This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with
appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
at the
The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."
According to the instructions from
Claim to Moral Authority
On the surface, the
Nothing can be allowed to besmirch this authority: not the sexual abuse
of children and adolescents, committed by thousands of Catholic priests
worldwide; not the secret relationships between pastor and their housekeepers;
not the covering-up of priests' children; and not the love affairs between gay
clerics. They are all cases of a double standard that
arose because it is difficult for people -- even priests -- to subordinate
their human desires to a papal encyclical.
This code of silence has
But now the wall of silence is coming down here in
Tip of the Iceberg
As shocking as the revelations were, they are merely "the tip of
the iceberg," says the current director of
For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their
pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by
characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are
finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According
to a SPIEGEL survey of
A group called the Round Table for Care in Children's Homes recently
published an interim report which contains dramatic findings.
The report deals with the wrongs committed since the 1950s against
children and adolescents living in homes, almost half of which were run by the
Catholic Church.
According to the report, more than 150 victims of sexual abuse have come
forward with their stories in recent months. One of
them is a woman who, as a 15-year-old girl, had to sit in the confessional and
watch a priest masturbate. When she tried to get away
from him, she was beaten by the nuns who ran the home. There
has never
Protecting Offenders, Ignoring Victims
A tremor is currently passing through the Catholic Church in
The scandal is just beginning, and yet it has already made a deep
impression: on parents, who expect Catholic schools to provide their children
with moral guidance; on the victims, who are now confronting their dark past
after living with it half their lives; and on the faithful, who now regard
their church with dismay. Their shock stems not only
from the fact that there are pedo
To this day, the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Archbishop
of Freiburg Robert Zollitsch,
has not offered any convincing words of apology or em
The Bishops' Conference will not even address the sex scandals until
Feb. 22. "The revelations show a dark side of the
church that scares me," says the Jesuit Hans Langendörfer,
secretary of the Bishops' Conference. "We
expressly want an investigation."
Repressed Morality
Nevertheless, the clerics are still a long way from any sort of true
self-criticism or far-reaching analysis, because it would require them to
examine the Church's repressed sexual morality that is dictated from above. It would require an honest discussion about celibacy and
its consequences, particularly when it comes to the Church's recruitment
practices. In a church that is having trouble
attracting men to the priesthood, particularly as a result of the ban on
marriage, the number of good candidates has become so small that too many
inappropriate candidates get admitted.
Does this mean that the church will continue to pursue its policy of
hemming and hawing, and of avoiding the important questions, as it has already
done so often? It will be difficult to carry on like
that, now that the Jesuits' offensive has put the entire clergy under pressure. The order intends to systematically investigate abuse in
its own ranks, as painful as that effort will be and even if the growing number
of revelations by former students plunge it into what is likely to be the
deepest crisis in Jesuit history. Father Stefan Dartmann, the head of the Jesuit order of
His fears are justified, as more and more former students come forward. In addition to the
One of the students who experienced the brotherly love of a Jesuit
priest firsthand is Robert K. Speaking of his time at the Bad Godesberg school, he says: "It was difficult for us,
as young boys, to endure the priests' sexual advances. They
ranged from extremely embarrassing questions about the minute details of
'shameful acts' during confession, to asking for kisses and caresses and,
finally, to concrete sadistic sexual assaults." One
prefect, Father S., "had small boys come to his room, strip naked from the
waist down and then lie down on the father's bed. The
father would beat them violently on the behind with a clothes hanger, and then
follow up with displays of affection."
Jovial Persona
Evidence of such assaults ranges back to the 1950s. Some
priests were apparently able to keep their urges more or less under control so
that they did not attract attention, like Father M., a now-deceased former
mathematics teacher at the
Afterwards, the offenders would enmesh themselves and their students in
a web of guilt, awkward silence and extorted atonement. One
of them was Father Peter R., a corpulent religion teacher with side-burns and
tinted glasses who is one of the three priests at the
For eight years, starting in 1973, Peter R. ran a sort of youth center
on the grounds of the
Photos taken at the time show the priest, who insisted that his students
call him Peter, surrounded by his beloved students. He
would accompany "his boys" on ski outings and to the swimming pool. The adolescents in the
One-on-One Talks
When he thinks back to the Jesuits' work with young people at the time, Ansgar Hocke, who is now 52, says
it was characterized by a spirit of optimism. At the
time, he recalls, he and his friends believed that "the days of the
priests in cassocks, who shouted at their students, were deeply conservative
and who saw the catechism as their only guideline, were coming to an end." Young, athletic priests were breathing new life into
the school. "We didn't see how sick and unstable
they were," says Hocke.
