No Pope Here!

Reasons for opposing the papal visit to Scotland & England of Pope Benedict XVI:

2. Moral - There is a stain and a stench in recent years on the character of Romanism over child abuse and it reaches right up the chain of authority to the Vatican.

Rome is a hierarchal system. The local priest is under the bishop, who is under the archbishop, who in turn is under the Pope. It is the Pope who appoints bishops. It is the Pope who sacks a bishop and no one else. 

The present Pope has shown a complete unwillingness to deal with these issues. That is not the view of biased Protestants. That is view even of Roman Catholics. Many are ashamed of what has been taking place in their institutions for many years. 

There was a recent example of the present Pope’s unwillingness to deal with these matters. This unwillingness was widely reported. One such report is found in the Catholic Herald on 12th August this year: 

Pope Benedict XVI has decided not to accept the resignation of two Dublin auxiliary bishops who resigned in the wake of the Murphy Report investigation into clerical child abuse in the archdiocese [of Dublin. The Ryan report was into religious orders] 

Auxiliary Bishops Raymond Field and Eamonn Walsh resigned on December 24 after coming under intense pressure because they served as bishops during the period investigated by the Murphy Commission. In a letter to priests of the Dublin archdiocese, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin confirmed the development. 

Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops,” he said. Archbishop Martin said the two men are “to be assigned revised responsibilities within the diocese.” Both bishops initially resisted calls for their resignation. However, both sent resignation letters to Rome after Archbishop Martin apparently failed to give them his total support. 

Even the Archbishop of Dublin couldn’t fully support these two bishops when the Murphy report came out, yet the Pope refused their resignations. 

There are allegations coming out of Munich were Joseph Ratzinger was Archbishop from 1977 of personal involvement in covering up abuse. 

In 1981, Ratzinger settled in Rome where he became the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one of the most important offices within the Vatican. 

Prior to 2001, the primary responsibility for investigating allegations of sexual abuse and disciplining perpetrators rested with the individual dioceses. In 2001, Ratzinger convinced Pope John Paul II to put the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in charge of all investigations and policies surrounding sexual abuse in order to combat such abuse more efficiently. 

In other words Ratzinger ‘was in the know’ about what was going on in recent years. It is said that he was a notorious micro-manger. He wanted to know everything that was going on in the Catholic Church worldwide. Is it logical to conclude he was unaware of these things? I think not!