What is Pope Benedict XVI Trying to Say about the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal?

The current Pope, Benedict the Sixteenth, has a convoluted history through the Church’s sex abuse scandals. So, when the Pope’s personal preacher, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, spoke on Friday, December 15^th, during one of his Advent Friday meditations about the clergy sex abuse scandal, calling down wrath on the "abominations committed by [the Church’s very ministers and pastors," one wonders, was this a subtle message to or from His Holiness?

Father Raniero Cantalamessa, a Franciscan Capuchin Catholic priest, is the preacher of the papal household, also known as the Apostolic Preacher, who preaches sermons (though they are called meditations) on Fridays during the Lent and Advent seasons to the Pope and other high-ranking clergy. His writings are lucid and gentle. He affirms that unbaptized babies do not go to Limbo, as some Catholic pundits postulate, but to Heaven, because in Catholic dogma Christ died for everyone’s sins and because God would not allow true innocents to suffer, irrespective of original sin. He seems to be a sane and undogmatic priest.

How then, did this priest whose Advent and Lent meditations include such titles as “Hail, True Body, Truly Born of the Virgin Mary,” “God Manifests His Love For Us,” and “’Do You Believe?’ The Divinity of Christ in St. John’s Gospel,” become the fire and brimstone preacherman who labeled pedophiles as “abominations” and declared that the time had come for the Church to "weep before God" over the scandal against "the smallest of its brothers?"

There are two possibilities: either he was moved to do it, or he was asked to do it.

The Apostolic Preacher gives his Friday sermons not only to the Pope, but also to the Cardinals, Bishops and Prelates, and General Superiors of religious Orders. That’s a lot of folks. That’s more than just the so-called Princes of the Church. That’s the whole court. He has a large and powerful audience to which to make his case. He also has the unique position of speaking to them but not being one of them.

So why this? And why now?

Let us consider his audience. First and foremost: Pope Benedict the Sixteenth.

Pope Benedict XVI’s record on sex abuse cases, including when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, a Cardinal and the Prelate of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, the successor to the Roman Inquisition,) has been a conflicting one. Unlike on some issues, like violence in the “evil and inhuman” Islam where the pope has become a blunt lightening rod, the pope has remained subtle with regard to his changes in policies, if any, regarding clergy sexual abuse.

On one hand, Benedict XVI wrote the infamous exhortation  that allegations of clergy sexual abuse must be kept secret upon pain of excommunication, though in his defense, first, this was when he was the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and this was a logical extension of Pope John Paul II’s extensive history of denial and secrecy, and second, the imposed secrecy only surrounds the Church’s internal investigation, and separate charges may be filed with the police by the victims.

On the other hand, since Benedict XVI ascended to the throne of Peter, Benedict XVI has made more dramatic and pragmatic decisions in some pedophile priest cases than did his predecessor. Even before he became pope, then-Cardinal Ratzinger reopened the case of Marciel Maciel, founder of an order of priests in Mexico, the Legion of Christ, in December, 2004, a few months before the death of Pope John Paul II. Maciel had been accused of molestation by nine former seminarians. A month later, Maciel declined being reelected to be the general of the legion, a move that has been attributed to the renewed investigation. In May, 2006, now-Pope Benedict XVI ordered Maciel to retire from his position and spend the rest of his life in “prayer and repentance.” Though this may seem mild, Pope John Paul II hadn’t done nearly as much, and a Vatican statement did say that Maciel has only escaped an ecclesiastical trial due to his advanced age and rapidly failing health.

So Pope Benedict XVI has a mixed record, but his words are less equivocal. He is known for making blunt statements, even considering the subtleties of Church speeches. Remembering that he probably has Vatican lawyers breathing down the collar of that ostentatious white surplice every time he speaks, the Pope said at Good Friday Mass in 2005, “How much filth there is in the church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him.” The filth in question is generally thought to refer to priests involved in sex crimes.

So the question remains: was Cantalamessa moved to repudiate the “abominations,” or was he asked to?

Also in Cantalamessa’s speech, he said that the Church is adopting “ironclad rules to ensure that the abuses are not repeated.” This is an interesting statement. Such ironclad rules could only have been adopted at the direction of the pope. (Whether the rules are indeed ironclad is another question.) The ironclad statement suggests the Pope’s hand may have guided Cantalamessa’s pen.

I don’t mean to suggest that Cantalamessa is a pawn. He’s most certainly a learned and gifted man, but I think collusion might be an excellent choice of words.

So, if Cantalamessa’s speech was a collaborative effort between the preacher and the pontiff to the assembled cardinals, bishops and prelates, and leaders of the religious Orders, what else was in the speech that might be attributed to Pope Benedict XVI?

Also in last Friday’s meditation, Cantalamessa said that "The moment has come to do the most important thing: cry before God. [The church must mourn] for the offense given to the body of Christ and the scandal given to the smallest of its members, rather than for the damage and dishonor it has caused us." He said, in effect, that it’s time to think about what those monsters did to the kids, that it was a sin to make the Almighty weep and shake the rafters, and that they should stop whining about how bad it makes the Church look if people talk about it.

Amen.

TK Kenyon

Author of Rabid: A Novel