Who Will be Pope?

by Erin Delmore  http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/28/who-will-be-the-next-pope/

Pope Benedict’s abdication and departure from the Vatican Thursday marked a watershed moment for the Catholic Church, as its leader transitioned to a role as “pope emeritus” and pledged his obedience to his successor for the first time in six centuries.
Now the Cardinals assembled in Rome face a daunting task: choosing Benedict XVI’s successor.
In the coming days, 117 electors will consider who among them is best suited to ascend to the papacy. In what could be a sharp deviation from the Vatican’s storied Euro-centricity, strong candidates from the developing world are under consideration. A distinct possibility of electing the first black Pope has captured global attention. From nationality to age, and the less tangible aspects of charisma and “media savvy,” the character of the papacy’s front-runners will be under a microscope until Easter.
“Each cardinal is looking for three things in the candidate,” Father Thomas Reese, S.J., a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center told MSNBC.com. “First, somebody who will be a good pope–which should be translated as somebody who agrees with the cardinals’ values and vision for the church. The second thing they’re looking for is someone with whom they can have a good personal relationship…and third, they’re looking for someone who will be well received in their own country.”
Reverend Monsignor Tom McSweeny, a former National Director of The Christophers, says the expectation from the American perspective is to find a new pope who embodies the stagecraft of former Pope John Paul II with the ability to connect with a “new approach to the next generation of believers, so they can live out their faith on a day to day basis.”
Praised for possessing an uncommon ability to connect with younger Catholics, Pope John Paul II was the second-longest serving Pope and the first non-Italian since the 1500s. He was also one of the most-traveled Popes in recent history, having visited over 100 countries. ”Pope John Paul II taught us a very vital lesson: whatever evangelicalization  means, it cannot happen within the walls of the Vatican,” McSweeny told MSNBC.com.
Pope Benedict XVI made headlines when he joined Twitter in December 2012, disseminating 140-character messages to millions in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Arabic and French. “Thank you for your love and support,” he tweeted Thursday on his English-language account. “May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives.” With over 1.5 million Twitter followers on the English account alone, the Vatican’s embrace of the micro-blogging service has acted as an olive branch toward tech-savvy young Catholics – a demographic the Church is eager to attract.
According to Father Reese, the cardinals may consider choosing a younger man to be pope, thanks in large part to Benedict’s decision to abdicate.
“The fear of electing a young man is that he’ll live forever. He’ll be pope for 20,30,40 years,” Reese said. “I think now that the pope has set the precedent that we’re not going to have somebody in there forever, you could resign at 80.”
A number of the top contenders for the papacy are in their mid-60s, including Ghana’s Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, 64, and Brazil’s Odilo Scherer, 63. Canada’s Marc Ouellet, perhaps North America’s strongest candidate, is 68. At 55, the Philippines’ Luis Tagle is the youngest cardinal assumed to be under consideration.

Odds on which country the next pope will hail from, as of February 27, 2013 via Intrade

The rise of Turkson along with Nigeria’s Francis Arinze, now 80, has created a buzz around whether the Catholic Church could choose its first-ever black pope. Brazil’s Scherer, the Archbiship of the Sao Paolo dioces–the world’s largest Catholic congregation–along with the 65-year-old former archbishop of Brasilia Joao Braz de Aviz could lend a new focus to the developing world.
Still the greatest force in the Vatican, the Italians, who make up a quarter of the College of Cardinals, retain a significant advantage with Milan Archbishop Angelo Scola and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as strong frontrunners. The online prediction market Intrade puts the likelihood of an Italian successor at an overwhelming 35%, ahead of the North Americans’ 14%, due in large part to the popularity of Ouellet. Two candidates, one from New York and another from Boston, are rumored to be under consideration from the United States.
“The cardinals will certainly be paying much more attention to some of the third-world countries,” McSweeny said. But if that increased attention would translate to a successor from the developing world, he said, “Certainly it would be a possibility, but given the nature and structure of the current college of cardinals, I’d probably say the odds are not there right now.”
The conclave may instead choose to focus on the issues that have dogged the Catholic church in recent years, chief among them a widespread sex abuse scandal.
“The problem area is the first world: North America and Europe,” Reese said. “If we could find a cardinal who could turn that around, that would be the ideal.”
As the College of Cardinals prepares to enter the conclave, a deeply religious process by which they choose the next pope, many wonder whether Benedict XVI’s successor will be considerably like-minded, since many of the cardinals in a position to select the next leader were chosen by Benedict himself. In fact, Benedict fortified the conclave’s heavily Italian presence, raising the number of Italians eligible to vote on a successor by a third since his election to succeed John Paul II.
“They will always look at the Italians first,” Reese said.”The odds are in favor of a European pope but we can always be surprised.”

