Avoid the daftness: don't hitch your cart to Hitchens et al.

Folks, this from Sean Murphy over at CERC:

Christopher Hitchens' venomous attack on Pope Benedict XVI ("The Great Catholic Coverup", 18 March, 2010) is a revelation that deserves wider attention. Were it not for its appearance in the National Post in Canada and Slate in the United States, it would be difficult to believe that a reputable newspaper would publish such absurdity.

Mr. Hitchens states that in May, 2001, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger sent a "confidential" letter to Catholic bishops to remind them that anyone who disclosed "child rape and torture" by priests would be excommunicated. He claims that Cardinal Ratzinger imposed a ten year "statute of limitations" on actions against such priests, and was thus guilty of "obstruction of justice."
These assertions are false.

The 2001 instruction was issued to clarify how reports of clerical sexual misconduct were to be handled. Ratzinger's directive actually facilitated Church proceedings against clerical sex offenders by extending time limits that had previously hampered prosecutions. Limitations of action are not unique to Canon Law. They exist in secular legal jurisdictions, and can prevent prosecution of serious sex crimes.

The so-called "confidential" instruction was published and appeared in English in 2001. It has been 'discovered,' 'revealed' or 'exposed' by so many reporters since then that it might give pause to those who doubt the possibility of the resurrection of the dead. Certainly, Mr. Hitchens' wild fabrication that Cardinal Ratzinger threatened to excommunicate anyone who revealed "child rape and torture" has trumped the rhetoric of his predecessors. However, lurid prose is hardly a substitute for sound research.

Bishops were not "reminded" by Cardinal Ratzinger of secrecy or excommunication. The passage quoted by Mr. Hitchens as 'proof' of his extravagant claim is not (as his readers might believe) from Ratzinger's instruction. It is from Crimen Sollicitationis, a 1962 instruction that Ratzinger merely noted had been under review.

Read it all here.

Commentary. A great piece that reinforces my own conclusions: ff you get your information from Christopher Hitchens - better known for his base attacks against Mother Theresa - on this issue, and think you are the best informed because of him, my friend, I pity you, for you are a moron.

(What a great way to start a paragraph. So be it.)

There's an ongoing rhetorical effort aimed at destroying the moral authority of the Catholic Church in general and of Pope Benedict XVI in particular. You can see it not only in Hitchens' latest drivel, but also in the recent statement made by the disreputable Dr. Hans Küng (here and here), as well as asinine references in the press to "the church's secretive canon laws" which you may buy, if you so cared, from Amazon (The Code of Canon Law: In English Translation).

There's a free for all of invectives, accusations, and litigations going in their scope well beyond the appropriate compensation of the victims, and this is by design.

The aim is clear: to strip the Church of all her ways and means, undermine her credibility, even strip the Holy See's diplomatic standing before world bodies and with it her sovereign immunity, in order to remove her as the world's principal actor in the moral arena. Once Hitchens - and Dawkins and all the other "brights" - and theological has-beens like Dr. Küng accomplish their goals, there will be no other peaceful moral force in the world powerful enough to oppose their totalitarian impulses - yes, "totalitarian," and I mean it - or so they see it.

I put Hitchens, Dawkins, and Küng at the same level with the pederasts. The amoralism they represent - yes, even Küng's - is the root cause of the Church's illness, not its cure.

When churchmen, seminaries, monasteries and convents absorbed the psychologism that plagued our societies in the 1960's, this is what we reaped. That prelates opened the door to, or facilitated these ills due to their naiveté and/or gross incompetence goes without saying, but what should also be stated with perfect, unambiguous clarity is that we find ourselves in this bind not because we didn't open the doors to the amoralities that Hitchens, Dawkins, Küng and many other "brights" advocate as black-letter science, but because we did.

I support Pope Benedict XVI, the Vicar of Christ, the Successor of St. Peter, "the sweet Christ on earth" as St. Catherine of Siena would have put it. Hitchens, Küng etall are not to be taken seriously. Their animus is very apparent, they have an ax to grind, they are not impartial, unbiased commentators. They have a clear agenda: the destruction or subversion of the Church.

Morons will believe them anyway, I reckon. As I see it, we are better off letting morons be and suffer them, while we ourselveves vow not to succumb to their sickness.

Avoid the daftness: don't hitch your cart to Hitchens, Dawkins, Küng et al.