Recently in Pope Benedict XVI Category

A week ago was the tenth anniversary of the controversial Declaration "Dominus Iesus" (Lord Jesus), from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2000 was headed up by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI.

Anyway, I say it was controversial because it made some claims about Jesus which are often considered somewhat politically incorrect. Claims like Jesus is the only name under which anyone is to be saved from an eternity separate from God, or that the Church He founded is the one true Church.

I read the document this morning for the first time ever. I felt like most of it was pretty common sense, provided that the person reading it professed to believe in the content of Holy Writ. If the document is politically incorrect or offensive to modern ideas of religious pluralism or relativism, it is because the New Testament and the Jesus of Nazareth described therein are rather offensive to those.

But I find that the most difficult Gospel teachings to accept often turn out to be the most beautiful.

The most dominant image used to describe God's love for mankind in Scripture is matrimonial -- the love of a husband for his wife. The declaration reads:

And thus, just as the head and members of a living body, though not identical, are inseparable, so too Christ and the Church can neither be confused nor separated, and constitute a single "whole Christ". This same inseparability is also expressed in the New Testament by the analogy of the Church as the Bride of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:25-29; Rev 21:2,9).

That is probably the most new idea I've taken from the document, the idea that Christ and the Church are distinct but inseparable. Or maybe not a new idea, but a new and clearer expression of the idea.

Because there is often perceived a disconnect between the two. Christ is all-loving, all-affirming; the Church is cold and rigid. Christ comforts. The Church burdens. Christ welcomes. The Church excommunicates.

Why the apparent difference? I would surmise that it is because the Church is clear and unmistakable in the world today, while Christ is more shrouded in the past, more ephemeral and thus more vulnerable to wishful thinking. In other words, it is much easier for us to make whatever we want out of "Jesus" than it is to make whatever we want out of the Church. Christ isn't walking around giving interviews or writing books. The pope is.

This is not to say that Christ is not loving and welcoming. Quite the opposite. But as Christ is welcoming, so too is the Church. It is the Church's job to preserve a proper understanding of Christ in the world today. The farther one gets away from Christ's teachings as propogated by the Church, the more one's understanding of Christ becomes contaminated by one's own wishful thinking. The Christ in our heads is then not Christ at all. Just a repository of our own opinions, costumed up to look like a 33-year-old bearded Jewish carpenter.

If any of the Church's teachings strike us as cold or unloving, like (and I hope this does not upset anyone too much) her teaching on marriage, then it is not her teaching but a teaching of Christ himself that we find so cold and unloving. Does that mean Christ is cold and unloving? Or might it mean that our understanding of the issue needs to be corrected or sharpened?

Anyway, I think that is what Cardinal Ratzinger was getting at. Just throwing it out there.

Speaking of marriage ...
as I read the declaration this morning it got me thinking about my future married relationship. St. Paul makes clear that the mystery of marriage actually points to the mystery of Christ and the Church -- distinct but inseparable entities. Beginning on that fateful day in late September, T and I will continue to be distinct individuals, but we will be inseparable. As one body.

Mind blown.

Came across an interesting article at the website for Crisis Magazine, a lay Catholic publication, by a guy named John Zmirak, whom I've never heard of but seems pretty insightful.

His argument: the theological virtue of love (or more clearly charity) cannot be properly understood or properly practiced without a proper understanding and practice of the "merely natural" virtues of justice (moral righteousness), temperance (moderation, avoidance of excess), fortitude (courage), and prudence (smart thinking).

Without the clear understanding and proper practice of those virtues, we cannot fulfill Christ's commandment, that we love one another as He loved us. For Jesus Himself was a model not only of the theological virtues (faith, hope and love), but of those four natural virtues as well.

The Christian message of Love, Zmirak writes, is not that only our conception of "love" by itself is sufficient without anything else to place it in context.

The example upon which he draws is indeed Benedict's comments regarding the abuse scandals, when he said:

"Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues."

Love without respect for justice is not really love, but a corruption of it. In modern popular culture, there are many conceptions and practices of "love" that do not include justice, or temperance, or courage, or prudence. They may involve strong emotional attachments and warm-fuzzies, but a strong emotional attachment and warm-fuzzies are not a foundation for a loving relationship in the Christian sense.

Some may argue that this makes it appear that God's Love is not enough, that we devalue God's Love by saying that it needs other virtues to make it work.