The students felt that the right to sexual happiness must be part of
human happiness. "We knew that the young priests
were excluded from this happiness, and we often saw how helpless they
were," says Hocke. He
himself did not have personal experience of their complexes, but others
suffered as a result in terrible ways.
The students who belonged to Father R.'s inner
circle were constantly subjected to "one-on-one talks."
The sessions sometimes took place in the Burg's basement, which quickly
acquired a notorious reputation among students, who referred to it as the
"masturbation basement" or the "interrogation room." "I had to take off my trousers and lie down on
the bed," says one former student. "He
wanted to watch me masturbate, and he touched me while I was doing it." When he was finished, the former student says, R.
would ask him: "Did you like it?"
Keeping It Secret
A mix of shame and fear, constant threats and intimidation, but also
friendly gestures from the priest and his image of being the students' buddy,
must have prompted his victims to keep his secret for years, or to treat it as
a joking matter at best. Usually the abuse ended only when the students became older and were no
longer to Father R.'s taste.
"At the time, we all heard that these masturbation stories were
going around. But we tended to laugh it off,"
says Johannes Siebner, a former student at the
Letters that the students wrote to each other when they found out about
the allegations reveal their bewilderment: "It was all completely new to
me, even though I always had this feeling about it … The whole thing was a
total shock for me, and I had trouble processing it. This
is all so unbelievable, vile, disgusting and bad … And then there was the whole
system of pressure, which wasn't that easy to get out of once you were in it …
But I also don't understand the order, and how it can be so irresponsible … I'm
trembling slightly as I write this today, and I feel afraid."
'I Lost My Innocence'
The boy who received the letter, a victim of Father R. himself, is 48
today and says that the abuse "cast a shadow" on his school days. The atmos
It wasn't until 1981, after he had graduated from high school, that he
found the courage to report the abuse to the then-headmaster, Father Karl Heinz
Fischer. Fischer reported the charges to his
superiors, and Father R. was transferred soon afterwards. Fischer
doesn't know what happened after that to his fellow priest of many years. "I reacted at the time within the framework of what
was possible," he says.
Sitting on the problem or transferring the abuser became the preferred
approach within the hierarchy of the Church and the order.
Father R. and his two fellow priests, Bernhard E. and Wolfgang S., were
transferred from
In none of these new locations were the school principals, priests,
students or parents warned of the new priests' dangerous tendencies --
something that is hardly surprising, given the Church's tendency to keep things
quiet. Anyone who did ask about the reasons for their
transfers was told, for example, that there had
Many parents in
But now cracks are beginning to appear in this carefully cultivated
image -- and precisely at a time when many schools are processing applications
for the coming academic year.
"It's a disaster for us," says Friedrich Stolze,
the principal of St. Ansgar, who dresses in jeans and
a sports jacket. "These priests did an immense
amount of damage, both to their students and to us today."
He feels "anger and contempt" for the men involved, and says
that it is clear that "the reputation of Catholic schools has
When Stolze came to the
Downplaying Abuse
Whenever rumors surfaced in Catholic schools, parishes, youth groups and
children's homes, or victims overcame their shame and reported the abuse, the
church would downplay the cases, characterizing them as isolated, regrettable
exceptions or the misconduct of an errant priest. This
was the position taken by the
In the
More and more victims came forward, and in the end the Catholic Church
in
Several dioceses, including
A series of sex scandals also shook
Not Just Isolated Incidents
The German church, on the other hand, is only beginning to confront the
past. Last week, 24 of
The results of the survey show that parishes and church facilities all
across
It is becoming increasingly clear how difficult it is for the state to
punish the culprits. In many cases, the abuses have
Multiple Cases
The Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese in
southwestern
Two priests were linked to abuse in the
In the
In
In
In the Bavarian city of
Church Reluctant to Shed Light on Crimes
Similar reports have emerged from cities like Würzburg,
Münster and
The prevailing view at the
For this reason, many members of the Curia believes it is preferable to
remain silent than to give these enemies of the Church a chance to attack and
that Rome's top priority should be to bide its time -- not only in the hope of
riding out the storm, but also to avoid jumping the gun. Determined
to protect their own people, they instinctively place the good of the Church
above that of the victims. Their first question is not
"how can we help the victims?" but "what shall we do with the
priests?"
A long time -- too long, from the point of view of the victims --
usually passes before the pope himself weighs in on the issue.
