An Open Letter to All Catholic Bishops by Swiss theologian Hans Küng Venerable Bishops Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active… On the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you… [Küng then lists many ecumenical and pastoral opportunities missed by the Pope and continues: ] And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.
There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence.
Ratzinger himself, on May 18th 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes (epistula de delictis gravioribus), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the secretum pontificium, the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties.
With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed urbi et orbi by the dean of the College of Cardinals.
Extract from Hans Küng’s Open Letter, the full text of which was printed in the Irish Times on April 16 2010.
Extract from Hans Küng's Open Letter, the full text of which was printed in the Irish Times on April 16 2010.