dinsdag, januari 30, 2007

Wat doet BXVI? Het eind van New York's Egan


As the Cardinal walked into the front parlor of his St. Patrick’s residence, girding for a tense meeting with about 40 leading New York priests, he was painfully aware of the circle that seemed ready to close around him. For nearly seven years, Edward Egan had reigned as cardinal-archbishop of New York—“the archbishop of the capital of the world,” as Pope John Paul II once called the job. Yet throughout his time here Egan had never really felt at home, had never become a “real” New Yorker in the identity morph that so many transplanted prelates and politicians manage just by donning a baseball cap. Instead, by choice and by nature, Egan had remained an outsider, a Chicagoan by birth and a Roman cleric by training, who had both an exalted view of a bishop’s authority and an anxious sense of how perilous the modern world can be for anything that smacks of monarchy.

As Egan, 74, prepared to retire from the pulpit that he rarely used to great effect, Egan’s long-standing fears seemed to be coming true, his history repeating itself with uncanny timing. He’d called the meeting of the Presbyteral Council in response to an anonymous letter, containing a series of blistering attacks on the cardinal, that surfaced on a clerical-gossip blog and subsequently made it into the papers.

The disloyalty he read in the priests’ faces this Monday in October reminded Egan of the ugly finale of his own mentor, Chicago’s cardinal John Cody. Cody, who died in 1982 under a cloud of scandal and recrimination, was one of those old-school churchmen whose long tenure was marked by a brittle and autocratic style. But then-father Edward Egan, who in the sixties served as personal secretary to Cody, stood by the cardinal to the end. Egan saw Cody as a role model and regularly championed his legacy, a past that was never as present as it was now for Egan as he approached the twilight of his own career.

The letter, signed by an anonymous “Committee of Concerned Clergy,” said that the relationship between the priests and a New York archbishop—the mortar that binds the hierarchy—had never “been so fractured and seemingly hopeless as it is now.”

The authors, who claimed they had to remain nameless because of “the severely vindictive nature of Cardinal Egan,” collated every criticism ever circulated about him—he was “arrogant and cavalier,” and especially “cruel and ruthless” toward priests, whom he treated with “dishonesty, deception, disinterest and disregard.” Egan had “an unnatural fear of the media” and had abdicated his role as a public figure and leader of the Catholic Church. And it called on the priests to act so that the Vatican would find a better man for the job.

Egan opened the session by reading, in full, an abject apology written to him by Monsignor Howard Calkins, a popular Westchester priest who, the previous day, had given an interview to the Daily News, in which he said that the letter reflected real anger at Egan. That was tantamount to betrayal in Egan’s mind, and Calkins, realizing he’d made a mistake, quickly wrote a personal letter to Egan offering to resign as head of the local vicariate, or region, and apologizing again for his “careless and ill-considered comments.” After reading Calkins’s letter, Egan called over his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling, and ordered him to release it to the media.

According to several accounts from those who were present, Egan went on to claim that his enemies were priests accused of sexual abuse who thought that Egan hadn’t adequately defended them. “When I hear stories about what those priests do, I have to do No. 2,” he spat in disgust. Then Egan widened his target to the entire priest corps: Of the 2,000 priests and bishops in the archdiocese, he lamented, not one stood up to defend him. “I was loyal to Cardinal Cody to the end,” he insisted in the stentorian affect he uses to complement his imposing height and girth. “Let me tell you, that is manliness! That is priestliness! That is Edward M. Egan!”

The room went silent. Egan announced that he needed to go upstairs for physical therapy on his knee, which still hurt after joint-replacement surgery in September, and then retired to his private quarters while the priests waited. For their part, they just wanted to get through the meeting and get back to their parishes unscathed, and the way Egan had handled Calkins convinced them that any hint of insurrection would be tantamount to clerical suicide. As the meeting stretched on for two hours, the priests agreed to a statement of support for Egan, saying they were “appalled” by the anonymous letter and “upset and dismayed that our Archbishop has been personally vilified in this manner.”
AFPGetty Images)

Yet Egan was still not ready to let the incident go. Four days later, on Friday, October 20, the cardinal followed up with a letter to all the priests of the archdiocese declaring that those behind the anonymous letter were obviously sexual abusers. “We cannot be left open to all manner of lies, leading to all manner of scandal and damage to the Archdiocese and the Archbishop from people who refuse to take responsibility for their actions,” Egan wrote.

Then he followed up a week later with a lengthy column in the archdiocesan paper, calling the anonymous letter “a secret, a secret of cowards.” (Egan suggested that the author was a layperson, because in his view the letter-writer used the word disinterested incorrectly, a mistake he hoped no priest would commit.) And again, Egan went after Calkins—naming him seven more times and dismissing his apology as “a partial correction” and “a curious protest of loyalty.” And he complained that the newspapers used a picture of Calkins “in priestly vestments, kneeling and embracing an African-American girl of six or seven years of age,” while he, Egan, was shown “with a twisted expression on my face.”

Whatever comity the earlier meeting had achieved quickly ended. On his influential blog, Father Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent conservative and editor of the religio-political journal First Things, wrote that Egan’s follow-up letter was “ill-advised and that the approach he has outlined is more likely to exacerbate than to resolve current discontents.” Even while criticizing the writers’ anonymity, Neuhaus added that their claim of widespread dissatisfaction with Egan contained “a strong measure of truth.”

Even after nearly seven years as archbishop, Egan remains a distant figure in Catholic life. In mid-January, he concluded the biggest public project of his tenure when he announced the closing of 21 parishes—a centerpiece of his nearly completed goal of restoring the battered finances of the archdiocese, a plan that also included the closing of nine schools. While Egan managed to spare a third of the institutions initially targeted for closure, mercy will not be what he’s remembered for.

Historically, the city’s top priest has been a tribal chieftain as much as a spiritual leader—a man who represents the pride of a blue-collar immigrant community that overcame prejudice and hardship to become the most prominent and powerful religious force in the city. Every bishop has a threefold mandate, “to teach, to sanctify, and to govern,” and New York churchmen have made full use of those powers, from “Dagger John” Hughes, the fearsome prelate who laid the cornerstone of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1858, to Francis Spellman, whose influence earned his residence the nickname of “the Powerhouse,” to Egan’s immediate predecessor, the mediagenic and immensely popular John O’Connor, who clashed with Catholic pols like Mario Cuomo, co-authored a book, His Eminence and Hizzoner, with Ed Koch, and brought the pope to Central Park. Even Cardinal Terence Cooke, who reigned between Spellman and O’Connor, was a man to be reckoned with despite a quiet demeanor.

Not so Egan. From the start, he approached the job more as a private administrator than as a civic leader. He eschewed partisan politics and shunned the media. For many years, O’Connor would talk to reporters after Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s, guaranteeing Monday-morning headlines and helping to make him a player in the life of the city. Egan, a gifted homilist, preferred to preach to the folks in the pews, and generally restricted his media appearances to twice-annual TV interviews, at Christmas and Easter. Even as pastor to a flock of 3 million Catholics who worship in more than 400 parishes from Staten Island to Sullivan County, he tended to be the classic “office priest,” operating from behind a desk and making periodic Sunday visits to local parishes.

In fact, from the time he arrived for his first New York stint in 1985, as an auxiliary to O’Connor, Egan has seemed temperamentally ill-suited to the city, a mismatch that in retrospect makes the ragged end of his career almost foreordained. O’Connor had been only recently transferred from Scranton, Pennsylvania, to take over the New York Archdiocese when Pope John Paul II asked him to take on Egan as a bishop. O’Connor had spent 27 years in the U.S. Navy as a chaplain, rising to the rank of rear admiral, and he would never refuse his higher-ups. But that’s not to say he liked the decision, or Egan himself.

The two men could not have been more different: O’Connor, an outgoing, outspoken pastor who was born in a Philadelphia rowhouse to working-class parents, the fourth of five children; and Egan, the opera-loving, piano-playing aesthete from the Roman Curia by way of an upper-middle-class Chicago upbringing. O’Connor would don a Yankees cap and sport a goofy grin; Egan would savor a performance of Otello at the Met and invite Renée Fleming to sing at his installation. “It was a very difficult relationship,” says a former Church official who knew both men.

Egan came to the job with a long résumé of academic honors but little experience in parish life. Even as a teenager in a minor seminary in Chicago, he had struck his classmates as unusually formal, with an almost patrician bearing. “It seemed like from the first day of high school he was wearing French cuffs,” even if only figuratively, says Robert McClory, a former Chicago priest who spent eight years in the seminary with Ed Egan from the time they were 13 or 14 years old, as was the custom in those days.

Egan didn’t pal around or play sports—a bout of childhood polio may have taken its toll on his physical confidence, acquaintances say—but he had plenty of friends. Unlike the rest, he rarely if ever earned a demerit on the card every seminarian had to carry with him, and over the five years of high school he garnered the highest average, winning the title of class prefect. He was also elected class president. As McClory says, “He was the perfect seminarian.”
Few were surprised when Egan was tapped to finish his studies in Rome at the Pontifical North American College, the elite seminary for would-be priests on the fast track. Egan eventually, and perhaps inevitably, earned the nickname of “Alpine Ed”—a climber who seemed destined to ascend the hierarchy. And so he did. In 1964, he received a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, often called “the pope’s Harvard.” He graduated summa cum laude—effectively he was a Church attorney—and returned to Chicago to serve as secretary to the city’s newly installed archbishop, the now-notorious Cardinal Cody.

