AmericanPapist Comments
A translation of his comments is here:
http://www.catholicregister.org/...t/view/1256/89/
Never trust the media to summarize these things well.
BTW, if you want to understand Benedict's love for Ouellet it comes from the fact that Ouellet was Ratzinger's student in university. They go way back.
check out the 49th International Eucharistic Congress --> Quebec City
please continue to pray for the Church in Canada, our Lord is with us always even till the consummation of the world!
We also can't forget in this discussion that the Canadian Church is fighting a fierce, losing battle against Canada's militant, anti-Christian (and particularly anti-Catholic) secularism.
Um, the Canadian Church isn't fighting anything here.
Well, it looks like the CBC hijacked the issues with their follow-up article: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montrea...hop-
quebec.html
Everything you said you hoped wouldn't happen, or thought might happen, happened.
Maybe the CBC and other mainstream media outlets should just come out and say they hate any kind of religion.
The article is a poor excuse for journalism.
I guess the Cardinal followed up his statement to the commission with another. Here is that one:
http://www.catholicregister.org/.../view/1302/849/
I guess that is what is causing the reaction. I think it is all good. You can't simply stop making public statements for fear the media will butcher it. It is like the pope at Regensburg. You just say what you need to say and those that make an effort to understand you will.
"Um, the Canadian Church isn't fighting anything here"
Are you nuts? The situation in Canada is increasingly more desperate in my eyes. Not to be pessmistic but that is the plain truth.
I agree, the Canadian Church has a LOT to fight for. I personally know someone that was abused by a priest when she was young, and it has scarred her and made her turn away from her faith for life. Although it hasn't affected me to my recent conversion, I feel for these people and pray they'll learn to forgive.
I think the "Um, the Canadian Church isn't fighting anything here." comment was directed not towards the idea that the Canadian Church doesn't have anything to fight, but rather, that it isn't fighting.
Depending on where you are in Canada, that statement is very true. Although, I think there are some bishops and priests who are fighting the big issues that threaten the Catholic identity here.
Canada has a different history than the United States on the matter of pedophiles operating under the patronage of bishops. The Church in Canada has much to be ashamed about.
Much of the abuse in Canada took place in government-sponsored orphanages run by the Catholic Church. The movie, "The Boys of St. Vincent," (released in 1992) dramatized the events leading to a sensational trial of a deviant Christian Brother. The film became available in the U.S. a year later, which is when I saw the film and was stunned at what it revealed. About a year later there was a tour throughout Canada of paintings and illustrations by men who were children in Canadian orphanages (“The Boys of St. Vincent”) and who longed to tell the world about those hellish years.
I visited the show in Windsor, Ont. Several of the men who had drawn some of the illustrations were there, and I spoke with them. They said the sexual abuse was every bit as bad as one could imagine; sometimes it was a daily event. Two of them also said they had no intention of suing anyone and were getting on with their lives. All the wanted, they insisted, was for their local bishop to acknowledge that the abuse occurred, and that he was sorry. As of that time, they said, the bishop denied everything. This caused these men grave pain, enough to travel around the country with their story. Would it have hurt a single thing for the bishop to apologize back then?
Tom Peters is absolutely correct when he writes: “Honestly, when apologizing ‘for the Church’ in the public forum, it's absolutely crucial to do everything possible to clarify that these faults and errors were committed by persons of the Catholic Church and not the teaching of the Catholic Church.”
Good point Tom. However, this is an abstraction that is meaningless to ordinary people. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church has never taught that priests and religious should molest children. Everyone also knows that the Church went to extraordinary and often illegal lengths to make such molestation continued, for decades, and that they lied about it publicly and privately, over and over again.
And worse, everyone knows that the Church is still engaged in a monumental effort to protect many of its bishops from accountability. Was it Spokane, or some diocese in California (or both?), where only a few months ago the bishop’s people openly stated that he opted not to testify in court and was willing to pay tens of millions dollars more in the settlement figure so he could maintain his secrets?
When he was living in Detroit in the 1990s the saintly Fr. John Hardon, S. J., said over and over again, even from the pulpit, that the hierarchy was the most corrupt in the history of the Church. The ongoing drama over the sex scandals only proves this point.
While periodic public apologies from bishops and cardinals are no doubt important, they are only words. We’ll know the Church takes the “scandals” seriously when it starts
(Here's the rest of the post above. Somehow it didn't copy.)
starts to “clean house,” by removing from office the scores of bishops still in office who lied about the pedophile priests they were protecting.
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