Can this story be for real?
When FOX news ("Fair & Balanced") begins to jump on the latest negative press out of Rome, then you know the Catholic church has a serious problem on its hands. FOX's website is carrying an AP report hot off the press right now about an interview that Colombian Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos gave to Latin American RCN radio today. Castrillon Hoyos is the retired head of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy who in 2001 wrote French bishop Pierre Pican to praise Pican for refusing to report a priest's abuse of minors to the legal authorities. Pope John Paul II made Castrillon Hoyos a cardinal in 1998.
If the AP report that FOX news has picked up is accurate, Castrillon Hoyos said the following today, in his RCN interview:
1. Asking a bishop to report to the civil authorities a priest sexually abusing children is akin to asking a family member to testify against another family member. (Apparently the family that is the church is the family of clerics, and excludes laity whom said clerics happen to abuse.)
2. ". . . [I]t's about defending the dignity and the human rights of a person, even the worst of criminals." (Defending the dignity and human rights of the abusing cleric, you understand; the abused minor is not part of the equation . . . !)
3. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) was at the Vatican meeting in 2001 at which the letter Castrillon Hoyos sent to Pican was prepared prior to its presentation to Pope John Paul II for approval.
4. The abuse crisis is being stirred by the church's traditional enemies, including--this again!--the Freemasons: "But I'm not afraid to say that in some cases it's within the Masons, together with other enemies of the church."
5. "Useful idiots" in the church are aiding these enemies.
6. Castrillon Hoyos knows about the conspiracy, and the collusion of useful idiots in the church with its enemies, but he won't disclose his sources or tell all he knows: "[S]ince I'm not stupid, I don't tell everything I know. Only drunks, children and idiots tell, and I'm not a child, nor a drunk, nor stupid."
6. Castrillon Hoyos knows about the conspiracy, and the collusion of useful idiots in the church with its enemies, but he won't disclose his sources or tell all he knows: "[S]ince I'm not stupid, I don't tell everything I know. Only drunks, children and idiots tell, and I'm not a child, nor a drunk, nor stupid."
Dear God. Why don't they just shut the hell up? Stupider and stupider, and venal and more venal, with each utterance. As I said a few weeks back, the family analogy vis-a-vis the abuse crisis is mind-boggling. What healthy family chooses to cover up an adult's sexual abuse of a child within the family circle, in order to maintain the public image of the family and safeguard the dignity of the abusive adult?!
Or are we being played for fools by Vatican officials making such obtrusively crazy statements day after day? Is this some kind of set-up that will be used to vindicate Benedict by demonstrating what he has been up against in trying to reform the Vatican's inner circles of governance?
Or are we being played for fools by Vatican officials making such obtrusively crazy statements day after day? Is this some kind of set-up that will be used to vindicate Benedict by demonstrating what he has been up against in trying to reform the Vatican's inner circles of governance?