Word: catholicism
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A Vatican official - a Spanish priest - whom I like and respect told me that as he walked down the street this week, someone shouted "Porco!" ("Pig!") at him from a passing car. Other priests say they can no longer hug children in their parishes. This is just one of the...
The current pedophile-priest scandal - what the Catholic writer and papal critic Andrew Sullivan pointedly refers to as "child rape" by clergy - has transfixed Catholics around the world, particularly with the allegations out of Germany that Benedict XVI, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich, may have allowed a transferred priest...
In Germany, the scandal started in late January, when the rector of Canisius College in Berlin admitted there had been at least 50 alleged cases of sexual abuse at the élite Jesuit high school in the 1970s and '80s. The charges came as a surprise; Catholics in mainland Europe...
As the scandals have multiplied, so too have calls for profound change in the priesthood. One perennial proposal dusted off in recent weeks is the abolition of celibacy among priests: commentators in Germany and Italy have suggested it may help prevent abuse. Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has...
That may not be enough: in Germany and Ireland there's a growing clamor for fresh public inquiries, the kind Ratzinger opposed. In the Pope's homeland, many want him to make a public statement. On March 12, he gave a 45-minute audience to the head of Germany's...