Is Vatican letter on abuse a 'smoking gun'?

the analysis is excellent. it overlooks one central theme: the concept of the smoking gun rests upon the thesis that nobody saw the gun being shot. if you have a dead body with a bullet wound and nearby a smoking gun, however, it is fair to say that the latter led to the former.
your conjectures (and that's all they are) regarding the aims of the instructions are just as legitimate as those who say the main target was protecting the good name of the church. not enough was done to solidify your conjecture. an awful lot was done that strengthens the contrary.
you can't - on one hand - say that intentions were good and right, and - on the other - stand behind ratzinger, whose so far published expletives on the matter suggest they weren't.
please also refer to the matter of timing: why was ratzinger promoted to deal with the matter only long after the matter had broken and those that promoted him realized that perhaps they should put up a face that reflects the blowing wind direction. had they truly been disturbed by pedophelia, they should perhaps have decided the matter earlier?

The new line from the vatican is that raping children is such a flimsy cause to remove a priest, you have to make sure to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. According to this logic it is better to have a defrocked priest continue to rape children than a priest safely in jail. As the vatican rushes to canonize jpii as the patron saint of abusers, I do not think another smoking gun is a surprise.

John, I think you're off the mark a bit with this line: "In other words, a main concern of the letter is to ensure that when a bishop takes action against an abuser, his edict should stick – suggesting a fairly tough line on abuse, rather than a drive to cover it up."

The letter itself says this: "If such procedures [including mandatory reporting] were to be followed by the Bishops and there were cases of eventual hierarchical recourse lodged at the Holy See, the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental to those same Diocesan authorities."

It doesn't say "the results could mean the Holy See would be forced to allow an abuser to return to ministry." It doesn't say "the results could be highly dangerous to the children in your diocese." It doesn't say "the results could be a setback to the Church's desire to root out this evil."

It says "you might be embarrassed when we overrule you."

This isn't taking a tough line on abuse -- it's taking a tough line to defend Canon Law and Vatican authority.

"In that light, the 1997 letter seems less a statement of Vatican policy than an expression of what would eventually be the losing side in an internal Vatican power struggle." Thank you, John, for this context and clarification, which have always been the preconditions of responsible reporting. - RobertG.

Seems like a lot of causistry to define what proves to be embarrassing for the Church and its moral reputation. Between 1997 and 2001 we know that official circles in the Vatican hierarchy did all they could to cover up what was a widespread phenomenon in many countries. As for respect for the minutiae of canon law, it seems that that is being offered as an excuse to avoid prosecution of offending clergy abusers in the civil courts, again giving the public the sense that the Vatican was more concerned with scandal to the Church and the enormous financial implications. It is interesting that the apologetics of the Church concerning the Inquisition shows the reverse of this tete a tete between canon and civil law. In that sad chapter in the Church's history, the explanation has always been that the Church never sent any heretic or Jewish convert reverting to Judaism to their death. Church officials simply turned the recalitrants over to the authorities of State. In any case, this most recently discovered letter does not reflect well on the moral credibility of the Church and trying to explain it away does not either.

John Allen's characteristically innocuous reading of events portrays the leaders of the Church as opinion sharing,
misunderstood churchmen who are ill-served by whoever runs their PR operation.

So to clarify matters, if the Irish Bishops defrocked an abusive priest and made a cannonical mistake, the Vatican putting law over people, would let a known abusive priest be placed once again in a parish where he could abuse more children? Did those men in the Vatican ever read the Gospels? Did they ever reflect on Jesus use of the law?
Our solution: beatify the prideful, polarizing, pedophile protecting, polish pope! This church needs a new reformation.

The defense of the Vatican presented in this article is nothing more than a continuation of the same shell game that lies at the root of this mess.

By his own words, Benedict recently stated that the system of Canon Law remained pretty much silent throughout the period since Vatican II. Yet, the number one defense of the Vatican here is that they were afraid that adopting the Irish bishops' position might undermine cases brought under Canon law.