But I would say it is precisely by practicing these simple, ordinary human virtues that we place the value in Love that it truly deserves. Without these ordinary virtues, we strip Love of its identity. Love becomes merely an undiscerning affirmation of everyone, even those who need to be called to conversion, and everything, even the most heinous crimes. Love is challenging. As Zmirak put it:

Grace builds on nature, but it cannot simply replace it. If we're unjust, rash, intemperate or irresponsible, it won't simply cripple our attempts to practice faith, hope, and charity -- it might actually render them evil.

It's been all over the news since he said it. Here and here for starters. Pope Benedict XVI has said that it is sin "within the Church" that has led to the sex abuse crisis the Catholic Church now faces.

Sounds pretty terrible and scary. But it is good news.

It looks like Vatican Radio broke the story and everyone else ran with it. Said the pope:

... attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church. This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church ...

His words are getting billed in the press as the "strongest comments" on the sex abuse scandal, that he is dismissing the idea that the whole sex abuse crisis has been ginned up by a press that hates the authority of the Vatican, the celibate priesthood, and him.

But his comments aren't surprising. He is essentially saying what those who follow the pope, and what many faithful Catholics, have known since the sex abuse scandals first started to break in America.

The crisis in the Church is a crisis of fidelity to Christ. It is rooted in the steady departure of the Church from fidelity both in preaching and in practice to the New Covenant in Christ. Components of this departure include a watering down of solid theological and moral teaching, and thereby a de-valuing of the admission of personal imperfection and penance before Christ. But at the root of it is a departure from prayer. At some point, Benedict seems to believe, the Church lost her prayerful soul. All the other ills flowed from that. Benedict continued:

... the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In one word we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues.

Bad or inaccurate media coverage, or slanderous accusers, or anything else external, could not create the crisis the Church now faces. Could they in some way contribute to it? Probably. But what could have prevented the crisis from becoming the cancer that it is on the body of the Church is and has always been prayer.

Again, this is good news. Why? Because the illness can be cured with prayer. Our prayer.

It has long been understood that the Church is not limited to the clerical hierarchies and religious celibates. The Catholic Church is all the baptized Catholic faithful. We can hardly affect what detractors and critics on the outside say about the Church and about her faithful. We are quite in a position to strengthen the soul of the Church itself, which is the Body of Christ.

If a man's body is bleeding because of what someone else is doing to him, then he faces the tall order of defending himself and changing the behavior of another. But if a man's wounds are self-inflicted, what he must do is simply change his own behavior. Unlike if his wounds are inflicted by an outside agressor, if he and he alone is responsible for his wounds, then the choice of what to do now is entirely his.

What happens to the Church now has nothing to do with the kind of press she gets. As the Holy Father has said, it requires conversion. In other words, it is our free choice.

The pope had a few words for, well, me, a couple days ago. He asked bloggers to basically make the internet less machine and more human being. Less Matrix, more Neo.

From Vatican Radio:

The need to give the Internet a soul and humanize the dynamics of the digital world was at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's message Saturday to participants in a conference on modern means of mass communication.

Promoted by the Italian Bishops Conference, "Digital Witness" draws together experts in information technology, social networking, web journalism and blogging to focus on the language we use and the way we communicate as Christians in the online society.

Pope Benedict told participants that the task of every believer who works in media, is to ensure the "quality of human contact, guaranteeing attention to people and their spiritual needs". "This is increasingly urgent in today's world", he said, at a time when Internet appears to have a "basically egalitarian" vocation, but at the same time, "marks a new divide", the "digital divide" that "separates the included from the excluded"

And this is my favorite:

"The dangers of homologation and control, of intellectual and moral relativism are also increasing, as already recognizable in the decline of critical spirit, in truth reduced to a game of opinions, in the many forms of degradation and humiliation of the intimacy of the person"

This continues his theme of actual truth, not just cleverer opinions. He also addresses the viral nature of the internet. Which reminds me of this movie I watched the other day with my fiance called "Untraceable." It's about a psychopath who creates an elaborate system whereby his victims are killed live via the internet -- and more quickly the faster the hit count rises (in other words, more quickly the more people log in to watch).

The film comes to a pretty cynical conclusion: that tens of millions of people would log on to watch a live homicide, driving the victim that much more quickly closer to death, if given the chance.

