The comments come from Hans Zollner SJ, a distinguished psychologist with a doctorate in theology.

He made the comments in an interview with Infovaticana.

"Celibacy is not a direct cause of abuse; what can become a risk factor is a ministry poorly lived and not fully accepted," says Zollner.

He says it is a misconception to think that abolishing celibacy would put an end to abuse in the Church.

Zollner, a former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, also serves as the director of the Institute of Anthropology at Rome's Gregorian University.

"All scientific reports, including those commissioned by non-Church institutions, conclude that celibacy in itself does not lead to abuse.

"Therefore it is wrong to say that with the abolition of celibacy, there would no longer be cases of abuse in the Catholic Church" he emphasised.

He said the core issue is an abuse of power.

Zollner places the focus on the celibate's leaders, the demands of the apostolate and an individual's inner life balance.

"If a priest lacks balance in human, spiritual and professional aspects, that inner void and unfulfilled desires can lead him to commit abuse" he explained.

The psychologist also dismissed the idea that there is a simple, one-to-one relationship between homosexuality and abuse.

"Human behaviour is complex and many male child molesters do not identify solely as homosexual" he said.

He referred to the 2011 U.S. John Jay Report which categorises such individuals as 'occasional abusers' and notes that instances of abuse against girls have risen with the advent of co-ed schools and an increase in female altar servers.

On the subject of the profile of abusers within the Church, Zollner identified four recurring psychological patterns: the narcissistic abuser, the obsessive, the insecure, and the true pedophile - as defined in psychiatric terms.

Commenting on the seminary training of priests, Zollner highlights the critical role of seminary formation and education.

"It's essential that seminarians not only acquire knowledge but also life skills.

"They need to be fully prepared to lead a balanced life and to excel in their future ministries," he said.

Zollner says that victims and survivors need a support network comprised of empathetic listeners and professionals from various fields.

"Those who have suffered should seek justice and surround themselves with people who can genuinely assist them in healing," he recommended.

Source

• CNA

The report, "Beyond Bad Apples: Understanding Clericalism as a Structural Problem & Cultivating Strategies for Change," released Monday (Aug. 15), explores the links between clericalism — clergy's focus on its authority — and clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse.

The study's authors, Julie Hanlon Rubio and Paul J. Schutz, both professors at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit institution in Northern California, initially intended to survey 600 respondents, drawn proportionally from lay, religious (those who take vows but are not ordained to the priesthood) and priests, but were turned away by five of the six dioceses and diocesan seminaries they approached.

The authors admit that this "likely means that our respondents are biased towards an agreement with our theory of clericalism" and that "our data leans in one direction."

Nearly half (48.4%) of the 300 who participated were lay Catholics, 22% were nuns, 16% were priests and 6% were men in formation for the priesthood. More than two-thirds of their responses from priests came from those educated in Jesuit institutions.

The report was funded by a grant from Fordham University as part of a project dubbed "Taking Responsibility: Jesuit Educational Institutions Confront the Causes and Legacy of Sexual Abuse."

Rubio and Schutz wanted to move away from asking, "Is he a good priest or a bad priest?" and ask instead, "What are the underlying reasons that this priest is acting in this way?"

Existing studies, said the authors, "have focused on individuals who engage in abuse due to personal weakness, psychosexual vulnerabilities, the influence of broader historical movements, or poor theology and training."

Schutz told Religion News Service that their aim was to understand how "structural clericalism operates in the church," comparing clericalism to the way structural racism shapes the lives of people of color.

Rubio said, "When you blame ‘bad apples,' then everybody else is sort of innocent, as long as we go after the bad apples. But when you say there's a problem with the structure, that's a much bigger problem, and we're all implicated."

The authors said their data shows that sex, gender and power are all components of structural clericalism, which in turn keeps priests above and apart from the rest of the church and potentially enables abuse.

Nearly half (49%) of priest respondents and 73% of those in formation said that they were told repression or sublimation were strategies for dealing with their sexuality (how one lives as a sexual person), according to the report. This number increases to 83% among non-Jesuit-educated priests.

The report also noted that 70% of those in formation and 51% of priests said it was difficult to talk about their sexuality. More than 75% of all respondents said the church would be a healthier institution if priests spoke openly about their own sexuality.

Half of the priests and those in formation said their formation program gave them the tools they needed for living a celibate life without denying their sexuality.

