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20 Jul

Pope acknowledges the ’shame’

Posted by Neil in Australia, Australia and Australian, Christianity, Gay and Lesbian, M, Sirdan, Sunday lunch, events, faith, gay issues, humanity, religion. Tagged: .

I for one welcome yesterday’s “sorry” from the Pope, not because it affects me personally, but because it is a good thing to have happened.

IT WAS much longed for and, when it came, Pope Benedict XVI’s apology to victims of clerical abuse took everyone by surprise.

The lines of apology were not included in the text given to journalists before the Mass at St Mary’s Cathedral but were added by the pontiff during his homily, to the joy of victims watching around the world.

Before 3400 guests, including cardinals, bishops, Australian seminarians, victims and pilgrims from around the world, he said: “Here, I would like to pause to acknowledge the shame which we have all felt as a result of the sexual abuse of minors by some clergy and religious in this country.

“Indeed I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that as their pastor, I too share in their suffering.

“These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation. They have caused great pain and have damaged the Church’s witness.”

Of course more needs to be done, but this also needed to be done, and now it has been.

I suspect tonight’s Compass will be worth watching, to gain some insight into the views of intelligent Catholics.

On the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s World Youth Day visit, Geraldine Doogue in a two-part Compass special examines thorny issues facing the Roman Catholic Church in Australia: the crisis in the priesthood, and the role of women in the church.

Tonight deals with the matter of celibacy, among other things.

Why I did not join the No To Pope demo

My friend norrie did; the amazing and challenging norrie is clearly visible here:

protest1_gallery__600x400

I will probably see norrie in an hour’s time, so I will no doubt hear more about it. And I have participated in such protests in the past, one very memorable example being described very much as it happened here.

When the Reverend Fred Nile and his fundamentalists march into Oxford Street set on a bit of cleansing I am out there with the crowd. I wear my Mardi Gras T-shirt with additions:

FOR JAY

Sept. 1961-Sept. 1989

‘Gone where fierce indignation
can lacerate his heart no more.’

AND FOR LUKE
WHO LOVED HIM

Fred has his thousand, harmless-looking folk pushing strollers, mingled love and fear on their faces as they march up Oxford Street.

But we have five, ten thousand voices chanting NO MORE GUILT! NO MORE GUILT!

And my voice is the voice of three, a trinity of love grief and anger, and in me sing J and Luke and I:

We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day
And it’s deep in my heart
I do believe
That we shall all be free someday.

And I see his face, a touch side-on, the slightly crooked nose and shy smile, eyes so often fearful, the bursts of anger, the incredible gentleness and my tears choke my singing and a gay man hugs me and says So you’re human after all…

At that time, as you may see, I needed to do that.

Yesterday I had my doubts about the efficacy or wisdom of such forms of protest, and I would not have really wanted to throw condoms at visiting teenagers, even if some of the (presumably) older visitors had need of the advice, as I mentioned in relation to gay saunas, and as this story also notes:  Pilgrims boom Sydney sex trade: “Adult Business Association spokesman Chris Seage said the boom in business had taken brothel owners by surprise.” Geoffrey Chaucer would not have been surprised… ;)

Interesting to me is that young Marxist blogger Benjamin Solah actually voices misgivings similar to my own, but in his own idiom of course:

This [the since overturned "annoyance" laws] has obviously created an uproar amongst the public and civil libertarians. These laws are unprecedented. How the fuck do you find annoying anyway? It’s a subjective thing. The protests were likely to be small because whilst the Pope is a homophobic asshole, this does not mean all Catholics are. Also, protests run the risk of alienating progressive Catholics who may be going to some of the socially progressive sessions that WYD is providing.

So I have focused instead on the wearing of black, with Lord Malcolm’s Indigenous Australian AIDS ribbon as an accessory, and on positively energising activities such as last Sunday’s gathering at Pitt Street Uniting Church, by no means the only such activity over the past week.

But to each his/her own I guess.

