Pope John Paul II, it is now clear, put enormous effort into covering up the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, which enabled it to continue. Then the Vatican invited Cardinal Bernard Law, of all people, to lead one of the Pope’s funeral masses: a great honor to Law, a rebuke to those who dared criticize him for actively covering up child molestation in his archdiocese of Boston, and an unmistakable message that he had the late Pope’s full approval. And now the church, including Pope Benedict, is rushing to make John Paul II a saint.
“Saint” has a very specific meaning in the Roman Catholic Church. To be canonized, one must be a confessor of the faith, martyr and/or miracle worker. But even so, the word also carries its common meaning of “person of extraordinary virtue or benevolence.” Apparently that meaning is being suspended in this case.
Sermons in Stones 
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
January 14, 2011 at 10:40 pm
Dan
Hmm. Maybe John Paul II is a miracle worker for the miraculous amount of denial he spread around? Or maybe he’s a miracle worker for his miraculous belief that everyone was going to simply accept his cover-ups?
LikeLike
January 15, 2011 at 6:21 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Hey, it worked for a looooong time. Does that count as a miracle?
LikeLike
January 15, 2011 at 5:52 am
Robin Edgar
I wonder if you are aware that Rev. William G. Sinkford had a clergy sexual misconduct complaint brought against him some years before he was elected as President of the UUA. And then of course there is Rev. Calvin Dame, the shame of Augusta Maine. . . who came within inches of being UUA Moderator.
Maybe U*Us need to clean up their own clergy sexual misconduct mess before self-righteously pointing fingers at the Roman Catholic Church.
LikeLike
January 15, 2011 at 6:20 am
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
So you are saying that as long as there are any cases of misconduct by a UU minister, no UU minister can criticize sexual misconduct by members of another faith. I disagree. And I know how you feel about this topic, so that’s where it will have to rest.
LikeLike
January 15, 2011 at 6:42 pm
Carol
“it is now clear, put enormous effort into covering up the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests”
Sorry, could I get a reference? I mean an unbiased reference??? There is nothing remotely “clear” about this disgusting situation from my perspective.
And to clarify and simplify the Catholic definition of “Saint”. A Saint is someone we can confirm is in heaven and able to act as a prayer intercessor for us. As we believe in eternal life and that people don’t go away after death, we believe we can still ask them to pray for us just as I might ask you to pray for me. SO, since God’s mercy is infinite, it really makes little to no difference what “crimes” the person in question may have committed throughout their life, it is an expression of the state of their soul at death and beyond through miraculous evidence. You don’t have to accept this, but please don’t try to redefine our religious term in light of your reality and expect it to make sense.
LikeLike
January 15, 2011 at 11:25 pm
Amy Zucker Morgenstern
Well, it isn’t just my reality. The Catholic Church also uses “saint” in the technical sense to mean a person of extraordinary virtue, according to all the online Catholic dictionaries I found. I realize it’s easy enough for me, a non-Catholic, to see the Pope as a mere human being who may have been very virtuous in some regards but was deeply flawed in others. I hope you understand that I’m angry and frightened on behalf of children whose families trusted the church, as I’m sure you are too. I don’t blame the church for the fact that some priests abused children, because abuse can’t be prevented 100%; the question is, what does a church’s leadership do when clergy are credibly accused of terrible crimes?
I understand it’s an incredibly painful and confusing situation for Catholics. I also know that you care about your children as much as people of any faith. I’m asking myself what I would want my church to do if a minister abused my child. What would you want your bishop to do, Carol, if your priest abused your children? If it turned out the bishop had been warned by other priests and therapists for years that that priest was a danger to children, but still placed him in your parish, what would you want the Pope to do?
I’m not sure what you would consider an unbiased reference, but I reach my conclusion that Pope John Paul II knew about the abuse and dragged his feet about stopping it from looking at the timeline. For example, just in the case of Boston, there are plentiful primary sources showing that Law repeatedly placed molesters in charge of new parishes that were unaware of the accusations against them. References here:
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories/010602_geoghan.htm
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories/012402_documents.htm
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/stories2/051502_law_spotlight.htm
It is of course possible that the Pope did not know what was going on in Boston, but considering that Law offered him his resignation in April 2002 and the Pope asked him to stay on, that stretches credulity. It wasn’t until several months later, when secular courts presented overwhelming evidence of Law’s cover-ups that the Pope accepted his resignation. The evidence was in the archdiocese’s files. Fr. John Geoghan had been indicted and defrocked a few years earlier, so I just don’t see how it could have escaped the Pope’s attention that Law had been moving this man around from parish to parish.
I use Boston as an example because I think the Globe carried out a very balanced and careful investigation, and some of the primary sources it refers to, such as depositions and documents entered into the court records, are online. But allegations of abuse in other US dioceses began hitting the media in the mid-80s–in other words, this was an issue during almost all of the Pope’s reign. Now that reign is being evaluated by the Vatican, and how he dealt with allegations of crimes against children in the church’s care is a fair part of that evaluation.
LikeLike