Thursday, December 2, 2010

Benedict on Causes of the Sex Abuse Crisis

An absence of justice is not mercy:
At one point, Seewald suggests that the evident episcopal mishandling of abuse cases represents a complete “failure” for the church. By way of response, Pope Benedict says: “The Archbishop of Dublin told me something very interesting about that. He said that ecclesiastical penal law functioned until the late 1950s; admittedly, it was not perfect – there is much to criticise about it – but nevertheless it was applied. After the mid-sixties, however, it was simply not applied any more.

“The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather a Church of love: she must not punish . . . This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people.”...

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