Pope calls on Church to learn from abuse scandal..Pope’s child porn “normal” claim sparks outrage among victims
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12039499
Pope Benedict has called for the Catholic Church to reflect on what allowed the sexual abuse of children by priests to happen.
The number of sexual abuse cases had reached “an unimaginable dimension” in 2010, the Pope said.
He also spoke of the “shame” the abuse crisis had caused the Church.
The abuse scandal, which first surfaced in the US in 2002, erupted globally this year with a raft of allegations across Europe and beyond.
“We have to ask ourselves what was wrong in our preaching, in our entire way of configuring the Christian being, to allow something like that to happen,” Pope Benedict told cardinals and bishops gathered for his traditional Christmas audience in Rome.
“We have to take this humiliation as an exhortation for the truth and a call for renewal,” he added.
However, the Pope also said the fault lay not only with the Church but also in the “context of our times”.
“There exists a market of pornography regarding children that seems to be increasingly accepted as normal by society”, he said.
The BBC’s David Willey in Rome says thousands of victims of paedophile priests have come forward and bishops have been accused of covering up cases, allowing paedophile priests to continue their ministry.
The Vatican has now introduced fast-track rules for defrocking priests found to have abused children, our correspondent says.
Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.
Asking how abuse exploded within the Church, the Pontiff called on senior clerics “to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred” and to help victims heal through a better presentation of the Christian message.
“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.
———-
oh dear..this man really has no idea..and now we know it for sure..molesting young people is a crime now, then and whenever, anywhere, anytime..you old fool..no excuses..they are sick individuals and you keep them in the church..what is wrong with you?
401
