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April 30, 2005
Singing The Eucharistic Prayer
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
About 6-8 months ago I contacted one of the apologist at Catholic Answers regarding our Priest singing the Eucharistic (presidential) Prayers. The woman apologist (I don't remember her name) consulted with you and the answer came back that it was acceptable. She even stated that you had researched it and found accompaniment for the prayers. [Actually, I already knew about the accompaniment. What I did was look it up and show it to her--ja] Since that time I have found in the GIRM para. 32 (The prayers and other parts pertaining to the Priest) that in fact this is not allowed. In fact on the Catholic Answers website in Redemptionis Sacramentum para. 53 reiterates the same point as the GIRM. Where did you get your information about singing the Eucharistic Prayers? This is becoming a huge issue in our church and I want to make sure I'm correct before pressing the correction of this problem.
It's understandable why, but you appear to be misreading RS 53 and GIRM 32. Let's look at them to see where the difficulty is. First, here's Redemptionis Sacramentum 53:
While the Priest proclaims the Eucharistic Prayer “there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent”,[GIRM 32] except for the people’s acclamations that have been duly approved, as described below.
You'll note that the passage states that there is to be no other prayers or singing going on while the priest proclaims the Eucharistic Prayer. It doesn't say that he isn't to sing (or that he isn't to pray). This is a restriction on what other people can do during this time (note that to the general rule that the people say or sing nothing it makes an exception for the acclamations of the people that are prescribed during this time). It is not a limitation on what the priest does (unless he wanted to play a musical instrument while proclaiming the Eucharistic Prayer, God forbid).
You'll also note that the passage being quoted is the other one you mention, GIRM 32. Here's the text of that:
The nature of the “presidential” texts demands that they be spoken in a loud and clear voice and that everyone listen with attention. Thus, while the priest is speaking these texts, there should be no other prayers or singing, and the organ or other musical instruments should be silent.
This is just making the point that they want the presidential texts delivered loud enough for everyone to hear, that they don't want any competing noise so everyone can pay attention. Nothing here excludes the priest singing.
Now, you might think that that something does because this passage refers to the presidential texts being "spoken," which you might conclude excludes singing. Except that it doesn't. Just a bit further down the road the GIRM clarifies that it's going to use words like "say" and "proclaim" to be inclusive both of singing and recitation. Here's GIRM 38:
In texts that are to be spoken in a loud and clear voice, whether by the priest or the deacon, or by the lector, or by all, the tone of voice should correspond to the genre of the text itself, that is, depending upon whether it is a reading, a prayer, a commentary, an acclamation, or a sung text; the tone should also be suited to the form of celebration and to the solemnity of the gathering. Consideration should also be given to the idiom of different languages and the culture of different peoples.
In the rubrics and in the norms that follow, words such as “say” and “proclaim” are to be understood of both singing and reciting, according to the principles just stated above.
Now, you might say "Wait! GIRM 32 didn't use the word 'say' or 'proclaim.' It used the word 'spoken'!" Leaving aside that GIRM 38 says that this applies to words such as "say" and "proclaim" and that "speak" is a word that goes in that category, you would be right. The English translation does use a different word.
Which is why it's good to look up the Latin.
In the IGMR 38 (IGMR being the Latin GIRM), it says:
In rubricis ergo et in normis quae sequuntur, verba «dicere» vel «proferre» intellegi debent sive de cantu sive de recitatione, servatis principiis supra propositis.
And here's the relevant bit from IGMR 32:
Natura partium «praesidentialium» exigit ut clara et elata voce proferantur . . .
As you can see, IGMR 32 uses a form of proferre. Specifically, it's the third person plural present passive subjunctive form: "they are to be proclaimed."
So the speak/proclaim distinction is an artifact of the English translation. The Latin makes it clear that "proclaim" is being used in both cases.
The only other possible scruple I could see someone having here is that GIRM 38 refers to the "norms that follow" and one might interpret this exclusively of GIRM 32 since it is numerically earlier. That, however, would be chopping matters more finely than the authors of the text intended. They simply do not write law with that level of rigor over there. This is being written for liturgical professionals, and they expect the reader to have a sense of how things are done in the liturgy. Singing the Eucharistic Prayer has a looooong history, and so they expect the intended reader (a liturgical professioal) to recognize that the use of proferre in GIRM 32 doesn't exclude it--particularly when people sing the Eucharistic Prayer all the time and GIRM 38 says proferre includes singing AND one other important fact . . .
