It all seems so clear, doesnít it?
As this Laurie Goodstein/Michael Luo/NY Times article presents, Pope Benedict XVI and a chronically corrupt Roman Catholic Church have been complicit in the protection of child-abusing priests.
But as this William McGurn/WSJ op-ed notes, the Timesí reporters undisclosed feeding of information from plaintiffís lawyers who have made a cottage industry out of suing the Catholic Church raises as many questions as the ones the Times raises about the churchís handling of the sex-abuse cases. As McGurn notes:
The man who is now pope reopened cases that had been closed; did more than anyone to process cases and hold abusers accountable; and became the first pope to meet with victims. Isn’t the more reasonable interpretation of all these events that Cardinal Ratzinger’s experience with cases like Murphy’s helped lead him to promote reforms that gave the church more effective tools for handling priestly abuse?
Yeah, but reporting that would not sell as many newspapers. And also not comply with the objectives of undisclosed agendas.
Morality plays are comforting because they make it easy to identify and demonize the villains. The truth is usually more nuanced and complicated, but ultimately more fulfilling to understand and less likely to generate witch hunts.
Update: Father Raymond J. De Souza provides more insight into the Kiesle case.
tom,
let me be nuanced, complicated and fulfilled by understanding truth:
the church moves slowly but surely over the centuries and, most fairly, should be understood in that light.
1978 first conviction for child molestation.
the priest tied up and abused two boys who could have been our young sons.
1981 local bishop requested to vatican that priest be defrocked.
1982 local bishop provided more information to vatican as requested.
1985 7 years after conviction, then cardinal/now pope says case needs, “more time”. during “more time”, our happy-hunter priest is working with church children.
1987 10 brief years after conviction, the church, moving ever-surely, defrocks priest who goes on, 8 years later, to molest and garner 6 years federal time.
now, one can choose to pontificate over taking things out of context, over-simplifying or whatever or one can wonder how that good catholic, ockham, would evaluate such information.
for most of us, it is plain the church has been too slow and a truly civilized society will find a way to not stand for it.
Dr. Tom, Kiesle sounds like a bad guy and should get whatever comes to him. But that should be the headline of the article rather than “Pope Put Off Punishing Priest Abusive Priest.”
As McGurn notes (as does the Times article), Ratzinger’s CDF did not handle administration of these types of abuse cases at that time, a bureaucratic foulup that he eventually changed.
Also, the Times article starts with “The priest, convicted of tying up and abusing two young boys in a California church rectory, . . .”
However, the only reference in the article to Kiesle’s criminal record at the time of Ratzinger’s letter is Kiesle’s 1978 plea bargain of misdemeanor lewd conduct.
Was that the conviction for tying up and abusing the two young boys? Maybe so, but it sounds to me a slap on the wrist for such a vile crime. Was there another conviction in the interim? Was Kiesle accused of tying up and abusing the boys, but then allowed to plead to a lesser charge? The Times article does not clarify this.
Moreover, if the information that Ratzinger had at the time of his letter was that Kiesle had been convicted of a misdemeanor for which he served no prison time and completed three years of therapy, then is Ratzinger’s cautious response unreasonable? It’s not the decision I would have made, but it’s not one that I would conclude as unreasonable under those circumstances.
As McGurn concedes, none of the foregoing should shield the church from criticism for its handling of priests such as Kiesle. The antiquated bureaucratic administration of these matters that Ratzinger ultimately corrected was absurd. That Kiesle was able to volunteer at a youth ministry while being defrocked is even more egregious.
But that’s the story. Not that the Pope dragged his feet.
tom,
i am trying hard NOT to engage in speculation that the church’s MOTIVES for being so slow and incomplete are almost as bad as the abuse itself. however, distractions about how headlines or news stories could have been better written, assertions that clever lawyers are behind the stories, that benedict was really not so involved or hints that the perception of gambling at rick’s is really due to “antiquated bureaucratic administration” sorely tempts me to such speculation.
we do well to keep our eye on the ball: the abuse is terrible, the handling has been terrible and the matter has not been adequately resolved, compounding the offense of the church and this pope.
OK, then. Let’s focus on the case described in the Times article because generalizations of the way in which the church and Ratzinger handled other cases doesn’t advance the ball much.
From this article, we know that Kiesle plea bargained to a charge of misdemeanor lewd conduct in 1978. That may or may not have been a result of charges that he tied up and abused two young boys.
He completed the terms of a deferred adjudication and his record was wiped clean, which is normal for first-time misdemeanor offenses. Nevertheless, the diocese removed Kiesle from the active ministry after his plea bargain.
In 1981, Kiesle’s bishop recommended to Ratzinger and the Vatican that Kiesle be defrocked as a result of the misdemeanor conviction.
The following year, Ratzinger — who was not clearly in charge of the decision to defrock Kiesle — writes back and asks for more information. Three years later, Ratzinger writes again and advises that the matter needs more consideration.
In 1987, Kiesle was defrocked. It is not clear whether Ratzinger had anything to do with that decision. It does not appear that Kiesle was ever returned to the active ministry after the diocese removed him from the active ministry after the conviction.
In the meantime, the diocese was negligent in allowing Kiesle to volunteer at a church as a youth minister. There is nothing to indicate that Ratzinger or the Vatican would have any reason to know about that.
So, was the church slow to act on Kiesle? Yes, but perhaps the Vatican believed he could be rehabilitated as a priest, which I don’t agree with but which is not an unreasonable interpretation of the facts above. It is far from clear that the Pope put off punishing a priest that he knew was a child abuser, which the title to the article implies.
that benedict was, in fact, in any way involved in kiesle being rather slowly ousted makes “pope put off punishing abusive priest” a reasonable headline to most of us.
i probably make your point in observing that non-legal, laymen like me tend to be, as you originally pointed out, prone to mystification that the church does not just “do the right thing”–an attitude that lacks nuance to well-trained legal minds.