A Free Pass

“He got a free pass,” said the journalist whose name of course I can’t remember. But I do remember thinking, “wow, so somebody agrees with me.”

Readers of this blog will know—I never wasted much time, or indeed any time, thinking up nice things to say about Joseph Ratzinger, the guy whose one unconventional move was to resign and become Pope Emeritus. But Ratzinger took it on the chin all during his papacy—and however much he kicked and clawed to get there, it must have given him little joy.

Yet the journalist cited above wasn’t talking about Ratzinger, but about John Paul II—and I couldn’t agree more. Because what did he have?

Call it the Ronald Reagan effect—it didn’t matter what he said, he looked the part. In fact, playing president of the United States was Reagan’s biggest role. And John Paul did exactly the same.

“He never listened to anyone—he was always talking,” said the journalist. “He had some 100 speeches, and he went around the world making them. But he never listened to anyone. He was theologically conservative, and he let the curia rule—and nearly ruin—the church. And after doing nothing about the priest abuse scandals, then the whole thing erupted during Benedict’s watch. But it was mostly John Paul’s doing. And the press never challenged John Paul, never questioned why he wasn’t acting more decisively. They idolized him.”

Oh, and speaking of the press—where is our press? Because though I’m not a journalist, I did grow up around them. And so when the news came out that Jozef Wesolowski, the ex papal nuncio to the Dominican Republic now being investigated for sexual abuse of minors, hung out in Arecibo and may have engaged in illicit activities—well, I sat back and expected the press to tackle the story.

What did they do?

They acted as press agents for the Catholic Church. The New York Times, in contrast, asked some difficult questions of the Vatican. Questions like why did the church recall Wesolowski, when in 2010 it established new rules that said that anyone—Vatican employee or a member of the diplomatic corps—accused of sexual abuse would be turned over to the civil authorities in the country in which the abuse took place? Had the Dominican Republic been notified? Yes—by the press, not the church.

Here’s what the Times said:

The Vatican’s own rules for conducting sexual abuse investigations under church law call for cooperation with the civil authorities and reporting abuse allegations to the police where laws require it. Those norms were shaped after an explosion of sexual abuse cases in 2010, when thousands of people came forward in Europe, South America and elsewhere detailing abuse by priests whom church officials had not reported to the police.

To my knowledge, nobody locally picked it up. Why not? Is the Times too difficult to read?

Or what about this tidbit, which I quoted yesterday:

El ex nuncio Josef Wesolowski obstaculizó investigaciones de pederastia en Puerto Rico contra más de una decena de sacerdotes de la diócesis de Arecibo.

So Wesolowski hindered more than a dozen pederast priest cases in the diocese of Arecibo and nobody is going after that?

And is anybody aware that this case is unique because it is the first time a Vatican official may have committed crimes in Puerto Rico? And Puerto Rico, by the way, falls under US jurisdiction. So that means that for the first time, after years of trying, a court can challenge the Vatican directly—instead of whatever diocese the bishop or priest belonged to. And that might lead to a mother lode of information.

Is anybody asking our justice department if they are conducting an investigation of the more-than-dozen cases that Wesolowski may have obstructed? Is our justice department cooperating with the Dominican Republic? Are they considering pressing charges? And by the way, are there any abuse victims out there? What’s their story, and are they considering pressing charges?

Is anybody poking around Arecibo, trying to figure out why the Catholic Church had to close down an entire seminary? Was it that full of gay men?

Or we could ask—what about the rumor that there was a close relationship between Wesolowski and the former bishop of Arecibo, Iñaki Mallona? Oh, and where is the former bishop? Is he still in Puerto Rico? Because an odd thing seems to happen in the Catholic Church—clerics tend to be curiously out of sight. I have just consulted the website Switchboard.com and learned that there is a Marc Newhouse, age 57, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Oh, and I got my number, as I did for five of my friends. But frequently, when I try the same thing for a member of the clergy, I can’t track them down. They are living in rectories or parish houses or retreats or somewhere; they tend not to have phones in their own name, except, of course, for cell phones. So they’re hard to find. 

The New Day, our local paper, has a large staff of reporters. But does it have a religion editor? Most papers do. And on an island where 80% of the population is Catholic, shouldn’t there be at least one reporter who’s on top of issues affecting the church?

Just as John Paul got a free pass, so, in Puerto Rico last week…

…did the Catholic Church.