In 1971, Egan went back to Rome to serve as a judge on the Roman Rota, the Church’s top court of appeals, and to teach canon law. His big break came in the early eighties as the Vatican was revising the Church’s entire Code of Canon Law, the dense compilation of strictures and procedures covering every possible sin or circumstance in Catholic life. Egan was one of six canonists assigned to finish the task, and he sat for many hours with Pope John Paul parsing the complex texts. “That really launched him,” says a priest who knows Egan well. The code was finally promulgated in 1983, and as often happened, John Paul wanted to reward Egan by making him an auxiliary, or assistant bishop, to a cardinal in a large diocese. (An archbishop will often have several auxiliaries to help carry the workload.)

Auxiliary bishops are normally among a cardinal’s most trusted advisers, yet O’Connor’s first assistant bishop was this outsider, and he let everyone know it. At a fête for the new bishop, in front of Egan’s family, O’Connor made edgy jokes about Egan and his grand piano and toasted him as “Chicago’s revenge.” Eventually O’Connor shunted him aside by making him vicar for education, in charge of the archdiocesan school system. By all accounts Egan did the job well enough, and in 1988, he was promoted to a diocese of his own, in Bridgeport.

For more than a decade, Egan ran the show, often in the imperious manner he seemed to perfect in Rome. If Egan didn’t have a warm and fuzzy public persona, he at least had a knack for administration. His fund-raising prowess enriched Catholic Charities, which became the largest private social-services agency in Fairfield County, and his reorganization of the schools bolstered enrollment. He cultivated contacts in “Fairchester,” the deep-pocketed Catholic crowd of Fairfield and Westchester counties, which included the likes of then General Electric CEO Jack Welch, then PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico, and Bob Wright, chairman of NBC.

In 1999, as O’Connor began to succumb to brain cancer, Egan’s name surfaced as a possible replacement. O’Connor was a favorite of John Paul’s, and as a sign of his affection, the pope had kept O’Connor on well past his 75th birthday. But now O’Connor was nearing 80, and his cancer was so advanced that the Vatican had to start thinking about making a move.

Although the process for naming bishops was once quasi democratic, or at least consultative, with local clergy having a say, in the past century the process had become increasingly secretive and byzantine. Even the terna, the list of three candidates traditionally compiled by Church officials for the pope to choose from, is not sacrosanct, and John Paul often picked someone else entirely. The names on the New York terna in early 2000 were reportedly Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, longtime head of Catholic chaplains for the armed forces in the United States; St. Louis archbishop Justin Rigali, a former Vatican diplomat who has since become cardinal in Philadelphia; and Buffalo bishop Henry Mansell, a former auxiliary to O’Connor, who remained close to him.

The infighting became fierce, especially when O’Connor heard that Egan was in the mix as well. Egan fit the profile of appointments during the last fifteen years of John Paul’s reign, when the pope overwhelmingly favored company men with a degree from Rome, experience in a Vatican office, and the powerful patrons that such a résumé brings. Egan knew the school system in New York, which needed reforming, and he was a prodigious fund-raiser, which New York needed after O’Connor’s profligate generosity. By those standards, Egan, a clerical lifer, was ideal.

But O’Connor thought he’d more than done his duty by taking Egan as an auxiliary years earlier, and he wasn’t about to see Egan warm his throne at St. Patrick’s. O’Connor wanted to see his friend Henry Mansell take over, to the point that O’Connor halted his chem-otherapy and went to see the pope, ostensibly to plead for Mansell. O’Brien didn’t have much pull in the Roman Curia (the pope’s mini-government), but Rigali did, and the pope faced an ecclesiastical impasse. Eight days after O’Connor died, the pope appointed Egan.

Following a week’s worth of tributes to O’Connor, Egan was introduced to the public. From his first words at the news conference introducing him at the Catholic chancery on First Avenue, his orotund speechifying, in a voice that sounded like Orson Welles (of the Gallo-wine-hawking vintage), made him seem a churchman from another century. There was none of the avuncular warmth that O’Connor broadcast so easily to the public.

Egan was given an impossible task. The landscape of the archdiocese was shifting under the Church’s once-solid foundations. For nearly two centuries, New York Catholicism was practically an Irish-run Establishment overseeing a mosaic of stable ethnic enclaves. But now those old-time Catholic communities were spreading out to the suburbs while new, poorer immigrants back-filled city parishes that had fewer priests to staff them and little money to support them. Churches and schools would have to close, creating a sense that after 200 years of surging numbers and clout, New York Catholicism had become a mature industry, religiously speaking, and was facing a discouraging phase of downsizing.

What’s more, part of O’Connor’s popularity was owed to the fact that he never denied anyone who came begging for a new program or for him to halt the closing of an old parish—and he left the archdiocese with a $20 million-a-year operating deficit and an infrastructure that needed a serious overhaul. During his tenure O’Connor reportedly blew through tens of millions in reserves—“O’Connor spent like a drunken sailor,” as one priest said. O’Connor left bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy, with overlapping offices and three or four different accounting programs that made it difficult to figure out exactly how much money there was, and where it was going.

Egan’s mandate was clear: Make tough decisions and then retire gracefully. In 2000, John Paul was ailing and knew his time was short, and he was consistently appointing bishops in their late sixties and early seventies who would retire within a few years, thus freeing John Paul’s eventual successor—now Pope Benedict XVI, who was elected in April 2005—to remake the hierarchy as he liked.

Egan got right to work, early on displaying the distinct management style that led priests to dub him “Edward Scissorhands.” During a March 2001 visit to the archdiocesan seminary in Yonkers, he began the meeting with the assembled faculty of St. Joseph’s Seminary by announcing, according to a witness, “Gentlemen, hard decisions have to be made.” He told those gathered that he wanted to restore the intellectual luster of the faculty, then snapped his fingers—“Literally, snapped his fingers,” recalls one witness—for an aide to hand him a sheet of paper. The cardinal then proceeded to read, with great formality, a list of faculty names and their titles. When he was done, he paused and announced, “If your name is not on this list, your services will no longer be needed in September. Questions?”

Those left off the list had been fired in public, and by default. It left several of them devastated emotionally and financially, and many are still angry. “It was done with such duplicity, such a lack of Christian charity,” says one professor who was in the room that day. Surely, much needed to be done to bring the archdiocese out of the red, and the cardinal closed or consolidated many chancery offices. Staffers who have worked with Egan say he seemed to want to stay as far removed from the emotional messiness of the budget cuts as possible. He formed few relationships with co-workers and answered those who inquired about the difficulty in cutting back with a simple rejoinder: “Economics 101.”

New York’s clergy found themselves at arm’s length from their new leader in other ways as well. In theological terms, the bishop and priest have a father-son relationship, and priests look to their bishop as their chief protector. But Egan was peremptory when engaged at close quarters and worryingly disconnected from their travails. As opposed to O’Connor, who stayed home every Wednesday to meet with any priest without an appointment, Egan made priests call a secretary. Where O’Connor would meet with his priests several times a year, Egan met with his regional vicars just once in six years.

Several other priests recalled how, early in his tenure, Egan went around to the nineteen regional vicariates to meet with the priests in groups of a few dozen at a time. At many of them, he began the session by announcing, “This is a dialogue. But it is a dialogue in the Roman sense—I talk, you listen.”
It’s not so much that the priests loved O’Connor—a highly controversial figure with enemies inside and outside of the Church. But priests, at least, felt that they could talk to him. They were proud that he was such a public presence and that he was one of them, a priest first and foremost, who would be there when they needed him.

Egan, in contrast, was always something of a loner, and he became more isolated as time passed and the pressures of the job grew. He would call priests late at night to complain about some petty slight, and he tried to have one priest’s authority to say Mass in the archdiocese revoked—a stunning maneuver that is tantamount to sacramental castration—because the priest spoke to a grassroots reform group Egan opposed. (“Egan will go after you until he gets you,” said one priest who, like most of the dozens of clerics and Church officials interviewed for this article, would speak only on condition that his name not be used.)

Egan managed to anger both sexual-abuse victims and clergy with his response to the nationwide scandal that erupted in 2002, by far the biggest issue for the Catholic Church on Egan’s watch. Though he has never been publicly accused of wrongdoing in New York, Connecticut newspapers reported in 2002 that as head of the Bridgeport diocese, he’d shifted pedophile clerics around to different parishes and that he repeatedly cast doubt on the allegations of victims. At first, Egan repeatedly insisted he had done nothing wrong. As the criticism mounted, he responded by issuing a carefully worded statement allowing that “if in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.”

As similar cases around the country prompted the Church to reform its procedures—or lack thereof—for adjudicating abuse claims, Egan was an obdurate opponent of those early efforts. In 2002, about 290 fellow bishops from around the country designated a blue-ribbon panel of Catholic laypersons, called the National Review Board, to oversee a new system of prevention and transparency. To Egan the board was tantamount to laypersons’ holding authority over a bishop, something he considered to be against Church doctrine. In January 2003, when the board visited New York, Egan refused to say Mass for the group—as other bishops did when the board visited their cities—and made no other bishop available to them.

A year later, a January 2004 audit by the board’s new Office of Child and Youth Protection gave New York a failing grade on implementing the Church’s new policies. A month later, in the review board’s first comprehensive report on the scandal, the lay group singled out for public rebuke four of the 195 archbishops who head dioceses; Egan was one of them.

Since then, he has brought the archdiocese into compliance—and then some. The chief worry now among New York’s priests is that, lacking an ally in the archbishop’s chair, they’ll have nowhere to turn if falsely accused.

Among the many criticisms of Egan, the most potent is that his tenure has been a lost opportunity. In New York, public presence translates into political power, and many Catholics believe that Egan’s invisibility has shortchanged any number of items on their agenda, from school vouchers to abortion to anti-poverty programs. At his best, an archbishop can offer comfort in the face of unfathomable loss, restore faith to an institution that has turned its back on children, and defend the rights of believers in a critical world. At a time when Catholic identity is more fractured than ever, Egan has done little to inspire the masses.