Of this 50%, all were Jesuit-educated; none were diocesan priests or students in diocesan seminaries.

Large majorities in the study rejected "simple correlations between homosexuality or celibacy and (clergy perpetrated sex abuse)." Only 11 respondents named homosexuality and only four named celibacy as a factor in clergy-perpetrated sex abuse, according to the report.

Among the survey's participants, 40% of priests and men in formation for priesthood identified as homosexual or bisexual, the report found. Officially, the priesthood is limited to heterosexual men.

"The concentration of gay men in the priesthood cannot be overlooked because most priests are not able to be open about their sexual orientation, and some may consciously or unconsciously seek out priesthood as a way of avoiding or repressing their sexuality, making healthy celibacy extraordinarily difficult," the report read.

When pertaining to gender, fewer than half (48%) of participants in the study named patriarchy as a significant factor in clergy sex abuse.

"Very few" participants discussed the role of gender when asked about the relationship among gender, sexuality and sexual abuse in the church, according to the report.

Just over 50% of Jesuit-educated respondents and about 40% of non-Jesuit-educated respondents said that men and women participated equally in their academic classes and were shown equal respect.

About two-thirds at Jesuit schools and a little fewer than 50% at non-Jesuit schools reported equal respect for female professors.

Fewer than 30% said they had encountered gender or sexuality studies in an academic setting.

Clericalism was identified as a looming problem in the report.

Clergy, lay and religious participants discussed "various versions of authoritarian management, all of which are linked by an excessive exercise of positional power."

Others described numerous "disorganized" management styles, with one lay respondent describing her priest's management style as "benign neglect tending toward chaos and toxicity."

Lay people and religious see their priests differently than the priests in the report see themselves.

When asked if they welcome constructive criticism about preaching, 80% of priests and 87% of deacons said they did. However, only 9% of the laypeople and the nuns in the report agreed that clergy are receptive to criticism, while 52% disagreed.

"Lay people are conditioned by structural clericalism to believe that they can't ask the question, they can't approach the father with their concern about the homily, or they can't bring this administrative or budgetary concern before the priest because, you know, he's in charge," Schutz said.

"We've all been conditioned over the course of our lives to see the priest in that way."

Thomas G. Plante, a professor of psychology and religious studies at Santa Clara University, described the report as an "ambitious project," but said that, given the limitations of the people who participated, it's important "not to over generalize."

Data shows that allegations of clerical sex abuse of minors have declined, while "clericalism hasn't changed as much in the 21st century," said Plante, who provided early consultation for the study.

Sex abuse of children and teens, he said, is a "common phenomenon regardless of where men are working."

"When we look at anyone who has power and control … whether they be clerics, school teachers or tutors, you're going to find a fair amount of child sex abuse," he said.

"We have to work hard to minimize that."

Rubio and Schutz hope the report will "contribute to a healthier future for our Church," they wrote.

They take what they call an "anti-clericalism" stance — not anti-priest. "On analogy with anti-racism, anti-clericalism is a moral stance that can be embraced by anyone with a critical awareness of a structural problem," their report said.

Among their recommendations, the authors said the church should provide spaces for open discussions of sex and sexuality. Including women in seminary classrooms and on seminary faculties and the study of feminist perspectives on the Catholic faith may also be "necessary to disrupt environments of male dominance and the perpetuation of male power."

Lay people and religious should also be able to contribute their experience to church life.

"Leveling the playing field in ecclesial life," the report said, "is a part of constructing safer environments where sexual abuse will be less likely to occur."

• Alejandra Molina is a National Reporter covering Latinos and religion in the West Coast. She is based in Los Angeles.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Countless revelations about sexual misconduct by clergy have shaken public confidence. The accumulation of negative publicity in very recent times has been remarkable: Dilworth School, Gloriavale, Destiny Church's antics, Arise Church's leadership woes. The list seems endless, the latest issue being Simon O'Connor lauding the US Supreme Court's verdict on Roe v Wade.

To any neutral observer, it might well seem that the Christian churches stand for utterly regressive social and gender policies and all too often for the scandalous abuse of power.

So it's been quite a turnaround for us churchgoers. In my student days at Otago, the churches were at the forefront of radical action. The first anti-nuclear march in Dunedin was largely church-led.

