By Phil Lawler
Monday, April 19, is the 5th anniversary of his election as Successor to St. Peter.
As a combined birthday/anniversary present for the Holy Father, we ask all Catholic Culture readers to join—and recruit their friends and neighbors to join—in this Project.
Defending the Holy Father
For the past several weeks Pope Benedict XVI has been the focus of an unprecedented campaign of negative media coverage. In one story after another, reporters have sought to link the Pope to the sex-abuse scandal that has shaken the Catholic Church.
The steady onslaught of accusations, the sheer volume of criticism have led many people to conclude that the Pontiff must be guilty—otherwise why would there be such a furor? But in fact every accusation against the Pope, without exception, can be readily answered.
The media campaign against the Pope has been driven by mistakes and half-truths, by innuendo and misunderstanding. Reporters have based entire stories on errors caused by ignorance of the Church’s canon law, or the policies that govern handling of sex-abuse cases, or the changes. Journalists have rushed into print without checking facts, timelines, and translations of key documents; they have relied on biased sources and failed to consult experts who could explain the context of Catholic affairs.
The net result has been a gross injustice to the Pope, as well as an affront to the Catholic community and a threat to the teaching authority of the Church.
Active Catholics must respond, to protect our Church and defend our Pontiff.
Has the sex-abuse scandal exposed corruption within the Catholic Church? Sadly, yes. That corruption has thoroughly infected the Catholic hierarchy. It has, regrettably, extended into the Vatican. The scandal is real; it cannot be denied.
But in the past 20 years, no one has done more to address the problem, to root out the corruption, than Pope Benedict XVI.
•It was then-Cardinal Ratzinger who recognized that individual bishops (and other Vatican officials) were not taking the abuse problem seriously enough, and called for a new policy putting the Vatican in charge of discipline for priests accused of abuse.
•It was Cardinal Ratzinger who pressed for tough investigations of a powerful Austrian cardinal accused of abuse, and for dismissal of an abuser who had founded one of the most influential religious orders in the Church.
•It was Cardinal Ratzinger who spoke passionately about the urgent need to purge the Church, to remove the “filth” from the priestly ranks.
•It was Pope Ratzinger who told Irish bishops that they would be held accountable for their failures to correct the abuse problem.
Pope Benedict is not a part of the abuse problem;
he is a part—the most important part—of the solution!
Why, then, has Pope Benedict become the target of the current media campaign?
Many different people have a vested interest in creating the impression that the Pope is a part of the problem. Dissidents from within the Church, and anti-Catholics without, have an interest in undermining the teaching authority of the Pope. Trial lawyers representing abuse victims have an interest in creating the impression that the Pope bears responsibility for their clients’ suffering, so that the Vatican might be a target for new lawsuits. Even Catholic bishops who have failed to curb abuse within their own dioceses might be tempted to fall into line with the idea that the Pope, too, made serious mistakes—so that their own negligence appears less culpable.
But whatever the motivations for the media assaults on the Pope, the effects of those assaults have been damaging, and the campaign continues. Many secularists, who chafe at the moral teachings of the Church, are ready to believe the worst about hypocrisy within the Catholic hierarchy. Worse still, many people of good will, scanning the newspaper headlines, eventually come to the conclusion that the Pope must deserve the criticism.
The Catholic Culture site has never hesitated to criticize Church officials who failed to protect children from abuse. We have been candid in recognizing corruption within the Church; we have been relentless in holding bishops accountable for their mishandling of the problem. We are committed to exposing the truth about the sex-abuse scandal. And we are fully convinced that the truth, once it is recognized, will vindicate Pope Benedict XVI!