Following a series of reports in the New York Times linking Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI directly to the ordinary practice of bishops to move pedophile priests to new assignments and to the refusal by any church official to put a stop to it, the Times gave editorial space to two of the pope's defenders.
"The permissive sexual culture that prevailed everywhere, seminaries included, during the silly season of the ’70s deserves a share of the blame, as does that era’s overemphasis on therapy. (Again and again, bishops relied on psychiatrists rather than common sense in deciding how to handle abusive clerics.)", wrote Ross Douthat parroting the same excuses used by Catholic hierarchs the world over for the better part of the last decade. The current "culture" is somehow to blame although numerous church documents going back to the middle of the first millennium deal with the offense of clerics raping children. The incidence of abuse peaked in the 1970s but they never show any correlation with the higher number of both priests and children under their supervision during the same decade and the fact that it takes victims of child sexual abuse decades - if ever - to come to terms with, and report, this most intimate and excruciating violation and humiliation. The bishops relied on mental health professionals although numerous practitioners have come forward to say that this was not the case. Douthat does admit that "common sense," or he as should have said, "common decency" as in, "Gee, I wouldn't want to be raped" (the Golden Rule), should have prevailed.
The other Times op-ed piece was written by John L. Allen Jr. Allen writes for the National Catholic Reporter, an independent and prestigious publication, and is often invited to give commentary on television, radio and in the press. In the Times, Allen states that Ratzinger had a "transformation" in 2001 after Pope John Paul II gave him responsibility for the cases involving child sexual abuse, "making him one of the few churchmen anywhere in the world to have read the documentation on virtually every Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse....From that point forward, he and his staff were determined to get something done." Yet Douthat quoted Ratzinger as stating a year later, "I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign ... to discredit the church."
Allen often cites Ratzinger's handling of Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, head of the Legion of Christ order of priests, as an example of his "toughness." Men who had been sexually abused by Maciel when they were boys and seminarians presented their case to the Vatican in the 1990s and received no response. Maciel was a favorite of John Paul II and when Ratzinger became pope in 2005, he "brought the hammer down" on Maciel, according to Allen on NPR. Poor Maciel. All he was asked to do was retire with no penalties and the pope never stated why, leaving the Legionaries to continue to claim that the charges against their leader were false and that Maciel was being persecuted like Jesus was - a similar analogy now being made for Benedict. Allen isn't reminding anyone that it was Ratzinger "who as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stopped the case against Maciel in 1999," as he himself reported in his NCR column dated May 18, 2006.
For Ratzinger, "getting something done" meant "twice, in carefully choreographed circumstances, he sat in the same room with and talked with a few hand-picked victims" as described by David Clohessy, head of the group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). Also, according to Allen, "getting something done" meant since 2001 "Cardinal Ratzinger and his team approved direct administrative action in roughly 60 percent of the cases. Having sorted through the evidence, they concluded that in most cases swift action was more important than preserving the church’s legal formalities," the result being that the bishops who presented the files were allowed to withdraw the offending priests from duty without a canonical trial. For this, "he deserves credit for how far he’s come."
As soon as he was elected pope, Benedict could have made it publicly clear that priests who sexually assaulted children would no longer be advanced in their ecclesial careers and that bishops who allowed it would have to suffer consequences. He could have ruled that all dioceses had to put in place the most effective programs - with consequences if disobeyed - to protect children from further abuse. He could have, as an example for all the bishops, not only apologized, but admitted his own responsibility for his actions or inactions resulting in the psychic destruction of more children. He could have ruled that bishops could no longer persecute the victims and that worldwide reparations should be made. And as a sign that he was sincere, he could have offered money from his personal income and assets to pay for therapy and ordered other bishops to do the same.
What Benedict actually did, four months after his election and as a quid pro quo to his donors who successfully linked homosexuality and child sexual abuse in the U.S. media, was sign an order in August 2005 symbolically barring homosexuals from ordination.