So the real message here seems to be "don't do anything locally that might get in the way of OUR (the Vatican's) way of not doing something Canonically... In other words, the Vatican WAS in fact, saying don't do anything.

The scandal was, and remains, all about priorities. Sadly, despite the loss of Billions of dollars, the carnage of thousands of lives forever altered, and a loss of credibility that continues the bleeding away of the church's moral authority, we STILL have no system of accountability for the officeholders who allowed this to happen on their watch. This latest defense of the church's leadership is just plain shallow, for it conveniently forgets Benedict's own words about the ineffectiveness of Canon Law during this same period.

Mr. Allen, your logic is every bit as serpentine as the curia's, reminding one of Clinton's protestation of the definition of "is". If anyone wonders why these league of ungentlemen will continue to rule unstopped by moral law or conscience it is due to lackies such as yourself who are as over-identified with the cult as the clerics themselves.
To your points:
1) all such letters are framed in Vaticanese so that the iron rod is always disguised in velvet. For example, a Mafia don recommending an underling take a vacation while kissing him on the cheek is anything but well-wishing.
2) If such a direct letter from the head of the congegation heading ALL abuse matters is only a directive and not a opinion why did the Irish bishops' ad limina following it support it completely - no quarter was given to the bishops despite their furious protestations? (See the RTE documentary out today).
3) There was no debate at the time. Then-Ratzinger acted in similar fashion before having his mitre pinned to the wall by the 2002 legal explosion in the US.
Any war can only be waged if the war of public opinion continues to be won AND the front line officers are for the war. In this battle of truth versus Vatican fiction, the tide has finally turned and the officers are fed up. In their own self defense, the Irish bishops are now throwing the Vatican under the bus. It does not excuse their own complicity but if they are going down, so are the elite who egged them on.

Dear Mr Allen
Are you a journalist, or a commentator on journalism? You seem to criticize the work of your colleagues, while doing nothing to bring real information to this important new story. We don’t have the full facts, but the few that are out there are not good. As stated on the Irish site:
http://www.irishrepublican.net/forum/showthread.php?64503-Tonight-on-RT%...

“In 1999 the Irish bishops were called to a meeting at the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome and told by the Cardinal Prefect, Castrillon Hoyos, to be "fathers to your priests, not policemen!"”

Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos was not just a demure wall flower. He was a major force in the Curia at that time, and boss in relation to bishops. To say that this was an “opinion” is disingenuous and misleading. Both this and the other NRC are more like Pravda of old.

To say the Vatican was "ambivalent" is not accurate; the Vatican was adamant, athough not all within the Vatican may have been in accord. The public face was unambiguous.

Then in the aforementioned letter there is this: "In particular, the situation of 'mandatory reporting' gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature." For me as a non-diplomat this reads as a 'full stop' order.

Storero was the nuncio to the Ireland and what I understood his letter to say was: 'nice try' but we won't support your efforts and especially we will not help improve this document (Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response) -- wait! the Congregation is studying the matter of the policies on clerical abuse of children in the English Speaking World and we will let you know how to proceed when we are ready.

It is hard to imagine that a letter from a nuncio is perceived by any bishop as just and only another opinion. A nuncio did not just represent the Archbishop of Rome or the Holy See to the civil government, but he represented both of these to the local churches in the civil region to which he was assigned.

Storero's letter as I read it did two things: 1) it threw a spanner into the works of the Irish bishops and eventually made things worse; 2) it illustrated that through the nuncios through out the world the Archbishop of Rome and / or the Holy See could and did coordinate strategies whose main effect was to preserve 'the Church' (read Holy See or curia) from scandal rather than serve the local churches and save the children of the People of God. This could explain why bishops worldwide had seemed to be 'singing from the same song page' with regards to clerics who rape children or sexually molest young people. The bishops, many perhaps without realizing it, had fallen into a cozy flannel of deniability paired with a strategy for secrecy.