And yet, to Egan’s credit, he stands to leave the archdiocese in a much better position than it’s been in a generation—a Church with enough resources to face its third century in New York. While Egan has never issued a financial statement or balance sheet for the archdiocese, his associates say he intends to have the outstanding debt paid off by the time he leaves. If he succeeds, that would be a monumental accomplishment.

The hardest part has been the “reorganization” of parishes and schools—a euphemism for the inevitable job of closing churches and parochial schools that are draining scarce resources. Many bishops in old-line northeastern and midwestern dioceses have had to downsize to some degree, and most have done it badly—making cuts too quickly and deeply, without sufficient consultation. There’s almost no good way to shutter churches and schools—Catholics can retain deep emotional attachments long after they move away from the old neighborhood, and even a rumored closing is enough to bring out protesters.

But Egan took his time with the process, spending three years on a plan and responding to appeals to spare several parishes and schools. “I think fair justice has to be done to him,” says Father John McLoughlin, pastor of St. Ursula’s in Mount Vernon. “He might not be the most popular archbishop of New York, but from what he has said and what he has presented at the Presbyteral Council, he has done a good job assuring our survivability … I give him a kudo on that one.”

Even Egan’s harshest critics admit that he’s not solely to blame for his shortcomings. In many ways, the system that nurtured Egan also betrayed him. From the age of 14, he had been immured in an ecclesiastical Xanadu, a largely Roman world where bishops are still deferred to like royalty and indulged like dauphins. The problem, say many officials, is that the Vatican pulled him up by the roots and thrust him into a strange land and under a harsh spotlight for which he was unprepared. “It’s a problem—and it’s not Egan’s fault—but this system drops someone in from the outside, and they’re lost,” says the former Church official.

Several years ago, a small group of priests attended a luncheon hosted by Egan at his St. Patrick’s residence for a priest who had turned 75. It was a pleasant afternoon, but what one priest remembers most vividly was that Egan, then about 70, was able to tick off, with apparent anticipation, how many years, months, weeks, and days would pass until he himself would turn 75 and be eligible for retirement.

That day will finally come on April 2, at which point Egan is required by canon law to submit his resignation. Pope Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul, tended to keep cardinals in situ well after that threshold—every bishop of the city so far has died with his miter on, so to speak. Until the recent blowup with his priests, Egan was considered a safe bet to remain in place for at least another year, until the conclusion of a yearlong series of events marking the 200th birthday of the New York Archdiocese. If Benedict accepts his resignation anytime before that, Church observers say, it would be viewed as a sign that the pope was no happier with Egan than were the priests of New York. It’s hard to predict exactly what Benedict will do—he likes to keep his own counsel rather than consult widely like John Paul did.

Then, of course, comes the question of Egan’s successor. Up to 25 American bishops, including five cardinals, are up for retirement this year, and judging from the pontiff’s handful of appointments so far, he is looking for pragmatists rather than crusaders, bishops with the willingness and intellectual chops to promote the faith in the public square, but not publicity hounds—in other words, someone with Egan’s restraint and O’Connor’s pastoral instincts. Whoever he is, the New York appointment could well determine Benedict’s legacy with American Catholics, just as John Paul made his mark with O’Connor in 1984.

As for Egan himself, whenever he leaves, he’s likely to return to what he does best, presiding at confirmations and baptisms, with the kind of low-key presence he had before becoming cardinal-archbishop. Rome, of course, is his favorite city. But with Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law biding his time in a luxe Roman sinecure in the city’s glossiest basilica, St. Mary Major, there aren’t many spots left for retired American cardinals with little to do and no place to do it.

Egan recently hinted that he might spend time in France. Maybe that’s where he would finally be at home—far from New York and the shadow of his own history.

woensdag, januari 24, 2007

Sterke verhalen Canvas tv Belgie Sex in a cold climat


Sex in a cold climate
Woensdag 24 januari 2007
Sex in a cold climate is een bioscoopdocumentaire over de echte 'Magdalene sisters'. De film brengt het verhaal in beeld van de 'uitgestoten' Ierse vrouwen die in een speciaal daarvoor opgericht huis worden heropgevoed.

De vrouwen worden er door nonnen fysiek en psychologisch misbruikt. Er wordt hen verteld hoe verdorven hun leven wel is.

De film spitst zich toe op vier vrouwen die opgesloten zaten in deze 'Magdalyn Asylems'.

Deze dames zaten er omdat ze een buitenechtelijk kind baarden, verkracht werden en dat niet wilden verzwijgen, of simpelweg teveel te koop liepen met hun vrouwelijke charmes.

De film is gebaseerd op interviews met vrouwen die tussen de jaren 40 en 60 van de vorige eeuw zaten opgesloten in één van de 'opvoedingscentra'.

Eén vrouw getuigt zelfs hoe ze werd opgenomen in een huis omdat ze thuis had verteld dat de lokale priester had gemasturbeerd op haar. Omdat niemand haar geloofde en de kerk haar excommuniceerde, werd ze opgesloten.

Sex in a cold climate schetst een aangrijpend beeld van menselijke miserie en het onmenselijk behandelen van kwetsbare vrouwen die worden onttrokken aan hun kind of hun familie...
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

De verhoren van de Ierse Staats-onderzoekdscommissie



25-1-06: cadeautje gekregen van de site oud kindertehuis kinderen:

(ik ben hier verwijderd door de beheerster Gina,welke voor mij waarschuwt, zie o.a. de 80 reacties onder de foto, correcte links naar de Voorzienigheid en de Goede Herder volgen. Apart Blog mbt deze groep en de betreffende stukken volgt tzt.)

Jord:

Magdalenasisters gezien vanavond op Canvas??? en de documentaire er achteraan? Was er hier in Nederland ook zoiets?

Nee, sorry Jord.

Zou ook niet weten waar het over ging

Knufff, Gina xxx

vrijdag, januari 19, 2007

Hand of God online te bekijken

Hand of God deel 1: For 30 years my brother held a secret.

Ook de overige delen zijn dmv deze PBS pagina van Frontline te bekijken.

De inmiddels saaie feiten, van een serie-pedo-verkrachter. Te veel dezelfde verhalen maakt zelfs dergelijke verhalen ordinair saai.

Maar 10 delen lang aangrijpend in de zo herkenbare jaren erna, het weinig spectaculaire verhaal over dat kind in die bankschroef.

Die man werd, wist op te staan en een advertentie zette omdat hij niet meer kon geloven dat hij de enige zou zijn: Wie herinnert zich Father Birmingham.

Mannen die uit de bankschroef kwamen
Ontroerend in het mogen kijken naar de familieleden, luisterend naar hoe zij allemaal met hun gezinsverhaal zijn om leren gaan.

Een door "vader" Birmingham verkracht gezin rond een misbruikte zoon, broer, partner waarvoor destijds geen bescherming was.

Een kerk welke die bescherming nog steeds onthoudt.
Maar kiest voor beschermen van verkrachters en zo kinderen en hun families mee verkrachtte.

donderdag, januari 18, 2007

Homo novo in Homophobia


"once they are here, we pay attention to how they relate with their peers," says Msgr. Hefner, "because people need solid, healthy friendships with their peers to handle the pressures of leading a celibate life."

De veilige priester als troetel.

Harstikke celibatair. Het wachten is, na de pin-up priesterkalenders, Bodars in Playboy, de kindermisbruikende priester in de auto-reclame en binnenkort te verwachten Georgie-boy's eigen kledinglijn -in klein paars -, op de volgende mode-ontwerpster die het kazuivel aanpast zodat die te onderdrukken sexualiteit nog beter ingezet kan worden,


hoerheren om een ziel in de verkoop van mannenmacht.
Vorm en inhoud:
Die homo's de kerk uit; de kerk schept haar eigen homo novo wel.
"once they are here, we pay attention to how they relate with their peers," says Msgr. Hefner, "because people need solid, healthy friendships with their peers to handle the pressures of leading a celibate life."

Secretaris paus inspireert modeontwerpster Versace
Geplaatst door Theo Borgermans op
do 18 jan '07 om 20:55u
ROME (RKnieuws.net) - De Italiaanse modeontwerpster
Donnatella Versace heeft toegegeven dat de persoonlijke secretaris van de paus
haar inspireerde bij haar nieuwe kledinglijn, meldt CatNews.

Versace pakte onlangs uit met een collectie klerikale zwarte jassen en witte t-shirts,
typisch voor Italiaanse priesters. “Hij heeft me zeker geïnspireerd”, bekende

Versace. De modeontwerpster laat zich overigens bijzonder lovend uit over
secretaris Georg Gaenswein, die sinds het aantreden van de paus ook al de
Italiaanse pers wist te charmeren. Ze noemt hem een geslaagd voorbeeld van ‘Meer
hersenen en minder spieren’. Volgens haar is de tijd ook rijp voor mode voor
‘meer ethisch en geestelijk geïnspireerde mannen’.

Georg Gaenswein was ruim tien jaar een erg nauwe medewerker van de paus, totdat hij na diens pausverkiezing ook zijn rechterhand werd.
Hij breekt sterk met het traditionele
beeld van geestelijken: hij is atletisch, blond, sportief en hij heeft een bijzonder sterke uitstralingskracht.

Gaenswein werd op 30 juli 1956
geboren in Riedern, in het zuiden van het Zwarte Woud. Later ging hij theologie studeren in Freiburg en bracht hij ook enkele semesters in Rome door.


Zijn studies betaalde hij met een bijbaantje als
skileraar. In 1984 werd hij priester gewijd. Daarna ging hij naar München, waar hij een diploma behaalde in het kerkelijk recht. In 1995 keerde hij naar Rome terug, dit keer als persoonlijke secretaris van de Duitse bisschop Josef Clemens.