Yale Prof's View of Catholic Church

Fascinating view of the Church from a Yale history prof.  This was published in the New York Times.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/opinion/global/which-catholic-church.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 

February 26, 2013

Which Catholic Church?

By PAUL KENNEDY

Being about the only professor at a liberal, tolerant, cosmopolitan Western university who is known to be a practicing Catholic — baptized at the age of two weeks — I have been asked frequently in recent times about what I think will happen to the church in the light of Pope Benedict’s resignation. Will it split further, between conservatives and liberals? Will there be an African pope? When will there ever be female priests, then bishops? What about declining attendance of the European congregations (as opposed to the surging populations in the southern world)?

I sigh. When I turn to my daily newspapers, I sigh further, at the stereotyping, the false assumptions, the hostility in some quarters, the focus upon protocol rather than substance, the obsession with fiscal laxities at the Vatican rather than the proclaimed mission of Christ. Much of this criticism is boringly predictable; I may be wrong, but I suspect it might be hard to find a month, for example, when New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd does not launch an attack upon the papacy and the Catholic Church. And when the College of Cardinals announces the successor to Benedict, there will be fervid speculation about the new pope’s attitude toward divorce, abortion, the Jews, secularism in Italy, and so on.

That is one view of the Catholic Church, the church of hierarchy, tradition, formalism, its bursts of reform soon restrained by a return to conservatism. It is the church so familiar to the minds of secularists, pagans and anti-Catholics everywhere. It is the church of the 19th-century popes. It is the church of infallibility, incense, candles, and of Latin masses. Pushing it further, it is the church of financial corruption and sexual abuse. It is the church of stereotype, which is not wise.

In the early 1790s, as Europe reeled under the shock of the French Revolution, the great English politician and philosopher Edmund Burke warned against condemning an entire nation, a France of about 30 million souls, for the troubles and wars. Shouldn’t we be wary of condemning a church of roughly 1 billion believers?

On Wednesday last week, I went, as I usually do, to work in the lunchtime soup kitchen of the St. Thomas More Catholic chaplaincy at Yale University in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, founded almost 30 years ago to meet the needs of the poor and hungry. Among our customers, there was the usual group of permanent down-and-outs, meth addicts, drinkers, druggies, and dignified older ladies and gentlemen who had recently lost their jobs and decided to take our food so they could spend their pittances on energy bills. There was a father with four young kids; the local schools had closed because of a blizzard, so they could not get their free school lunches. To talk with our clients is sometimes a revelation. Just a few weeks ago, I talked with a young man (never seen before or since) who wanted to discuss the poems of Shelley and Keats — plus Eliot’s “Four Quartets”!

The helpers at the soup kitchen are all volunteers; they would never expect to be remunerated. Not everyone is Catholic, but most are. They are the parishioners who live around Yale and come in for Sunday Mass and collegiality. They are the Yale students who also work in the downtown evening soup kitchen, or in the men’s overflow night shelter. A number of them are going off to Guatemala in mid-March to help rebuild a village still hurting from the civil wars. They welcome guest speakers and participate in theological discussion groups. This is not a dead or decaying church. It is vibrant and pulsing, rejoicing also in the beauty of the services (especially the sung Masses) and the sheer intellectualism of the homilies. It is our Catholic Church. Nobody is leaving it. What happens in Rome is, well, distant.

A few Sundays ago, the Gospel featured that very familiar tale of “the Good Samaritan” (Luke 10:25-37). A man going to Jericho from Jerusalem was assaulted by robbers, then left to die in the ditch. A priest came by, and rode on. A Levite came by, and did not stop. But the despised Samaritan stopped, took the unknown victim to an inn and paid for all that he needed. Note that the benefactor did not assist a family member, or a college friend, or a favored charity. That’s simply not enough. “Even the pagans do that!” scoffed Jesus in another address.