After the scope of the abuse scandal in the
To this day, Benedict has not sent the comforting pastoral letter he had
promised to the Irish, who were shaken by a decades-long abuse scandal. Moreover, no victims have
The subject of abuse committed by priests has no place in Jose
And for those who have already fallen prey to "weaknesses" of
the flesh, the pope offers the relative leniency of an internal Church
proceeding. In dealing with sex offenders in the
clergy, the
But because the Church refuses to admit to the mere possibility of
crimes within its own ranks, its criminal law is as obfuscating as incense
smoke at the altar. "One can't say that the
criminal law has any practical significance," says
Problem of Definition
Nevertheless, the Church would prefer to use precisely these procedures
to discipline its "sinful" priests. However,
it is not even sure how to define the crimes. One
option is to refer to them as a "delictum contra
mores," or a crime against morals, while another is to apply the Sixth
Commandment ("You shall not commit adultery"). The
problem with the second approach is that the perpetrators are never married,
while their victims are rarely married.
The penalties -- transfer or excommunication -- fall well short of the
penalties of secular criminal law, while the extenuating circumstances that can
be applied to reduce penalties are generous. One of
those circumstances involves otherwise celibate priests being swept away by a
"storm of passion" ("gravis passionis aestus").
Besides, a willingness to do penitence, express remorse and amend one's
ways normally placates those passing judgment. In any
case, details about decisions are very hard to obtain: The verdicts are secret
and disappear, as a "secretum pontificium," into sealed archives.
The German Bishops' Conference likes to point to a set of
"guidelines," which it approved in 2002, on how to respond to
suspicions of sexual abuse. Secretary Hans Langendörfer describes it as "an important step." "We want to address the subject openly, which is
what we have
Code of Secrecy
But upon closer inspection, even these guidelines are pervaded by the
Church's way of thinking, as affirmed by the Holy See in 1962 under Pope John
XXIII and once again in 2001. According to those
guidelines, which remain in force today, potential cases of abuse must be
reported to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The
guidelines also forbid bishops worldwide from taking any steps beyond an
initial investigation of accusations without direct instructions from
The guidelines of the German Bishops' Conference are worded accordingly
and em
Based on its own canonical law, the German Catholic Church does not feel
obligated to immediately report cases of abuse within its own ranks to the
German authorities, so that the authorities can conduct house searches, for
example. Critics say that the Church is exposing
itself to charges of obstruction of justice, as long as the clergy handles
cases purely on an internal basis.
Critical Catholic groups have long sought to change the Bishops'
Conference guidelines, but to no avail. Bernd Göhrig, the executive director of a group called the Church
from Below, calls for the establishment of independent ombudsmen to address the
concerns of the victims, instead of the biased representatives of the diocese. This is probably the only viable option, given that the
German bishops are as reluctant to address the issue of prohibited sex as the
German pope.
No Need to Act
Even after the massive abuse scandal in the
Only a few weeks later, however, Lehmann was
confronted with a new case of abuse inside his own diocese, in a parish near
The Diocese of Aachen, in western
But K. immediately attracted attention to himself after attending a
retreat with children who were about to take their first communion. Investigators believe he made improper advances to them in
the dormitory. K.'s new
parish had not
Investigations Drag On Without Results
Meanwhile in
Such abuse cases, which happened only a few months or years ago, show
that, despite its claims to the contrary, the church has done little to change
its position. This coincides with the perceptions of
Johannes Heibel, who works for a Germany-wide
association that counsels victims of sexual violence and who has worked with
people who were abused by priests for many years. "The
traditional approach -- keep it quiet, cover it up, transfer the offender -- is
by no means a thing of the past," he says.
"You aren't concerned about the victims, but mainly about making
sure that nothing gets out in the media," said one abused adolescent, in
an accusation directed at Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Müller. A
chaplain had grabbed him in the crotch in 1999.
Instead of investigating the case and putting the chaplain on trial, the
abusive chaplain, acting through the episcopal ordinariate, paid the family what amounted to damages for
pain and suffering as well as hush money. Then the man
was transferred to another parish, which was not informed about the abuse
allegations, and where new cases of abuse were reported in 2003.