Yup, governments / laity concerned about the safety of children should start looking at the nuncios for the rest of the smoking armory if for no other reason to clear the air and to hold the Archbishop of Rome and the Holy See to a continuing higher standard of accountability and openness.

It's a relief to read an accountability-related NCR contribution which offers some background, balance and perspective. A pity the Irish RTE and AP didn't bother to first analyze and then comment. Keep up the good work.

How about posting the letter and let the readers decide if this letter suggested "a fairly tough line on abuse, rather than a drive to cover it up." That is not the way I read it.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/the-1997-letter-vatican...

This is an excellent piece, Mr Allen. It neither attempts to whitewash the Church's record nor shrilly shouts down those who speak out against it: instead, you offer calm and reasonable counter-arguments that expose the flaws in the latest attempt to drag the Church down. As such I shall be directing anyone who quotes to me the latest Goodstein piece in the NYT to this page (and to Jimmy Akin's blogpost of yesterday). Thank you.

John,

Your knee jerk coverup of egregious Vatican behaviour is entirely predictable.

Your depiction of Benedict as an anti-abuse hero is extremely exaggerated.
While he did advocate a faster laicization process in some cases,
he did not advocate or implement reporting of criminal behavior
to civil authorities, even in the most egregious cases. He
emphasized that all proceedings were to be kept under strict pontifical
secrecy.

Nice try. The letter doesn't say anything about the confessional. If the letter has secret or coded references, that can and should be documented. And if the letter represents "the losing side in an internal Vatican power struggle," let the Vatican release letters that represent the winning side if any such letters exist. Otherwise, the letter has to stand on its own.

John,

Good analysis. Here's a link to the letter itself as I think people need to see the source document.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/Ireland-Catholic-Abuse.pdf

Does NCR have a copy of the letter or a link? I think it would be good for readers to read the letter themselves so as to judge the comments and interpretations from Allen,Lombardi, Lena, Anderson and the survivor's network.
I've google-searched for it but am not finding it...........

Cheers,

Smoking gun or not, it gives more credibility to the idea that enough was not done to rectify the situation.

John Allen's "bits of context" may nuance HOW the letter constitutes "a smoking gun." But they cannot fully exonerate the Vatican--or Pope John Paul II, whose cause for sainthood is very much tarnished by the Vatican's mismanagement of the entire sexual abuse crisis.

Certainly it was good for the abused and for the church that Ratzinger's position eventually trumped the Castrillón stance which John Paul II allowed to dominate for too many years. But what about the time BEFORE Joseph Ratzinger prevailed?

Mr. Allen's analysis fails to give that period its due: by its indecision and by allowing some Vatican officials to direct a cover-up, the Vatican is at the very least criminally liable for obstruction of justice during the period of time it went on.

The letter undoubtedly is one of the smoking guns for that period. Everyone believes there are more. Joseph Ratziner, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, knows that first-hand. He ought to admit it publicly--and in every court case in which the issue is raised. That is the only substantive way for the Roman Catholic institution to make amends for its criminal behavior.

More on this at my blog, http://creativeadvance.blogspot.com

Readers just remember that in Anglo-American legal systems, the Trier of Fact is either the jury or if no jury, the judge. This letter will appear in many court cases. The Vatican will try to suppress the evidence. The other side will attempt to introduce other evidence to support the position that the Vatican leadership obstructed justice. The more we see this letter used sucessfully in court, more likely we will see civil judgments and criminal convictions against the Church bishops and their dioceses. Time will tell. I hope NCR will review this a year from now and let us know what happens.

It may not be a smoking gun, but it is what we would expect from the Vatican during the papacy of John Paul the Great Enabler. There is more concern for the priest abuser, the church's reputation and the technicalities of canon law than there is for the victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Thanks for you clear and concise report John Allen Jr. Website noted above is actually wife's Internet blog.

