I grew up in a small Oklahoma town where most people were Evangelical Protestants. These folks were grouped in several denominations, but they all held one central belief: The Bible is the word of God and must be interpreted literally.
For example, the Nazarenes, a little-known sect that began in North Texas, prohibited women from cutting their hair or wearing makeup based on church leaders' interpretation of a few obscure verses in the Old Testament. The Church of Christ, almost unheard of outside the South, allowed no musical instruments in their worship places because the Bible did not mention pianos.
All these sturdy groups shared one iron-clad belief: dancing and the consumption of alcohol were grave sins. Thus, Jesus did not change water into wine at the wedding in Cana; he transformed it into Welch's grape juice. And Jesus didn't dance.
In midlife, I converted to Catholicism, and I now believe that at least one verse from the Bible must be interpreted literally. This is the verse:
But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Matthew 18:6 (NCB)
Sexually abusing a child is a great sin, and all the experts agree that a child or youth never recovers psychologically from it. Surely, an adult who molests or rapes a child deserves to have a stone attached to his neck and be thrown in the ocean and drowned.
Tragically, the Catholic Church has been cursed for more than half a century by the sexual abuse of children by priests--hundreds of thousands of children across the globe.
Much of this abuse took place while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger presided over the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican agency in charge of handling sexual abuse allegations.
In Jesus Wept, published this year by Alfred A. Knopf, Philip Shenon established conclusively that Ratzinger knew about the sexual abuse crisis and did virtually nothing about it.
Shenon wrote:
Vatican documents made public in court records proved Ratzinger had always been involved personally in the handling of especially notorious child-abuse cases and that he regularly acted to delay the punishment of pedophile priests, even though that put more children at risk.
Shenon's book describes the sexual abuse calamity in detail, and Ratzinger was not the only person in the Vatican who fell short. Pope John Paul II probably knew almost as much as Ratzinger did. John Paul was surely aware that Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legion of Christ, was a serial child abuser, but he continued to pal around with him.
This week, the cardinals will convene to choose a successor to Pope Francis. I hope they all will have read Shenon's book and will choose a new pope with the courage to tackle the sexual abuse crisis that continues to scandalize the world.
Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI upon the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005. He stepped down from the papacy in 2013 and died in 2022. It's too late to tie a millstone around his neck and cast him into the sea.
I don't believe in a literal hell, but Ratzinger might dwell there if it exists. Catholics should pray for his soul and the souls of all the children who were ravaged by priests over the past several decades.
May God have mercy on the abusers and the men who covered it up. And may the balm of God's compassion heal all the children and youth who were sexually abused by Catholic priests.
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| Pope Benedict XVI |