My Reflecton on news articles below;
If women, including women priests and bishops, had been at the decision-making table in the Vatican, the veil of secrecy would have been ripped wide open and church leaders would have put victims before protecting its institutional reputation.
Our first moral imperative as Catholics is to follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ and be the compassionate face of God, not to practice blind obedience to church authorities under the cloak of secrecy in order to avoid scandal. Pope Benedict and the bishops have betrayed the church in the coverup of the sex abuse scandal.
Now it is time for a people empowered open, transparent, accountable Catholic Church. It is time for the magisterium to adopt a renewed, healthy theology of sexuality that reflects the lived experience of the people (one example, contraception). The hierarchy of the church should follow the wisdom of the faithful: abandon mandatory celibacy, welcome married priests and womenpriests, rid itself of a top down management model of clericalism. We need to build together a more inclusive church where all are welcome to receive sacraments, and utilize our mutual responsibility as members of the Body of Christ.
Bridget Mary Meehan, RCWP
See these and other excellent articles in the National Catholic Reporter:
http://ncronline.org/
Global scope of abuse crisis makes case for reform
Church’s system of governance needs a fundamental overhaulMar. 19, 2010
By Tom Roberts
"The clergy sex abuse crisis, once dismissed by some church officials as a product of U.S. anti-Catholicism and media hostile to the church, has begun sweeping through Europe, with damning government reports in Ireland and widespread allegations in recent weeks of abuse of youngsters in Germany and the Netherlands.
"Only now, an insistent new question is being posed by in the international media and by many church observers: What did Pope Benedict XVI know and when did he know it?"
"Amid all the investigations and continuing revelations, the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, ran a column written by Lucetta Scaraffia, an Italian journalist and history professor, asserting that if more women had been present in decision-making roles in the church, the cover-up may not have occurred. “We can hypothesize that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence,” she wrote.
"Cleaning up the church, however, might be easier said than done, according to U.S. Dominican Fr. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and one of the earliest advocates of church transparency and of victims’ rights in the sex abuse crisis... [Tom Roberts is NCR editor at large. His e-mail address is troberts@ncronline.org. Religion News Service and Catholic News Service contributed to this report.]=======================================================================================
Divided loyalties: an incredible situation
by Joan Chittister on Mar. 17, 2010
From Where I Stand
"The dilemma that really threatens the future of the church is a distorted notion of the vow of obedience and the tension it creates between loyalty to the Gospel and loyalty to the institution -- translate: "system."
In this case, the problem swirls around Ireland's Primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, a good man with a good heart and a good reputation. Until now. In 1975, then Fr. Sean Brady, a newly certified canon lawyer and secretary to then Bishop Francis McKiernan, now deceased, in the diocese of Kilmore, took testimony from two young boys abused by the serial rapist Fr. Brendan Smyth. At the end of those interviews, Brady exacted a vow of silence from the boys which effectively protected Smyth from public censure and enabled him to go on abusing children -- including in the United States -- for another 18 years. Brady, too, said nothing to any one about the case, other than to his bishop, ever again. Not to the gardai, not to the courts, not even to the bishops to whose dioceses Smyth had then been sent... "
"Challenged now to resign because of that failure to give evidence of a crime, Brady's answer is the Nuremberg defense: He was only following orders; he did not have the responsibility to make any reports other than to his bishop; he was only a note-taker. Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience..."
Natonal Catholic Reporter
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