. . . the Missal contains sheet music for singing the Eucharistic Prayer.
In fact, it contains a lot of sheet music. Enough to sing all four Eucharistic Prayers (plus other texts). Since seeing is believing, I thought I'd scan the first page of Eucharistic Prayer I so you can see for yourself.
So here it is (click to enlarge), freshly scanned from the pages of my copy of the Sacramentary. You'll note from the image that it even includes singing the words of consecration (just like in the Eastern churches).
In view of all this, it sounds as if what your priest is doing is just fine and well within the tradition and law of the Church.
Hope this helps and that it reassures folks!
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Liturgy | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
While We're At It . . .
(Jimmy Akin)
I thought, while we were talking about the Aramaic underlying Matthew 16:18 ("You are Peter . . . ") that I'd show you this verse in the standard Armaic translation of the New Testament.
Many Catholics have heard that "kepha" is used in both places in this verse ("You are Peter \[kepha] and on this rock [kepha] I will build my Church . . . "), but few have seen it with their own eyes.
So I scanned it and here 'tis:
The standard Aramaic translation of the New Testament is known as the Pshitta or Peshitta (pronounce it the former way, not the latter). It is not generally regarded as an Aramaic original to the New Testament, but it is based on very early Aramaic versions that were utilized to produce a standard edition and, indeed, it uses kepha in both slots in this verse.
Because of the unfamiliarity of the scrip for most folks (NOTE: It's read right-to-left instead of left-to-right), I've circled the word kepha both times it appears in the text so folks can tell that it does appear twice.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Pope | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Hollow Peter???
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
Do you know of a place I can go to get an authoritative definition of the Aramaic word Kepha (Or however you would transliterate Simon Peter's Aramaic name meaning rock). I am in an online dialogue with some folks who say that Kepha in Aramaic means hollow rock and therefore would not be a suitable foundation for a Church. Therefore, Jesus could not have said, "You are Kepha and upon this Kepha I build my Church."
This website seems to agree with the "hollow rock" definition.
http://www.htmlbible.com/sacrednamebiblecom/kjvstrongs/FRMSTRHEB37.htm
Okay, two problems:
- The page you reference is an online version of Strong's Hebrew Dictionary. Now the thing about Strong's is, it's not a scholarly dictionary. It gives brief glosses on words and is based, frankly, on outdated scholarship and has a lot of flaws. I really wish people would stop trying to appealing to it in apologetic controversies, because it's simply too unreliable to try to get precise nuances out of. Unfortunately, it's old enough (outdated scholarship, remember?) that it's a public domain text and so it's all over the Internet and people cite it constantly.
- You'll note that the word in question (#3710) does not have "(Aramaic)" at the front of the definition (compare it, for example, to #3706). That tells you that the dictionary is attempting to offer a definition for the Hebrew word keph. Now the thing is: You can't rely on a definition of a Hebrew word to tell you what an Aramaic word means. Hebrew and Aramaic may be cognate language, like English and German are, but you can't use words in one language as a sure guide to the meaning of similar-sounding words in the other. The German word bitte sounds like the English word bitter (especially in a non-rhotic English accent that drops the final /r/), but they mean very different things. (Bitte means "please," not "acrid tasting.") In the same way, you can't appeal to the definition of a Hebrew word as a reliable method of determining the meaning of an Aramaic term. So even assuming Strong's is right on the meaning of the Hebrew keph, that can't be used to settle arguments about the meaning of the Aramaic kepha.
The reader continues:
I have seen a translation of the bible into Aramaic where they used Kepha for Simon's new name AND for the rock that Jesus builds His Church, but I was hoping to find some sort of Aramaic Dictionary that I can easily obtain that has a definition closer to "big rock".
I can help you here, but I have a caution: I'd drop the "big rock"/"small rock" thing. While this distinction existed in at least one dialect of classical Greek several centuries before the time of Christ, the distinction was gone by the first century. It is also exceedingly hard to recover something like size distinctions at this remote date in history since we can't survey a swath of native speakers to ask them to clarify their usage. From what we can tell now, petros, petra, and kepha all just meant "rock" in the first century, and it isn't productive to try to argue size differences one way or the other.