I don't know if that's true, but it speaks to the voyeuristic nature of some of the stuff you can find on the internet. Not just porn, but hardcore wipeout stuff. And I don't mean stuff like Fail Blog, which sometimes is pretty funny and to my knowledge has never shown anyone getting fatally wounded. There is, aside from the sex trash, some pretty violent stuff out there that can just further desensitize the population. The pope is wise to address this.

But basically, he's inviting bloggers to bring a little more God into the blogosphere. Hope I can help a bit.

Pope Benedict XVI preached a homily at Mass with the Pontifical Biblical Academy yesterday, in which he addressed, in off-the-cuff, non-scripted remarks, not just the ongoing sexual abuse scandals plaguing the Catholic Church in various parts of the world, but the errors of modern thought that made such crimes possible, and the fresh opportunity for the Church to open herself to God's transforming power.

So far there is not a complete transcript, just notes taken by Vatican Radio and others. But if the notes are any indication, it was a brilliant teaching moment from Benedict.

Because so much of this is so great, I'm going to quote it a bit at a time and intersperse my comments. If you, dear reader, wish not to be interrupted by my inferior thoughts, please skip over them. You won't offend me. He's the freakin' pope.

Vatican Radio reports:

Speaking without a prepared text, the Holy Father said that in modern times we have seen theorized an idea of man according to which human being would be, "free, autonomous, and nothing else."

This supposed freedom from everything, including freedom from the duty of obedience to God, "Is a lie," said Pope Benedict, a falsehood regarding the basic structure of human being - about the way women and men are made to be, "because," he continued, "human being does not exist on its own, nor does it exist for itself."

I'm not sure there's a man alive on the planet today who better understands the errors of modern thought than Pope Benedict. He understands that the error is based on something that appears on the surface to be a good, which is freedom. When he says that this particular idea of freedom is a "lie," he is not saying that there is no freedom. He is saying that what many in the modern world mean when they say the word "freedom" is not freedom at all. For God is the source of freedom.

In the modern mind, to be free means to be unencumbered by, often by means of separation. For example, being free from homework by being separated from school, or confinement by being separated from prison. Or morality by being separated from God. But to be separated from God is to be separated from the only source of freedom available to man. Therefore, "freedom" from God in the modern sense is actually the opposite of freedom.

He continues:

The Pope said it is a political and practical falsehood, as well, because cooperation and sharing of freedoms is a necessary part of social life - and if God does not exist - if He is not a point of reference really accessible to human being, then only prevailing opinion remains and it becomes the final arbiter of all things.

Citing the Nazi and Communist regimes of the 20th century as examples, Pope Benedict said such dictatorships can never accept the notion of a God who is above ideological power - and he also stressed that in the present, there are subtle forms of dictatorship like that of a radical conformism, which can lead to subtle and not-so subtle aggression toward the Church.

In the modern world quite often people think there are no facts that cannot be disputed -- only opinions that can be rhetorically cleverer than others, and thus more highly valued as "right." Particularly in the area of morality and politics it is the one who can be funnier or more charismatic who wins. That is not to say that such qualities are bad. They can be very good, but only if they are used to advance truth rather than falsehoods. Those who possess good humor and charisma may be right, or wrong. But in the modern world they are admired regardless as being worthy of our agreement. And on the flipside, those who come off as angry or humorless are dismissed as unworthy of our attention, regardless of whether what they're saying may be true.

The Holy Father also stressed that for Christians, true obedience to God depends on our truly knowing Him, and he warned against the danger of using "obedience to God" as a pretext for following our own desires.

If we don't know a person, we can't know what he wants. We may think that perhaps we know what he wants. But if the thing that we think he perhaps wants coincides with what we certainly know we want, how likely are we to make sure we understand him rightly?

That is the awkward position in which many Catholics finds themselves. We have a Church that professes concrete teachings on the principles of Jesus, many of which impose on us what at times appear to be profound inconveniences -- unreasonable prohibitions. Often, it is not simply that we do not know, but that we would rather not know.

But again, only by summoning up the courage to know the truth -- about ourselves and about God and what he wants -- can we be truly confident in God, and only then can we be truly free.

"We have," he said, "a certain fear of speaking about eternal life."

"We talk of things that are useful to the world," continued Pope Benedict, "we show that Christianity can help make the world a better place, but we do not dare say that the end of the world and the goal of Christianity is eternal life - and that the criteria of life in this world come from the goal - this we dare not say."