In 1996 werd hij benoemd tot lid van de Congregatie voor de Geloofsleer en in 2003 aangesteld als persoonlijke secretaris van kardinaal Ratzinger, de
toenmalige prefect van deze congregatie. (tb)


Bedankt, Emmanuel!

Bisschopswijnje?

Sigaartje uit eigen doos misschien?

"

Ik was een heel erg grote beer die toch heel lief was.

God was een Ezel en hield veel van mij.

En iedereen was erg gelukkig".

G.K. Reve

Heeft Nederland effe mazzel dat die Belgen ook Nederlands schrijven

HEHE! Wat een mazzel dat die Belgen ook Nederlands schrijven!

Kerk+Leven kritisch voor Vaticaan in affaire Poolse aartsbisschop Wielgus.’Pijnlijk onbegrijpelijk’
Geplaatst door Theo Borgermans op
do 18 jan '07 om 00:01u



ANTWERPEN (RKnieuws.net) - In zijn wekelijkse column is Toon Osaer ,de hoofdredacteur van K+L, kritisch voor de manier waarop de Romeinse curie het dossier van de Poolse aartsbisschop Wielgus heeft benaderd. Hij vindt dat de curie nog altijd onvoldoende vertrouwd is met pluralistische democratieën en uit de pedofilie-affaires in Amerika niet de gepaste lessen lijkt te hebben getrokken.

"Ongewild wekte het de indruk van de ontknoping van een slechte vaudeville. Nog geen 24 uur na zijn aanstelling als aartsbisschop van Warschau bood mgr. Stanislaw Wielgus al zijn ontslag aan. Zijn benoeming had van meet af aan voor beroering gezorgd. Volgens het rechtse blad Gazeta Polska zou hij een informant zijn geweest van de gehate communistische geheime dienst.

„Niets van aan”, klonk het vastberaden, ook bij de Poolse bisschoppenconferentie en het Vaticaan. En de paus heette op de hoogte te zijn van alle details van Wielgus’ voorgeschiedenis. Een katholieke Poolse onderzoekscommissie bevestigde evenwel de contacten met de geheime dienst. Harde bewijzen voor laakbare daden leverde het onderzoek nochtans niet op. Volgde dus Stanislaw Wielgus’ aanstelling tot aartsbisschop, zij het in besloten kring. Uiterst ongewoon voor een land waar de Kerk niet wordt vervolgd. Kort nadien gaf de nieuwe aartsbisschop in een verklaring toch toe voor de geheime dienst te hebben gewerkt. Hij bekende fouten te hebben gemaakt en sprak een mea culpa uit. Om vervolgens onder Vaticaanse druk de dag nadien ontslag te nemen.
Niet meteen een verheffend spektakel. Wij kunnen uiteraard niet oordelen of de man al dan niet moreel laakbare daden stelde. We zijn evenmin zo naïef te denken dat in een oudcommunistisch land, waar decennialang terreur en chantage regeerden, geen oude rekeningen moeten vereffend. Toch moeten we toegeven, de Kerk heeft dit dossier op z’n minst bijzonder onhandig aangepakt.

Bisschop Wielgus kan best wel overtuigd geweest zijn van zijn persoonlijke onschuld. Vraag is of van een kandidaat-aartsbisschop niet mag verwacht worden dat hij kan inschatten of zijn benoeming wel een dienst aan de Kerk is. Dat hij kan onderscheiden of zijn verleden niet voor onoverkomelijke verdeeldheid en verwarring zal zorgen.

Ook in Rome liet men serieuze steken vallen. Op zich is het een groot goed om in volle vrijheid en onafhankelijkheid te kunnen beslissen over de benoeming van bisschoppen. Hopelijk ook vrij van lobbygroepen en zonder druk van de media. Dat mag er nochtans niet toe leiden blind te zijn voor de omstandigheden, noch doof voor wat er waarlijk leeft. Want het gevaar zich verheven te voelen boven de werkelijkheid is dan nooit veraf.

Vrees voor gezichtsverlies voor de Kerk is in dit dossier allicht een slechte raadsman gebleken. Evenzeer de onvertrouwdheid van Rome met de hedendaagse pluralistische democratieën. Na de pedofilieschandalen in de Verenigde Staten leefde nochtans de verwachting dat die wereldvreemdheid tot het verleden behoorde. Het is naïef te denken dat dossiers zoals dat van mgr. Wielgus vertrouwelijk kunnen blijven. Overigens ruikt zoiets al snel naar doofpotten, met alle negatieve gevoelens die dat oproept. Neen, in Rome heeft men nog altijd moeite met een welbegrepen doorzichtigheid.

Intussen is veel kwaad geschied en heeft deze zaak de Kerk alweer veel schade berokkend. Niet enkel in Polen, ook elders en bij ons. Het slechte imago waarmee het instituut blijft kampen wordt er enkel door versterkt. Zoiets is koren op de molen voor wie het instituut verkettert en ziet als een belemmering voor de boodschap van het evangelie. Maar het brengt ook vele gewone weldenkende gelovigen in verlegenheid.

We kunnen slechts hopen dat die betreurenswaardige geschiedenis heilzaam mag zijn voor het inzicht van curiemedewerkers en mag bijdragen tot een nieuwe bestuurscultuur in Vaticaanse kringen", aldus Toon Osaer.
.

woensdag, januari 17, 2007

Portugese kardinaal: 'Abortus toelaten aanslag op beschaving'

Portugese kardinaal: ’Abortus toelaten aanslag op beschaving’
Geplaatst door Theo Borgermans
di 16 jan '07 om 15:33u


LISSABON (RKnieuws.net) - Abortus toelaten zou een aanslag op de beschaving betekenen. Dat verklaarde mgr. José Policarpo, aartsbisschop van Lissabon, dinsdag.

Een wet die de vernietiging van het menselijk leven toestaat betekent een aanslag op de beschaving en een ondermijning van de ethische grondslagen die aan de basis liggen van de samenleving, aldus de kardinaal.
Op 11 februari spreken de Portugezen zich in een referendum uit over abortus. (tb)

reacties: de gebruikelijke emotionele uitbarstingen over hel en verdoemenis. Maar 1 fascinerende die de rest overbodig maakt:

Een volk dat zijn eigen kinderen vermoordt pleegt zelfmoord

Gepost door m w gisteren om 16:06u


Zou hij het zelf verzonnen hebben? Wat jammer dat de man waarschijnlijk zelf niet door heeft hoe kernachtig zijn uitspraak is.




De baarmoeder aller keuzes.







Heel onplezierig om dat nou direct weer met zo'n Saddam, of creapier nog: die ophanging van z'n broer, per ongeluk onthoofd in plaats van opgehangen, te moeten associeren.



Toevoeging 18-1:







ik wist het, hehe, gelukkig! Al mijn vooroordelen weer geheel en al bevestigd: hij heeft het niet zelf verzonnen!






Leve de Sabijnse maagdenroof.


Monk
Forum: Ethische kwesties. Geplaatst op 17/1 '07 18:47u. Onderwerp: Mannen te veel (posts: 34, views: 485)
De oude Romeinen kenden de "Sabijnse maagdenroof". Als je als volk geen vrouwen hebt, roof je ze bij een naburig volk.

Volkomen waar De nabuur volkeren van China moeten behoorlijk op hun hoede zijn, wanhopige chinese mannen op roof tocht naar maagden


Forum: Ethische kwesties. Geplaatst op 18/1 '07 2:50u. Onderwerp: Mannen te veel (posts: 35, views: 499)
Men krijgt de nationaliteit uitsluitend dooor naturalisatie, niet door geboorte.


Dat lijkt me nogal logisch, gezien het gigantische mannenoverschot in Vaticaanstad, en die paar vrouwen die er wonen zijn waarschijnlijk de nonnen die de pauselijke huishouding doen. Geboorten zullen er in Vaticaanstad dus niet veel plaatsvinden, en dan ben je wel op naturalisatie aangewezen. En trouwens, dat mannenoverschot daar hunkert vermoedelijk ook niet zo naar vrouwen als de Chinese mannen, dus vrouwenrooftochten door kardinalen vanuit Vaticaanstad in het naburige Italië hoeven we ook niet te verwachten (daar zou wél een mooi Dan Brown-boek in zitten! ).

Eén vraagje nog: in die secure opsomming van wie er zoal in Vaticaanstad woont miste ik de paus. Ik mag toch, hoop ik, wel aannemen dat hij daar woont als Eerste en Opperste Inwoner, compleet met geldig Vaticaans paspoort?



Toch jammer dat Cleaver geen portugees schijnt te hebben gesproken.Anders had een van zijn cumpadres hem kunnen wijzen op zijn typefoutje en had er gewoon gestaan: Soil on ice.

problems with same sex celibacy

Zou dat 38 jaar debat hebben gescheeld, dat ene verschil tussen 2 uitspraken die Nederland en Portugal

typeren

Hij komt van de maan en nao e da minha terra?

Women and waves!

zondag, januari 14, 2007

Het knaapje, het melkmeisje en verkleedkistenpriesters


C(*)

geslacht: vrouw
relatie: ongehuwd


Over mijzelf:Kerk kleding hoeft niet duur te zijn maar toch om toch aan het beoogde doel te beantwoorden.50 euro aan stof,arbeid niet meegeteld,was vrienden dienst uit liefde voor onze Grote Baas Zo kan een handige naaister, moeder ,vrouw of vriendin hulp van 1 patroon alle kerkelijke kleuren voor zijn of haar priester maken.Nog functioneler is een kazuivel die aan twee kanten gedragen kan worden.bv paars en zwart of rose .Voor de liefhebber kan ik wel het patroon kopieeren en opsturen zo ook van een albe met kap.Dat patroon kopieren en opsturen kost niks alleen tijd . Ik heb ze zelf ook gekregen.Maken mag je zelf.Bron: rorate .com(*) met (inmiddels verkregen) toestemming van betrokken deelneemster.