Excellent. But I'll bet the mainstream media never publicizes this perspective on the controversy. Thanks for your objectivity.

When bishops/cardinals testified under oath to Federal Grand Juries that they did not receive instructions/orders from the Vatican/Nuncios about reporting abuse they may want to say hello to Martha Stewart, Barry Bonds, Skipper Libby and Gov. Blago. Fed prosecutors love big name perjury cases.

I normally defend John Allen. His conclusions to note that this letter is not the smoking gun it appears to be, his "three bits of context", are indefensible.

The letter states that overturned sanctions of predatory priests would be "embarrassing and detrimental". Mr. Allen spins that into a hard line approach? Instead, the bishops read this as another way to hide from civil prosecution, noting that embarrassing the church leads to withdrawal of the faithful. They imaged they were keeping souls inside the saving church by not letting them know the evils that lurked about. That's a drive to cover up, to use Mr. Allen's words, and certainly not a call to protect children or speak the truth.

The letter "does not directly forbid bishops from reporting abusers to police and prosecutors." It doesn't recommend it, either, as if this is an issue to discuss. Stopping the abuse, ending the harm, protecting the defenseless is the only first action here (and again, any discussion necessary?). Posing that this is a problem of the confessional would mean that all or any of these sins were being confessed. Has anyone ever claimed that? I thought not.

The third point notes that Castrillon Hoyos lost the power struggle with Ratzinger. Note that this cardinal was in charge of the process at the time. Note how many times before 1997 the faithful tried to have their church address this problem, seen as "only American" at the time. That's not a power struggle, that's a damned man caught in another lie. To pretend otherwise, Mr. Allen, is wishing on a star.

The rewriting of history continues, Mr. Allen. For this piece, you should be ashamed.

Not even bothering to read Allen's article...
for a few years now, Allen has found nothing at all ever wrong with the Vatican. How can there be a smoking gun, when the Vatican does no wrong?

Got your tickets for the May beatification, yet John?

Allen makes mention of "the position today espoused by Vatican officials" on reporting clergy sex crimes to law enforcement.

Let's be crystal clear on just what that is. Al Jazeera reports today "While the Vatican does advise bishops worldwide to report crimes to police in a legally nonbinding guide on its website, this recourse was omitted from the official legal advice provided by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and updated last summer.

And let's also be clear on the status of the 1996 proposal by Irish bishops to mandate calling police about clergy sex crimes. Fifteen years later (as CNN reports today), the Vatican still hasn't approved the change.

David Clohessy, Director, SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, (7234 Arsenal Street, St. Louis MO 63143), 314 566 9790 cell (SNAPclohessy@aol.com)

Another sad comment on the top hierarchy of the Church, unsurprising for me. The so-called necessity for interior prosecutions according to cannon law, never took place as one might expect in such a secretive organization as the Church, but a crime is a crime, is a crime, and it should have been perfectly clear long ago what should have happened. Unless the Church cleans house once and for all, its reputation will continue to suffer and the result will be its increasing irrelevance. Too bad.

The Church has obviously covered up the abuse for years. In light of how the public feels about the Church today, I've no doubt eventually those secret vaults of the Vatican will be opened by a court of law higher than the Vatican. Like Hitler himself, the Church will fall. You know as well as I do this has gone on long enough. Just when things seem to settle down, another uprising of evidence comes forth. The Church and its priesthood and celibacy are a problem. It's probably not natural. The abuse situation is too big an issue to dismiss; priests are men and men have desires and feel a need to express those desires, whether natural or wrong. Sad to say, many priests have chosen unnatural ways...and with children. This has been covered up too long and victims have to be helped. The gold of the Vatican, so to speak, must be melted down to help the victims.

