Vatican City, Feb 25, 2019 / 10:11 am (CNA).- On Monday, in the Vatican’s first follow-up to last week’s child abuse summit, officials emphasized “encounter” and the need for concrete responses as called for by Catholics.
The focus of the four-hour meeting Feb. 25 was “first and unanimously” on Pope Francis’ desire for encounter, according to a statement by papal spokesman Alessandro Gisotti.
In attendance were some senior officials of the Secretariat of State, the heads of several Vatican dicasteries, and abuse summit organizers Fr. Federico Lombardi, Fr. Hans Zollner, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, Cardinal Oswald Gracias, and Cardinal Blase Cupich.
The group agreed to continue to hold similar interdicasterial meetings “in the name of synodality and synergy” to monitor progress on commitments made at the summit.
Gisotti said that dicastery heads, speaking openly, affirmed their commitment to following “the example of Pope Francis in the fight against abuses,” with an emphasis on encounter and on listening to victims.
Other discussion topics during the meeting were the need for better child protection training and greater involvement from laity, Gisotti said.
Organizers outlined for officials the principles behind the forthcoming documents and task forces – the promised outcomes of the abuse summit which were announced Sunday.
The concrete commitments made at the end of the Vatican’s sex abuse summit Sunday included the publication of a motu proprio from Pope Francis “on the protection of minors and vulnerable persons,” Lombardi announced Feb. 24.
Vatican City State is supposed also to receive in the coming weeks its own new child protection law, and the Vicariate of Vatican City new child protection guidelines. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will publish a “vademecum,” or handbook, with the tasks and obligations of bishops, Lombardi said.
Another measure slated to take place over the next months is the creation of task forces specifically to help local Churches in need of help in solving problems and developing initiatives in their bishops’ conferences and dioceses.
The summit on the protection of minors in the Church took place Feb. 21-24, and included the participation, from around the world, of around 190 presidents of bishops’ conferences, heads of Eastern Catholic Churches, and several superiors general of religious congregations.
The meeting was called in response to the crisis of clergy sexual abuse around the world, with a stated purpose of educating the world’s bishops on their responsibility for protecting minors from abuse within the Church.
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Call me Ysma’el if you wish. Or a cynic. My initial reaction was anger. But in this tragic instance it adds to Polarization. Unity of our Church, Jesus’ Mystical Body is of essence. Nonetheless we mustn’t desist from seeking Justice. That is the unfortunate failure of Pontiff and Bishop attendees. The failure of our bishops is apparently a myopic vision of authority and subservience. What is mistakenly deemed appropriate. We’re dying of appropriateness. Cardinals Burke and Brandmuller admonished Bishops to address the core issue [clerical child abuse has already been effectively addressed with sharp decline] of mutual homosexual relations within clerical ranks and predation of vulnerable priests,seminarians. And not remain Silent. It did not motivate. An apparent Vatican agenda to normalize adult homosexuality seems in process. There is strange intransigence among our Hierarchy. As if a foreign spirit holds sway. Recent Chair of Peter office readings cited Saint Pope Leo the Great on Peter’s Confession of Faith, “The gates of hell shall not silence this confession of faith; the chains of death shall not bind it. It’s words are the word of life”. Paradoxically I’d rather be called a mistaken cynic regards continued Synods. Aimed at resolving what? Aimed at advancing an agenda. Faith is useless if it is not proclaimed in season and out.
Yay the voice of TRUTH. I 100% agree. I look forward always to your comments as I can rely on them. The prayer “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” came so strongly to mind just now. It was so powerful converting the pagans of his time, ahem. If some have not heard it, look it up. I call on the Most Holy Trinity
source of all real UNITY to come to us and make this agenda that is at work, to right itself. Encounter who?? Listen where?? Soon we will be asked to dialog about the dialog. Truth is simple and understandable to all. I call on the intersession of the Blessed Mother, come to our aid.
Yup. Encounter, handbooks, documents, task forces, interdicasterial “synodality and synergy”…
Here’s some other verbiage, for a Summit Agenda, that might give credibility to an organizing committee:
1. While 96 percent of the clergy are NOT implicated and should be more celebrated, the sexual abuse crisis is in fact a “seamless-garment” MALIGNANCY; future protocols must not be limited to only the abuse of minors, e.g., the McCarrick factor will be aired out in 30 days, and then corrected.
2. Past catechesis, for the past half century, on broad morality has tended to replace (not supplement) the Commandments with the Beatitudes. This egregious SIN OF OMISSION will be corrected under the guidance of the CDC.
3. Proclamation of the whole Gospel message also involves STEADFASTNESS. In justice, the slanderous labeling of steadfast Vatican critics as “bigots” and “rigid” will be repented with adequate public restitution.
4. WORD GAMES: the 2002 cover-story of “pedophilia” must yield to a forthright treatment of correctly-labeled “homosexual infiltration” into the Church. Gay “marriage” and de facto redefinition of priestly “celibacy” (among “consenting adults”) are off the table.
5. Needed explanations are forthcoming, and an ACTION CALENDAR announced, for example:
(a) Conference actions in France and Italy were accepted, but in the United States put on ice? Why?
(b) Compromised high-level papal lieutenants will be identified and removed within 30 days.
(c) With the newly-assembled support of the presidents of national conferences now on record, the St. Gallen clique and shadow popes will be called out and rebuked, within 7 days.
(d) As local progress gets underway (with the followup help identified in the above article), a Summit follow-up will be convened to directly exchange best-practices, in 180 days.
(e) The CDC will prepare a complete response to the dubia in 60 days (on whether the Church still has a clear morality to teach, or not), with the valued and invited assistance of the previous head of the CDC.
(f) Local bishops remain responsible personally and wholly(as individual successors of the apostles), such that synodal actions and inactions will not be either offered or pretended as cover. Even ecumenical councils are only what the Church DOES, not what the Church IS.
All of this (which took less than half an hour), or something better, could fit within a ten-minute speech from the podium.
The current Vicar of Christ views his American flock as village idiots and medieval peasants.
He dosen’t like us……Oh’ no!! Not that many of us any longer care.
Death by meetings, death by Jesuit-speak. That is the agenda.