Dank je wel C(*)! Ik heb me een ongans gelachen toen ik het per ongeluk vond, met die lach en die traan! Heerlijk dat jij die inmiddels ook kunt delen over je eigen naiviteit. En in staat bent geweest aan dit misbruik van jou goedgelovigheid een eind te maken! Een diepe buiging voor je moed, meid!

Libertas Forum: Humorhttp://rapidwire.net/cgi-bin/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.pl/111110A/http/crispina.punt.nl/flist.php?id=15">Humor>. Geplaatst op 26/3 '06 10:37u. Onderwerp: Roraters'>http://rapidwire.net/cgi-bin/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.pl/111110A/http/crispina.punt.nl/fshow.php?id=184523">Roraters in debat (posts: 8, views: 100)Was er maar debat ,maar dat is niet mogelijk op geen enkel forum , en als je doormiddel van debat je gelijk maar wil halen,ook dat zal nooit lukken op geen enkel forum.Voor een goed debat zal men onder zielsverwanten en vrienden moeten zijn, met vreemden is hethooguit je kaartje af geven meer niet.Libertas


Libertas
Geplaatst op 26/3 '06 14:35u
Christenen met lef die praten niet maar poetsen, zijn gedreven ,willen niet aardig gevonden worden,staan in vuur en vlam en stellen Christus Jezus Centraal en present.Door hun houding doen en laten ,door te zeggen wat ze te zeggen hebben zonder aanziens des persoons, en een zo leven te (dus niet een leven van het eeuwigdurend heden ,waar de meesten mensen in zitten )hebben wat de ongelovige jaloers maakt, en Jezus Christus navolgen en Christenstrijder zijn,dat is een Christen met lef,door die lef lopen de Kerken weer vol.Libertas

I couldnot agree more. (ik had het niet meer met je eens kunnen zijn).Je kaartje héb je afgegeven, Libertas.Een debat daarover heeft inderdaad Rorate onmogelijk gemaakt.
En dát was de start van het ontdekken van het kerkelijk (sexueel) misbruik dat inmiddels, dankzij de Rooms Katholieke Kerk, tot aan de Vicaris Generaal van het aartsbisdom en Kerk en Recht aan toe, mogelijk is nu óók in digi space.
Die ontdekking was mogelijk dankzij jouw visite kaartje, waarop stond Priester. Waarover geen vragen gesteld mochten worden.Op het visitekaartje dat jij afgaf op een Rooms Katholiek Forum wat pretendeert :1) a) Dit is een Rooms-Katholiek forum.Van de deelnemers wordt verwacht dat zij de geloofs- en zedenleer en de traditie, zoals die in de geloofsbelijdenis en de Katechismus van de Katholieke Kerk worden verwoord, respecteren.
Inmiddels blijkt daaraan te zijn toegevoegd:

Aan Rooms-Katholieke priesters die aan ons forum meedoen mogen o.i. in deze,vanwege hun voorbeeldfunctie, hogere eisen gesteld worden. Zij maken deel uit van het leergezag van onze Kerk en dienen zich derhalve van hun grote verantwoordelijkheid bewust te zijn! Van hen mag op een RK forum verlangd worden dat zij in trouw aan de paus en het bisschoppencollege de leer van de RK Kerk onverkort verkondigen en verdedigen.

Kennelijk hebben de digi-mijters het inmiddels zo in hun punthoofdjes gekregen dat zij zich nu ook deze toets toe kunnen eigenen. Welke priester houd zich al dan niet aan het kerkelijk leergezag.Ook zij geven hun visite kaartje dus af.


Zou het daarom zijn dat deze inquisitie- in- digi-space de taak op zich heeft gemeend te moeten nemen niet slechts de kudde der goed-gelovigen te beschermen door mij levenslang de toegang tot dat forum te ontzeggen , maar tot mijn stomme verbazing (in ieder geval vanaf het moment dat ik, om totaal andere redenen welke slechts mij aangaan, vroeg om opnieuw toegelaten te worden) dagelijks dit weblog te bezoeken.

Niet om iets te lezen, de inquisiteur blijft slechts 15 seconden.Kennelijk op inspectieronde. In een voor en door hem zelfgebouwd spookhuis.....


Een beetje gezond mens gaat naar een museum ofzo om beelden te bekijken.Deze inquisiteur - in- digi-space heeft dat benul kennelijk niet. Maar komt zijn angst hier welhaast dagelijks her bevestigen. Zichzelf masturberend in "ik hoor bij de goeie comboys, Heer, laat mij toe tot Uw hemelpoort'' als elke andere fundamentalist.

Volslagen blind voor eigen handelen dat in flagrante tegenspraak is met alles van die Rooms Katholieke Kerk leer. Geilend op de mannen macht in dat mannen-instituut RKK. Op grond waarvan misdaden mogelijk waren, en deze nu ook in digi space uitgevoerd kunnen worden, en waartoe gelegenheid geschapen wordt.

Het aardige van alles is dan nog wel dat deze digi-mijter dat uithaalt in werktijd van zijn baas. Een verzekeringsmaatschappij.Hij heeft kennelijk problemen met het begrijpen van bedrijfsculturen.
Een verzekeringsmaatschappij immers heeft als doel het verdienen van geld.En verdient dat geld door het verkopen van verzekeringen aan mensen die bang zijn.ANGST.

Het Geloof is geen product wat je hebt te verkopen voor winst.
Dat is, letterlijk, door de eeuwen heen levensgevaarlijk gebleken!

En op de vraag waar zijn Christenen met lef?

Hier heeft U mijn visite kaartje, mijnheer de flapdrol uit een verkleedkist.Gelovigen praten namelijk wél.

Vrouwen praten namelijk wél. Dat is de kracht van vrouwen, altijd al geweest. Gemeenschappen bouwen.Ook al probeert die RKK dat om haar mannen machts redenen onmogelijk te maken.In real life en in Nederland digi-space dankzij Rorate 's digi-mijters.
Net zoals slachtoffers van misbruik hun mond overal ter wereld aan het open doen zijn. Slachtoffers van kerkelijk seksueel misbruik.
In real life, over hun dagelijks leven. En daarvoor ook digi-space leren gebruiken ten behoeve van dat dagelijks leven. Waardoor kerkelijk sexueel misbruik in digi space ontdekt kon worden. Al heeft het dan wat langer geduurd dan misschien wel wenselijk was.

Hier heb je mijn visite kaartje. En dat van andere vrouwen, rorate deelneemsters.Welke zich hun Geloof niet af laten nemen. Maar hun individuele recht op Geloofs vrijheid en Godsdienst heel serieus nemen.
Misbruik door flapdrollen. al dan niet verkleed als priester, kerkelijk functionarissen en aan een religie verwante mensen als dit soort moderatoren zal altijd plaats vinden, zoals dat altijd heeft plaats gevonden.Angstige mensen zullen zich altijd laten misbruiken door hen die zich dezereligie(s) eigen maken.Omstanders zullen altijd gelegenheid geven tot dit misbruik. Uit angst en menselijke behoefte tot kudde -schaap gedrag op zoek naar een herder.


Tot zij zichzelf vinden. En hun vrijheid.
En met die vrijheid mag iedereen doen en laten wat zij of hij wenst te doen.Ook zich laten misbruiken.

Maar dat heeft niets te maken met de boodschap uit het Evangelie. Noch met de 10 geboden. Die zeggen namelijk:Ik ben de Heer uw God, de Schepper, van man en vrouw en blijf met je fikken van een ander af!
Wie oren heeft die hore, wie ogen heeft die kijke.Want in dit land bestaat er naast Geloofs vrijheid ook vrijheid van spreken, en informatie. Zelfs van je hersens gebruiken wanneer contacten even niet bestaan omdat ieder haar vrijheid nodig heeft.
Zeker wanneer dat gaat over belangen van vrouwen die misbruikt worden.En laat dat nu toch ook nog eens horen bij datgene wat Rome te zeggen heeft.....!

Niet alleen over vrouwen, maar zelfs over het gebruik van digi -space: wie een gereedschapskist nodig heeft, die maakt er dus een.
En wie mij meent hierop aan te moeten klagen:U syt wellecome!!

Naam en adres is bij voldoende mensen bekend.

(*)link weggehaald 7-11-07
7-11-07: 134 reacties weggehaald gezien persoonlijke betrokkenheid en beschadigingen personen.

zaterdag, januari 13, 2007

Hoe RK Polen het niet meer bestaan van RK Nederland aantoont

Onwaarschijnlijk hoe een artikel in een volstrekt niet ter zake doende Nederlandse krant, wat zou het zijn een dag- of weekblad?, en een diep verontwaardigde opmerking in een nog veel minder terzake doende clubje, de firma rorate en co IK-ben-lekker-gelovig-en-jij-niet, waar dit artikel integraal werd overgenomen, en deze kreet van de laatste katholiek die zich kennelijk verlaten voelt onder werd geplaatst laat zien dat itt Belgie de Rooms Katholieke Kerk in Nederland volstrekt niet meer bestaat. Waarmee de scheiding tussen Kerk en Staat voor wat betreft de RKK een feit is, priester-redacteuren weer eens geen visie hebben,maar teruggerijpen op het model van Schaepman, met evenwel dit verschil dat ze daarbij en passant maar even de oecomene een feit laten zijn. Dus in de verdeiging van het onverdedigbare van Rome maar gebruik maken van een harstikke protestante visie.
De kennelijk laatste katholiek voelt nattigheid en zich bekocht.