How true is this! We hear this a lot these days, and not necessarily always in a bad way. But it's very popular to talk about "What Christ's sacrifice means for me," and "How does this impact my life here and now," etc. But there's a certain self-centeredness there when we think of Christianity only in terms of this present world, and my present life. It's important to do that, of course. But have we perhaps lost sight of our ultimate and final end? The complete happiness that we cannot have in this life, no matter how much money we earn, how many friends we make, and how holy we are? Christianity -- Christ -- is much bigger than this world, and will remain long after this world is gone.

We must rather have the courage, the joy, the great hope that there is eternal life, that eternal life is real life and that from this real life comes the light that illuminates this world as well.

And here we have the flipside of that coin. Part of the problem is, I argue, a certain self-centeredness on the part of man. But the other side of it is simply fear. What, really, is going to happen to me after my heart stops beating? When I lose consciousness for the last time? It is simply the scariest question that human beings can ask themselves. And we are the only species on the planet that fears death on more than just an instinctual level, more than just when death seems uncomfortably near. We worry about it in the comfort of our own homes. Am I ultimately going anywhere besides in the ground?

As with virtually every question that weighs on the human heart, the answer is Jesus. We have in Him a demonstration that death is not the end, that we are heading for something greater. Don't just cling to that when you're afraid. Own it always. Believe and know that eternal life is waiting.

The Catholic News Service quotes him near the end of his remarks.

Recognizing the sins of priests who have sexually abused children, performing penance and asking for forgiveness, the Catholic Church trusts that God will purify and transform the church, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace."

Like death, we fear penance. Penance is a kind of death because we put to death our perverse desires. And Benedict is pointing to the recent terrible offenses of abusive priests, but also takes this as an opportunity not just for those perpetrators, but for all the members of the Church to really examine ourselves. If we truly possess the truth of the Jesus Christ, if we receive Him fully, then we should be the least afraid of the change it would make in ourselves.

That's the amazing thing about what Pope Benedict is doing here. He's taking the recent egregious crimes of the priests as an opportunity for the whole Church to be an example to the world of the change that Christ can make if we open ourselves to Him. There are many calling for change in how the Church operates as an institution. Such suggestions are worth considering. But Benedict understands that even more urgently needed is the transformation of hearts -- those of the Church's shepherds and their followers.

* * *

When I think of people going off the cuff the way Benedict has, I often picture them launching into rants against this person or that person, angrily speaking and wishing ill. None of that here. He attacks no individual person or group of persons. He simply invites people to examine the prevailing ideas of the modern world. And he does it with love, motivated by the love of Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit. As his five-year anniversary approaches, I am thankful for this pope.

* * *

Reuters reported on the pope's words here, and the New York Times here.

Hat tip to the First Things blog and Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Loggia.

Phil Lawler, director of the website Catholic Culture, on April 10 wrote a columna slamming the mainstream press for abandoning accuracy standards in their reporting on Benedict XVI and the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. He focuses on a story from the Associated Press claiming the future Pope Benedict "stalled pedophile case".

Lawler argues that the press has failed to conduct themselves and report fairly, to consult with people in the Church who actually understand the documents on which they are reporting. He further shows a blatant inconsistency on the part of the press -- that when the scandals in the United States first broke at the turn of the millennium, it was all the U.S. bishops' fault. Now, for what mainly are turning out to be cases that took place during the same time period, the blame falls on the Vatican.

Lawler's is the most concise, and I would argue most effective, defense of Benedict that I have yet seen. He asks all the questions that the mainstream press -- the AP and the New York Times -- should have asked before going to press.

First to repeat the bare-bones version of the story: in November 1985, then-Cardinal Ratzinger signed a letter deferring a decision on the laicization of Father Stephen Kiesle, a California priest who had been accused of molesting boys.

Now the key questions:

• Was Cardinal Ratzinger responding to the complaints of priestly pedophilia? No. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which the future Pontiff headed, did not have jurisdiction for pedophile priests until 2001. The cardinal was weighing a request for laicization of Kiesle.

• Had Oakland's Bishop John Cummins sought to laicize Kiesle as punishment for his misconduct? No. Kiesle himself asked to be released from the priesthood. The bishop supported the wayward priest's application.

• Was the request for laicization denied? No. Eventually, in 1987, the Vatican approved Kiesle's dismissal from the priesthood.

