Richard Sipe Calls on Pope Benedict to Resign

 

I began today posting an excerpt from Richard Sipe's latest article at NCR, analyzing the roots of the abuse crisis.

And now as the day moves on, I have just read at Frank Douglas's Voice from the Desert blog that Richard Sipe has called on Pope Benedict to resign.  Voice from the Desert says that the National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) newsletter published the following op-ed statement by Sipe today:

Pope Benedict XVI is a good man. He has served the Church long and well. It takes nothing away from his goodness to suggest that he should resign his office. Nine of his predecessors have resigned, most for the good of the Church. The clerical sex abuse crisis that now exposes a corrupt pattern and practice of a system has escaped and confused many good, brilliant people and left generations paralyzed. There is no need to point fingers.

However, the Roman Catholic Church is in a period of Reformation as profound (and breathtaking) as any its history has ever recorded. The voluntary resignation of Pope Benedict XVI would be a gesture that would match the epic challenge that faces Catholicism today. Such leadership would break the pattern and practice that holds the church hostage to a past that no longer serves the Christian message. The monarchy that rules the church has outlived its service in the evangelization of peoples, an evangelization that Paul the apostle taught and that Pope John Paul II championed. The People of God, hierarchy included, are shackled by a secret system designed to control rather than free them.

The problem is the system.  And it can be addressed only by systemic reform.  I agree with Sipe: that can begin only with substantive change at the center.  Benedict's resignation would be a significant step in the right direction, towards such substantive change.

Catholic Abuse Crisis, Argument and Counter-Argument: Weighing the Moral Norms

Since the conversation continues—and heatedly so, but with more heat than light ensuing—let’s try it from another angle.  I want to return now to an observation of Vincent Twomey’s to which I linked several days ago. 

Writing about the dynamic underlying the cover-up of clerical abuse by Catholic hierarchy, Twomey observes that the “real cause” of the cover-up—and Twomey finds this frightening—is “the lack of expected emotional response to reports about the abuse of children.”  As he notes, while Catholic officials have been quick to blame others for exposing the abuse and its cover-up, and have been quick to call for sympathy and understanding for clerics abusing children, nowhere has there been “any expression of horror or outrage by those who were told [about the abuse].”  And yet, in Twomey’s view, “Horror and outrage are the natural passions of the good person which God gave us to ensure that we get up and do something in the face of injustice done to others.”

Richard Sipe on Rigidity, Submission, and Psychosexual Immaturity as Precondition for Power in Catholic Clerical System

Richard Sipe writing at National Catholic Reporter about how the unholy trinity of lies, secrets, and power around which clericalism revolves fosters the abuse crisis, and would bring the walls of the church tumbling down if the lies were ever exposed, the secrets told, and the power effectively challenged:

Jim Burroway on Arizona Anti-Immigrant Law: We Are All Mexicans

Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has a very fine series of articles (here and here) about Arizona's new anti-immigrant law, entitled "We Are All Mexicans."  As he notes, 

For National Poetry Month: James Applewhite, "Good as Dad"

His name is always Don or Bo or Bud
Or Jesse.  He doesn't know Mozart from dog fart.
He refers to blacks as 'em.  "I seen three of 'em
In a big old Buick.  Perfume on 'em would knock you dead."
He's been known to hit his woman, some dumb
Lip she gave back after staying too late or smart
Answer instead of supper.  He can learn a dog
To mind real good with a stick and maybe birdshot
If the bitch runs off.  A boy, though, that's what
This rangy, soft-voiced man can teach to jog
Behind his strides, to love for the half-playful cuffs.

Aging and Learning: The Gift of Fallibility

I’ve noted recently on this blog that I’m growing older.  Just a little bit, maybe?  I’ve talked about turning 60 just a little bit perhaps.

I don’t mean to be obsessed with an experience that, after all, affects every one of us every time the clock ticks.  Still, I’m fascinated by some of the aspects of growing older about which I haven’t thought much in the past.  Because I wasn’t then where I am now, on the chronological scale of things . . . .

John McNeill on the Theology of Fallibility and Urgent Need for Catholic Reformation: Judaism and Christianity as Religions of the Collapsing Temple

 John McNeill continues to post provocative (and prophetic) theological statements on his new Spiritual Transformation blog.  The latest in his theology of fallibility series (about which I’ve blogged several times in the past) focuses on the urgent need to reform the Catholic church. 

John grounds his reflections in scripture—particularly in Ezekiel’s call to the Jewish community to look to God as their shepherd when God’s Spirit withdrew from the temple in Jerusalem as the shepherds of Israel focused on their own self-protection and not on safeguarding their flock; and on Jesus’s statement in John’s gospel that his body and the body of all those united to him through the Spirit will become the new temple.