Sirdan overlooks Centennial Park and Randwick Racecourse, so he has a box seat on today’s activities. I am meeting him for lunch later on and will no doubt hear more about it. M may be joining us; so might Sirdan’s friend B, which could be interesting, as B (unfortunately) has some views that make Pauline Hanson seem normal, and M of course comes from Shanghai… M can be volatile when he detects racism, but B, I think, has at least gained in social graces in recent days, largely due to Sirdan — and life experience of course.

I shall let you know what happens.

I still find racism in a gay man unaccountable — when you think about it — but there you go: it does happen. After a memorable explosion a few years back, B and I tend to dance around one another carefully, but also perhaps acknowledging one another’s good points.

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6 Responses to this post.

  1. Posted by Gregory Carlin on July 20, 2008 at 11:20 am

    (lifesite won’t mind you borrowing their article on links vis a vis Catholicism & prostitution)

    Official Catholic Church Women’s Group Involved in Legal Prostitution Scheme in Germany

    By John-Henry Westen

    COLOGNE, May 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Germany’s legal prostitution scheme, introduced by the Socialist-Green government in 2001, has generated new controversy as the World Cup is about to begin. German authorities are readying for a boom in the sex trade with the construction of mega-brothels and sex-huts or “performance boxes” as they are called. (coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06050108.html)

    Even stranger than the fact that German governmental authorities are, through taxation, profiting from the wiles of prostitution, is the fact that the Catholic Church in Germany is involved in the legal prostitution scheme. The city of Cologne funds the project with some 480,000 Euros per year.

    The “Sozialdienst katholischer Frauen” (SkF) [Catholic Women's Welfare Service] is, according to its website, “a women’s association in the Catholic Church (in Germany) . . . supporting women on the outskirts of society who suffer from discrimination and the feeling of being excluded.” (http://www.skf-zentrale.de/html/skf_englisch.html)

    SKF in Cologne, in conjunction with the police and the health department spent three years coming up with the plan for a fenced off compound on the city outskirts where prostitutes can ply their trade “safely”.

    The area allows those wishing to purchase sexual favours to drive into garage-type structures called “performance boxes” where prostitutes await them.

    The Catholic Women’s group’s Sabine Reichert explained in an interview with Deutsche Welle last year, “Every hut is fitted so that the driver has to get out on the side nearest to the wall, and the prostitute has the side with an exit into the street in case she has to get away in an emergency. There are red alarm buttons in every box that can be pressed.”

    The participation of the Catholic Women’s group in the prostitution scheme is at odds with Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls prostitution “a social scourge” and notes that “it is always gravely sinful to engage in prostitution.” Moreover, in numerous addresses, the late Pope John Paul II decried prostitution. In September 2004, speaking to the bishops of New Zealand, Pope John Paul specifically condemned the facilitation of prostitution. He pointed to “the distortion of reason by particular interest groups and exaggerated individualism” which leads to “the tragic consequences of . . . the facilitation of abortion and prostitution.” (http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/sep/04091304.html)

    New Zealand, had legalized prostitution, that year. And the results of the law decried by the Pope have been disastrous. Only last month the New Zealand press reported the comments of Auckland barrister David Garrett who has slammed the Prostitution Reform Act. Since the introduction of the new law which legalized prostitution for those over 18, he contends, there have been an “explosion” of teenage prostitutes police were unable to control.

    Calls and emails yesterday and today to the SKF and their governing Bishop in Germany, Paderborn Auxiliary Bishop Manfred Grothe, were not returned by press time.

    The situation is reminiscent of a battle some German bishops had with Pope John Paul II over abortion counselling. For years the Pope requested that the German bishops insist that certificates they were giving for counselling of women in crisis pregnancies could not be used as a permission slip for abortion, as was the practice in Germany. However, the government insisted that women obtain counselling certificates prior to obtaining abortions and the Bishops argued that being involved in that government funded counselling program was beneficial as it allowed some women to turn away from abortion.

    However, the scandal associated with the Church’s counselling certificates being so closely associated to abortion was intolerable for the Church which regards abortion as murder of the innocent. The Vatican had to order some German bishops out of the business. In 2000, then Cardinal Ratzinger, who at the time headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote the bishops saying, “whoever continues to operate in the system of counseling centers is placed in open opposition to the Pope.”

