Expert: Fr. Michael - 12/4/2009

Question
Father, it seems, when it comes to pedophilia, the Church never suspends, excommunicates or applies extreme penance on these clergy. Based on this, I also want to ask, are these clergy some how preserved from certain aspects of law, that the Church can just pay victims off, and just transfer the perpetrator to another Parish? How were these matters addressed traditional in the past, when they were much more rare, both legally and pastorally?

Answer
The blame for this scandalous and corrupt situation can be laid directly to Pope Benedict, who has been directly in charge of this area since 2001.  Essentially, he has done little or nothing to expel these thousands of his presbyters, who have committed crimes that Christ Himself said were deserving of death.  Morever, Benedict has done nothing to punish his agents, the bishops and cardinals who, if they have not been involved in the crimes themselves (and dozens of them have been), have suborned a massive cover-up and obstruction of justice.

Such cases were much rarer before Vatican II (1962-1965), when episcopal oversight was much better, and Rome made sure that the bishops kept their dioceses clean.  In the cases where there was a hint of such crimes, the offending priest was gotten rid of, without public acknowledgement, to be sure, but gotten rid of.