In the 1980s, larger-than-life personalities like John Murray (Presbyterian) and George Armstrong (Anglican) were prominent in the anti-Springbok tour campaign and the emerging nuclear-free movement. Catholic peace and justice activists worked side by side with Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans and Quakers for years before David Lange cemented our non-nuclear stance.

The core values which undergirded this new thinking about national security and biculturalism stemmed to a significant extent from Maori and Pakeha church sources. Brilliant composers Shirley Murray and Colin Gibson wrote the battle hymns for these momentous struggles. One thinks, too, of the key roles of Cardinal Tom Williams and Archbishop, later Governor-General, Paul Reeves in turning around Pakeha attitudes.

Today all that seems forgotten.

Rather there is widespread bemusement about Christianity. How can otherwise intelligent people keep trundling along to these outdated church services, people ask.

I still encounter the assumption that we live off a diet of hell-fire sermons, though in what is now a long life I've never encountered a single one, whether here, in Scotland, Germany, Australia or the United States.

It's bizarre, this almost willful ignorance. Continue reading

"Real power, as Pope Francis often cited, comes from service. Not imposing power on the innocents," the Myanmar cardinal said recently in a homily.

"For any government, in any just country, the government is not above the people.

"The government is one eye, the people the other eye. Two eyes and one vision.

"A nation built on justice. Anything else is idolatry."

The cardinal mourns Mynmar, which was born with the great dream of peace and prosperity for all.

"Yet powerful people diluted this ideal. Created their own idols: power, possessions, extreme wealth at any cost, economic injustice, environmental injustice," he said.

"For the last seven decades, idol worshippers have robbed the ideal of a nation built on peace and prosperity for all.

"A dream became a nightmare."

Bo also spoke of the agony of the 1000-plus civilian deaths in the coup-hit country during the last six months.

"We have seen the selfish interests of a few, seeking the bread that perishes, [... robbing] millions of their bread of peace, their bread of life, their bread of prosperity."

His comments highlight the background of turmoil besetting Myanmar since Aung San Suu Kyi's administration was ousted in a February coup. Her removal has sparked huge pro-democracy protests and a bloody military crackdown.

Last Friday a Myanmar shadow government began working to overthrow the junta by launching a daily radio programme; first steps seeking to battle military-backed media for supremacy over the airwaves.

The twice-daily 30-minute radio programme went on air providing Covid-19 updates, details of alleged military atrocities and reading out letters from democracy supporters.

Another section was dedicated to local self-defence forces that have sprung up across Myanmar to battle junta forces — often using hunting rifles or weapons manufactured at makeshift jungle factories.

Security forces have killed more than 1,000 civilians since the February putsch, a monitoring group said Wednesday.

Source:

• UCANews

Synodality, therefore, has an ad extra dimension. It is an ecclesial response to populist leaders who "hijack" religion by sowing division and exploiting the anger of those who feel excluded, as Vatican Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle noted recently.

Of course, synodality has specific ad intra dimensions, too.

In an interesting article published a few months ago in Vida Nueva, Spanish Jesuit Alejandro Labajos pointed out that, according to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, four percent of these religious communities had undergone an apostolic visitation (basically a Vatican investigation).

Such visitations are made to look into reports of abuse or serious problems with faith and discipline.
Seduction, spiritualization and blind obedience

Labajos summarized the root problem of the abuse of power in Catholic communities in three points.

First, it usually involves seductive charismatic personalities, often marked today by a strong media profile.

Second, it entails the use of spiritualized language that, on many occasions, is capable of creating ambiguous perceptions of reality and justifying evil by resorting to words such as dedication, the gift of oneself, sacrifice, community, mission and so forth.

And third, it almost always capitalizes on the bond of obedience.

The abuse of power is not found only in the long-established religious orders and institutes. It is also present in the new ecclesial movements and Catholics communities founded and led by seductive charismatic personalities.

Such personalities often attract members through spiritual seduction. In the worst cases, this fosters blind loyalty and total surrender to the will of the leader.

It's especially operative in communities where institutional systems aimed at preventing such spiritual seduction are absent or frowned upon by the members of those communities.

The wave of revelations of abuse and misconduct of different kinds (included sexual) in lay-led ecclesial communities is one of the new elements of the latest phase (since 2017-2018) in the history of the Catholic Church's abuse crisis.