That being said, the most exhaustive Aramaic-English dictionary that is commonly in use today is A Compendious Syriac Dictionary (Syriac is a major Aramaic dialect) by R. Payne Smith, which was edited down from a longer work (Thesaurus Syriacus) by his daughter, J. Payne Smith.
So. . . . Here's the definition for kepha in Smith:
Now, you may not be familiar with the Aramaic script that the dictionary uses, but you should be able to see that the basic meanings of the term are "a stone, rock."
It is also used elliptically (i.e., as shorthand) for "a stone vessel, column, idol, a precious stone." This means, for example, that speakers might be referring to a stone cup (a kind of vessel) and say, "Hand me that stone."
From there the entry starts to give examples of the term used in phrases ("he was stoned") and compound constructions ("a millstone").
As you can see, though, in no case is a definition anywhere close to "hollow rock" given, either for the term itself or for anything else the entry covers.
The idea that kepha means "hollow rock" is simply bogus.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Pope | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
April 29, 2005
Mr. Peter?
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I thought I had seen it all regarding arguments against Petrine Primacy until a day or so ago. In arguing the case that Peter’s name change was not significant, a Protestant gent asserted that since his text says that Simon ‘was surnamed’ Peter, that Jesus did not give the Apostle a new name but rather just decided to call him by his already given surname.
Is there evidence that first century Jews used surnames in the sense we do today? I find it difficult to fathom that Jesus would decide that he would do something as petty as calling someone by a different name for the mere reason that He did not like the original name. Thanks.
The guy doesn't know what he's talking about. First century Palestinan Jewish nomenclature didn't work that way. They didn't have family names the way we do, they had patronyms--which is to say, they were distinguished from others of the same personal name by an appellation designating them as the son (or daughter) of their father.
Thus Peter's birth name was Simon bar-Jonah, or "Simon the son of John," and Jesus bestowed the name Peter on him, as we see in John 1:42:
He [Andrew] brought him [Simon] to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, "So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas" (which means Peter).
There also is no history of anybody prior to Peter having kepha (the original Aramaic form of the name) as a name, either as a personal name or as a surname (since they didn't have surnames in first century Palestinian Jewish culture).
This custom of using patronyms to distinguish indiviuals with the same personal name is still used in many places in the world today, including other Middle Eastern cultures.
MORE INFO ON JEWISH NOMENCLATURE.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Pope | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Terri's Final Hours
(Michelle Arnold)
Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, shares his eyewitness testimony of the final hours in the life of Terri Schindler-Schiavo.
GET THE (HEARTBREAKING) STORY.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Off The Road Again
(Michelle Arnold)
Okay, I had already thought of my post title for this story before I read it in the article, so I'm going to use it anyway.
"Singer Willie Nelson's name is off the road again.
"A state legislator had proposed naming a 49-mile stretch of Texas Highway 130 being built around Austin in Nelson's honor.
"But two Republican senators, Steve Odgen of Bryan and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, said they didn't want Nelson's name on the road that crosses their districts, citing the musician's fondness for drinking and smoking, and active campaigning for Democratic candidates."
Call me cynical, but I doubt Willie Nelson's personal habits would have mattered enough to State Senators Ogden and Wentworth to go to the trouble of blocking the proposal if Nelson had had a record of "active campaigning" for Republican candidates. Of course, it's also true that State Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos (D-Austin) might not have introduced the bill in the first place if it weren't for that "active campaigning" for Democratic candidates.
Like I said, call me cynical.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Music | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
The "Act Of The Devil" Clause
(Jimmy Akin)
I really hope that Benedict XVI issues a new apostolic constitution governing conclaves.
It's not a certainty that he will. He might rely on John Paul II's Universi Dominici Gregis. But popes tend to revise the rules governing what happens after their deaths. Some have revised them more than once.
But there's a specific reason I want Benedict XVI to issue such a document.
There's something that has been missing from such documents heretofore: an "act of the devil" clause.
Now, you may be asking: "What's that?"
Well, you know how some contracts have "acts of God" clauses to cover unforeseen circumstances like floods, fires, and other unlikely but possible events not caused by human agency?
Suppose that al-Qa'eda detonated a suitcase nuke near the Sistine Chapel and killed every single one of the cardinal electors during a conclave.