The litmus test is whether you help the unknown, the desperate-looking person at the soup kitchen, the beggar on the street. At the end of his striking homily upon this passage, the remarkable Catholic chaplain at Yale told us bluntly: “This is the test. Do you love your unknown neighbor as yourself? Do you love your dirty, hairy, smelly, dispossessed neighbor as yourself, and will you reach out to help?” Loving your God, and loving your known and unknown neighbors as yourself, is the core. Everything else, said Father Bob, “is footnotes.” Wow. The married-priests issue is a footnote; the female-priests issue is a footnote; so is divorce, contraception, Latin Masses, changes in the liturgy, even perhaps the death penalty.

What matters is your reaching out to help. That’s the sole question you will be asked when you reach the Pearly Gates.

Does this mean that Catholics do not need a worldwide church structure? Not at all. We need the parish, the parish priest, the parish church, where most of us will be baptized, take Communion and confession, get married and eventually enjoy the last rites. But those parishes reside under the protective umbrella of a diocese and its bishop — and the line from a bishop goes straight to Rome.

The physical parish church offers not only a place for public worship but also a place for study groups, social and fund-raising events, soup kitchens and the like. Nobody, surely, wants to be like the early Christians, wandering through deserts and hillsides, without a physical place of worship, without roots. We need the Church Physical, just as we need the Church Ethical and the Church Social. Even the modest Quakers, with their great commitment to prayer and social justice, need meeting houses, organization and a network.

But no one launching an attack upon the papal elections, Vatican finances, sexism and the rest should think that they are attacking Catholicism per se. From my perspective, our Catholic Church is vibrant, helpful, intellectual, and working in so many ways to fulfill the message to love God and to love, and reach out to, one’s unknown neighbor. Everything else is, well, footnotes.

Paul Kennedy is Dilworth Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University; and the author of many books, including “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.”

TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES

Young Catholics: What Kind of Church Do They Want?

Annie Selak's article in the Washington Post is well worth pondering.  - Fr. Rick
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/guest-voices/post/the-church-young-catholics-want/2013/02/14/de08eae2-760a-11e2-95e4-6148e45d7adb_blog.html

Posted at 04:10 PM ET, 02/14/2013

The church young Catholics want

By Annie Selak

(This photo is the Pope in Australia.  This is not the photo that appeared with this article in The Washington Post.  I choose this photo from goggle images to illustrate this article - Fr. Rick)

Pope Benedict XVI walks past a figurine of baby Jesus as he leads the Christmas Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican December 24, 2011. REUTERS/Max Ross (MAX ROSSI - REUTERS)

With the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, all eyes are turned to the future of the Roman Catholic Church. Rather than getting caught up in a game of the most likely candidates to serve as the next pope (a different type of March Madness for Catholics), I think it’s helpful to take a step back and think about what we hope the future church will look like. I’m a young Catholic. I work with college age Catholics. What do young Catholics want?

- A church that takes our experience seriously: If you dig through church teaching, you can see that experience is a valid and necessary aspect of forming conscience. However, it does not feel like that is the case. Whether it is the sexual abuse crisis or new translation of the Roman Missal, the church seems distant from what is actually going on in the world. We want the church to ask the questions we are asking, rather than ones that seem trivial at best and irrelevant at worst. Catholicism can recover from mistakes, but one thing the church cannot recover from is being irrelevant.

-A church that emphasizes the inclusive ministry of Jesus: Jesus was incredible, right? Why is it that we so rarely hear about that? Jesus consistently reached out to those marginalized from the community, yet the church does not follow suit. Who are the marginalized today? Most young Catholics are quick to point to two groups: women and people who do not identify as heterosexual. Regardless of political leanings, there is an overwhelming consensus that the church needs to do better in these areas. The Vatican has repeatedly shut down any dialogue surrounding the ordination of women and church teaching on homosexuality. At the very least, these issues need to be opened up to a thoughtful, informed dialogue that includes historical analysis, social sciences, tradition and Scripture (notably, all areas the church affirms in the formation of conscience). There is an urgency to these issues, as these are not nameless people on the margins, these are our friends, family members, mentors,and leaders. One of the things that draws young people to the Gospel is the inclusivity of Jesus; how is it that the exclusivity of the church turns people away?