It's no longer just the clerical institutes like the Legionaries of Christ, which was founded by the serial abuser Father Marcial Maciel.
Not all abusive power is linked to clericalism

Now we are discovering abuse in movements that are not identified with a clericalist, anti-modern ideology. It is also present in a Catholic culture open to the modern world, such as Schoenstatt, the Focolare Movement, and L'Arche.

Other recent cases have emerged that have revealed the troubling past of certain Catholic charismatic leaders, such are Father Jean-François Six in France.

There has been a growing awareness of the scope and seriousness of the abuse of children, women, and vulnerable adults. The well-known MeToo movement is one result of this.

As we begin to more carefully appraise the complicated contribution made by new ecclesial lay movements, the Church is already reeling from the scandals caused by charismatic leaders - some long deceased, others still living.

This is one of the reasons why the pope's push for a synodal Church is so important.

Francis is demonstrating once again that he believes history is truly a magistra vitae- a teacher of life.

He's a Jesuit whose real genius is spiritual direction. And in light of the last few decades, he's aware of the risks that the Church runs when it blindly follows the charismatic leadership of individuals.

In his pontificate, Francis has repeatedly warned all-new ecclesial communities and movements to avoid the risks of sectarianism and respect the personal and spiritual freedom of its members.

He issued a motu proprio last November called Authenticum charismatis that amends canon law (no. 579) and requires bishops to get authorization from the Holy See before they approve a new religious institute at the diocesan level. Continue reading

• Massimo Faggioli is a Church historian, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University.

Why move against civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, when she had gone along with so much of their program, even defending their campaign against the Rohingya Muslims?

And what explains such a defence on the part of Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner celebrated for standing up for democracy and universal human rights?

Our frame of reference is that military rule is autocratic and therefore bad and that those opposed to it are democratic and therefore good. That's hopelessly simplistic when it comes to the country formerly known as Burma.

What we fail to appreciate is the degree to which Burmese Buddhism has over many centuries nurtured a very different conception of good versus bad government. I've learned better from anthropologist Ingrid Jordt, an expert on religion and politics in Myanmar who teaches at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

In brilliant articles on the 2007 revolt against military rule and the anti-Rohingya campaign of the 2010s, Jordt explains the dynamic interplay of religion and political power in traditional Burmese statecraft and how this has functioned in recent times.

Briefly, Burmese Buddhism understands political legitimacy as derived from a species of spiritual potency called hpoun. The source of hpoun is the monastic order, or sangha, which acquires it by renouncing power and forswearing worldly things.

Political leaders, like everyone else outside the sangha, obtain hpoun through their support of the sangha, emblemized by placing of food in the monks' begging bowls. In this system of what Jordt calls "karmic kingship" (the title of her forthcoming book), hpoun is what differentiates a good (legitimate) ruler from a bad (illegitimate) one.

Although monks are required to be apolitical, they do have the right to act in order to protect the teachings of the Buddha. They do this by refusing to accept food donations from those they believe have violated those teachings. By "turning over the bowl," they withhold hpoun.

That is just what happened in 2007, during public protests over an unannounced removal of fuel subsidies by the military government.

After a brutal crackdown on several hundred monks who had joined the protests in the name of relieving human suffering (a core Buddhist teaching), tens of thousands of monks protested this assault on religion by marching through the streets holding their bowls upside down. In the end, junta leader Than Shwe earned the title "Monk Killer," lost his legitimacy and in 2011 resigned from the position of head of state he had held since 1992.

Not surprisingly, the military was anything but happy with this development. So they did what Burmese leaders in similar situations had always done: denounced those who denied them hpoun as false monks and found monks who would support them.

The campaign against the Rohingya was spearheaded by one of the latter, who sold the campaign to the Burmese public as all about preserving Buddhism against alien religious power and influence.

None of this is to say that Western ideas of democracy and human rights have been absent in Myanmar. In 2007, some younger Burmans, including monks, embraced them — but their standard-bearer, Aung San Suu Kyi, only up to a point.

The daughter of the martyred independence leader Aung San, Suu Kyi spent 15 years in house detention as head of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party whose landslide electoral victory in 1990 the generals refused to accept. Despite the name, the party has been less pro-democracy than anti-dictator — in traditional Burmese terms, as opposed to illegitimate kingship.

According to Jordt, the arrangement of a shared civilian-military rule that has just been overthrown was a diarchy, an awkwardly shared rule that pitted Senior General Min Aung Hlaing against civilian leader Suu Kyi. The coup, led by Min Aung Hlaing was grounded in his hope that, at age 75, her power was on the wane.