Will Mr. Allen please revise at this point his stance on the letter sent by the Vatican in May 2001, which bishops in both the United States and Ireland report told them that they were not to report abusive priests to the police? Mr. Allen has, up to this point, tended to leave the letter out when telling the story of the abuse scandal. When he does mention it, he allows only for the hierarchy's increasingly unbelievable party line-- that the letter does not mean what it actually says. He is right in that these current revelations are not a "smoking gun"-- that gun has been there in the May 2001 letter and in the 1962 policy it threatened bishops that they must still in force. All this letter does is confirm how wrong John Allen-- and other apologists for the Pope and the other bishops and cardinals who allowed thousands of children to be raped and who have gone completely unpunished themselves-- how wrong they have been to parrot the lies of men who put the Church's wealth and reputation above the safety of children.

Mr. Allen-- do you honestly have no shame at all?

From my perspective as someone not abused by a priest, I thought the letter was not a "smoking gun." While Mr. Allen's background provides some possible rationale, the letter itself expresses concern that the proposed Irish policies could potentially invalidate measures the Bishops were taking to prevent abuse. I respect that abused persons are highly sensitive to any letter coming out of or near the Vatican regarding abuse as potentially evidence of Vatican "cover up." This document, however and in my opinion, shows a genuine regard to avoid tying the Bishop's hands and be able to use the measures available to remove abusive priests.

Lombardi seems to run counter to calling the letter a "smoking gun". His term for it would more likely be "red herring".

Since so much of this alleged tolerance, stonewalling, and coverup went on during the papacy of John Paul II, as well as his espousal of the Legionaries of Christ (with whom I had some rather uncomfortable contacts), I find it disturbing that he has been named the patron for World Youth Day 2011.

One has to wonder if the church hierarchy really has any real sense of lived Christianity or if they just operate pretty much as politicians & CEOs. It certainly seems as though they manifest the behavior of the latter.

Sounds to me like another Vatican defense to ensure that Benedict XVI can also be made a saint when he dies.

If John Paul II can be a saint with his record on the abuse crisis, how much more will Benedict be able to claim the label.

Maybe we should just proclaim all popes saints.

This letter, or so-called "smoking gun" should come as a surprise to no one. In the meantime,
the man who ultimately "in charge" at the time, is on the "fast-track" to sainthood!

More fuel for Amderson and the SNAP-BRIGADE and Vatican bashers. But those who can read and understand will "get it." The sad art is that the US media in general will follow the bash" B XV1 line.

Let us pray this undeniable more-than-smoking gun does away with this pipe dream of beatification for wojtyla, the Marcial enabler, the root of all of this evil.

John, John when are they going to give you a red hat? Your apologistics is beyond logic...but then, when was the Vatican response to anything ever logical?

The Vatican's letter warning Irish bishops about reporting sex abuse to police has been misunderstood. Misunderstood by whom?

The Vatican is just as misunderstood as was Enron Corporation(remember them?). JPII, Luciano Storero, and other Vatican officials, are just as misunderstood as was Kenneth Lay, Chairman, and Chief executive officer, and Jeffrey Skilling, President, and Chief operating office of Enron. Lay died of a heart attack shortly after his conviction; Skilling is in prison working off his 20 years. Both innocent and misunderstood men, right?

Also, remember when the Church's "company line" was, "it's the liberal anti Catholic media that's exaggerating the number of pedophile priest's," or "it's the lawyers that are trying to get rich?"

Misunderstood, give me a break!

Where to begin! If ever there was a strong advocate for Vatican policy [deception, delusion and truth dodging], this John Allen fellow would have to receive the award. But enough about him; what really bothers me is the statement from the Jesuitical Lombardi: "The “moral and canonical concerns” mentioned in the letter, Lombardi said, concern the sacrament of confession." WHAT! Now we are to believe that if a priest breaks the law, the bishop cannot report him to the local prosecutor because it may impinge on the church code of law! This is not only irrational but also illegal-------not to even mention unChristian! Give me a break! Who are these people, where do they come from!