• Did Kiesle abuse children again before he was laicized? To the best of our knowledge, No. The next complaints against him arose in 2002: 15 years after he was dismissed from the priesthood.

• Did Cardinal Ratzinger's reluctance to make a quick decision mean that Kiesle remained in active ministry? No. Bishop Cummins had the authority to suspend the predator-priest, and in fact he had placed him on an extended leave of absence long before the application for laicization was entered.

• Would quicker laicization have protected children in California? No. Cardinal Ratzinger did not have the power to put Kiesle behind bars. If Kiesle had been defrocked in 1985 instead of 1987, he would have remained at large, thanks to a light sentence from the California courts. As things stood, he remained at large. He was not engaged in parish ministry and had no special access to children.

• Did the Vatican cover up evidence of Kiesle's predatory behavior? No. The civil courts of California destroyed that evidence after the priest completed a sentence of probation-- before the case ever reached Rome.

So to review: This was not a case in which a bishop wanted to discipline his priest and the Vatican official demurred. This was not a case in which a priest remained active in ministry, and the Vatican did nothing to protect the children under his pastoral care. This was not a case in which the Vatican covered up evidence of a priest's misconduct. This was a case in which a priest asked to be released from his vows, and the Vatican-- which had been flooded by such requests throughout the 1970s -- wanted to consider all such cases carefully. In short, if you're looking for evidence of a sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, this case is irrelevant.

We Americans know what a sex-abuse crisis looks like. The scandal erupts when evidence emerges that bishops have protected abusive priests, kept them active in parish assignments, covered up evidence of the charges against them, and lied to their people. There is no such evidence in this or any other case involving Pope Benedict XVI.

Competent reporters, when dealing with a story that involves special expertise, seek information from experts in that field. Capable journalists following this story should have sought out canon lawyers to explain the 1985 document-- not merely relied on the highly biased testimony of civil lawyers who have lodged multiple suits against the Church. If they had understood the case, objective reporters would have recognized that they had no story. But in this case, reporters for the major media outlets are far from objective.

He also goes after the New York Times.

The New York Times-- which touched off this feeding frenzy with two error-riddled front-page reports-- seized on the latest "scoop" by AP to say that the 1985 document exemplified:

...the sort of delay that is fueling a renewed sexual abuse scandal in the church that has focused on whether the future pope moved quickly enough to remove known pedophiles from the priesthood, despite pleas from American bishops.

Here we have a complete rewriting of history. Earlier in this decade, American newspapers exposed the sad truth that many American bishops had kept pedophile priests in active ministry. Now the Times, which played an active role in exposing that scandal, would have us believe that the American bishops were striving to rid the priesthood of the predators, and the Vatican resisted!

Exactly. Because back then the man in the Vatican was not an easy target. Now, he is.

An op-ed columnist named Ross Douthat at the New York Times of all publications is wondering whether Benedict XVI is actually a better pope than John Paul II. I don't agree with the whole thing, but it is interesting:

The world didn't always agree with Pope John Paul II, but it always seemed to love him. Handsome and charismatic, with an actor's flair and a statesman's confidence, he transformed the papacy from an Italian anachronism into a globe-trotting phenomenon. His authority stabilized a reeling church; his personal holiness inspired a generation of young Catholics. "Santo subito!" the Roman crowds chanted as he lay dying. Sainthood now!

They will not chant for Benedict XVI. The former Joseph Ratzinger was always going to be a harder pontiff for the world to love: more introverted than his predecessor, less political and peripatetic, with the crags and wrinkles of a sinister great-uncle. While the last pope held court with presidents and rock stars, Cardinal Ratzinger was minding the store in Rome, jousting with liberal theologians and being caricatured as "God's Rottweiler." His reward was supposed to be retirement, and a return to scholarly pursuits. Instead, he was summoned to Peter's chair -- and, it seems, to disaster.

Douthat touches on one of the reasons I have not been quick to criticize Pope Benedict. It just seems so easy to target the man. Who out there with any cool points is actually backing him? What pop culture icons has he befriended? Not Stephen Colbert, as much as I love that guy. Bono was friends with John Paul II, but not Benedict. Benedict has always been considered in the conventional unwisdom of popular culture to be a creepy crumudgeon.

