ROME, December 2, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In 1988 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then-head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, attempted to bring reforms to the Code of Canon Law that would have forced local bishops to observe proper juridical procedures against priests accused of sexual abuse, and impose specific penalties against them if they were found guilty.

In an article published today by the Vatican’s press office, Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta Ochoa de Chinchetru, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, shows that Pope Benedict XVI has for decades attempted to reform the process by which “graviora delicta,” or grave crimes, including sexual abuse of minors by clerics, are tried in the Church.

Bishop Arrieta writes, “The initiative [for reform] sprang from a deeply-held conviction of the Pontiff, the fruit of years of personal experience, and from his concern for the integrity and the consistent application of Church discipline.”

The article highlights a letter, dated to 1988, by Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), asking the Vatican office responsible for the Church’s Code of Canon Law, for “a more rapid and simplified penal process.”

Ratzinger had argued that as the head of the office dealing with faith and morals, the grave crimes involving the sexual abuse of minors fell under his own jurisdiction. He asked that such cases be dealt with by his office, the CDF, rather than entirely locally by bishops in their own dioceses.

At that time, the cardinal’s request was refused. In a letter to Cardinal Ratzinger, dated March 10, 1988, the head of what was then called the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of the Code of Canon Law, said, “I can well understand Your Eminence’s concern at the fact that the Ordinaries [local bishops] involved did not first exercise their judicial power in order to punish such crimes sufficiently, even to protect the common good of the faithful.”

“Nevertheless the problem seems to lie not with juridical procedure, but with the responsible exercise of the task of governance.”

The Pontifical Commission acknowledged the “deplorable” result of the then-recent changes to Canon Law that allowed bishops to apply what was called “pastoral governance” in such cases. This new principle, the Commission said, “ultimately is not pastoral at all, because it tends to obscure the due exercise of authority, thereby damaging the common good of the faithful.”

Nevertheless, the Commission said it would be “dangerous” to circumvent existing procedures, and that it preferred instead to “exhort those in positions of responsibility to implement the provisions of the law.”
In 1983, the Church issued a new Code of Canon Law that used the concept of “subsidiarity,” or decentralization, to mean in practice that the judicial power of the Church was placed almost exclusively into the hands of the local bishops. Approved as a “guiding principle” by the Second Vatican Council in 1967, Ratzinger believed subsidiarity had allowed too much local interpretation, and failed to serve the interests of objective justice, both in allowing for due process and the right of defense for those accused, and in requiring just penalties for those found guilty.

The U.S. bishops have admitted that before the scandals of widespread sexual abuse in the Church were revealed by the press in 2001, it was a common practice simply to move an offending priest from parish to parish after he had received “counseling,” normally without informing his new parishioners of his past.

Formal canonical proceedings were often considered too lengthy and cumbersome by bishops who preferred to handle accusations in-house. Until Ratzinger began to introduce reforms, Bishop Arrieta wrote, the norms of Canon Law were applied in local chanceries with “the constant fluidity that characterized the normative framework of the postconciliar period.”

One notorious case of the use of “pastoral governance” by local bishops was that of the archdiocese of Milwaukee, where the principle was applied in the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy, who was proven to have sexually abused boys for years in a school for the deaf. In a radio interview, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, the active homosexual poster-boy of the liberal “progressive” wing of the American Catholic Church, accused the Vatican and Ratzinger of having ignored the case until Murphy was too old to be tried.

After the secular media had taken up Weakland’s accusation against Ratzinger, however, it was revealed that Murphy’s victims had actually started complaining to authorities, including the Church, in the 1950s, but Weakland had waited until 1996 to inform the competent authorities in Rome.

In 1984, Weakland notoriously responded to a group of teachers in a Catholic school who were reporting sexual abuse by local priests, saying “any libelous material found in your letter will be scrutinized carefully by our lawyers.”

Bishop Arrieta noted that since the introduction of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, a “widespread anti-juridical bias [among bishops]… continues to exercise a degree of influence, giving rise, among other things, to the supposed difficulty of harmonizing the demands of pastoral charity with those of justice and good governance.”

The wording of the new Code, he said, “where tolerance is invoked, could be misinterpreted as seeking to dissuade the Ordinary from applying penal sanctions where the demands of justice require them.”

In 2007, Pope Benedict asked officials to re-examine the Church’s penal code. A draft document will be issued this week that will include the reforms that Cardinal Ratzinger had unsuccessfully requested 22 years ago.

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Pope on homosexuality among priests: “one of the miseries of the Church”

LifeSiteNews.com reported on November 25, 2010:   

Even if homosexuality were innate, it would not make the behavior morally acceptable, Pope Benedict told interviewer Peter Seewald in the new interview book “Light of the World.”

When Seewald observed that homosexuality exists in monasteries and among priests, the Pope responded: “Well, that is just one of the miseries of the church. And the persons who are affected must at least try not to express this inclination actively,” according to Catholic News Service.

On page 151 of the book, which has already sold out in Italy, when asked about the acceptance of homosexuality in the West, the Pope affirmed the “meaning and direction of sexuality,” which he said is “to bring about the union of man and woman, and in this way to give humanity posterity, children, a future. This is the determination internal to the essence of sexuality. Everything else is against sexuality’s intrinsic meaning and direction.”

“This is a point we need to hold firm, even if it is not pleasing to our age,” the Pope added.

In November 2005, the Congregation for Catholic Education released the “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocation with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.”

The Instruction, approved by Pope Benedict, forbade admission to seminary to “those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’.”