They'd do it! They're fantatics! Of course they'd love to wipe out the leaders of the "crusaders" while in the process of electing a new "crusader leader"! It'd convulse a billion Catholics plus (to some extent) another billion Christians. They'd love to do that. Indeed, we already know that al-Qa'eda has wanted to kill the pope more than once. Wiping out a conclave is well within their field of consideration.
Now, this wouldn't be an "act of God" for, although it would be permitted by God's providence (if he permitted it to happen, that is), it wouldn't be something produced by natural forces rather than human agency. (I.e., it was terrorists rather than a hurricane or an earthquake.)
Therefore, let's call it an "act of the devil" since (even under the providence of God) it would likely be the devil motivating the terrorists.
What would happen with respect to the election of a new pontiff in that case?
Nobody knows.
Universi Dominici Gregis (UDG) doesn't say. Neither does any other Church document.
That we know of.
It's always possible that John Paul II prepared a secret document that might be brought forward in such an event (assuming it and those who had knowledge of it weren't also wiped out by the suitcase nuke), but I doubt it. UDG covers elaborate contingencies.
But not this one.
If John Paul II made specific provision for such a circumstance, it should have been in UDG (which was released in 1996--five years before World War IV even started).
UDG also has clauses in it that prohibit the cardinal electors from making new arrangements for the election of a pontiff. So what would happen if they were all wiped out? UDG doesn't seem to leave the Church any avenues for electing a new pontiff.
Given that, what would realistically happen in this circumstance?
Assuming that there was no secret "act of the devil" document, probably the following:
- There would be a huge convulsion of unbelievable intensity, both in the Catholic world and in the world in general.
- The surviving cardinals, who would be those over the age of 80 or otherwise sick and not at the conclave, would issue a statement decrying the tragedy and saying that, despite its unforeseen nature, it is the will of God for the Church to go on and for the Petrine ministry not to be extinguished.
- They would then hold a new conclave, either by gathering in one place (probably not Rome, but somewhere the terrorists wouldn't have anticipated) or by telecommunications.
- They would elect a new pope.
- Most Catholics (and others) would accept the new pope (and his successors).
- But innumerable individuals for centuries to come would be tormented by doubts about whether the election of the new pope and his successor was valid since it was done in a way completely unprovided for by Church law.
To avoid this situation (and assuring the faithful's reception of the new papal election as valid is one of this kind of document's chief purposes), it makes all the sense in the world for the new pontiff to include in his document a provision for the surviving cardinals to elect a new pontiff in the wake of a disaster that wipes out a conclave, whether caused by man or nature.
I therefore hope that Benedict XVI issues an apostolic constitution governing the next conclave and that includes an explicit "act of the devil" clause.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Pope | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
GERMAN YAHOOS: No Homeschooling!
(Michelle Arnold)
In the People's Republic of Germany, homeschooling is illegal and parents face fines, imprisonment, lawsuits, state harrassment, and the possible loss of their children for the crime of seeking to educate their children themselves.
"A German mom has been sent to jail for six days and fined $115 US because she and her husband insist on home schooling their children, reports ASSIST News Service.
"Home schooling is illegal in Germany. Parents are obliged to send their children to state-registered schools. Parents may not educate their children at home, even for reasons of faith or conscience. Despite this, about 500 German children are home schooled.
"The jailed mom and her husband belong to a Baptist church. They regard religious instruction at school as too liberal and object to the sex-education program.
"Since October, seven other parents in Paderborn County have refused to send their children to public school for religious and ethical reasons. They have been fined $190 US each. The authorities have even threatened the parents, saying they could be taken to court or lose custody of their children if they do not comply with the law. "
If you're a homeschooler, you can keep an eye on the legal issues surrounding homeschooling at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). It wouldn't surprise me if the public-school establishment in the United States were looking abroad for anti-homeschooling laws that they could import.
Posted by Michelle Arnold in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Diabetes, Pregnancy, Vasectomy Question
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I came accross your web site when I was looking to see the catholic churches stance on vasectomies. I have a question, my wife was diagnosed with diabetes and we were informed that if we concieve a child there is a large risk of still birth or deformities. We were told that it is a higher rick than an average couple.
First, I am very sorry to hear about your wife's condition. Diabetes is a cross that many have to carry, but there is hope for a cure soon.
