Heel goed nieuws Charles Molineaux gehele tekst

Een verassend indrukwekkende tekst van Charles Molineaux over de door de RKK in te nemen positie in de noodzaak van het verlengen van de verjaringstermijnen, zoals deze week gepresenteerd op het congres van sociale wetenschappers

De hele tekst is hier te vinden, want is veel te lang voor dit blog.
Jammer genoeg niet in het Nederlands, hoewel de vertaling daarvan de moeite waard maar een bereklus zou zijn, omdat er niet gesproken wordt over de verschillende juridische schema's, maar uitvoerig ingegaan wordt op de problemen in vanuit en met de RKK. En de verschillende manieren waarop er naar de Kerk in haar verschillende betekenissen gekeken kan (dan wel dient te) worden.

The Church: What is Her Proper Role in this Discussion??

Wat zeker niet alleen van belang is voor de Amerikaanse situatie, gericht op die verjaringstermijnen, maar van internationaal.
Ook zeker heel direct slaat op de Nederlandse situatie, zoals ook nu weer bleek door de uitspraak van Hisrch Ballin en de reactie van Hulp en Recht.

Daarom indien er iemand dit leest, die er, door het Engels echt niet uitkomen, neem dan maar even contact op, misschien kunnen we een oplossing vinden. Dat is dit artikel zeker waard. (hoewel dit geen belofte is tot het aanleveren van een complete vertaling! Desalniettemin: doe je mond open, laat die taal geen onoverkoombaar obstakel zijn om ook na te denken en dit soort goed nieuws te krijgen! ) Wie weet is er zelfs wel iemand die er plezier in heeft wel een (deel) vertaling te maken??? :-)

Want wat een genot een dergelijk artikel! Dat moet je helemaal niet alleen voor een groep RK sociaal wetenschappers in Verwegistan laten. Doodzonde.
Da's nog eens een Credo.

The Abuse-and-Coverup Scandal:
The Church Should Not Oppose Extending Statutes of Limitation

Introduction
The mission of the Catholic Church is evangelization - the bringing of the Good News to mankind, the bringing of mankind to Christ. The word “evangelization” has been reclaimed from the television evangelicals but we might say, to put it in the vernacular, that it is about public relations, about putting out a message. The Church has had a continuing evangelization disaster, a public relations disaster, on its hands since 2002 with respect to its internal abuse-and-coverup scandal – partly as a result of an inversion of episcopal priorities: placing concern for property and the institutional Church ahead of concern for souls. The present public opposition, by most dioceses, to extending statutes of limitation continues the same mindset and exposes the institutional Church to the charge of hypocrisy. It should end.


The Church: What is Her Proper Role in this Discussion??
The Church as Mystery
To touch on ecclesiology, and I am no ecclesiologist, what should be the attitude of the Church at this sorry juncture? The Church is characterized in the Catechism as the People of God, united in the Body of Christ, and as the temple of the Holy Spirit. [7] A mystery, visible and invisible, the essential mission of the Church is to evangelize all men.

Vatican II made changes in ecclesiology, not in dogma but certainly in emphasis.[8] Some writers (rather like Kremlinologists noting placement at public events during the Cold War) seek significance in the placement order of key ideas in Lumen Gentium, The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, a critical document of the Council. For example, while the main image of the Church is that of the Body of Christ, it has been noted that Chapter 2 of Lumen Gentium, considering the People of God, precedes Chapter 3, which considers the hierarchy [9] . The British historian Paul Johnson has remarked that in mediaeval times, “ [t]here was a tendency to equate the clergy with ‘the Church’”[10] a concept which now, a few hundred years after the Council of Trent and four decades after Vatican II, has perhaps been adjusted by a newer emphasis on the “People of God” as a dominant vision.