-A church that embraces that God is everywhere: The younger generation of the church resonates with the universal notion of Catholicism. We see diversity and unity as two concepts that go together, rather than being opposites. Moreover, we recognize the importance of other religions. Some of Pope Benedict XVI’s biggest missteps related to his interactions with other religions. But young Catholics have grown up alongside people from different religions who are some of the holiest people we know. Nostra Aetate , Vatican II’s “Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions” affirms that God is present in other religions, yet you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the pews on a Sunday morning who knows this. We need to affirm and emphasize that God is present in other religions and sincerely work on improving our relationships with them.

-A church that engages struggles and is open to dialogue: We want to wrestle with the hard questions of how our experience interacts with Scripture and tradition. Yet, it feels like young Catholics are alone in this desire. Many young people respond to this vacuum in two ways: by either taking everything the hierarchy says as absolute truth or completely disregarding the church. Neither of these responses are what the church actually calls us to do. We do not need answers; we need to engage the world. We do not want to be spoon-fed theology. Rather, we want to wrestle, grapple, use our minds, engage our hearts, debate, think and pray. And we want our church to do that with us.

In Mass we say that “we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” So too, in this time of transition in the church, we wait in joyful hope of a Catholicism that lives out the Gospel in our modern world. We, the young generation of the church, are yearning for the Gospel of Jesus. We want the church to get its hands dirty and be engaged and relevant in our lives, helping us to share this good news throughout the world.

Annie Selak is a lay minister in the Roman Catholic Church and specializes in the question of young adults and vocation in the modern world.

By Annie Selak  |  04:10 PM ET, 02/14/2013

National Catholic Reporter on Pope and Clergy Sex Abuse

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/jesuit-expert-calls-benedict-great-reformer-sex-abuse

Jesuit expert calls Benedict 'great reformer' on sex abuse

• 
  Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner presents the acts of a 2012 symposium on sex abuse to Pope Benedict XVI on Feb. 1

