In a papacy sometimes marred by scandal and internal confusion, Benedict’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis has often been touted as a bright spot — one case, at least, in which the expectations of the cardinals who elected him for a firmer hand on the rudder seem to have been fulfilled.
That background makes the scandals now engulfing the church in Europe especially explosive, because by putting the pope’s all but forgotten tenure as the Archbishop of Munich from May 1977 to February 1982 under a microscope, they threaten to once again make Benedict seem more like part of the problem than the solution.
Read it all–a little dated now but helpful.
John L Allen (NCR): Will Ratzinger's past trump Benedict's present?
In a papacy sometimes marred by scandal and internal confusion, Benedict’s handling of the sexual abuse crisis has often been touted as a bright spot — one case, at least, in which the expectations of the cardinals who elected him for a firmer hand on the rudder seem to have been fulfilled.
That background makes the scandals now engulfing the church in Europe especially explosive, because by putting the pope’s all but forgotten tenure as the Archbishop of Munich from May 1977 to February 1982 under a microscope, they threaten to once again make Benedict seem more like part of the problem than the solution.
Read it all–a little dated now but helpful.