Incidents in reform schools, which counted a total of 220,000 students
in the early 1960s, have also remained largely unresolved until now. Michael-Peter Schiltsky, who was abused several times by
deacons while in a church home in Westuffeln in the
western state of Hesse, has compiled the reports of
many fellow abuse victims, including 40 from Catholic homes. One
of the accounts is by Peter Rueth, a former altar boy
in a home run by the Salvatorians near the
northwestern city of
"One morning, when he was alone in the vestry with me, a priest
closed the door to hear my confession before mass. He
said: Only a pure spirit can serve God. I had to sit
on a chair. Then the priest blindfolded me with his
stole and tied my hands with another piece of material, saying that he had to
do this because you weren't supposed to see the other person during confession. He asked me to talk about my sins, and when I confessed,
he told me that, as punishment, I should open my mouth so that he could place a
sponge dipped in vinegar inside, just like the sponge that was once offered to
the Lord on the cross."
After the ensuing oral sex, the boy was told to recite the Lord's Prayer
three times and then wash out his mouth.
Statutes of Limitation One of Biggest Problems for Victims
"As far as I'm concerned, nothing is statute-barred," Overfeld
writes to Köhler. "It's
all coming back." The president has yet to
respond to Overfeld's letter.
Statutes of limitation are one of the biggest problems for victims of
abuse. Such sex crimes generally become statute-barred
after 10 years in
Another church victim,
For the church, a serious effort to confront its own sexual morals
should be just as important as it is to address the legal ramifications.
"If you are forced, by virtue of your profession, to live a life
without a wife and children, there is a great risk that healthy integration of
sexuality will fail, which can lead to pedo
His fellow theologian Eugen Drewermann writes of a "church structure that is repressive
in emotional areas and on questions of love." Because
of these and similar views, the
Celibacy, which has only
Although surveys and studies have produced a wide range of figures on
the sexual behaviors of Catholic priests, they all arrive at the same
conclusion: Very often, the sanctimonious show of chastity in the church is at
odds with reality. According to a
2 Percent of Priests Pedo
There is widespread agreement that this climate of repressed sexuality
promotes sexual molestation of children in schools, homes and parishes. A number of studies in the
When applied to
Such research has prompted lay movements like "We are Church"
to call upon bishops to engage in a fundamental discussion of sexuality. The movement cites a structural problem, in which strict
sexual morality and an authoritarian system combine to form a dangerous mix. But the bishops refuse to even entertain such a
discussion.
Wunibald Müller also calls for the end of
celibacy and the ordination of women, saying that both are "a form of
prevention." Müller, a Catholic theologian and
psychologist at the Münsterschwarzach Benedictine
Abbey, advises priests confronted with serious crises. He
has argued for more openness in matters of sex for years, and says: "The
experience of pain and suffering can lead us to God, but so can eroticism and
sexual passion."
Müller insists that members of the clergy must address their sexuality. "They cannot suppress this area, or else it will find
ways to slip out and cause problems for other people."
Inhibited Attitudes Toward Homosexuality
The
Taboos have
In light of its recruitment problems, the church accepts almost anyone
who decides to become a priest. However, few in the
official church are willing to admit that the new recruits include more and
more young men who find the priesthood so appealing in part because they
believe it will allow them to conceal their sexual problems.
It is a vicious circle. Fewer and fewer young
men are taking the vows of priesthood -- only about 100 were ordained in 2008
-- while the overwhelming majority of the 20,000 pastors and deacons in the
German Catholic church were educated in the archconservative, sexually
repressed church environment of the 1950s, '60s and '70s. This
is particularly true of many senior clergy in the dioceses, who, as a result,
have left the young priests alone with their problem far too long.
Experts agree that radical changes in seminaries are necessary, and that
important questions must be addressed: How emotionally mature are the
candidates? How can open discussions be initiated with
those who may need help, and how can they be convinced to accept offers of
assistance?
But the official church stubbornly adheres to the vow of celibacy and
the prohibition on marriage, as if this were a guarantee of -- and not,
perhaps, a threat to -- its continued existence.
Bishops, like Wilhelm Schraml of the Diocese
of Passau in
"First they have to conclude that their faith hasn't helped
them," says Beier. "Who
can talk openly about his proclivities when even sexual fantasy is considered a
sin?"
But prevention is more important than ever in the church, says Beier, because "the orders have a particularly strong
appeal for people with pedo
Beier, who is convinced that priests can be
helped, offered his support to the
Surprisingly enough, the
A turning point? Hardly. Beier's letter probably ended up in the secret archives of
the Curia, together with the many records of internal church proceedings.
STEFAN
BERG, JÜRGEN DAHLKAMP, JAN FRIEDMANN, FRANK HORNIG, SIMONE KAISER, SVEN RÖBEL,
ALEXANDER SMOLTCZYK, PETER WENSIERSKI
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497,00.html