John L. Allen Jr.  |  Feb. 16, 2013 NCR Today  Rome

One difficulty in assessing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI on the sexual abuse crisis is that the people making the assessments tend to know more about one end of the equation than the other. That is, they’re either papal observers struggling to make sense of the scandals, or people on the front lines of the scandals trying to understand the pope.
A rare figure with deep expertise in both is Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, the academic vice-rector of the Jesuit-run Gregorian University in Rome and head of its Institute of Psychology.
On the papal side, Zollner was born in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, more or less the hometown of Pope Benedict XVI, and holds degrees in philosophy and theology from the University of Regensburg where the future pope once taught. In Rome, he’s had a front-row seat for the last part of Benedict’s tenure at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the almost eight years of his papacy.
In terms of understanding the dynamics of abuse, Zollner’s credentials are equally impressive. He was licensed as a psychologist and psychotherapist in 2004, and in 2010 and 2011 he served as a member of the scientific working group of the “Round Table on Child Abuse” created by Germany’s federal government.
Zollner has studied the church’s rocky history on the issue at length, publishing the 2010 book Chiesa e pedofilia. Una ferita aperta. Un approccio psicologico-pastorale (“The Church and Pedophilia – An Open Wound: A Psychological and Pastoral Approach”), along with fellow Jesuit Fr. Giovanni Cucci.
In 2012, Zollner was chair of the organizing committee for a major international summit on the sex abuse crisis held at the Gregorian, and co-sponsored by several Vatican departments. Among other things, that summit marked the debut of a “Center for Child Protection” and an e-learning curriculum for church practitioners, intended to distill “best practices” in preventing abuse, detecting it when it occurs, responding to it in terms of civil and canon law, and reaching out to victims.
On Feb. 15, Zollner sat down for an interview with NCR to discuss Benedict’s record and the fallout from last’s year summit.
* * *
Now that Benedict XVI is stepping down, how do you evaluate his legacy on the sexual abuse scandals?
Based on what I know personally, at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he was the first person, and the most determined person, to take on what he called the ‘open wound’ in the body of the church, meaning the sexual abuse of minors by clergy. He came to know about a number of cases, and the intensity of the wounds inflicted on victims. He became aware of what priests had done to minors, and to vulnerable adults. As a result, he became more and more convinced that it has to be tackled, and at various levels he started to deal with it – the canonical level, the ecclesial, and the personal.
Benedict XVI is the first pope who has met with and listened to abuse victims, who has apologized, and who has written about the problem both in his letter to Irish bishops and in the book Light of the World.
One very important step was to concentrate all the legal and administrative procedures at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Another was to appoint a very intelligent, practical and dedicated man as Promoter of Justice.
You’re talking about Monsignor Charles Scicluna, now Bishop Scicluna in Malta?
Yes, Monsignor Scicluna, who was in that job for ten years. Now he’s appointed Father Robert Oliver [of the Boston archdiocese], which shows his resolution to go on – to do justice to the victims, to hold abusers within the church accountable, and to whatever can be done to promote prevention.
We had enormous support for the symposium on abuse last February by all the heads of the major offices in the Roman Curia – the Doctrine of the Faith, Propaganda Fide, Bishops, Education, the Secretariat of State. The Secretary of State wrote a letter to participants in which he quotes the pope. If you understand how Rome functions, all this could not have happened if there wasn’t a placet from above.
Other voices notwithstanding, and despite the bad image some people have created of the pope both as prefect and as Holy Father, he has been the most determined person to take this on. He’s been very encouraging for many people, including ourselves, to really face the issues and to try to do whatever can done to make sure that this evil within the church is acknowledged and is avoided as much as possible in the future.
You believe Benedict XVI will be remembered as a great reformer on the sex abuse front?
Yes, I do.
How do you explain his negative image?
Based on what I’ve read recently in the German newspapers, even in those that are rather critical of the church, all of them unanimously acknowledge that he was forced to face a crisis rooted in cases that often go back up to fifty or sixty years. Both in the last years of John Paul II and in his papacy, Benedict XVI was dealing with something that had lingered for decades. Unfortunately, he was made responsible for something that came to a broader public light in the last ten years or so, but it predates him. He got a bad image probably because people didn’t know how far back these cases went, and it was not communicated well enough how much he’s done to clean out the stables. He was the most important person in this.
Why do you think that story is so hard to tell?
Probably because his public image as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith got in the way. It was so opposite to who he really is. Whoever has worked with him, whoever has encountered him personally, as we did two weeks ago when we presented the proceedings of the symposium to him, knows that he’s the most humble, most sensitive person. He’s very much aware of who’s in front of him, so he really takes the individual into account. That’s so contrary to the public image of the “panzer cardinal” and so on … a very rigid, conservative person. He has his convictions, but he’s much more open-minded.