His own current effort has been to build up his hpoun by donating to monks and important pagodas and consulting with the monastic leadership. He is seeking to demonstrate that the entire country, supernatural as well as natural, is with him and that he is the legitimate ruler in the traditional way. It remains to be seen whether he can bring the sangha with him.

This time around, however, exposure to social media has made the Burmese people far more aware and supportive of democracy as such. Gen Z has been at the forefront of a civil disobedience movement far more inclusive than anything that occurred in the past.

The activists are doing investigative reporting, doxing those who support the military. Significantly, many of the protest messages on Twitter and in the streets are being written in English — to let the world know what has been going on in their previously shuttered society.

In the face of these massive protests, Min Aung Hlaing has been compelled to make his claim to power in terms of democracy. "Democratic practice allows people to have freedom of expression," he said on Feb. 9. "Democracy can be destroyed if there is no discipline."

So far, however, there's no sign that the protesters consider this anything more than lip service.

"What's really changing is the idea of the location of power," says Jordt. "The old system of personalized sovereignty is being challenged by the broader system, the rule of the many. There's been a remarkable change in the landscape.

"We're in a period in which there are two competing concepts of political authority. I don't think we're going to see an eclipse of traditional Buddhist ideas. But what the younger generation is trying to bring about is a future in which many identities — ethnic, religious, age- and gender-related — have a place in the Burmese state. Whether such a future will come about is an open question."

• Mark Silk is Professor of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and director of the college's Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. He is a Contributing Editor of the Religion News Service.
• Reprinted with permission.

Priests, lay experts and canon lawyers alike say the Vatican needs to revisit how the church protects its seminarians, nuns and even rank-and-file parishioners from problem bishops and cardinals, who for centuries have wielded power and authority with few — if any — checks or accountability.

McCarrick was only investigated and defrocked by Pope Francis because a former altar boy came forward in 2017 to report the prelate had groped him when he was a teenager in the 1970s. It was the first time someone had claimed to be abused by McCarrick while a minor, a serious crime in the Vatican's in-house legal system.

And yet the bulk of the Vatican's 449-page forensic study into the McCarrick scandal released Tuesday dealt with the cardinal's behaviour with young men: the seminarians whose priestly careers he controlled and who felt powerless to say no when he arranged for them to sleep in his bed.

The report found that three decades of bishops, cardinals and popes dismissed or downplayed reports of McCarrick's misconduct with the young men.

Confidential correspondence showed they repeatedly rejected the information outright as rumour, excused it as an "imprudence" or explained it away as the result of McCarrick having no living relatives.

McCarrick's friends and superiors went to enormous lengths to find ways to claim his behaviour wasn't necessarily sexual, couldn't be proven and would cause a scandal if it ever went public.

Their decades-long reflex to turn a blind eye was evidence of the church's old boys culture of silence, clerical privilege and protection of reputations at all cost.

No one ever thought about the effect of his behaviour on the young men.

The report faulted in particular St. John Paul II, who appointed McCarrick archbishop of Washington and later made him a cardinal despite having commissioned an inquiry that confirmed he bedded his seminarians. The report recommended he not be promoted.

But John Paul gave McCarrick the most influential position in the U.S. church, which, coupled with his role as a major U.S. fundraiser, meant the cardinal wielded enormous power as he hobnobbed with presidents, prime ministers and three popes.

"The reason we had a McCarrick was because he pulled so much power to himself, relatively quickly," said the Rev. Desmond Rossi, a former seminarian under McCarrick who was interviewed for the report.

"I think the church has to look at the authority and power that people are given: How do we guarantee that it's used in a healthy way?"

The question for the church is also a legal one, just as it is in the secular sphere. Vatican and U.S. Catholic leaders had known since the 1990s that McCarrick slept with his seminarians. But that wasn't a firing offence under the church's canon law — then or now.

Since McCarrick's seminary victims weren't minors, they weren't considered victims at all, and in those years even priests who repeatedly raped children had their crimes covered up.

McCarrick rose to the heights of the Catholic hierarchy merely bothered by occasional "rumours" that he had been "imprudent" with the young men.

"It does get down to this idea that somehow when someone turns 18, a) they're no longer vulnerable, and b) that they have the ability to protect themselves," said David Pooler, a professor of social work at Baylor University and an expert in clergy sexual abuse of adults.