Dit is een heel vreemd artikel. Normaliter pleegt de hier verstrekte informatie redelijk neutraal te worden gebracht maar in dit artikel is heel duidelijk iemand aan het woord die behalve informatie ook vooral zijn visie op diezelfde informatie kwijt wil.Ik stel dit geenszins op prijs en vind dat een dergelijk artikel niet geplaatst had moeten worden.
Gepost door A.M. BERBEN vandaag om 16:39u

Tja en dan heb je natuurlijk ook nog katholieken die haast zeker weten dat Polen islamieten zijn!

Het erge is dat je door dit soort opmerkingen bijna gelukkig wordt dat die RKK zo anti-democratisch is. Maar ja, da's natuurlijk weer Europees post-communistisch denken, erfenis van democratisch centralism.

Oi, oi, oi...en da's jids

WARSCHAU (RKnieuws.net) - Op 28 februari verschijnt een boek
over geestelijken die tijdens de communistische periode in Polen samenwerkten
met de communistische politie. Daarin worden 39 "gevallen" besproken. De
geestelijken worden met naam genoemd.Het boek is geschreven door een Poolse
pater. "Ik ben blij dat het boek af is" , verklaarde de geestelijke vrijdag. Hij
verwacht tegenstand van de bisschoppen voor zijn werk. Hij zegt ook dat hij alle
gegevens waarover hij beschikt eerder al aan de bisschoppen heeft bezorgd.
(tb)

Dit soort geestelijken zijn de aanstokers van de hetze! Typisch pools!

Gepost door daveithe2 op 14-1 '07 om 23:58u


Een orthodoxe 'bisschop Wielgus' is er niet en komt er ook niet
door Herman Veenhof
Nederlands Dagblad

De Poolse crisis rond het aan- en aftreden van Stanislaw Wielgus als aartsbisschop van Warschau is een dubbele. Een orthodox-christelijke variant op het rooms-katholieke drama is er niet en komt er waarschijnlijk ook niet. De kerken van oosterse snit waren volgzamer tijdens het communisme. De partij had minder moeite met de tiara dan met de mijter.

Met betraande ogen zat Stanislaw Wielgus (67) jongstleden zondag in de Johannes de Doper-kathedraal van Warschau. De 67-jarige prelaat deelde mee dat hij aftrad als aartsbisschop van Warschau, een functie waarin hij twee dagen ervoor was aangetreden. Paus Benedictus XVI had hem gevraagd zijn nieuwe baan neer te leggen, nadat pas zaterdag in Rome een Duitstalige versie van het voor Wielgus belastende materiaal beschikbaar was gemaakt.

Dat materiaal omvatte de 46 documenten die het IPN, het Poolse Instituut voor Nationale Herinnering, had opgedoken. Het ging om het onvolledige dossier-Wielgus uit de archieven van de Poolse geheime dienst SB. Die had Wielgus in 1967 geworven toen hij theologie studeerde aan de Universiteit van Lublin. In die oost-Poolse stad mocht de enige rooms-katholieke academische instelling in redelijke autonomie functioneren.

Wielgus bleef informant voor de SB tot de val van het communisme in 1990. De tegenprestatie was reisvrijheid en een herhaald studieverlof in München, waar hij college volgde bij Joseph Ratzinger, de huidige paus. Met zijn loopbaan kwam het ook goed. De Poolse boerenzoon werd bisschop van Plock, rector van de Universiteit in Lublin en op 6 december 2006 aartsbisschop van Warschau.

Die functie is de belangrijkste in de Poolse kerk. Als primaat zou Wielgus vrijwel automatisch tot kardinaal worden verheven. Maar op 20 december verschenen in het weekblad Gazeta Polska , een soort Elsevier, de belastende archiefstukken. Dagbladen als Rzeczpospolita en Dziennik voegden daar extra informatie aan toe zodat de positie van Wielgus onhoudbaar werd.

Geen regiefout
De ontmaskering van Wielgus was natuurlijk gefundenes Fressen voor internationale bladen en omroepen van linkse signatuur. De foute bisschop kon in het rijtje van de homofiele en knapenschendende collega's die vooral in het vrije West-Europa (Oostenrijk, Engeland, Amerika) zijn opgedoken. Het was de zoveelste rotte appel in de mand van een door en door fossiele kerk.

Maar in het Poolse geval lag het anders. De deconfiture van Wielgus was geen regiefout van Benedictus XVI in Rome. Die kreeg zijn informatie te laat en was in feite op het verkeerde been gezet door zijn voorganger, de Poolse paus Johannes Paulus II, die Wielgus in 1999 benoemde in Plock en Lublin. De Poolse paus was weliswaar zelf standvastig geweest tegenover het communisme, maar had de opmars van 'foute' collega's ook na 1989 gedoogd.

Daar worden nu de wrange vruchten van geplukt. Tien tot vijftien procent van de Poolse clerus werkte samen met de SB; dat zijn circa 1500 geestelijken. Maandag rolde al de kop van Janusz Bielanski, pastoor van de Wawel-kathedraal in Krakow, de thuiskerk van Karol Woytila. Hij nam een voorschot op een boek van de jezuïet Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, die de collaboratie binnen zijn eigen priesterorde heeft onderzocht.

Maandag werd ook bekend dat 12 bisschoppen door de SB waren geïnstrueerd om in 1978 de 'Operatie Primaat' te leiden, ten einde de oude Stefan Wyszynski te vervangen door een volgzame kandidaat. De verkiezing van Woytila tot paus en de benoeming van Józef Glemp in 1981 tot primaat voorkwam echt ingrijpen.

Diezelfde Glemp (75) is nu door de paus gevraagd om aan te blijven tot 2009. Dan zal de aartsbisschoppelijke zetel van Warschau naar Gniezno zijn verhuisd, de stad waar nog voor het jaar 1000 de Poolse staat en monarchie ontstond.

Dubbele crisis
De Poolse crisis is een dubbele crisis. Tot voor kort stonden tenminste uiterlijk kerk, rechtse pers en de nationalistische regering pal voor een hergeboorte van de natiestaat. Dat besef van nationale trots stoelde op twee pijlers: het streven de communisten van weleer alsnog te wraken en het streven de rooms-katholieke kerk in Polen als een nauwelijks verkapte staatskerk te handhaven.

Mythe
Nu ligt Pools rechts in twee stukken, omdat je bij het naspeuren naar collaborateurs met het communisme ook terecht komt bij de kerk. Het extreme deel - Radio Maryja en TV Trwam, de media van priester Tadeusz Rydzyk in Torun - houdt vast aan de mythe dat de kerk goed was en de recente gebeurtenissen dus alsnog een machinatie van links, communisten en joden. Het platteland staat als vanouds tegenover de stad, waar gematigd rechts, de media en links zich ophouden. Niet alleen de kerk wankelt, ook de Poolse regering staat op losse schroeven, sinds de coalitiepartner LPR (de Liga voor Poolse Gezinnen) en een nog extremere partij werden gedecimeerd.

Uiteindelijk zouden de twee onderzoeksrapporten van december - een van de staat en een van de kerk - de val van de tweelingbroers Kaczynski (Lech is president en Jaroslaw is premier) kunnen bewerkstelligen.

Rooms en orthodox
Polen is een uniek geval. In geen ander land in het voormalige Oostblok was de kerk zo sterk en zo dissident. In geen enkel ander land is de wens af te rekenen met het communisme zo intens als juist daar. Maar in het algemeen bestaat er een groot verschil tussen de landen achter het IJzeren Gordijn die een rooms-katholiek karakter hebben en de staten waar de orthodox-christelijke kerken domineren.

Een orthodox-christelijke variant op het rooms-katholieke drama is er niet en komt er waarschijnlijk ook niet. De kerken van oosterse snit waren volgzamer tijdens het communisme. De partij had minder moeite met de tiara dan met de mijter. Ga maar na: in Tsjechië, Slowakije en Hongarije werden de rooms-katholieke kerken harder vervolgd dan de protestantse, die zich voor een groot deel lieten paaien. In de DDR (Duitse Democratische Republiek) was de evangelisch lutherse kerk stil of accordeerde; verzet was werk van enkelingen en een rooms-katholieke kerk was er nauwelijks.

Maar de echte collaboratie vond plaats in Roemenië en Bulgarije. Daar zitten de archieven van Securitate en Darzjava Sigurnost (DS) nog op slot, zijn ze deels vernietigd of - erger nog - herschreven. De Roemeense patriarch Teoctist en zijn Bulgaarse ambtsgenoot Maxim zitten nog steeds op hun post, de invloed van de communisten is er nog groot en beide staten zijn redelijk hevig corrupt.

Maar beide landen zijn twee weken geleden wel lid geworden van de Europese Unie.

POLAND
WARSAW - The Catholic Church here has confirmed that the Vatican is looking into allegations of sexual harassment leveled against the Archbishop of Poznan, one of the highest ranking church officials in Pope John Paul II's homeland.
The allegations surfaced Saturday in Poland's Rzeczpospolita newspaper, which reported that Apb. Juliusz Paetz, 67, has been accused by numerous priests and clerics of sexual harassment.


Paetz, who is recovering from illness according to his spokesman, denied the allegations and
claimed they were part of a campaign to defame him.

Paetz worked in the Vatican 1967-1976 in the Bishops Synod Secretariat. He was nominated bishop in 1982 and archbishop in 1996 by John Paul II.

In its front-page accusation, Rzeczpospolita said the archbishop had frequently used a 200-meter underground passageway connecting his palace to seminarians' lodgings to pay them
unannounced visits.

