by Bradley Eli, M.Div., Ma.Th.  •  ChurchMilitant.com  •  January 9, 2019

Shows they’re not serious about stopping homosexual predators

The evidence that the Vatican isn’t serious about stopping homo-clerical predators includes creating special positions for them in the Vatican and allowing them to avoid prosecution because of legal technicalities.

Vatican investigators are scuttling the case that started the ball rolling last June against now-disgraced Abp. Theodore McCarrick. The Vatican is saying the abuse victim was 16 years old at the time and chose to serve midnight Mass for McCarrick at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1972 when he was abused. They claim this calls into question if the boy consented to being groped and fondled by McCarrick in the sacristy before Mass.

The Vatican is also now claiming ignorance of credible allegations that Bp. Gustavo Zanchetta had sexually assaulted seminarians prior to his special appointment in the Curia. Zanchetta had stepped down from his diocese in Argentina two years ago because of such allegations before assuming a special position as assessor for the Holy See’s financial office, a position created especially for him by Rome.

Under the direction of Pope Francis, the Vatican has a history of letting homosexual predators off the hook. A panel established by Francis in 2015 has reduced or dismissed penalties against clerics found guilty of sex abuse in about a third of the cases. Prior to the formation of this special panel, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), formerly responsible for reviewing such cases, rarely lowered an abuser’s penalties.

Cardinal Blase Cupich, seen as the Pope’s frontman on clerical sex abuse in the United States, is saying that Francis has put unity among U.S. bishops on par with finding solutions to stamping out sex abuse. The archbishop of Chicago told this to reporters last November in preparation for the bishops’ retreat on sex abuse at his Mundelein Seminary.

“Pope Francis asked the bishops, the bishops conference leaders, to schedule a time in which we would have a spiritual retreat to build unity among ourselves as a way of moving forward,” said Cupich. “Because, he thought that that was just as important as coming up with a solution.”

Cupich and Rome have repeatedly blamed clericalism as the root cause of clerical sex abuse. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the CDF, denied the veracity of such claims in a recent letter to LifeSiteNews.

The offender’s will for sexual gratification is the cause of the violation of the physical and emotional intimacy of a person entrusted to him. To babble on here of clericalism or of Church structures as the cause (of sexual abuse), is an insult of the many victims of sexual abuse (outside the Catholic Church).

 

https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/vatican-punts-on-abuse