I am extremely suspicious, however, of the advice you have been given regarding having children. While there may be a higher risk of stillbirth or deformities, there is a significant likelihood that this risk has been exaggerated by your physician. Many doctors in America today have a hypersensitivity to risk and an anti-child mentality that leads them to tell people they should't have children for totally inadequate reasons.
I strongly suggest that you contact a pro-life doctor and ask him to give you a realistic assessment of the impact that your wife's diabetes may have on the situation.
For example, even the March of Dimes (a very anti-child organization that wants to end birth defects by killing the children who have them) says the following about diabetes and pregnancy:
Today, most of these women [i.e., women who have diabetes] can look forward to having a healthy baby. While diabetes poses some risks in pregnancy, advances in care have greatly improved the outlook for these pregnancies [SOURCE].
It goes on to say that:
Women with poorly controlled preexisting diabetes in the early weeks of pregnancy are three to four times more likely than nondiabetic women to have a baby with a serious birth defect
but it elsewhere notes that the chance of a birth defect is 1 in 28. That means that for a woman with poorly controlled diabetes the chance of a birth defect would be 12.5% (assuming that the "serious birth defect" mentioned in the diabetes article is the same as the "birth defect" mentioned in the second article; the risk would be less than 12.5% if "serious birth defect" meant to be is a subset of the category "birth defect," meaning that there is less than a 1 in 28 chance of a serious birth defect.)
It does not seem to me that a 12.5% risk of a birth defect creates an automatic "don't have children" situation. There is an 87.5% chance per kid that the child will be totally fine.
And that is for women with "poorly controlled preexisting diabetes." I assume that your wife, now that she has been diagnosed, will be properly controlling her diabetes through diet, exercise, and (if needed) medication, in which case the chances of having a normal baby will be greater than 87.5%.
I therefore strongly recommend that you talk to a pro-life doctor or contact the Couple to Couple League for additional perspective on this as I think you're being misled by a hyper-cautious doctor.
The reader continues:
We are currently thinking about my getting a vasectomy. I am almost sure I will get one, my question is will this stop my ability to get the eucarist, or recieve other graces (i.e. ability to get into heaven)?
I strongly recommend that you do not pursue this course of action. Having a vasectomy is intrinsically wrong and a grave sin. To have one knowingly and deliberately is a mortal sin. Those in a state of mortal sin cannot receive Communion and those who die in mortal sin do not go to heaven because they have turned their back on God and extinguished the life of grace in their souls by rejecting his will in a fundamental matter. (Documentation on all this available on request.)
If, after seeking appropriate pro-life counsel, you conclude that you need to avoid having children then this needs to be accomplished in a morally licit way, such as Natural Family Planning. The Couple to Couple League can help you get trained on how to do that.
Finally, I'd add a caution of a prudential nature: Many men who have vasectomies later repent and conclude that they shouldn't have had them. Some, along with their wives, conclude that they really want children after all. Consequently, they undertake corrective surgery. However, the way corrective surgery for a vasectomy works, it is not always successful (leading to further heartbreak and anguished regret for the couple) and it often causes the man ongoing physical pain.
I therefore strongly urge you not to undertake an action that could so dramatically affect you life, both spiritually and physically.
Hope this helps, and God bless!
20
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Moral Theology | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack
Observe This!
(Jimmy Akin)
The British "newspaper" The Observer tells us the following:
Pope 'obstructed' sex abuse inquiry
Confidential letter reveals Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep allegations secret
Jamie ("I'm too unqualified to hold my job") Doward, religious affairs correspondent
Sunday April 24, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI faced irresponsible know-nothing claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret. The order was made in a
confidentialpublicly available letter, obtained in a death-defying feat of investigative journalism by The Observer by downloading it from the Vatican's web site where it has been available for years [HERE, YOU MORONS], which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001 before the U.S. sex scandal even broke out.It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors (gasp! next they'll be wanting grand juries to do that!) and keep the evidence confidential
for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthoodwhereas what we all know they should do is put the inquiries on CourtTV and hold regular press conferences and put all the humiliating charges and counter-charges out in public so we can sell more newspapers and have a media feeding frenzy and ruin the reputations of all involved by humiliating both innocent victims and priests who have been falsely accused. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week. (Dum! Dum! Dum!)Please pay no attention to the fact that the document was part of the implementation effort for a set of norms that Pope John Paul II himself had just enacted nineteen days earlier in a letter [HERE/TRANSLATION WITH NORMS APPENDED], so Ratzinger was just doing what his boss told him to do. That shouldn't get in the way of a good smear on the new pope.
