The Pope gave another speech around Christmas and mentioned the sex abuse scandals that have been dogging the church for the last decade. He’s got a new explanation – it was the 70s fault.
Benedict qualified his mea culpa by stating that the scandal (in which priests who sexually abused children were often ignored or protected by the Catholic Church) was partly justified by the broader social context. Benedict said that while the church accepted some responsibility, he could not be silent about ”the context of these times…. There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society.” [History of Pornography No More Prudent Than Present]
Benedict claimed that as recently as the 1970s, “pedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children.” In this climate, the Catholic Church’s actions were merely reflecting the moral relativism of the times: “It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself,” Benedict said. That is, church leaders weren’t sure if child sexual abuse was wrong, since secular society seemed to accept it.
…
Pope Benedict is simply wrong when he claims that child sexual abuse and pornography were socially acceptable in the 1970s and 1980s, when the bulk of sexual abuse occurred. Even if it were true, there’s little reason to think that pedophile priests would be especially susceptible to perceived secular moral decay. The Pope’s acknowledgement, that Catholic priests do not have the wisdom nor the moral compass to realize that raping children is wrong or harmful, is a remarkable admission, and hardly comforting.
I see he didn’t offer an explanation as to why the 70s made bishops transfer abusive priests to other locations. Seriously though, how hard is it to admit they were wrong? If I were writing an apology for the pope I would simply say “it was a horrible crime that happened to these children and the families that trusted them. We were wrong to protect the church at the expense of the children. We didn’t realize it at the time because we thought that prayer could cure these urges, but we were clearly wrong. We are deeply sorry.”