In considering the proper role of the Church in the statute of limitations extension argument, we can turn usefully and briefly to what Cardinal Avery Dulles terms visions or “models” of the Church. He considers five models: the Church as institution, as mystical communion, as sacrament, as herald, and as servant, with particular reference to the institutional Church and what he terms the deformation of institutionalism.[11] And at the outset, he warns that, in discussion, the Church should not be lowered to the same plane as other human communities
[12].

The Institutional Church is Secondary
Cardinal Dulles refers to an institutional vision of the Church, a view that defines the Church primarily in terms of its visible structures. As to institutionalism, he means “a system in which the institutional element is treated as primary. From the point of view of [Dulles], institutionalism is a deformation of the true nature of the Church—a deformation that has unfortunately affected the Church at certain periods of its history, and one that remains in every age a real danger to the institutional Church.”[13]

As Dulles expresses it, “[t]he institutional structures of the Church are secondary in the sense that they are intended to preserve and promote communion.”[14]

We might thus say that the institutional structure constitutes a sort of useful infrastructure. In other words, the Church is not primarily the hierarchical power structure, the clergy, and the buildings, Rather, it is, in the words of John Paul II, “a communion in many different ways. Its character as communion renders the Church similar to the communion of the Divine Trinity…Thanks to this communion, the Church is the instrument of man’s salvation. It both contains and continually draws upon the mystery of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice.”[15]

If the mission of the Church is to lead men to Christ, to save people through the Church but by the grace of Christ, what then should be the proper attitude of the Church toward victims of its errant churchmen? As secondary - lower in importance than, and supportive of, the communio – the institutional Church should be more than merely apologetic.

Put another way, as Gaudium et Spes of the Vatican II documents expresses it, “The order of THINGS must be subordinate to the order of PERSONS and not the other way around, as the Lord suggested when
He said that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.”[16]


Conclusion
The unpleasant and disappointing reality is that it has only been because of the secular justice system that the institutional Church has been forced to move toward saying that it is making changes in its priorities. But it is apparent that “clericalism” and accompanying secrecy continue in the institutional Church.
When we say, at Mass, “Credo…in unam Ecclesiam,” we express our belief in, and loyalty to the Church. We are a community of faith and prayer, People of God, enhanced by the sacraments instituted by Christ Himself, not a club or fraternity or corporation concerned primarily with asset preservation.

Loyalty does not mean blind loyalty to, or tolerance of, thieving priests and luxuriating bishops. The MAGISTERIAL Church merits our total loyalty and acquiescence. No “cafeteria Catholics.”.

The INSTITUTIONAL Church merits a sort of discrete loyalty. A judge in the Roman Rota explains the difference: “Although we have a guarantee that Christ’s truth is behind the solemn exercise of the Church’s teaching office, it would be a mistake to look for the same guarantee in relation to the ruling office…”Footnotes][52]

In the first instance we support with assent and assets the teaching and activity of the bishops appointed by Peter.

But, the entire meaning of “the Church” and its basic mission must be perceived. Hiding the fiscal and physical assets of the institutional Church from justice, via outmoded and arbitrary statutes of limitation, is not a consideration when it clashes with the mission of the Church - the bringing of men to Christ, by word and example. The institutional Church should not dodge moral responsibility by invoking pragmatic rules as to the timing of lawsuits or by stalling with secrecy the production of record evidence.

In sum, the institutional Church, its credibility already damaged by careerist, cowardly and criminal bishops, should not now, via its chanceries and lobbyists, attempt to block justice, to block legislative efforts to update outmoded and pragmatic statutes of limitation with respect to the commencement of lawsuits.
—Charles Molineaux
(CMlnx@aol.com)

Charles Molineaux, Esq., is an attorney, a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law. Born in New York, he was educated in public, Catholic, and Jesuit schools in Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C. and currently resides in northern Virginia where he serves as an international commercial arbitrator and sometime free-lance writer. His articles and poetry have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Georgetown Academy, The Catholic Lawyer and New Oxford Review. He is a member, inter alia, of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and of the Knights of Malta. The opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of any organizations of which he is a member.