He encountered the Jesuit professors here at the Gregorian in 2006, and he made a statement that was so profoundly encouraging to develop theology. I was there in 2008 when he addressed the Jesuit General Congregation members, made up of 220 Jesuits, and some of them were fairly apprehensive. He gave a brilliant talk which took many of us by surprise because of its openness, and its deep understanding of the needs of the church today. He praised Fr. [Pedro] Arrupe, he praised our work for social justice, he gave credit to the Jesuit Refugee Service, he singled out the pioneering work of dialogue with culture of Matteo Ricci, and he called us to go to the frontiers, acknowledging that going there means being at the edge, in difficulties, and not always having the right answer. It was both deeply consoling and challenging.
The public image and the reality are just so different. For instance, bishops with a story of scandals, most of them personal, have been asked to step down. That’s happened in Europe, in Latin America, in Africa, and in other places.
One of the reasons it’s tough to style Benedict as a reformer, at least in the United States, is precisely because the perception is that bishops have not been held accountable. We have a bishop in Kansas City who pled guilty to not reporting suspected child abuse, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston received a position in Rome, and now Cardinal Roger Mahony is on his way to the conclave despite having been relieved of administrative and public duties by his successor. What about accountability for bishops?
I know this is a constant question from American journalists and the public. I was there when Monsignor Scicluna responded to your question on this point at the symposium last year.
He said we need greater accountability mechanisms for bishops.
Yes, the question really is not resolved. It’s complicated to work out clear procedures, partly because civil law and church law often don’t coincide in many instances and in many countries. We’ve tried to promote understanding of this point, but I know it’s hard to do. The civil law in the United States on these issues, for instance, is not the law in other countries. What your people ask for may not be what Germans, or Italians, or Malaysians, would ask for, and so it’s hard to arrive at a common standard [of accountability] for the entire world.
Obviously, we have to think about how accountability for bishops can be put in place, clearly and recognizably. Despite its hierarchical nature, the church actually doesn’t have clear procedures for some of these issues. For instance, the role of the bishops’ conference [in enforcing accountability] is not clear, the role of the Metropolitan is not clear.
I was a bit surprised by Monsignor Scicluna’s reply to you, because he seemed to suggest that it all goes back to the pope. The poor pope can’t possibly deal with every one of these situations. There have to be intermediate steps, and these are not yet in place. That’s probably true not only of the church, but of many other institutions. Who’s responsible for a teacher who abuses a child in a school? Is it the principal, the superintendent, the regional administrator, the minister for education in that country?
In American lawsuits, they would probably all be named.
That’s not the case in Europe, where the fault in civil law lies with the single person.
It’s not only a question of how we deal with sex abuse cases and the responsibility of the superior or the bishops. There are also other situations, such as financial misconduct, physical abuse, and various kinds of scandals. It’s not dealt with adequately in church law, and the picture is very complex.
Both in the church and in society, people have learned a lot in the past ten years in terms of developing protocols and systems to ensure child safety, and are moving in the right direction, although there remains much still to be done. But Benedict XVI should be given the credit for taking important institutional first steps.
The symposium a year ago seemed to send a signal that the Vatican and Rome was trying to gets its hands around the issue. One year later, what have the fruits been?
The major fruit is that around the world, church leaders at various levels and the faithful have come to a much higher awareness and sensitivity. More people are coming to understand that abuse at the hands of priests has happened in all countries and other church employees, as in other institutions. There’s a growing conviction that we can’t tolerate this, we have to do whatever can be done to do justice to victims, we must stop the abusers and bring them to do justice, and we have to whatever we can to prevent these crimes.
Last weekend I was in Poland, giving some lectures to psychologists. A week before I arrived, a Dutch journalist living in Poland published a book in which he presents twelve interviews he did with victims of clerical abuse in Poland. One of my Polish Jesuit brothers said, ‘You were right. I never believed this had happened in Poland, because if it had the Communists would have used it against us. Now I see that it’s true.’ If that’s happening in Poland and other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, which has a very conservative church climate, and where people didn’t believe it could have happened because of their unique circumstances, it’s striking. The same thing is happening in Latin America. I’ve talking to the bishops’ conferences and a wider public in Chile and Argentina in April. They get the point, and it tells me we’ve made a major step forward.
What about Asia and Africa?
It varies from country to country. In the Philippines they’re ahead of Eastern Europe. Much has been done, because of the public scandals there and because of the contact the bishops have with the United States. The cardinal of Manila is the best example. He’s given talks in the States on this issue, and he’s made it clear this is a major concern that has to be handled by the church in the Philippines. The same thing is true for Thailand, where abuse is rampant among sexual tourists there, and the church is the forefront of protecting children and women.
