Abuse scandal-riddled Ratzinger must resign
Dragan Pavlovic – Every officer in charge, politicians and representatives of public responsibility should have to be underwritten for what happens in his house. And if one’s own organization offenses weight as heavily as in the widening scandal around the abuse of children in church-run facilities, there can be no alternative but the resignation of Benedict XVI.
The extent of the Catholic child abuse in Germany points to Irish conditions. In Ireland children were beaten for the last decades and thousands of children were systematically and sexually abused as reported in a study of the Irish Commission for the Investigation of Child Abuse (the Commission of Inquiry Into Child Abuse), the ‘endemic’ rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care.
Ratzinger is the head of the last absolutist state in Europe. Thus he finds himself in the company of politically backward countries like Brunei, Saudi Arabia, Swaziland, Qatar and Oman. The international status of the Vatican as a state permits with other “brothers in spirit” to voice-power the blockade of vital health programs (HIV prevention, prevention of unwanted pregnancies and abortion) of the United Nations (UN) in the 3rd World.
Noting that the state status of the Vatican is anachronistic and must fall, the place as absolute ruler of Ratzinger in the Vatican City can not protect him against the responsibility for the widening scandal of mass child abuse, and his resignation have to be accepted.
The Vatican as church and state institution has gambled away with lasting effect of lost trust in society. Therefore, religion can have no role model in schools any longer. The religious lessons need to be replaced from its current form to life-practical lessons, with no possible cancellation. Old laws in Germany still stand in the way, they date back to the Third Reich during the Nazi dictatorship and the Vatican Agreement, and are finally set to be unwound.
The abuse cases already show that with the church’s statements, the Christian religion have reached the modern age, and its differentiation for not being in the same relevant man made image of the Islamic religion, is in fact not credible.
Ratzinger, in his recent term of office could prove how difficult is it for him to acquire any merits, through the arguments of the Berlin political scientists and journalists Prof. Dr. Otto Kallscheuer and Munster social ethics and religion sociologist Karl Gabriel – they drew a largely negative review after five years of Benedict XVI.
The reigning pope can no longer direct past and today’s issues with nice words and cheap gestures – he must face the consequences.
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The pope meets members of the Regensburger Domspatzen choir at the Vatican
Child molestation scandals at several German Catholic schools have prompted Catholic reformers to call on Pope Benedict XVI to account for his term as bishop in Bavaria between 1977 and 1982.
A spokesman for the “We are the Church” movement, Christian Weisner, said the pope should publicly state exactly what he knew about widespread allegations of abuse by clerics in the Bavarian city of Regensburg during the 1960′s.
“From 1977 to 1981 Joseph Ratzinger was the bishop of Munich and Freising, so he must answer the question about what he knew then and what he did about it,” Weisner told news agency DAPD.
The statement followed revelations that the renowned German boys choir, the “Regenburg Domspatzen,” had received reports of sexual abuse dating back to the 1960s.
Weisner said the church authorities could not ignore the fact that information about these child abuse cases had been known by senior officials in the church leadership. In addition, many cases of sexual violence had been systematically hushed up by the church leadership, he said.
Director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, who attended the choir’s boarding school in the 1960s, told newsmagazine Der Spiegel of a “sophisticated sytem of sadistic punishments wrapped up in sexual desire.” Wittenbrink said the boarding school’s director at the time would “come into the dormitory at night and pick out two, three of us boys to take back to his apartment.”
Pope Benedict’s brother, Professor George Ratzinger, has headed the boys choir since the 1960s. Ratzinger told the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” that he knew nothing about cases of child abuse.
The Vatican has said that it will back an investigation.
Zero tolerance Minors were allegedly abused at the school in Ettal
German Education Minister Annette Schavan told the mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag that there should be “zero tolerance” for sexual abuse of children and announced she would meet with education officials in the coming week to discuss concrete measures to prevent abuse in the future.
“Violence and abuse of schoolchildren is the worst breach of trust imaginable. It makes me livid,” Annette Schavan said.
“Wherever there is a suspicion of abuse or violence against children in schools, there must be zero tolerance and a complete explanation. Nothing must be hushed up,” added the minister.
She also told the Passauer Neue Presse that she supported extending the statute of limitations for sexual abuse.
Abuse allegations spread
The scandal in Germany broke in January when an elite Jesuit school in Berlin admitted the systematic sexual abuse of its pupils by two Roman Catholic priests in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Jesuit order has said that so far around 120 people have come forward alleging abuse.
Meanwhile, a report into alleged past abuse at a monastic school in Ettal, near the Swiss border, said that minors “were massively abused over decades, sexually, physically and psychologically” by several monks. And on Sunday new accusations came to light against a nun at an orphanage in Berlin who allegedly molested children throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The nun withdrew from the order in 1986 .
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