"And what I have learned from my research is that that's simply not true: that there's nothing magical about becoming an adult and being able to then protect oneself in a vulnerable place," he said.

Pooler said a seminarian is really in no position to offer meaningful, free consent to any sexual activity with his bishop, since his bishop has all the power in the relationship. A bishop or seminary rector determines whether the seminarian can continue in his studies, is ordained a priest, or is assigned to a good parish.

"Only when there is sort of equal freedom and kind of equal power in the relationship could there ever possibly be consent," Pooler said. "And that's just impossible between a priest and someone who's in seminary, or a priest and someone who's just in their congregation or parish."

The Vatican has long sought to portray any sexual relations between priests and adults as sinful but consensual, focusing in recent years only on protecting minors and "vulnerable adults" from predator priests. The Vatican's legal norms have defined "vulnerable" people as those who are disabled or consistently lack the use of reason.

Only in the past year or so, amid the #MeToo reckoning, has the Vatican even admitted publicly that religious sisters can be sexually abused by priests, bishops or even their own mother superiors. The McCarrick scandal now stands as a case study of how seminarians can be exploited and abused by the men who hold power over them.

"People have the tendency to believe the one who is in power, and not the one who is powerless," said Karlijn Demasure, director of the Centre for Safeguarding Minors and Vulnerable Persons at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Canada. "

And that's the whole change in culture that has to happen: that one has to listen to the vulnerable and not to the ones who are in power." Continue reading

The reality is that priests abuse small boys not because they are gay but because they have the opportunity. Most are not even paedophiles, but rather sexually maladjusted, immature and lonely individuals unable to resist the temptation to exploit their power over children who are taught to revere them as the agents of God.

A church that has tolerated the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children - a crime against humanity in any definition - needs to face unpalatable truths and to make drastic reforms.

Cover-ups are no longer an option. The magnitude of the crimes is well-established and the evidence of how the Vatican and its bishops hushed them up in order to protect the reputation and finances of the Catholic Church is fully proved.

By insisting upon its right to deal with allegations under medieval canon law weighted in favour of the defendant and providing no effective punishment, the church itself became complicit.

It has allowed abusive priests to confess without fear of any report to police; it has encouraged bishops to withhold information from prosecuting authorities; it has refused to allow Vatican envoys (papal nuncios) to co-operate with government inquiries on the excuse that it is a state and hence they have diplomatic immunity.

The necessary reforms must begin with recognition that child sexual abuse is a crime, not just a sin, and must be reported to and dealt with by prosecuting authorities.

Canon law, with its pathetic punishments of prayer and penitence, and its obligations to keep proceedings secret, must have no part in dealing with allegations of sex abuse.

Nor can the veil of confidentiality any longer be allowed to shroud the confessions of paedophiles, let alone the absolution of one priest by another ("Brother, can you spare a crime?") The confessed abuser must be told to confess to the police or else be handed over to them.

Obviously, there should be zero tolerance for clerics who confess or are convicted. They must be defrocked and certainly not allowed any appeal to the Vatican, which in the past has permitted many to remain in holy orders - the sheep's clothing in which they have often reoffended.

Even in countries where local bishops have announced that public prosecutors will be told of sex abuse allegations, there is always the qualification "only if the victim consents".

It is all too easy for young victims and trusting parents to be counselled that their child's best interests lie in allowing the church to deal with the matter "in its own way" without involving the police. They give in easily to pressure and persuasion that their complaints should be dealt with in secret under canon law.

Abolishing the role of canon law in dealing with sex crimes will take some papal courage, but will be relatively easy, beside the radical changes necessary to stop the abuse from happening in the first place.

The reform most often suggested is to abandon celibacy. This would not be doctrinally difficult - Christ's disciples appear to have been married and the rule was a dogma introduced in the 11th century and almost abolished by 16th-century reformers.

But marriage does not "cure" paedophilia. Continue reading

• Geoffrey Robertson QC is a former UN Appeal Judge and author of The Case of the Pope (Penguin).

In her piece, Dowd's assertions often lack context and the column itself is not particularly interesting, but it was a welcome one, nevertheless, because it allows us to consider how the Catholic Church, more than any other institutional body in history, has uplifted women and encouraged them to live to their highest potential.

Yes, a very sound argument can be made that the Catholic Church has been the means of freeing women, and not - as many unthinkingly charge - the means of their oppression.