    One bishop continued to offer the controversial counselling service until the Pope personally intervened, stripping the bishop of his authority. (coverage: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/mar/02031104.html )

    To contact Bishop Manfred Grothe with concerns:
    Official Web Site: http://www.erzbistum-paderborn.de/
    Mailing Address: Domplatz 3, D-33098 Paderborn, Bundesrepublik Deutschland
    Telephone: (05251)1250
    Fax: 12.54.70
    info@erzbistum-paderborn.de

  2. Posted by ninglun on July 20, 2008 at 11:01 pm

    You know, Greg, Akismet binned your comment as spam initially, mainly because of the number of links in it. I rescued it because I could see some relevance to my post, though surely not direct relevance, or relevance in tone. It is spam in fact, and I really wouldn’t want to encourage that.

    As for the matters you have raised, people can read and decide what they think for themselves. I really don’t want a thread here on those issues though…

    Greg: do you have a blog of your own? That is really where your comment belongs — as a post. I would happily tell people where your blog is, if you have one.

  3. Posted by Benjamin Solah on July 29, 2008 at 11:08 am

    I missed this reference to my post. It was a shame the other main socialist group, Socialist Alliance has reduced itself to popularism and made themselves look like loons.

    Socialist Alternative has a letter from one Sydney member in the current issue of the magazine

  4. Posted by Neil on July 29, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Thanks for the response and link, Benjamin. That letter is worth posting. Without my necessarily endorsing its particular politics, I do commend its thoughtfulness:

    …Our main argument was: yes, the pope is terrible but we need to sheet the blame for homophobia back to our own governments and the system of capitalism they serve, which play the main role in oppressing gays and lesbians today. The cause of gay oppression is not the Christian Right, but capitalism’s reliance on the family to produce the next generation of healthy, socialised workers without the capitalists having to pay.

    We were also wary of a sneering, elitist, anti-religion element to the demonstration. While it is fine to protest against the pope and the Catholic Church as an institution, we must make a big distinction between this and the mass of ordinary believers. Unfortunately, our fears were justified. The 500-strong rally ended with people chanting, jeering and throwing condoms at the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims walking past. A more counterproductive and futile exercise is hard to imagine!

    We deliberately stood apart from this and instead held placards saying: “Pilgrims are welcome! Please take Iemma home with you!” (Though in hindsight we wouldn’t wish Iemma on anyone.)

    Some pilgrims carried Aboriginal flags and a number had come to an Aboriginal rights protest earlier in the week. They are our potential allies, not our enemies. The world’s working class has the potential to challenge capitalism and create a better world. They will do this even while the majority continue to hold religious beliefs.

    Being an atheist or advocating the virtues of secularism does not make you a superior human being and certainly does not make you inherently more left-wing!…

  5. Posted by Bruce on July 29, 2008 at 12:10 pm

    I’m glad I didn’t have the choice of going, because on the one hand, while wanting to go in to bat for secularism against things like homophobia and contraception for the third world, I wouldn’t want to wind up in the kind of rabble that it sounded like. Thrown condoms and all that.

    While I’m pretty stubborn on my principles, I’m not angry or hurt enough to be a part of an angry, hurt mob and would find myself feeling out of place.

    Not condemning anyone of course.

    On the other hand, considering that the Vatican is also a state (something I’m not happy about) it probably wouldn’t have been inappropriate for the PM to voice a number of people’s concerns the way he did when visiting China. Not on religious matters internal to Catholicism but rather matters like the spreading of disinformation about condoms by priests, which the Vatican lets go unpunished, or indeed the role of Catholic priests in the Rwandan genocide and the lack of acknowledgment and consequences on behalf of and by the Vatican.

    Better than chucking things at pilgrims.

  6. Posted by Benjamin Solah on July 29, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    I think the lunacy of the demonstration was really evident in having the Raelians in the organisation coalition!

Comments are closed.