Pope Benedict XVI prayed with tearful victims of clergy sex abuse in a chapel Thursday, an extraordinary gesture from a pontiff who has made atoning for the great shame of the U.S. church the cornerstone of his first papal trip to America.
Benedict’s third day in the U.S. began with a packed open-air Mass celebrated in 10 languages at a baseball stadium, and it included a speech to Roman Catholic college and university presidents.
But the real drama happened privately, in the chapel of the papal embassy between events.
The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a papal spokesman, said that Benedict and Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley met with a group of five or six clergy sex abuse victims for about 25 minutes, offering them encouragement and hope.
“They prayed together. Also, each of them had their own individual time with the Holy Father,” Lombardi said. “Some were in tears.”
Five or six.
Sounds comforting for the pontiff.
Doesn’t sound all that comforting for the thousands of victims.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
No kidding, Mr. Rabbit. The Pope is acting just like George W. Bush, who refuses to extend the simple courtesy of meeting with the families of each and every casualty of the Iraq war as often as they might wish. You and Cindy Sheehan have pointed up the great hypocrisy of leaders of large organizations. They claim to love their fellow Americans or Roman Catholics, but do they spend their entire waking lives commiserating with the pain of each and every wronged parishioner or the families of every fallen heroic soldier, fireman, police officer, paramedic? No they do not.
But do they then have the decency to be consistent and meet with NO wronged parishioner or grieving family member? No they do not. Instead they meet with only some. What horrible selfish men our Pope and President are, right?
“someone”, there had been quite a clamor of victims who would have liked to meet with the pontiff, but there was little to no response from the Vatican. The meeting at the embassy was arranged secretly with a fraction of those who were interested, and quite a number of people were disappointed. My source for this was radio reporting on WQED Pittsburgh, an NPR station. Sorry, I don’t know if the information is available on the web.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
I’m still a little confused as to what your complaint is #3. Of course some people are disappointed. The pope can’t possibly meet with all of the victims, nor would he be expected to. Are you suggesting that there are some specific victims (or I guess more likely, some self-proclaimed “leaders” of victims) that the pope should have met with in addition to (or in place of) those he did meet with?
The fact of the matter is, the pope’s meeting with SOME victims sends a message to ALL victims that their concerns are taken seriously by the pope, or at least that the pope is hearing first hand about the pain caused by this kind of abuse. I doubt extremely that the meeting is “comforting for the pontiff” as you assert in your first post, but I have little doubt that it is comforting to the victims he met with and with many (though of course not ALL) other victims.
In terms of charity, I don’t see much difference between what you wrote in the first post and Christopher Hitchens’ writing on Mother Theresa (i.e. any good works are done solely for the selfish pleasure of the actor)…
[blockquote] any good works are done solely for the selfish pleasure of the actor [/blockquote] Mr. Hitchens overstates the case. I am in the midst of reading “The Dark Night” essay by St. John of the Cross, and I have become painfully aware of the mixture of selfishness and unselfishness in almost any “good work,” including my own. Only when you are forced to go to that place where you abolutely do not wish to go–such as the cross–does selfishness have a chance of being purged.
I suspect it was lower Vatican officials that kept the wall of silence before the petitioners who were begging to be heard. I have no doubt that the meeting itself was called for by the pontiff himself. There is (almost) always a disappointment when one trusts things to the machinery of a large organization. As to how many could have been given an audience, I cannot say, except to suspect that a number greater than “five or six” was well within the range of capability of the Vatican machinery.
I have just returned from a long walk, during which I pondered your original post. It occurred to me that if George Bush were a different man, he could indeed have given an audience to the families of each and every soldier killed in Iraq. The number of people at each gathering might have been uncomfortable, but each family could have been seen and heard. Who knows? Who knows what these voices in the president’s ear might have produced?
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
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In simple terms (for the third time) I think that “five or six” was inadequate to the pastoral need, even on a representational basis. I don’t know what was possible, but I am sure that more was possible.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
And no, I never studied debate. In fact, I probably lost every serious debate I was in. I apologize if I have been less than lucid.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
One last question. You say that “five of six” was inadequate. Given that there were 1000’s of victims of abuse over the last 50 years, what should the number have been? 7, 77, 777, or 7,777? This gets to the heart of our disagreement. What metric would you employ for determining what is “adequeste to the pastoral need, even on a representational basis”? With 5, 6 or 7 you can have people sitting in a small group discussing things with the Pope. With 77 or 777 you’re in an auditorium being addressed by the Pope, with lines of people approaching microphones to “have their say”. Some of whom will take the opportunity to scream, yell and carry on. Not all that conducive to pastoral reflection I’d guess. 7,777 and you’re in a stadium.
Another thing to consider, in a group of 7 people may feel comfortable discussing what happened to them. Less so, except for exhibitionists, in a group of 77 or larger.
And why assume that it’s the Pope that needs to talk to the 777? He wasn’t pope when this happened and the Church is hierarchical for a reason. Is it not sufficient for local bishops to offer pastoral assistance to victims? Can only the pope provide a healing balm? If I’m raped by a public school teacher, can only the President of the US address my hurt?
Well, “someone”, perhaps 7 is the better number. Or perhaps it would be a dozen. How much time did the pontiff devote to this? An hour? If an hour was all the time that he could spare to tend to a crime that lasted for at least two generations, then 5 or 6 is all they could fit in, perhaps. And it is not just the paucity of the time and people that were there: there were also the many that were stonewalled and concluded there would be no such audience.
The RC was involved up to the hilt in this mess. It was not just the thousands of priests; what was even worse was the pattern of coverup and denials that reached into the highest echelons of the RC church in the US, with (if I remember properly) acquiescence if not complicency from the Vatican. It is wonderful that the Pope apologized. If I were raped by a public school teacher, and the President of the US was part of a system that denied me justice, yes, I would hope for an apology. And what’s up with this “five or six? Don’t they know how many were there? Or are they calling into question, even today, whether one of them was really a victim? The effort was certainly well intentioned, but it was rather clumsily done. At least, now, we have the full admission of guilt at the very highest level of the Roman Catholic Church.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
Great kudos to the cardinal archbishop of boston who fought for this..he is the true hero of this. He gave the pope a list of 1000+ of those who had been abused, to the pontiff, who asked that he pray for them. That is the real story.
What I don’t understand is why so many lower the bar, so as to grant the pope an ok, for meeting with five and not providing explicit direction to bishops and priests after this to take care of the existing gap that the pope has had to address.
Hypothetically, If our dear Lord was told that his 12 apostles had gone to the far ends of the earth and done this, then he would have acted immediately. Why doesn’t his “vicar” on earth, overseeing the successor of the apostles do the same?
Thanks for the information, Jackson. That would indeed be the best way forward, for the pope to set the example and direct his bishops to follow up to complete the task.
[size=1][color=red][url=http://resurrectioncommunitypersonal.blogspot.com/]The Rabbit[/url][/color][color=gray].[/color][/size]
It’s probably pointless as no one will be coming back to this old post. You write: “That would indeed be the best way forward, for the pope to set the example and direct his bishops to follow up to complete the task.” Why in the world do you think this has not happened? Charity indeed.