Prior to perhaps the last 150 years, the great majority of educated and accomplished women were Catholic female religious, who conceived completely original ideas and ran with them.

Think of Elizabeth Bayley Seton, a widow with 5 children, cut off from her own family's fortune due to her conversion, conceiving of what we have come to think of as Catholic elementary education, and essentially inventing a means for the children of the poor and the marginalized to become educated and competitive in the "new world."

Think of Teresa of Avila, who not only reformed a corrupted religious order, but then went on to build 16 monasteries, both for men and women, while often in paralyzing pain.

Oh, and she wrote a few books that are considered classics of theology, and is now a Doctor of the Church.

Not bad for a woman who had spent her youth reading romance novels.

Think of Henriette DeLille, the daughter of freed slaves, and Katharine Drexel, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist, both founding individual orders of women who spent their time and energy building schools and hospitals for Native Americans and African Americans in the deep south.

Think of Catherine of Siena, counselor to both popes and royalty, dictating her letters to two scribes at a time. Another Doctor of the Church.

Interestingly Catherine was almost entirely uneducated and "unaccomplished" by worldly standards, but the church - hardly an elitist institution - calls her "Doctor" just as it does Saint Hildegard of Bingen, an intellectual giant of music, science, medicine, letters and theology.

Just as it does Saint Therese of Lisieux, who entered a Carmel at age 15 and never left it, but whose influence has travelled far.

Oh, and let's not forget Joan of Arc. Continue reading

• Elizabeth Scalia is Editor-at-Large at Aleteia and the award-winning author of Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life and Little Sins Mean a Lot: Kicking Our Bad Habits Before They Kick You.

Research involving two New Zealand universities has discovered such acts were used by social elites to maintain their power, the Stuff.co.nz website reported.

The study came from researchers from the University of Auckland, Victoria University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

They analysed historical data from 93 Austronesian cultures, using methods derived from evolutionary biology.

It was found that practising human sacrifice made societies more likely to be divided into the haves and have-nots.

"Religion has traditionally been seen as a key driver of morality and co-operation, but our study finds religious rituals also had a more sinister role in the evolution of modern societies," said study lead author Joseph Watts.

Human sacrifice was widespread in Austronesian cultures, which include early inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Madagascar and Easter Island.

Forty cultures included in the study killed humans as part of their religious rituals.

The study divided the Austronesian cultures into three main groups of high, moderate and low social stratification (inequality).

It found societies with high levels of stratification were almost twice as likely to practice human sacrifice as cultures in the moderate category.

Watts said that was because the sacrifices were used by ruling groups to keep the lower classes in line.

"By using human sacrifice to punish taboo violations, demoralise the underclass and instil fear of social elites, power elites were able to maintain and build social control," he said.

Human sacrifice was a particularly effective way of controlling society because it provided a "supernatural justification" for punishment, said Professor Russell Gray, one of the study's co-authors.

"Rulers, such as priests and chiefs, were often believed to be descended from gods and ritual human sacrifice was the ultimate demonstration of their power."

Sources

• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

The Pope was ranked behind Russian president Vladimir Putin, German chancellor Angela Merkel and US president Barack Obama in Forbes's 2015 list.

The Pontiff was ranked ahead of Chinese president Xi Jinping, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen.

"Pope Francis has made it his mission to transform the longstanding conservative image of the Catholic Church," the US business magazine stated.

Pope Francis was ranked fourth in the Forbes list last year too.

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Both publications illustrate the immense power and wealth that is concentrated amongst a miniscule group of businesspeople. According to the NBR, 'The rich continue to get richer'. Editor Nevil Gibson says 'This year's Rich List is bigger and richer than ever before, with the total minimum net worth of members now at $47.8 billion, an increase of $3.5 billion on last year's list. Add the small group of New Zealand-based international billionaires and the figure climbs to $60.4 billion, an all-time record' - see: How to be a millionaire - NBR Rich List.

This enrichment is because, Gibson says, 'The past year has been a good one financially', with record profitability: 'The surge in wealth is mainly due to the substantial gains of most investment classes; the New Zealand equity market returned 25.9% last year'.