As you say this is no news. One wonders if the release was not done to silence Hoyos and those who still cling to his view, like Sodano. Nothing like this ever happens by accident.

John, if you don't yet receive a substantial stipendium from the Vatican for being their best unofficial spin-doctor, you should make a claim forthwith.

John Allen: Vatican ENABLER!

Allen asserts that the caveat contained in Storero letter (“the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental”) is actually the expressed wish of the Vatican bureaucrat that when a bishop takes actions against the abuser “his edict should stick – suggesting a fairly tough line on abuse.”

I suppose I could believe that kind of dissemination from Allen if I also believed that unicorns defecate in rainbow colors.

Secondly, Allen’s notion that the Storero letter is only “an expression of opinion,” not a Vatican “policy directive,” assumes that curial officials are lame enough to use plain, direct language in their communication. Vatican-speak is a highly sophisticated lexicon especially adapted for obfuscation and hedging against ever having to take responsibility.

A case in point which gives the lie to Allen’s notion: Cardinal William Levada, then San Francisco archbishop, was so incensed that he suspended the Rev. Jon Conley for reporting his pastor, Rev. Gregory Aylward, to police for making sexual advances on a teenage boy, when returning home to the rectory Conley discovered Aylward dressed only in his underwear. Levada stands alone among American bishops in having been sued, successfully, by a whistle-blowing priest, Jon Conley.

Thirdly, Allen postulates that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now B16, actually won out “in an internal Vatican power struggle” with Cardinal Dario Hoyos, the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy over “streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases.”

Allen is making this stuff up out of whole cloth because, if we assume that Ratzinger’s taking charge represented a “change” in the Vatican’s response to the sexual abuse crisis in 2001, then why did Ratzinger take subsequent steps that essentially rendered the American bishops’ Dallas Charter defanged and toothless?

It is as if John Allen is speaking off of the same page as the Vatican’s very skillful legal eagle, Jeffery Lena, who is particularly suited and gifted in parsing the words of his vulnerable and suspect clients.

[BTW: Jeffery Lena’s emergence in this story is a testament to how close this dagger of Storero’s letter strikes at the heart of the Vatican’s cover-up of its campaign to suppress the efforts of survivors for justice and to gain redress of grievances. We would never have heard from Lena if there wasn’t a painful collective "groan” coming from the Vatican curia.

Is it possible that Lena may have jacked-up John Allen to start the media counter-offensive against the damaging revelations in this Storero letter?]

Well, today they are saying the letter was "just misunderstood."

"In a similar vein, the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, said the letter “correctly insists on the importance that canonical legislation be respected, precisely so that guilty parties not have a basis to appeal.”

fine, but in the meantime get rid of the perverts....

But Mr. Allen, nothing of substance has changed despite all the public relations spin by Lombardi and others. You will concede, as an honest and respected reporter, that there is even today no canonical mandatory reporting rule to police or other civil authority. The Vatican web statement dealing with reporting is little more than a suggestion at best and obfuscation at worst.

Your argument that the Colombian cardinal "lost" the argument concerning reporting abusive criminal priests is, to borrow a quotation from the Bard of Avon, "sound and fury signifying nothing". He and others like him have simply been told to button their lips, not to change their tune. Why can't the Vatican simply state that in all countries in which the justice system provides minimum due process in fact and deed, the police will always be informed? If the RC church can stand above the mandatory reporting requirements (which are too few and far between internationally) why can't the local Jewish congregation or the local mosque? Can the Eastern Orthodox claim such exemption in Greece or Cyprus? I thought church courts power to supercede civil courts waned at the Reformation and died in the Enlightenment. Rome doesn't agree obviously.

In your critique of the 1997 Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy letter to Irish bishops you failed to mention that the top of the letter it is marked "Strictly confidential".

While I don't defend the policy iterated in the letter, why is it necessary for the correspondence regarding the Church's policy be strictly confidential?