In Confucianist countries such as Korea and Japan, it is quite difficult to talk about sexual abuse publicly. We know from statistics that abuse in the family is a serious problem, but the church hasn’t really taken any public position. In India we’re working with 17 Jesuit provinces to fight the wider problem of child abuse, not just in the church. One government study in India, where the population obviously is mostly Hindu and Muslim, claims that fifty percent of young people are abused.
Africa, as both Monsignor Scicluna and Father Oliver have said, is far behind in many countries in setting up guidelines and acknowledging the problem. One challenge, and this is very hard to convey to a broader public, is the cultural differences. This is not the Anglo-Saxon legal system and puritanical moral system. In many African countries, for example, it’s normal to marry a girl at 14, 15 and 16, and to have children at that age. In Angola, there are initiation rites for boys at the age of 13 to 16. They stay in ‘boy camps’ for one to two years, where they’re introduced to sexuality, including what by our standards would include abuse. We have to understand a bit more what sexuality means for the peoples of Africa, and how they understand sexual interaction with minors. The civil law may be completely different from the practice. If the culture, or the tribe, or the family says that you marry at 16, then it doesn’t matter with the law says. Actually, that’s often true in India with the caste system.
In Kenya we’re working with the Malindi diocese on the east coast, which is a center for sexual tourism by Europeans and Americans. The bishop of Malindi, who’s a Maltese Capuchin, opened a help desk for the victims of abuse in the family, through sexual tourism, and possibly also by priests. At the first conference organized by the Center for Child Protection in Munich, a Kenyan priest told us about a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy who has two sisters, twelve and ten. They don’t have parents anymore because of AIDS. He sells his sisters to tourists so all three can survive. That kind of context helps us to understand the wider perspective in which the African church is trying to handle abuse cases. What does ‘abuse’ mean in that context?
Of course, some things are universal. If you violate the body, the mind and the freedom of a minor, that’s clearly abuse. The appropriate responses, however, are complicated, and we have to be aware that we’re far from having a ‘one size fits all’ response.
The archbishop of Tamale in Ghana was here two days ago. He’s a broad-minded man, with a degree in church history from Germany. He told me that the seminary now has problems they didn’t have thirty years ago. He wants to promote awareness, and this is where we think our approach can make a difference. He works together with UNICEF and other NGOs to fight abuse, which gives credit to the efforts of the church. It’s so different from the situation in some parts of Europe and North America; in Africa we can really help the victims speak out, to help stop the abuse, and to raise awareness that this is an important issue not just for the church but the entire society.
What’s another fruit?
One that will have important consequences has to do with the [anti-abuse] guidelines established by bishops’ conferences, which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had requested be submitted for review and comment by June 2012. More than 75 percent of conferences have responded. Virtually every European country, all the countries in North and South America, and most Asian countries have sent them in. The bulk of the ones missing are in Africa, where there are 36 bishops’ conferences. However, many of them sent representatives to the symposium, and they’ve at least begun to think about how to shape a set of guidelines for their situation.
Let’s remember that in countries such as Mali and Congo, there’s a war going on. Obviously, it’s hard to think about a set of guidelines in those circumstances. But we see the momentum even in these places, and I’m sure the Congregation for the Faith will continue to push. They’ll also get their observations back, and the congregation is being very clear.
How is the e-learning center going?
It’s going very well. We have funding for three years, so we can find out whether this platform can function in various languages, cultures and continents. The initial feedback is very good. The interest is exploding, from NGOs, political institutions, research institutes. We also want to do it in a scientifically rigorous way, so by the end of 2014 we should have something to present that’s sustainable.
How many church practitioners have made use of it?
At the moment, there are around 250 practitioners and 60 trainers involved, in the eight countries in which we are present at the moment.
What’s the future of the Center for Child Protection?
First of all, we want to consolidate the e-learning program, with everything that church practitioners need, and later on for others who want to join the program. The basics are how to recognize that a child possibly has been abused, how to act with the abuser, and what’s the correct civil and canon law. We have to be aware of the cultural issues, which will raise many questions.
We also want to develop the theological reflection on this issue, which has not had much development. There’s actually very little.
We also have to sort out how we can best promote and expand these efforts. Child protection is one concern, protection of vulnerable adults is another, and women’s rights are another. We need to think about how to combine them.
Also, we need to think about how to connect our program with other areas and resources. For instance, the Jesuit Refugee Service has a program that connects various Jesuit universities through e-learning programs. We could insert this one, and it has a wide reach. In India, for instance, the Jesuits have an immense network of schools. In Indonesia, the Jesuits have a university where the students are seventy to eighty percent Muslims. This opens up a totally new area, involving the Muslim community in this network and acknowledging what happens in the Muslim community.
You’re saying this is not just an exercise in crisis management, but a permanent commitment?
Surely, yes.