That is what popular culture typically thinks of people who are defined first and foremost by their commitment to moral goodness. I say "first and foremost" because in the popular cultural context, John Paul II was not defined "first and foremost" by his commitment to moral goodness. Oh, he wrote several books on sexual morality that ran completely against the popular stream. But mainstream popular media just sort of glossed over that.

It is impossible to gloss over anything with Pope Benedict XVI. He stands for principle as strongly as John Paul II did, in a far less assuming and less charismatic way, yet more intimidating to the secular media. When the scandals in America first broke in 2002, it was the bishops that took the brunt of the criticism. John Paul II was largely unscathed. Perhaps that was in part because the man was dying. But the scandals that were uncovered then, and continuing to be discovered today, took place before he began to really lose health. Yet it was understood that it was the bishops, not JPII, who really screwed up. I don't mean to say that that was incorrect. But if it was a fair assessment back then, with JPII, why is it not equally fair this time, for Benedict? Because Benedict is, quite simply, an easier target.

But as far as I can tell and from what I've read of his writings and the writings of others about him, he does not appear very different from other humble servants of the Lord and His Church who are today known as saints. He may never be canonized himself. But he appears to be a man with a good heart, who didn't strong-arm anyone to become pope in the first place. Basically, to me, he just seems like a good man who doesn't deserve all the flak he's getting.

So the high-flying John Paul let scandals spread beneath his feet, and the uncharismatic Ratzinger was left to clean them up. This pattern extends to other fraught issues that the last pope tended to avoid -- the debasement of the Catholic liturgy, or the rise of Islam in once-Christian Europe. And it extends to the caliber of the church's bishops, where Benedict's appointments are widely viewed as an improvement over the choices John Paul made. It isn't a coincidence that some of the most forthright ecclesiastical responses to the abuse scandal have come from friends and protégés of the current pope.

Speaking of, the Vatican Monday made it clear that bishops are supposed to follow the law and report allegations of sex abuse to local civil authorities. Why that needed to be spelled out for men many of whom have doctorates, I don't know. But that is part of the life of the Church over millennia: common understanding of teachings and procedures is assumed to be understood until it needs to be spelled out.

The Vatican rules for handling sex abuse charges against priests can be found here.

I sure didn't.

From the Catholic News Agency:

While resting up at Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father will be taking the time to catch a film on Friday. The Pontiff will watch "Under the Roman Sky," a movie about Hitler's treatment of the Jews in Rome and his attempt to kidnap Pope Pius XII.

Whoa. Seriously?

At least some people seem to think so. In 2007 a book was published on the subject by Washington reporter Dan Kurzman. The broader aim of the book, "A Special Mission," was to refute the myth of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope."

The kidnapping story is not without its skeptics. Wikipedia actually has a page on Hitler's "alleged" plot to kidnap Pius XII. Some say it did happen, and some say it was just a rumor that was spread by allied propagandists.

As for the movie, Pius XII is played by actor James Cromwell, who played a chauffeur with superhuman strength in Murder By Death (1976), a kindly sheep farmer who befriends a pig in Babe (1995), and Jack Bauer's evil dad in season 6 of 24.

The mini-series is set in the streets of Rome during the Nazi occupation. According to Italy's AGI News, the plot develops along the course of nine months, and features Jews being taken from the ghetto and a failed attempt by the Nazis to abduct the Pope.

The film, made by the Italian production company Lux Vide, also illustrates the Church's efforts to protect and save Jews during the war, the very subject that raised a considerable amount controversy after Pope Benedict declared Pius XII "Venerable" on Dec. 19, 2009

I can't help imagining what Quentin Tarantino's version of this whole scenario might look like. The SS surrounds St. Peter's square, and hiding in the chapel is the Holy Father with his Swiss guards, who morph into a band of super-assassins. ... I'll just stop right there.

Quick note: I am playing a bit of catch-up since I recently completed the Lenten daily reflections. So while a lot of the stuff I'm posting may have happened a week or more ago, I believe they are worth noting.

Daniel Cardinal DiNardo of Houston-Galveston issued a statement on April 1 in anticipation of the Easter Triduum:

Since 2002, the Church in the United States has had a policy of zero tolerance: Any member of the clergy who has admitted to or has been found guilty of sexually abusing a minor can no longer engage in public ministry.

No one has been more forceful in implementing this policy than Pope Benedict XVI.