“Such persons, in fact, find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women,” said the document. “One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

The matter was so contentious that many bishops refused to implement the Instruction, requiring the Vatican to reaffirm the instruction in 2008.

"Man shall not condone evil or rationalize sin. Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of God and man! The Creator condemns those who do not repent of this sin." - Our Lady of the Roses, August 5, 1977

"Are you so blind that you do not recognize the acceleration of sin among you? Murders abound, thievery, all manner of carnage, destruction of young souls, abortion, homosexuality, condemned from the beginning of time by the Eternal Father. Yet sin has become a way of life. Sin is condoned now, even unto the highest judge of your land and your lands throughout the world. As you have sown so shall you reap. Sin is death, not only of the spirit, but of the body. Wars are a punishment for man's sin, his greed, his avarice." - Our Lady of the Roses, August 14, 1981

 

Our Lady of the Roses Bayside messages:

These prophecies came from Jesus, Mary, and the saints to Veronica Lueken at Bayside, NY, from 1968 to 1995.

SIN IS INSANITY
"I have told you, counseled you in the past, that sin is insanity. Your world and its people are involved--they walk as on a treadmill, seeking power and money and material goods and pleasure. And they go round and about, never stopping as the world plunges faster to the abyss.” – Our Lady, August 4, 1979  

FREE WILL
"I say unto you, as your God, I bring not your destruction. You will bring about your own destruction, for I leave you, as your God, to the exercise of your free will. In your free will, if you reject your God and the plan for man's redemption as given from the beginning of time, I say unto you, you will destroy yourselves.
     "Sin is insanity; insanity shall be loosed upon your world. There will come a time, if you continue on your present path, so vile and evil upon mankind that those who are living will envy the dead.” – Jesus, May 18, 1977  

THE GREAT FOUNDATION
"Pray constantly your Rosary, your beads of prayer to Heaven. Remain unified in your family lives. The institution of your country--the great foundation is based on family life. Destroy the family and you destroy your country. The enemies--the enemy is already within your country. Watch and pray well, My children." - Our Lady, June 18, 1980 

READ  YOUR  BIBLES
"Your word of homosexuality can be explained by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Read in your Bibles or consult your clergy.  Find yourselves, My children, a humble, pious clergy.  Many have fallen away from the Faith." Our Lady, October 6, 1992  

PASTORS  HELD  RESPONSIBLE
"We hold the pastors of My Son's House, We hold them as being responsible for the fall of the children.  Be ye warned now, My children, that woe to the man who has this responsibility upon his conscience and his soul.  Scandals have been brought into the lives of your children.  Perversion, homosexuality, immorality, perverted sex, My children-where shall you stop but at the abyss!" Our Lady, December 7, 1977 

AN  ABOMINATION
"Man shall not condone evil or rationalize sin. Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of God and man! The Creator condemns those who do not repent of this sin." Our Lady, August 5, 1977 

BLACK  CLOUD  OVER  AMERICA
"In the days of Sodom, so too were men giving themselves over to all the pleasures of the flesh: eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage. All manner of sinful lusts are being committed. Men shameful with men, women casting aside their role of motherhood and lusting after women. As it was in the days of Sodom, so now is this black cloud over America."  Our Lady, July 14, 1979 

SODOM:  "WE  DESTROYED  IT"
"And the great issue now of homosexuality in your country, that shall be on the balance that Michael holds.  Unless this balance is evened by removing this evil from your country and bringing in just laws to prevent the spread of homosexuality, you cannot be saved; your country cannot be saved.  Because I repeat again, as I have repeated in the past:  When a country has given itself over to immorality and all pleasures of the flesh, and abominations of the flesh, then that country will fall!  If you do not believe Me, My children, I say:  You will read your history books, and you will find out that there was a Sodom and Gomorrah.  And what did We do to that abominable city, Sodom?  We destroyed it!  And what did We do to Gomorrah?  We destroyed it!  And We destroyed all who did not follow the plan for their redemption." Jesus, November 1, 1985  

SIN:  FORERUNNER  OF  WAR
"For sin is always a forerunner for war, My children:  murders, persecutions, robberies, all manners of sins of the flesh, homosexuality, lesbianism, perversion, sodomy.  Sodom and Gomorrah fell for less sins than you have committed now upon your earth.  Noah took to the ark and the world was in a better state spiritually than your world now; for you have accepted a sophisticated manner of sin, based on man's reasoning and not God's truth." Our Lady, October 2, 1979  

ANY  COUNTRY
"Any country that allows homosexuals to roam and to seduce the young shall be destroyed."  Our Lady, June 30, 1984

Directives from Heaven

D161 - The Great Apostasy  PDF
D167 - The Family - Part 1  PDF
D168 - The Family - Part 2  PDF
D174 - Homosexuality, Part 2   PDF
D175 - Defilement of the Young   PDF
D176 - Sodom and Gomorrah   PDF
D177 - Seminaries   PDF

 

Article:

Links:

Catholic Medical Association: Homosexuality and Hope
http://www.cathmed.org/publications/homosexuality.html

Videos online:

Vatican II Watch here...	World Monetary Crash Watch here...	Deception of the Century Watch here...	Third Secret Fabrication Watch here...
The Miraculous Story of Bayside Watch here...	A Pilgrimage to Our Lady of the Roses Shrine Watch here...	Jacinta's Third Secret vision: She saw Pope Paul VI Watch here...	Consecrate Russia Watch here (Part 1) (Part 2)