of a priest abusing the confessional for that purpose to come forward, under pain of excommunication for failing to do so. This penalty is stipulated, the document says, "lest [the offense] remain occult and unpunished and always with inestimable detriment to souls."

Canon lawyers also note that pontifical secrecy is hardly reserved to sexual abuse. Under a Feb. 4, 1974, instruction Secreta Continere, pontifical secrecy covers:

1) Documents for which pontifical secrecy is expressly indicated;
2) Affairs dealt with by the Secretariat of State under pontifical secrecy;
3) Doctrinal denunciations and publications of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as its investigations;
4) Extrajudicial denunciations of crimes against the faith or against morals, and crimes against the sacrament of penance, as well as the procedures leading to these denunciations;
5) Acts by Vatican representatives relative to matters covered by the pontifical secret;
6) Creation of cardinals;
7) Nomination of bishops, apostolic administrators and other ordinaries with episcopal power, and the procedures related to these appointments; 8) Nomination of superiors and other major officials of the Roman curia;
9) Codes and coded correspondence;
10) Affairs and practices of the pope, of the chief cardinal or archbishop of a dicastery and of pontifical representatives.

John L. Allen Jr. is NCR’s Vatican correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org.

A person has to be totally blind to follow the Roman Catholic doctrine.

Totally.

Clergy were humiliated and punished in "Currency" and "Immorality" show trials throughout 1935 and 1936.

The immorality trials sought to destroy the reputations of Catholic religious. Priests, monks and nuns were accused of "perverted and immoral" lifestyles. The secret police set innumerable traps. The New York Times carried a report in May 1936 describing priests who had been summoned on sick calls to hotel rooms. Waiting in the rooms would be photographers. When the priest entered, the "caller" would turn out to be a prostitute, planted by the Gestapo. Photographs would later be produced in court as irrefutable evidence of corruption.

One notorious trial in 1936 concerned the Franciscans of the Rhineland town of Waldbreitbach. This trial was widely publicized and parents were warned in sanctimoniously penned editorials not to allow their children to enter Catholic schools. Even children themselves were encouraged to read the lurid trial accounts. In several cities, newspaper stands were purposely lowered so youngsters could read salacious and pornographic stories accompanied by cartoons in the pages of Der Sturmer (the newspaper controlled by Julius Streicher, notorious anti-Semite and anti-Catholic).

Witness statements from children were produced in court by secret police, whose testimony was not allowed to be challenged. Threats, bribes, brutal nighttime interrogations, and nervous breakdowns were reported....

Legal moves against the clergy were accompanied by violent attacks in the streets, presbyteries and at frontier posts. Church services were disrupted, processions broken up and even individual Catholics assaulted. In the middle of one particularly vicious outbreak of violence by young Nazis in 1935, a large notice appeared on the police headquarters in Essen which read: "The Police Stand By The Hitler Youth!" When a police inspector was asked to investigate near-fatal assaults by Hitler Youth on Catholic teenagers in Limburg in February 1935, he dismissed the complaint by saying: "We used to have fights now and again when we were boys."

For providing some FACTS to shed light on this misinformed Blog.

There are a couple of things that disturb me about the recent scandal in the Church:

1. That it took place at all. People who are made priests are given a lot of responsibility, and it is a terrible betrayal to use their position for those purposes.

2. The way some bishops in the Church handled the scandal was wrong. Passing priests along to a different diocese was not the proper solution.

3. The way the MSM reports the story. INHO, the word "pedophile" is not really appropriate for what was going on. Most of the victims were adolescent boys. So really what was going on was a "predatory homosexual" scandal. But it is not politically correct to call a spade a spade. I have heard talk show hosts and psychiatrists say that most of these men who molest boys are actually heterosexual. How twisted is that? Performing a sexual act with the same sex is a homosexual act, and to assert otherwise is the equivalent of saying that down is up.

Here is an example:

"Another problem related to terminology arises because sexual abuse of male children by adult men is often referred to as "homosexual molestation." The adjective "homosexual" (or "heterosexual" when a man abuses a female child) refers to the victim's gender in relation to that of the perpetrator. Unfortunately, people sometimes mistakenly interpret it as referring to the perpetrator's sexual orientation.

To avoid this confusion, it is preferable to refer to men's sexual abuse of boys with the more accurate label of male-male molestation. Similarly, it is preferable to refer to men's abuse of girls as male-female molestation. These labels are more accurate because they describe the sex of the individuals involved but don't implicitly convey unwarranted assumptions about the perpetrator's sexual orientation.

The distinction a victim's gender and a perpetrator's sexual orientation is important because many child molesters don't really have an adult sexual orientation. They have never developed the capacity for mature sexual relationships with other adults, either men or women. Instead, their sexual attractions focus on children – boys, girls, or children of both sexes."

What a load of crap! By using this logic, it would never be possible to have a homosexual molest a young boy because that would be "male-male molestation".

Here is another website: "Or to put it another way, most homosexual molestation is not done by homosexuals."

How can someone with a functioning brain write that? That is like saying: "Most people who eat meat are vegetarians."

In response to the scandal, the current Pope restated the Church's official position that homosexuals were not allowed to be ordained priests. It was a mistake for them to ever be allowed into the seminaries, and getting them out has been like hunting for vampires.

I witnessed a priest give a homily protesting the Church's stance. (I don't need to tell you what that priest's sexual preference was. He has since retired, thankfully.) This is an example of a widespread attack on the Church, with the true culprits covering up for each other.

I am grateful for Erlenda's intelligent treatment of the facts. The headline story seems to have gotten it all wrong, as is the case in the MSM in general. If the causes of the scandal are really to be addressed, then we must be willing to deal with the facts, and not with prejudicial rumor-mongering like children in a game of telephone.
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"Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly."

The way the MSM reports the story. INHO, the word "pedophile" is not really appropriate for what was going on. Most of the victims were adolescent boys.

Many of whom were considerably below the age of consent at the time. That makes it pedophilia.

the psychological disorder.

Let's use your "definition": "considerably below the age of consent at the time. That makes it pedophilia."

By this definition, if the legal age of consent were raised to 21, then people sleeping with 18 year olds would be pedophiles.

Instead, I suggest we use the original meaning suggested by the greek roots of the word itself: pedo, meaning "child"; and phile, meaning "love". Therefore pedophile would describe the psychological disorder that causes an adult to be sexually attracted to children.

The MSM misuse of "pedophile" could perhaps be a over-fondness for alliteration. But I believe it confuses the issue. Adult men using adolescent boys for sex was common in older cultures such as ancient Greece, and was called "pederasty". I don't know why the MSM doesn't use this more appropriate word, except that it might actually explain what is really happening.
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"Stop judging by appearances, but judge justly."