In 2001, Pope John Paul II assigned the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith full responsibility for cases of priests accused of sexual abuse. (Before 2001, the Congregation only became involved in rare instances when admission of abuse occurred in the context of the confessional.) Pope Benedict, then a cardinal, was head of that Vatican office. He has been the primary force for advocating a tough response to the crisis. He led our Church's efforts to reform how sex abuse cases are handled, making it easier to remove priests who have committed crimes from ministry. As pope, he has
made handling abuse cases a priority.

Pope Benedict is the first pontiff to meet with victims of sexual abuse by clergy. He is the first pope to devote an entire document to the sexual abuse crisis in his recent letter to the Church in Ireland. He spoke openly about the crisis several times in his visit to the United States in 2008.

There has been no one more effective and clearer on this issue than Pope Benedict XVI.

Given all that His Holiness has done to push reform forward, recent headlines insinuating inaction or culpability by Pope Benedict XVI regarding the crisis are unfair and inaccurate. Any innuendo that he has not tried to tackle cases of sexual abuse by clergy is misleading and harmful to the Church. (Cardinal William J. Levada, an American bishop who now leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a statement regarding recent media coverage; a summary of his comments is also available on our Web site.)

Cardinal William Levada, an American bishop who now leads the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (as did Pope Benedict back when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger), also defended the Holy Father back on March 26. He said the New York Times failed to treat Pope Benedict fairly, and came up short of the American journalistic tradition of fairness, accusing the paper of "anachronistic conflation" and "rushing to a guilty verdict."

As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See's tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times's subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd's silly parroting of Goodstein's "disturbing report." But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his "successor" Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

There is no way of knowing this, but one would hope that the point of publishing such daily reports on sex abuse in the Church is not merely to make it impossible for Church leaders to respond in a satisfactory way to the scandals, thereby demoralizing the faithful.

In response to the seemingly constant torrent of news reports about sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Church around the world, papal biographer George Weigel wrote a great defense of the celibate priesthood in Newsweek a few days ago. Puts things quite in perspective:

Sexual abuse is indeed horrible, but there is no empirical evidence that it is a uniquely, predominantly, or even strikingly Catholic problem. The sexual abuse of the young is a global plague. In the United States, some 40 to 60 percent of such abuse takes place within families--often at the hands of live-in boyfriends or the second (or third, or fourth) husband of a child's mother; those cases have nothing to do with celibacy. The case of a married Wilmington, Dela., pediatrician charged with 471 counts of sexual abuse in February has nothing to do with celibacy. Neither did the 290,000 cases of sexual abuse in American public schools between 1991 and 2000, estimated by Charol Shakeshaft of Virginia Commonwealth University. And given the significant level of abuse problems in Christian denominations with married clergy, it's hard to accept the notion that marriage is somehow a barrier against sexually abusive clergy. (Indeed, the idea of reducing marriage to an abuse-prevention program ought to be repulsive.) Sexual abusers throughout the world are overwhelmingly noncelibates.

He continues:

yes, aspects of clerical culture in the U.S. and elsewhere contributed to the problem, but that same deplorable circle-the-wagons instinct has warped the response to this plague in other sectors of society. The difference is that the Catholic Church in America has taken more rigorous action since 2002 to protect the young people in its care than any other similarly situated institution, to the point where the church is likely America's safest environment for young people.

And (sorry, I thought it was really good):

Since 2002, with strong support from then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (and from him still as Benedict XVI), the Catholic Church in America has developed and enforced policies and procedures to ensure the safety of the young that offer an important model for the world church. There were only six credible reports of sexual abuse of the young in the U.S. church last year. And while that is six too many in a church that ought to hold itself to the highest standards, it is nonetheless remarkable in a community of 68 million people.

What is essential throughout the world, however, is that the church become more Catholic, not less. John Paul II's "Theology of the Body" proposed an understanding of faithful and fruitful human love as an icon of God's inner life. That vision is far nobler, far more compelling, and far more humane than the sex-as-contact-sport teaching of the sexual revolution, the principal victims of which seem to be vulnerable young people. Those who are genuinely committed to the protection of the young might ponder whether Catholicism really needs to become Catholic Lite--or whether the Augean stables of present-day culture need a radical cleansing.

* * *

Meanwhile, a priest who was the judicial vicar in Milwaukee from 1995-2003 is defending Benedict's record as a Cardinal in addressing and reducing sexual abuse cases in the Church:

With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying 'odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people. " Also quoted is this: "Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation."

The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct.

Ouch.