Rick Malloy, S.J., on Pope Benedict's Decision!

 Pope Benedict XVI Steps Down.

 Richard G. Malloy, S.J., Ph.D.

Vice President for University Mission and Ministry, the University of Scranton

(Front Page Story in the University of Scranton's paper, the Aquinas, Feb 15 2013)

This week we saw something that hasn’t happened in 719 years.  A Pope resigned.  This is a wise and humble choice on the part of Benedict XVI.  He has led the church since 2005, taking over from the charismatic and beloved John Paul II.  Admittedly more shy and less media savvy and charismatic than his predecessor, Benedict has charmed many he visited, e.g. his USA trip in 2008.

Celestine V in 1294 A.D. was the last Pope to voluntarily resign as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  (Gregory XII was forced to resign in 1415, and so ended a painful schism, in the Western church where two Popes were claiming the Papacy).

Benedict’s eight years as head of the world’s more than one billion Catholics have not been easy.  He had to deal with the never ending revelations of priests’ sex scandals and Bishops mishandling of these matters.  Benedict XVI has been less the conservative enforcer some predicted and has certainly not made the conservative –liberal logjam any worse than it was when he took office.  Still, relations with religious women, and especially two well respected female theologians, Margaret Farley and Elizabeth Johnson, did not please the Catholic left.  But the Catholic right has not been pleased with what some see as his unwillingness to take a hard line and “crack down” on dissenters. 

This Pope is a brilliant theologian and an astute reader of the signs of the times.  He realizes that women and men of faith gain more by the patient and prayerful work of persuasion than the bludgeon of deafening dogma.  In the long run, dictators never win true allegiance of hearts and minds. 

Especially in his writings (hundreds of articles, multiple books, Encyclicals and three recent popular books on the life of Jesus), Benedict has been a voice of faith grounded in solid biblical scholarship.  Jim Martin, S.J., notes, “in [his] books, the pope brought to bear decades of scholarship and prayer to the most important question that a Christian can ask: Who is Jesus?  This is the pope’s primary job--to introduce people to Jesus--and Pope Benedict did that exceedingly well.” http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/popes-legacy

Benedict’s voice calls for faith in an age where faith is fragile.  The erosion of faith in European and First world countries threatens the life of the church.  Yet hope rises where the church is blossoming, in places like Africa, Asia and Latin America.  China has seen Christianity grow exponentially in recent decades.

In his Introduction to Christianity, Benedict writes, “one could very well describe Christianity as a philosophy of freedom” and “The Christian message is basically nothing else than the transmission of the testimony that love has managed to break through death here and thus has transformed fundamentally the situation of us all.” (1968, p. 158; p. 307)

Jesuit Father Drew Christiansen argues that Benedict’s “encyclical Caritas in Veritate, with its affirmation of structural reform as ‘political charity’ and his call for a global authority to regulate the financial sector, may be the most radical since John XXIII's Pacem in terris 50 years ago.” http://americamagazine.org/content/all-things/benedicts-legacy

In Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict movingly reveals his view of God who exists in loving relationship.  “We see that to be God’s child is not a matter of dependency, but rather of standing in the relation of love that sustains man’s existence and gives it meaning and grandeur.  One last question: Is God also Mother?  The Bible does compare God’s love with the love of a mother.  …  The mystery of God’s maternal love is expressed with particular power in the Hebrew word rahamim, … ‘womb,’ later used to mean divine compassion, … God’s mercy.  The womb is the most concrete expression for the interrelatedness of two lives and of loving concern…” (2007, p. 139).

Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927 and ordained a priest in 1951.  He has been serving the church in many capacities for over six decades.  He merits some time to relax, read and pray.  Maybe he’ll even have some more time to write.

College students know how to use twitter.  “Tweet” the Pope at his twitter handle “@pontifex” and say, “Thanks.”

Pope Benedict's Challenge to Redistribute Wealth and Bring Justice and Peace

Pope Benedict's profound five page letter, "Educating Young People in Justice and Peace" (click here for full document) (Jan 2012) is well worth reading and praying over these last days of Advent. Peace - Fr. Rick
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Educating in peace

5. “Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity.”8 We Christians believe that Christ is our true peace: in him, by his Cross, God has reconciled the world to himself and has broken down the walls of division that separated us from one another (cf. Eph 2:14-18); in him, there is but one family, reconciled in love.

Peace, however, is not merely a gift to be received: it is also a task to be undertaken. In order to be true peacemakers, we must educate ourselves in compassion, solidarity, working together, fraternity, in being active within the community and concerned to raise awareness about national and international issues and the importance of seeking adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth, the promotion of growth, cooperation for development and conflict resolution. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:9).

Peace for all is the fruit of justice for all, and no one can shirk this essential task of promoting justice, according to one’s particular areas of competence and responsibility. To the young, who have such a strong attachment to ideals, I extend a particular invitation to be patient and persevering in seeking justice and peace, in cultivating the taste for what is just and true, even when it involves sacrifice and swimming against the tide.