Police had carried out a preliminary inquiry but could not launch a full-scale investigation unless a formal complaint were filed.
Prominent Catholics were divided over how the handle the controversy.Reuters,
2/23/02

Nun Accused Of Sexual Assault To Stand Trial - News


video jan '07

video dec '06

MILWAUKEE -- A nun accused of sexually abusing two boys at a Milwaukee school in the 1960s was ordered to stand trial Tuesday.

Forty years after the alleged abuse, Sister Norma Giannini, 78, pleaded not guilty to two counts of indecent behavior with a child.
Her two alleged victims said she took sexual advantage of them when they were only 12 and 13 years old at St. Patrick's Church and School on Milwaukee's south side.


In her initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon, Giannini waived her right to a preliminary hearing.

The statute of limitations on the charges would've expired long ago, but Giannini was moved by the Sisters of Mercy to Illinois in the late 1960s. That meant she could still be charged.

Giannini was booked and released on a $10,000 bond to await trial.
If convicted, she could face up to 20 years in prison.


Giannini was the focus of a 12 News Investigation -- in which 12 News confronted her in Chicago last month. When 12 News reporter Nick Bohr spoke with her, she denied her identity.


Previous Story:

Nun Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Children
Victims: Assaults Occurred In Convent, School Office
POSTED: 8:14 pm CST December 4, 2006

MILWAUKEE -- A Catholic nun who served as a principal at a Milwaukee school has been charged with sexually assaulting children as many as 200 times.

Investigators said Sister Norma Giannini, now 78 years old, assaulted two of her students in the 1960s when the boys attended St. Patrick's Elementary School at 7th and Washington in Milwaukee, often in the church's convent and school office.
Giannini was principal of that school at that time.

According to the criminal complaint obtained by 12 News, one of the victims claims Giannini instructed him to open the buttons on her habit, but he was shaking so badly that he couldn't. She opened her buttons and instructed him to feel her breasts, according to the complaint.
Another accuser claims he recalls sitting on the sofa in the convent and having Giannini take his pants down. She was wearing her habit, but removed it. She then pulled him on top of her, he said.

"I know his main concern as with most victims is stopping the abuse from happening to anyone else," said Peter Isley, an abuse victim advocate, in an interview with 12 News' Chloe Morroni.

The Sisters of Mercy released a statement late Monday, stating "Whether old or new, such a matter still runs counter to the very ministry of the Sisters of Mercy."

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee asks that anyone who has been victimized to come forward with the confidence that they will be heard and helped.


Giannini taught at an all-girls Catholic high school in the Chicago after leaving Milwaukee during the 1970s. She now lives in a suburban Chicago retirement home.

Insurers win access to church documents

Thursday, January 11, 2007
By MICHAEL McAULIFFE

McAULIFFEmmcauliffe@repub.com

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, seeking coverage for dozens of claims of sexual abuse by priests, suffered a major setback in its lawsuit against several insurance carriers with a judge's decision that the diocese must turn over most of nearly 7,700 pages in church documents.

Superior Court Associate Justice John A. Agostini, in an 11-page decision, rejected that documents were protected from disclosure under several arguments, including the First Amendment, priest-penitent privilege, religious autonomy and psychotherapist-patient privilege. Agostini, who heard arguments in Berkshire Superior Court in December, did rule in favor of the diocese in arguing some documents were protected by attorney-client privilege.

Greenfield lawyer John J. Stobierski, who represents more than 20 people with abuse claims, said the decision was "a significant repudiation" of the positions taken by the diocese in its efforts to keep documents secret.
"There were a lot of creative legal arguments that were made and not accepted by the court," he said yesterday.


Adam Simms, a lawyer for one of the carriers, North Star Reinsurance Corp. of Stamford, Conn., had positive words for Agostini's decision. "Speaking for myself, I think you could say we were very pleased," said Simms, who practices in Boston.

Mark E. Dupont, a spokesman for the diocese, said an appeal may be forthcoming.
"We still are reviewing the entire matter and haven't determined if we will appeal certain aspects of it," he said. Asked which aspects of the ruling would be honored by the diocese, Dupont said, "I'm not free to say at this point."


Stobierski also said the Springfield diocese has continued to fight on while other dioceses have settled sex abuse cases. "Nearly every other diocese in the country has been able to negotiate these very same issues with their insurers," Stobierski said.

The diocese sued the carriers and the Massachusetts Insurers Insolvency Fund to obtain coverage for dozens of abuse claims and to recoup $7.7 million paid in 2004 in the settlement of a lawsuit involving 46 claimants represented by Stobierski.

The insurers have argued the documents sought will enable them to see how the diocese has historically handled claims of sexual abuse by priests, and whether it fulfilled its obligations to protect the public.

In the decision dated Jan. 3, Agostini wrote that in some instances the diocese raised a religious autonomy-First Amendment privilege to withhold disclosure of documents "which are, on their face, not confidential ... or which are devoid of substance."
"Privacy mandates by ecclesiastical authorities are not, standing alone, binding on this court," Agostini also wrote.


In addition, Agostini firmly rejected the argument that a psychotherapist-patient privilege precluded disclosure of some information.

"The Diocese argues that where ... the documents from and relating to the accused priests' treatment were placed in a confidential file accessible only to the bishop and his designees, the psychotherapist privilege applies and precludes their disclosure. This assertion is at odds with the statute and the case law."

Dupont said the diocese felt it needed to be compelled by the court to disclose that information.

©2007 The Republican

vrijdag, januari 12, 2007

Judge allows sex abuse lawsuit against Vatican

Judge: Men can seek damages from church
By BRETT BARROUQUERE Associated Press Writer

© 2007 The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Three men who accuse Catholic priests of sexually abusing them in childhood can pursue damages from the Vatican in a negligence lawsuit, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

The ruling lets the men pursue their claim that top church officials should have warned the public or authorities about priests in the Louisville Archdiocese who were suspected of abusing children.

William McMurry, the plaintiffs' attorney, said the ruling could open the way to take depositions of Vatican officials and to obtain copies of church records and documents.
"Our whole purpose is to hold the Vatican accountable," McMurry said.

Many lawsuits stemming from the clergy sex abuse crisis have named the pope, the Vatican and other high-ranking church officials as defendants. But the Holy See is typically immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II dismissed claims that the Holy See was negligent by failing to protect children entrusted to the clergy. He also threw out claims of deceit and misrepresentation by the Vatican.

Jeffrey Lena, a California-based attorney for the Vatican, said the ruling was in many respects favorable to the Holy See because the remaining allegations rely on the unproved assumption that U.S. bishops act as agents of the Vatican. He predicted that claim would not be borne out as the case proceeds.
Vatican officials declined to comment.

McMurry is seeking to have the lawsuit certified as a class action, which would allow other accusers to join the case. McMurry represented 243 sex abuse victims that settled with the archdiocese in 2003 for $25.3 million.

One of the three plaintiffs is Michael Turner of Louisville, who also filed the first lawsuit against the archdiocese. The Rev. Louis E. Miller was removed from the priesthood in 2004 by the late Pope John Paul II after pleading guilty in 2003 to sexually abusing Turner and other children in the 1970s. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence.

The two other plaintiffs, James H. O'Bryan and Donald E. Poppe, have not settled. Both live in California and allege that they were abused by priests while growing up in Louisville.



Catholic clergy abuse lawsuit against Vatican can go ahead, judge rules
By Jerry Filteau1/12/2007
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) – A federal judge in Louisville, Ky., has denied a Vatican request to dismiss a sex abuse lawsuit seeking damages from the Holy See.

U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II ruled Jan. 11 that U.S. bishops and priests are employees of the Vatican within the terms of the Federal Sovereign Immunity Act.

The act generally exempts other sovereign states from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, but it allows U.S. courts to adjudicate lawsuits seeking monetary damages from a foreign country for personal injury caused in the United States by an employee of that country "while acting within the scope of his office or employment."

The lawsuit, brought by Louisville attorney William McMurry on behalf of three clients who claim they were abused by priests when they were minors, is believed to be the first clergy sexual abuse suit that names the Holy See as the sole defendant.
McMurry described Heyburn's decision as "historic."

However, The Courier-Journal, Louisville daily newspaper, quoted attorney Jeffrey S. Lena of Berkeley, Calif., counsel for the Vatican, saying that calling U.S. bishops and priests Vatican employees is a "fairly weak linchpin" for the case.

"The Holy See is just not responsible for this, and that's the bottom line," he said.
The Vatican's spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Jan. 12 that he had no comment on the ruling.

Lena said the Vatican did not present evidence before the ruling, which was a procedural ruling on a preliminary challenge in which the judge must treat the facts alleged in the complaint as if they were true.

The case is the second in which a federal judge has denied a motion to remove the Vatican as a defendant.
Last June a federal judge in Portland, Ore., ruled against a Vatican motion to be dismissed as a defendant in a case in which a religious order priest was accused of child molestation in Portland when he was assigned there after previously admitting he had abused minors in Ireland and in Chicago. The Vatican has appealed that ruling.

In a number of other sex abuse cases around the country in recent years the Holy See has succeeded in getting itself dismissed as a co-defendant.

In the Louisville case, Heyburn barred some of the bases for claims against the Vatican but accepted the grounds of "negligent failure to report (abuse), negligent failure to warn, breach of fiduciary duty -- insofar as that breach involved failure to report and failure to warn -- outrage and emotional distress, violations of the customary law of human rights, and claims under the doctrine of respondeat superior."
"Respondeat superior" is the legal doctrine under which an employer may be responsible for actions of an employee acting within the scope of his or her office or employment.