Ambulance-chasing Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim without any foundation it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'. Yes! By saying that the Church's own internal investigation is to be secret, that totally prevents victims from contacting the police and reporting what happened to them. It stops them from obtaining their own civil legal representation. And it stops them from holding press conferences and explaining what happened. You can't have both a closed-door internal Church investigation and a civil investigation at the same time. Everybody knows that!
The letter, 'concerning very grave sins', was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office <irrelevant historical smear>that once presided over the Inquisition</irrelevant historical smear> and was overseen by Ratzinger.
It spells out to bishops
the church's position on a number of matterswhich canonical crimes fall under the CDF's jurisdiction, ranging from celebrating the eucharist with a non-Catholic to sexual abuse by a cleric 'with a minor below the age of 18 years'. Ha! Fooled you, didn't we! You thought this document was about the sex abuse scandal (which hadn't yet broken out in the U.S.) and how to cover it up, when really it was simply a clarification of which crimes the CDF has jurisdiction over! Ratzinger's letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been 'perpetrated with a minor by a cleric' and thus prevent the state from doing diddly about them--Not! It says that the CDF has jurisdiction over these cases as far as church law is concerned, saying nothing about what civil courts may do.The letter states that the
church's jurisdictiontime that the CDF has to hear the case before its competence expires 'begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age' and lasts for 10 years. Which says nothing about how long the secrecy lasts, despite what we said in the second paragraph, and which is actually an increase in the amount of time that one normally has to file a complaint, which is normally only three years [SEE CANON 1362 §1].It orders that 'preliminary investigations' into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger's office (Yes! He really said that! "Send them to my office! Don't send them to anybody else. Send them to me only. Only I am to see them. Me. Me. Me."), which has the option if it feels like taking the afternoon off of referring them back to private tribunals in which the 'functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests'--it being, of course, a bad idea to let priests be judged by "a jury of their peers."
'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time
while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operatingcarries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims whose lawyers are obviously incompetent. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims frivolously claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice.
Daniel ("I'm too incompetent to address this matter") Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: 'It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It's an obstruction of justice.'
Canon law expert John Q. Obvious pointed out that the "clock" of when the complaint can be filed does not start "ticking" when "the kid turns 18." The "kid" can bring an action against the priest even if he is under 18 years of age. What the norms do is guarantee that he has until he is 28 to bring the action so that he isn't forced to bring the action while he is still a child in order to get it heard.
Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April last year in which he admitted to Shea who used thumbscrews to wring the tearful and much-resisted admission out of him that the letter
extendedclarified thechurch'sCDF's jurisdiction and "control" (Dum! Dum! Dum!) over sexual assault crimes in terms of he Church's internal law.<guilt by association smear>The Ratzinger letter was co-signed by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone who gave an interview two years ago in which he hinted at the church's opposition to allowing outside agencies to investigate abuse claims.
'In my opinion, the demand that a bishop be obligated to contact the police in order to denounce a priest who has admitted the offence of paedophilia is unfounded,' Bertone said. </guilt by association smear>
Shea criticised the order that abuse allegations should be investigated only in secret tribunals. 'They are imposing procedures and secrecy on these cases in terms of their own law. If law enforcement agencies find out about the case, they can deal with it. But you can't investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10 the priest will get away with it,' Shea added. "Because obviously if a Church investigation is under way, or if the ecclesiastical statue of limitations has expired, that totally binds the hands of civil authorities. We're living in a theocracy, after all. There's no point in the victim contacting the civil authorities to report the matter. They're powerless unless the Church allows them to do something here."
An unnamed and therefore sinister spokeswoman in the Vatican press office who obviously doesn't hang out on the Vatican web site very much declined to comment when told about the contents of the letter. 'This is not a public document since you'd have to, like, go on the Internet to find it, so we would not talk about it,' she said.
SHEESH!!!
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Benedict XVI | Permalink | Comments (46) | TrackBack
