Tag: sex abuse scandal

Whole Lotta Testosterone

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by Mary Valle

I don’t think that men and women are the same. I think we have a lot in common, being humans. However, if you look around, you’ll agree that there’s a big difference between us and that difference is testosterone. Skyscapers. The space program, with its great missiles impregnating the silvery, virginal moon. Football. War. The Washington Monument, for Pete’s sake. Guns, archery, race-car driving. Fireworks. Abrahamaic religion, with its cold, lordly sky-gods and “pure” “untainted” virgins. Agriculture. Mono-anything. New cars, and that “new car smell.” Breaking seals on bottles of shampoo and ketchup. Beer caps popping off, and the foamy explosion running over the lip of the bottle. Synthetic pressurized whipped cream products, and anything having to do with them. Onward, into infinity. These are all the byproducts of testosterone, which can really change a person, since we all do start out female. Continue Reading →

Misinterpreting the Legacy of the 1960s

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Part of The Revealer’s series on the John Jay report, The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.

by Scott Korb

For a good part of the past four years, I met every other week with a former Ursuline nun – let’s call her “Josefa” – to talk about the life of the Church from the ’50s to early ’70s, precisely the period of time when the child sexual abuse crisis was at its worst. Josefa, approaching 80, was writing a memoir; I helped her along. Together, inch by inch and mile by mile, we paved the way for her entry, as a teenager, into the religious order known to be the first group of Catholic sisters to arrive in the new world. And together, week by week and year by year, we came to understand why exactly, at 40, she left. Continue Reading →

Smear the Pope

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Diane Winston, Knight Chair in Media and Religion at USC and friend of The Revealer, writes at her blog, The Scoop, about criticism The New York Times has received for it’s recent story about Pope Benedict‘s role in covering up sexual abuse in the church:

Critics complain that the Times is out to get the Church and Pope Benedict, in particular. They cite theological inaccuracies, historical misunderstandings and editorial intimations to justify their stance. But they miss the forest for the trees. The intricacies of priestly ordination, Vatican law and institutional preservation are important to the story, but they’re not the point. The point is the church’s choice: opting to safeguard the institution, its priests and reputation at the expense of children and families. The Times is, as any news outlet should be, interested in making sense of this decision and, of course, grabbing readers’ attention.

Continue Reading →

Stuff to Do, Updated

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Mary Valle: We here at The Revealer were wondering just who was the “American who taught that Catholics could dissent from church teachings about abortion, birth control and homosexuality” in the Goodstein/Halbfinger article? Who was cited as a special target of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Laurie Goodstein edified us: good ol’ Charles Curran, who was booted from his tenured post at Catholic University by the micro-managing (when they saw fit) CDF.

Read more about Curran here, here and here. Continue Reading →

They Had Stuff to Do, Give Them a Break!

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Mary Valle: A huge New York Times piece on the Ratzinger-led Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s role in the “sexual abuse scandal” (or, as I like to call it, Pontifigate) by Laurie Goodstein and David M. Halbfinger draws the trail of crumbs ever closer to the Vatican. Indeed, they say “it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.” Hmm. Cancer metaphors? Where have we heard this before? John Dean in the Oval Office, uttering the infamous “cancer on the Presidency” line. We all know how that ended. Continue Reading →

The Vatican's Moral Authority

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Tony Crosthwaite writes us with an interesting observation and some history:

One wonders if Rome’s ongoing invitation for Anglicans to join it is like being welcomed aboard a sinking ship. Everyone can see the Vatican reeling as the scandal of child abuse and cover-up play out on the world stage. That this has weakened the moral authority of the Roman Church there can be no doubt.

Therefore it is intriguing that currently there are moves to canonize Pope Pius XII, for this will ensure continued debate on the Vatican’s relations with Fascism and Nazism in the World War II era, and the facts of this period make the Vatican extremely vulnerable to further attacks on its moral authority. Those interested in the Vatican’s conduct in this period would find the following article informative: “The Vatican and Fascism: Remembering the 1929 Lateran Accords.” Continue Reading →

The Vatican’s Moral Authority

Posted on by

Tony Crosthwaite writes us with an interesting observation and some history:

One wonders if Rome’s ongoing invitation for Anglicans to join it is like being welcomed aboard a sinking ship. Everyone can see the Vatican reeling as the scandal of child abuse and cover-up play out on the world stage. That this has weakened the moral authority of the Roman Church there can be no doubt.

Therefore it is intriguing that currently there are moves to canonize Pope Pius XII, for this will ensure continued debate on the Vatican’s relations with Fascism and Nazism in the World War II era, and the facts of this period make the Vatican extremely vulnerable to further attacks on its moral authority. Those interested in the Vatican’s conduct in this period would find the following article informative: “The Vatican and Fascism: Remembering the 1929 Lateran Accords.” Continue Reading →