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Well, a Pope's apology to the catholic people of Ireland has not been enough to quell widespread
outrage among the faithful about handling of *** priests. Going back years
from North America to his native Germany the Pope faces
the most daunting of questions: what did he know and when did he knew it? Has there been
a Vatican cover up?
If so, by whom? And is the pope in some way part of the problem or part of the solution?
Laura, you covered
some of the big stories in the US for a while
Yes and when I was there it was just breaking out in Massachusetts
the numbers of
cases there and in other parts of the United States
and what surprises me so much about what's happening now
is that they didn't see it coming at the Vatican after everything that
happened in the United States after those
thousands of cases after letting go of five thousand priests in the end of all of this
after an enormously difficult struggle for catholics to figure out how they were going
to work through these problems and keep their faith
and also what the Americans might have taught them, American catholics, was
we figured out
a way to take this problem
and move forward, they created a code
in the united states at a meeting of bishops
they created zero tolerance policy
they gave catholics a reason to believe that if they had made mistakes in the past
they were committed to moving forward and not making those same mistakes again
what I'm seeing now with the Vatican and its behavior is that it's just closing in, it's not responding
to the problems that are boiling up all around them
it needs to learn
that it's living in a world where accountability is utmost and the Vatican is not used to that.
Can you say if there was a,
as the where an American solution to this problem within the church in north America
should not that be true of Ireland or Germany or other places where they're facing these
kind of allegations, should it be localized or is it definitely
the Vatican where the buck stops?
Well shouldn't the Vatican be setting the standards
for those who follow the faith around the world instead of letting these solutions or
non solutions pop up here there and everywhere?
and yes there is some in Ireland who have tried to tackle this issue head on
and have dealt with it
and also in Germany there's a certain opening up in dealing with this but
why wasn't the Vatican in the forefront years ago
after what happened in the united states in saying 'we need to look at this problem
globally'?
Joann, as you know the Vatican newspaper said things like,
you know, 'there's effectively a smear campaign against this pope, he's doing the best he can
to sort this out'
well the best way to answer that is just to read out what Ratzinger wrote in 2001
he wrote to every catholic bishop in the world
told them to keep it secret in their safe
he said- I should read it out because it's very important that people know the exact words he used
'cases of child abuse should be dealt with in the most secretive way, restrained by
perpetual silence
and everybody is to observe the strictest secret
there was no mention of going to the police father Doyle, who was a Vatican lawyer
said explicit it was intended to make people
not go to the police
now to understand how serious this is just imagine this happened in any other organization
imagine here at the BBC, at the BBC TV center
there was a group of pedophiles running the creche
and the director general of the BBC found out about it
he ordered all BBC staff to keep it secret
dealt with internally
and he moved those pedophiles to -say-
the next BBC center in another part of London
but they run another creche, abused more children
when he was informed of that
he moved them to the BBC center in Nairobi where they abused more children
this is exactly what happened in the catholic church
and the language of mistakes and repentance I think are wrong
this is a matter for criminal law. we're talking about an
international criminal conspiracy
to cover up the *** children
that enabled that *** to go on for a very long period
it's not enough to say sorry
if you're sorry hand yourself over to the police and allow them to investigate it
- Michael? - I'd just like to step the question back a bit, there's two points to make
and then we'll get to both of them
the first is the obvious one which is
the church's perpetuation of celibacy as the criteria for the priesthood
is at the core of much of this problem
not being able to deal with human sexuality historically has been a big problem for the
catholic church. - And not just the catholic church, a lot of churches are having problems
with, a lot of faiths have problems with dealing with *** questions
that's right
but the second, and I think more apposite of this, is that
we speak of the catholic
church as if
it's one entity
there's the catholic faith which seems to me is an outsider
and then there's 'the church'
the church is a
self-perpetuating political oligarchy
headquartered at the Vatican
and the politics between the faithful
and their church
it's not like
our politics which is about
individual liberty
against the tax code and and and how we
organized that
it is about your eternal soul, it is what you will do for eternity
and it's a tremendous hold that this
basically political group has over people
I think it's not a question of what we do about the pope I think it's much more a question
of
what the catholic faithful
choose as a way forward
in the practice of their faith
for the rest of history because
it is at a critical moment but it's not the first critical moment that's been reached in-
I mean-
over the last few hundred years every time there's some burst of progress in
human emancipation
and I've written a book about jewish emancipation
the catholic church has, the political part of the catholic church
acts as a drag on that
it pulls people back
it's a deeply conservative force
in the most malign sense of what 'conservative' means