As we read this NCR defence of current Vatican policy on reporting sexual abuse, and are asked to treat an earlier statement by a papal nucio as a "losing position," how seriously can we take this viewpoint? Do Roman Catholics, even today, live in a Church environment where varying opinions are allowed? Do bishops and priests believe they will not be standing alone in a deafening silence of their friends, if they do not do whatever the last one to speak "for the Church" has "opined"? Maybe someone else hears a cascade of episcopal and Vatican objections to the poorly stated and badly handled case of St Joseph's Hospital and Bishoop Olmsted? This poor bishop has badly garbled the issues, scandalized the people, and set back the Church's credibility. He, however, got to speak last. Archbishop Storero, in his time, wrote a letter on Nuciature stationery, and how many of the purple-bordered birettas bowed in obedience, allowing the cover-ups to continue? The days for arguing that the Church is technically faultless are over. The ogre is a mode of exercising authority, over-reaching claims of infallibility, and selecting and promoting robots and ghosts who will not resist inappropriate exercise of authority or register strong objection to mistaken decisions. The smoking gun does indeed tell us something helpful. It is not that the Vatican was ambivalent--no ambivalence appears in the letter itself--but that by 1997 the bishops had already ceded the unambiguous responsibility Vatican II had affirmed for them in favor of pleasing the boss.

Res ipsa loquitur.

John,

That letter might not sound threatening to you. You realize, I am sure,
that those bishops who wrote to John Paul II on a subject that he did not
want to discuss, never received an answer or an acknowledgement. Any Vatican
watcher would get the message. Handle everything in house!

Smoking gun? How many does it take? Ask any honest
local police official or prosecutors office how many bishops sent the chancery car to secret abusive priests out the back door. No matter that they knew the abuse to be real. What about the real guns smoking in the hands of victims who took their own lives ?
Why did they want to die? Sexual violation- rape and sodomy -
by their priest? Yes. And because their bishops would not listen to them or their families. Then bishops who hid behind lawyers who threatened victims and their supporters. On and on and on.
You are looking for a smoking gun in an artillery barrage.

It's a pretty interesting viewpoint to claim that an official letter expressing the judgment of an official congregation of the Holy See is not necessarily binding. I hope that that argument is picked up by Bertone. That should open new horizons for all the bishops of the world. They have a lot more freedom than they might have thought!

C'mon, John! Since when is a letter from a Vatican dicastery just a friendly letter of advice as you suggest? Wink, wink, nod, nod. If you can't read between the lines of that letter then you ought to get out of the business. The Vatican does enough of its own CYA that it doesn't need you to do its lawyering for them.

People should take a look at the story of Bella Dodd. She was a member of the communist party of the USA back in the first half of the 20th century. She converted later in life and wrote a book that stated that her party in the 1930's sent 1100 men into the Catholic seminaries with the sole purpose of destroying the Church from within. It makes you wonder are these the stories of the fruits of their labors.

May Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos get what he deserves.

Excellent analysis...but alas unlikely to matter much in todays gotcha media environment, especially with an emboldened atheist/secularist left that hates religion on principle and catholicism in particular....

As with any sexual cover-up this article is suppose to sell devout catholics another false lie as to the truth of the Vatican Letter..For example on point one the explanation is so far from the truth... This has already been proven in the Irish and european court systems..Point Two The fear was that the confessional rules could be violated..How about the thousands of abused , molested, raped and mentally ruined victims and third The Bishop who said that priest should not have to confess to anyone This is what the laws of the church are protecting. Pediphiles and its stance has been that way for centuries I recommend everyone to look at Catholic sex Scandals on Wikopedia then hit the topics different countries

If the Storero letter is not a "smoking gun" it is a good imitation.
There is nothing ambivalent about cover-up. When did the Vatican start ofering opinions rather than issuing directives? It is stretch of the imagination to accept the claim of "a fairly tough line".Lena and Lombardi strain the credulity of any but the wilfully blind.
jULIE mACKEY