Benedict: Fire the Lawyers, Confess to the Cover-Up

The Vatican hasn’t looked particularly holy in responding to its latest pedophilia scandal. “The church has acted almost entirely on the basis of this world’s imperatives and standards,” writes EJ Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post. It has worried about lawsuits, its image, and how to protect its leaders from scandal, and “in so doing, has made millions of Catholics righteously furious and aggravated every one of its problems.”

In his 2008 trip to America, Pope Benedict said he was “deeply ashamed” of the abusive priests, but apologizing for their individual misdeeds isn’t enough. We need an apology for the internal culture that has hidden abuse and allowed it to flourish. “The church needs to cast aside the lawyers and the PR specialists,” concludes Dionne. “Defensiveness and institutional self-preservation are not Gospel values. ‘For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’” (More Pope Benedict XVI stories.)