Heyburn said a priest engaged in sexual abuse is not acting within the scope of his employment, but noted that the plaintiffs claim their superiors failed to address such misconduct properly and covered it up. "If, as plaintiffs allege, these bishops, archbishops and other clergy followed a written or unwritten policy established by the Holy See, they certainly acted within the scope of their office or employment," he said.

Heyburn acknowledged that whether the Holy See qualifies as an employer of U.S. clergy for the purposes of the case had not yet been fully tested.

"The court is open to reconsidering its decision that the United States-based bishops, archbishops and other clergy of the Roman Catholic Church are employees of the Holy See for purposes of FSIA (the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act) if further contrary evidence emerges during the litigation," he wrote.

woensdag, januari 10, 2007

In Poland, new wave of Charges against clerics

New York Times
By CRAIG S. SMITH
January 10, 2007

KRAKOW, Poland, Jan. 9 — Poland was convulsed in finger-pointing and recrimination on Tuesday as more allegations of former secret-police collaborators among the Roman Catholic clergy members spilled onto the country’s front pages, sullying an institution that for decades was considered spotless in its fight against Communism.

And the stream of disclosures now promises to become a torrent: here in Krakow, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski is preparing to publish a book that will identify 39 priests whose names he found in Krakow’s secret police files, three of whom are now bishops in the Polish church.

Perhaps the most explosive assertion by people in the church is that the taint of collaboration was known for decades but kept quiet out of respect for — or perhaps even at the behest of — the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.

“The church didn’t want to hurt the pope, but actually, more harm was done by keeping silent,” Father Zaleski, 50, said in an interview at the hilltop compound of a charity he runs outside Krakow.

The sudden focus on the fallibility of a church thought to be heroically anti-Communist followed the Vatican’s choice of Bishop Stanislaw Wielgus as archbishop of Warsaw despite clear signals of his ties to Poland’s secret police. Bishop Wielgus resigned Sunday after admitting his secret past.

“There is a sort of unholy alliance in Poland that has been present for many years, but is fully visible only recently, that is based on a culture of mendacity,” said Andrzej Zybertowicz, professor of sociology at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, the heart of the Polish church’s most conservative camp.

He argued that there were three elements of this alliance: former members of the secret police and the Communist Party who are now active in business and politics; apologists who wanted to forgive and forget past collaboration; and an influential part of the hierarchy of the Polish church.
Collaboration in the clergy is not unique to Poland. Church officials across the Communist world were commonly bent to ignoble service. Some of that has come to light as Eastern bloc countries have peered into their secret police archives.


But Poland is unique in that the church remained stronger there than elsewhere in the Communist world. That was largely because Poland’s primate at the time, Archbishop Stefan Wyszynski, agreed to cooperate with the Communist authorities, preaching compromise — up to a point, beyond which he said the faithful should not yield.

Most researchers who have delved into the archives of the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, estimate that thousands of the country’s priests, monks and nuns at the time — as many as 10 percent of the total — collaborated with the secret police to some degree.

Poland’s current primate and archbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, told an Italian news agency last year that the overall percentage was 15 percent. The percentage was likely to have been much higher in major cities and university towns, some historians say, where surveillance was heavier.

But the most troubling aspect of the recent allegations is how high past collaborators have climbed in the church hierarchy.

On Tuesday, the Dziennik newspaper, the third largest daily in the country, reprinted excerpts from a secret 1978 police document concerning a dozen high-ranking church officials — at least one of whom was a bishop at the time — indicating that the secret police tried unsuccessfully to influence the appointment of a new primate of Poland, the highest position in the Polish church.

The document gave only code names, like Ramses (cited as a bishop), Professor and Shepherd, but the newspaper promised to disclose those identities soon.

The disclosures have gripped this deeply religious nation — the largest bloc of devout Roman Catholics left in Europe — and sparked anger toward the church for letting the frenzied news media disclose them, rather than researching the archives and reporting the findings on its own.

“The church is guilty because it had the possibility to cleanse itself by publishing honest data about the clergy’s activities during the Communist time,” Father Zaleski said.

The church argues that coming to terms with the past is a matter of personal sin that should be handled within the church in a spirit of forgiveness. It also argues that the public disclosure of secret service files on clergy members could do the church harm because many of the documents are false or misleading.

But many people say the church has been overly cautious for fear of tarnishing its Communist-era image as a champion of freedom.

But the church is caught in the dilemma of risking a loss of trust whether it explores the collaboration or continues to treat it as an internal matter. The results could be as bad for the Vatican as they are for the Polish church, because Rome had hoped the church could keep this bastion of the faithful in an otherwise fast secularizing Europe.

Church officials now say that collaboration by some of the Polish clergy members was a quietly understood fact of life under the Communist government that ran Poland from 1944 until 1989.

That was obscured while the pope was still alive. But not even two weeks after his death, in April 2005, the Institute of National Remembrance published documents that showed that the Rev. Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo, a Dominican priest posted to the Vatican, passed information to the secret service’s antichurch branch. Father Hejmo admitted giving the information but denied that he was a spy.

During the 25th anniversary celebrations for the Solidarity trade union in Gdansk that August, a friend told Father Zaleski that there was a secret police file on him in Krakow.

When he returned to the city, Father Zaleski visited the archives and was stunned to find a file crammed with 500 pages of documents about him.
“I was shocked by that,” Father Zaleski said in his garret office. He was even more troubled when he read that two priests had provided the secret police information on his activities.


Though the priests were identified only by code names, they were described so precisely, he said, that he knew who they were.
“I just couldn’t imagine that there were priests who had cooperated with the secret police,” he said.
He sought guidance from the Krakow archbishop, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a longtime personal secretary to Pope John Paul II.


But Father Zaleski said he was at first ignored and then told to pray. Eventually, his superiors advised that he burn the documents.
“They weren’t interested at all in knowing anything about this,” he said,
rifling through a stack of photocopies stamped by the Institute of National Remembrance.


In a meeting with former Solidarity members at a Krakow-area steel mill last January, Father Zaleski suggested that the church authorities engage in “lustration,” as the process of vetting people for past Communist collaboration is known in the former Eastern bloc.

Journalists attending the meeting wrote about Father Zaleski’s suggestion. “It started a storm among the church authorities in Krakow,” he recalled. “The archbishop’s office published an open letter condemning my activities.”

He decided to undertake the project alone and promised to publish his findings.

The church, meanwhile, publicly acknowledged that some of its clergy members had collaborated and issued an apology for their sins in March.

It called on priests, monks and nuns who had collaborated with the secret services to confess — to the church if not publicly. Seven of the country’s 41 Roman Catholic dioceses have since set up commissions to help priests review their files.
But none of the commissions has issued a report on its findings.

The disclosures continued, each more shocking than the last.

In May, the Rev. Michal Czajkowski, co-president of Poland’s Council of Christians and Jews, was accused of having spied for the secret police for 24 years. He resigned his posts and issued an apology.

Next, the press accused the Rev. Mieczyslaw Malinski, a close lifelong friend of Pope John Paul, of collaborating under the code name Delta. Father Malinski admitted having had contacts with the secret police but denied that he was a spy.

When Father Zaleski decided to begin publishing disclosures in May, Cardinal Dziwisz forbade him to do so or to speak to the press because it would undermine “love for the church and Christ.”
The cardinal issued an order prohibiting any member of the clergy from delving into Krakow’s secret police archives without his authorization.
De Paus wil blijkbaar voetbal kijken en verschuift zijn reis, de wereld , goed geregisseerd , is druk met de RKK en de Da Vinci Code, Nederland keek vertederd naar de troetel-popi in het blauw, buitengewoon hoogleraar in Communciatie, die gezeten achterop een scooter geld bijeen zamelde voor de restauratie. En een andere communicatie deskundige met goede banden in Rome , troetel met stip omdat hij de eerste was die de kansen via internet ziet, verzekerde Nederland vriendelijk lachend: Nee hoor, de Kerk heeft niets te verbergen.

But after he met with Cardinal Dziwisz in June, the archbishop agreed to let him proceed on the condition that Father Zaleski seek comment from the clergymen he intended to identify.
Cardinal Dziwisz could not be reached for comment.


The Rev. Jozef Kloch, the Warsaw episcopate spokesman, said that while Father Zaleski “can publish whatever he likes, he and his editorial office will be responsible for the consequences.”
Father Zaleski found the 39 priests identified as “TWs,” short for tajny wspolpracownik, or secret collaborator.


Four of them are now bishops.

Of the 39, 22 answered his request for comment, the majority denying that they were collaborators, and 4 admitting that they were.
One of those who he wrote to was the Rev. Janusz Bielanski, who resigned as rector of Wawel Cathedral here on Monday, citing the allegations.

Only one of the bishops responded, and he supplied Father Zaleski with documents that showed he had refused to cooperate with the secret police.
But the three bishops who did not respond, along with the other priests, will be identified in his book, which goes to print in mid-February.

Een interessante link over de vraag: wat wist JPII? inclusief informatie over JPII's kennis en keuzes over , nee, niet Maciel Dellgolado!,
The most explosive aspect to these new revelations is how they go directly to the questions of what did John Paul know about the collaborators, and when did he know it? Did he know that men he appointed as bishops had been secret police informers back in the day? Or was John Paul kept in the dark? Or, as seems plain from his mishandling of the clerical sex abuse scandal, did he
know but refuse at some level to accept it because the truth was too hard to bear? You might recall the
case of the Polish archbishop, Juliusz Paetz, who resigned under pressure over allegations that he was sexually harrassing seminarians; John Paul, a personal friend, had protected him for some time, but finally was pressured by Polish church officials into relenting. John Paul apparently could not bear the ugly truth in these cases. Which is no excuse, no
kind of way.


Maar ook nu weten de Calimero's weer zeker: een aanval op de Kerk.