Most of the 2013 NBR Rich List information is behind the NBR paywall online, but you can still see the summary Rich List at a Glance (Wealth order), as well as the individual entries for various rich-listers such as Graeme Hart, Richard Chandler, the Todd family, Owen Glenn, and Alan Gibbs. And of course there's some very political people on the list too - for example, both the National Party's leader and president - see: John Key and Peter Goodfellow's family. A good summary of the report can also be read in Steve Deane's Hart returns to top of wealthier NBR rich list.

Further evidence of growing wealth and profitability in New Zealand was also seen earlier this week via Hamish McNicol's Luxury car sales leave rest behind and Christopher Adams' Banks' profit jumps 12.9pc, nears $1b. Continue reading

Sources

• Bryce Edwards in The New Zealand Herald
• Image: IZ Quotes

Dr Bryce Edwards is a politics lecturer at University of Otago.

"Newness and life will not come out of a Church which still wants to look on itself as an institution of power, even a renewed institution, or from a Church which is simply a focal point of organised doing good or social reform," Archbishop Martin said.

The archbishop of Dublin said the church must "witness more concretely to the message of Jesus".

"We have to live in such a way that the energy of life and vitality which spring from Jesus' Resurrection can really touch our hearts and change our church," he said.

Speaking in Dublin's Pro Cathedral, Archbishop Martin said a renewed Church would be "pro-life in the fullest sense of that term".

"If Christians have a passion for life then they should be in the forefront in the fight for life, at every moment of its existence . . .

"We have to defend the right to life and we must at the same time always accompany that defence with a commitment to ensure that all can live their lives with a level of dignity worthy of the Lord of life in whose image they have been created," he said.

Archbishop Martin said Christians should be driving forces for a society in which young people receive reasons for hope.

"We have great young people but our years of prosperity have not left them a legacy of hope," he said.

The Dublin-born archbishop had a series of Vatican appointments, including the Holy See's permanent observer at the United Nations Office in Geneva, before being appointed coadjutor archbishop of Dublin in 2003. He succeeded as archbishop in 2004.

Source:

Irish Times

Image: RTE News

"Money is still something that we don't touch. And yet, as I talk in churches so many people are so behind the eight ball on their retirement, on their homes," she told me. "In churches people are just barely holding on financially—we've got to find a way to speak to this in a direct, biblically-based, powerful way."

As a Senior Fellow at American Progress, a theology professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and its former president, Thistlethwaite has seen, firsthand, how money and power have not only influenced the political and financial system, but how it has affected those at the bottom of the economic scale. Her forthcoming book is: #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) about Money and Power.

"Statistics show that 50% of Americans own 1% of the wealth of the country. That's a shift on the one percent, but that's the one percent that has nothing. We can't let this happen under the radar anymore, so I developed a thesis that Occupy is a sign from God that we have to take this seriously. I hope this book will get progressives to start talking about money in the way we've just begun to talk about human sexuality in justice-making ways. We're not there yet on money," she said.

We talked more about these topics, including a look back at her most recent book—on tech, sin, and the myth of Eden—during a recent conversation. Read more

Sources

• Religion Dispatches
• Image: Patheos

Do you sometimes wonder if things have changed?

I don't think they have.

Men are careful. Men are circumspect. Men, after all, have their careers to consider.

Women just do it.

That could be a reason Jesus did not name women as Apostles, or at least why the women who were there did not bother with the title. The women were not interested in advancement or having their names remembered. They were simply doing.

What did the men want? Power? Authority? They preached the message, it is true, but they also jockeyed with each other for position. And who could forget the one who sold out for cash?

So, have things changed? As the church universal begins to move through the holy days this season, few will argue with the statement that the men have made a mess of things.

Of course, the Big Events go forward. The pope goes to Mexico. The pope goes to Cuba. The symbolism is striking, even as the palace guard drags the nearly 85-year-old professor around the world. On the one hand, it seems insane. On the other, it is important, it really is.

But it is also very, very important for Christians — a third of the world — to keep an eye on the empty tomb. Christ is risen, that tomb proclaims. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. That is what really makes a difference.

Without the concept — if not the fact — of resurrection burned into every human heart and mind, the names Trayvon Martin and, lest we choose sides, George Zimmerman soon will be forgotten and tossed upon the trash heap of history. Their names, their story and their stories, are emblematic of so much of human interaction.

What happened in Florida happens every single day in so many ways in so many lives. We never really know who started things. We only know both sides are changed forever. Continue reading

Sources

• Phyllis Sagano in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: Revival Cry