Oliver,
Your quote is apparently from “Crimen sollicitationis” (http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_crimen-sollicitationis-1962_en.html) issued a few months before Vatican II, i.e. almost half a century ago, and many things have changes since, even in the Church.

You might (or might not, like myself) want to read it all but if you trust Wikipedia, this is what it says:

“Crimen sollicitationis Crimen sollicitationis (Latin: the crime of soliciting) was a 1962 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (or Holy Office) codifying procedures to be followed in cases of priests or bishops of the Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents."

This would imly that it does not deal with pedophilia or pederasty (except in the brief paragraph 73. where it seems to equate them with “crimen pessimum” of homosexual acts) but with the “Seal of Confession“ (recognised then also by many secular authorities, along with medical, legal or bank secrecies); hence the “secretiveness”.

Of course, more detail - about how relevant is this old document to the current controversies - is in the link provided by Gordo Pollo.

Thanks George,

I am aware of the letter:

http://www.multiline.com.au/~johnm/ethics/crimineextracts.htm

When I have referred to it, here and other threads, typycally, I have done so with some acknowledgement to the confessional, penance or genernalisation. Others, have argued a closer association between secrecy and child abuse:

http://tjwoodlock.com/blog/thomas-doyle-on-crimen-sollicitationis/

http://reform-network.net/?p=3006

The key issues are "secrecy" and protecting the Church of scandals and the comforting of "minders" whom the Church seem much less likely to "throw to wolves". In the twenty-first century, it is not the role of any organisation to have its own rules outside of "The Law" of the secular state. Organisations can have "policies" but that's all.

In the West especially, matters of evidence are weighted by juries after deliberations. The jury selection process proactively tries (ahem) to find members free of partiality. The jury system is a superior system to in-house chambers.

I think our OLO friends on my side of the argument are not saying "just the perpetrators and minders in "jail, stop", rather we are saying for the Church to come totally clean and that the "alledged" criminals go before a secular court to test their innocence. Even if the Church were to loose scores of bishops and a few cardinals, the exercise would ultimately be in its own interests and protect victims from preditors.

Handing of the priests is a good first step. The minders must come next.

If there is to be a Catholic Church, even skeptics and atheists, wish to see a moral and civil Church, representing those whom choose to believe

Gordo Pollo and George et al.,

If this documentary has any truth about it -and the BBC investigative reporters seem it does - then the "Bishops are putting the interests of the Catholic Church above those children" (BBC).

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3335354490744010763#

The "minders" (Bishops) must not allowed to avoid justice.

Dear Oliver,

Again, your post contains pieces I can agree with and pieces I cannot: the problem is that they are too intertwined.

As for Crimen Solicitationis (CS), if you want to criticise it, I think it preferable to refer to the authorised (by the Vatican) translation rather than to extracts or opinions from second-hand sources.

I am not an expert on Canon Law to tell whether http://reform-network.net/?p=3006 is a faithful interpretation of http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_crimen-sollicitationis-1962_en.html. So I cannot comment more on this - let me repeat, 48 years old - instruction on how to deal with priests who dishonour the “sacrament of confession”, except what I already wrote, noting that there are obviously other contemporary interpretations of CS by non-rebellious Canon Law experts.

[Your other link http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3335354490744010763# contains e.g. a statement
“It (CS) imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witnesses. Breaking that oath means excommunication from the Catholic Church” without quoting, where in the text is such an absurdity as “excommunication of child victims” stated.]

On the other hand - returning to the contemporary situation - I almost agree with you. There indeed is a problem (that needs to be tackled, however not from the outside) with “secret sex in the Catholic celibate system” that only marginally is related to criminal pedophilia (in distinction to pederasty). This problem is usually dealt either with schadenfreude (by those overly hostile to the Church) or dismissively (by those overly loyal to the Church's traditions).

In my opinion the article http://ncronline.org/blogs/examining-crisis/secret-sex-celibate-system is neither. It is a credible description of the situation by a mental health counselor and author who earlier spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk and priest, as devastating as it must be to an unsophisticated Catholic.

Dear George,

I fully appreciate that the substratum of Canon Law pertaining to the Crimen Solicitationis makes primarily reference to the solicitation in the Confessional: An issue that goes back centuries and was lampooned by Boccaccio in some of the stories of the Decameron. Yet, I feel Father Doyle (Canon Lawyer) is asserting that in practice there is kin secrecy around all serious crimes of solicitation. The Pheonix DA seemed similarly concerned and felt that documents were shifted to clerics having immunity from soummons, to proctect the Church, before protecting the abused childern (now adults).

"Ratzinger’s document demands that all canonical cases of clergy sex abuse of minors be sent to his office under the requirement for strictest secrecy (forgiveness of a violation is reserved to the pope)." - A.W. Richard Sipe National Catholic Reporter

I don't see it is the Pope's role to keep these matters secret.

(Actually, I thought he had recently taken a tougher stance and was willing to hand over junior clerics, if not bishops.)

In these cases, each bishop's first phone call should be to secular authorities and the last thing we want is to transfer the offender. If nt, the bishops are putting Church above their community's institutions. As the Chinese say, "there cannot be two suns in the sky".

BTW, I have never suspected any of the priests I have known. My brother was altar boy and he was never touched. Regarding, "secret sex", in my teens, I did believe a rumour of about a priest in a neighouring parish having a heterosexual affair with his housekeeper. Regarding,the latter, if true, the matter was unsavoury, but does not reach the level of criminality discussed in the recent OLO abuse threads.

I do think absolution must require offenders handing themselves in to secular authorities. Also, I feel, and, this is the hard one, bishops and even the Pope should be held accountable for ant cover-ups.

Gordo Pollo,

Your perspectives having viewed the video?

Dear Oliver,

Now you jump from “Crimen Solicitationis” to the more contemporary “De Delictis Gravioribus”. I provided the link to a relatively brief article by the author of the famous and widely respected Sipe Report, who is a psychotherapist (and witness) specializing in the counseling of clergy, not an expert on Canon Law. The part you quote is almost unrelated to the rest of this article and the complete context is:

“The Council of Ancyra (Anno 315) demanded strict penalties: solitary confinement, fasts, isolation and supervision for any cleric caught having sex with a minor. Ratzinger’s document demands that all canonical cases of clergy sex abuse of minors be sent to his office under the requirement for strictest secrecy.”

Obviously, in 2001 one could not have demanded the same as in 315, when the Church’s jurisdiction was not that separate from the secular. Of course, the 2001 “stricktest secrecy” refers to the CANONICAL (my emphasis) context. Most of the cases communicated to Rome - 90% according to http://zenit.org/article-28634?l=english - are of no criminal nature as defined e.g. in Australia. There is no need for an explicit instruction to the bishops to cooperate with secular authorities when criminal charges have been laid by the victim (or his/her parents) or a crime suspected beyond reasonable doubt, or negotiate an out of court settlement, etc.; this is implicitly rather obvious. [A priest might tell the mother of a sick child to “pray and trust God”, without having to tell her explicitly to first follow doctor's inxtructions].

You see, I am getting involved in legal matters more than I intended to, since that is not a field where I feel secure. Father Doyle is not the only priest who publicly says things that are newsworthy mainly because of what he is rather than of what he says. There are other views on these matters by qualified lawyers, e.g. in http://www.mercatornet.com/justb16/view/7112/. (ctd)