The Vatican forcefully denied it undermined the Irish bishops’ efforts to protect children from sexual abuse and characterized as “unfounded” claims the Vatican tried to interfere in government investigations regarding church handling of sex abuse cases.
The Vatican recognizes “the seriousness of the crimes” detailed in a government report about cases in the Diocese of Cloyne, Ireland, and “has sought to respond comprehensively,” said a communique released by the Vatican Sept. 3.
Update: I see a NY Times article on it here as well.
An analysis of the Vatican’s response:
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/09/the-holy-seersquos-response-to-the-cloyne-report
John Allen Jr. also has a blog post about the response in which he fairly succinctly explains what was and wasn’t said or done. http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/vatican-insists-it-didnt-torpedo-irish-response-abuse-crisis
I see the NYT headline uses the word ‘rebuke’, chosen no doubt to make the Vatican sound like the big bad meanie; yet what the latter actually published in the response document includes a line-for-line discrediting of demonstrably unfactual statements that Kenny and others have promulgated, apparently without sense of shame at their disconnect from facts, about the role of the Vatican during this crisis. After living cheek-by-jowl with some unreconstructed Irish in Australia for 20 years, I am fairly unimpressed with their ability to form a balanced view of their relationships to others in society or the world – the world is unfair, their ‘victim people’ identity runs deep, and somebody has to owe them something.
There’s no mistaking, I think, that there are lawyers like Jeffrey Anderson, and politicians in the mold of Kenny, waiting in the wings to continue hammering at the Church in Ireland in hopes of either making money from prosecutions (Anderson – who not long ago set up a London office), or detaching significant segments of the Church to form a State-controlled religious entity – just as China is working at steadily with its refusal to recognize the Vatican w/r/t bishop appointments. If true, none of that bodes well for the West.
No doubt many of you will regard public relations as a dark art. Which it may be. But I long for the Vatican to get more professional in its approach. A media office under a Jesuit (has he any training in the field?) with a tiny staff is not enough in today’s world where screaming headlines need a measured answer that will get through. Yes, part of the virtue of Rome is that it thinks in centuries and not in knee-jerk responses. But I ploughed my way through the first half of the long rebuttal and the preceding summary and found myself floundering. Vaticanese is not enough. Sometimes you have to be as wily as serpents and as innocent as doves to get your message across.
Here is a helpful timeline, which does not support the Vatican’s case:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0905/1224303498447.html
The Vatican denial creates the impression that they (the good guys) knew nothing of the goings on of their priests and the cover-ups and relocations of pedophiles and homosexual pederasts (according to John Jay Study – priests were victims of poor priestly formation, childhood trauma, cultural and vocational pressure) by their bishops (did not know the harm of sexual abuse, did what they were told by psychologists who back then, were not aware), but that has been proven otherwise. The church has often blamed the victims of abuse for raising a stink and paid them off to silence them, then transferred their sexual predator priests onto another unsuspecting parish to repeat their crimes. The church clerical hierarchy used the people and sacrificed their children to protect and sustain themselves.
The ‘good cop/bad cop’ game is a proven effective defense and is being played to good effect by other entities, such as Islam.
The Vatican rebuttal was factual. The provocative slanderous statements by Kenny were not. Especially his claim that the 1996 proposed framework was an attempt to intefere in the civil and criminal laws of Ireland and to stifle victims and clergy who wanted to report sexual abuse against children.
The John Jay study has nothing to do with Ireland.