For Austrian cardinal, female deacons an ‘open question’

Rome, Italy, Jul 20, 2017 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A member of Pope Francis’ commission to protect minors says a new report on the abuse of more than 500 choir boys in Germany points to a current reality in many non-western countries – and that bringing these things to light means progress for everyone.

“It will take time, but this kind of sensitivity that is created by publicly discussing these things of course will push, because people realize what is right and what is wrong, and they realize that they will be questioned if something goes wrong,” Fr. Hans Zollner told CNA July 19.

Fr. Zollner is vice-rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, director of the university’s Center for Child Protection (CCP), and a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

He spoke following the July 18 publication of a report on an investigation German lawyer Ulrich Weber carried out on the Regensburger Domspatzen, the official choir for the Regensburg Cathedral.

While it was previously thought that only 250 children had been victimized, Weber said the number of children affected is closer to around 500.

According to the report, members of the choir were exposed to physical abuse and 67 suffered sexual abuse from 49 members of the school’s faculty, ranging from 1945 until the early 90s. However, most of alleged perpetrators will likely not face charges due to the amount of time that has gone by.

The reported violence ranged from public ridicule, heavy beatings, and sexual abuse, but a significant portion of the documented incidents involved slapping and food deprivation, a legal form of discipline in Bavaria until the 1980s.

Fr. Zollner said that the magnitude of the abuse was discovered thanks to the decision of the diocese’s bishop to open the archives, allowing a more in-depth investigation to take place.

What came to light was “a horrible and horrendous story” that has been going on for some 70 years, he said, adding that this took place because “in those years and decades people who could have known didn’t look at it, people who could have spoken to police didn’t do it.”

“This includes of course the Church leadership, but this also includes the parents and relatives of the children,” he said, noting that he himself grew up in the city and had friends who were members of the choir.

Zollner recalls his friends talk about getting “beaten up,” but that at the time, “sensitivity to child rights and the violation of these rights was not as high as it is now, and corporal punishment was considered more or less a normal way of education.”

The majority of the excessive discipline in the choir was attributed to Johann Meier, a schoolmaster at one of the boarding schools from 1953 to 1992. However, Benedict XVI’s older brother, Georg Ratzinger, who directed the choir from 1964-1994, was accused of turning a blind eye to the abuse.

It also accused Cardinal Gerhard Muller, who oversaw the diocese from 2002-2012, of cover-up.

Fr. Ratzinger said he was unaware of any sexual abuse, but admitted to slapping children, as it was common practice at the time.

In his comments to CNA, Fr. Zollner noted that while societal understanding of abuse has changed in most western countries, there are several in Asia, Africa and some parts of Latin America where such actions are still common practice.

Speaking of a recent visit to Myanmar, where he offered training and workshops on child protection guidelines, the priest said that while there, he was told that parents would often “specifically ask the teachers to beat their children if they do not obey.”

Zollner said that in Myanmar specifically, it is still normal in some Buddhist monasteries to flog the monks publicly if they are disobedient.

“This is the idea that you learn obedience and correct behavior by beating. So this is the idea that at present in the minds and in the context and in the behavior of parents in an Asian country,” he said, noting that he has seen the same scenario in some African and Latin American countries.

However, the government is now “clamping down on that, so they are also changing the law so that in public schools corporal punishment is prohibited.”

In western society the use of corporal punishment is widely recognized as unacceptable, and this is thanks to both a growing awareness and a “owning up” to the consequences of what is now considered as abuse.

The adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of the Child by the U.N. in 1959 and the subsequent formation of the U.N. Committee for the Rights of the Child have both prompted an increase in awareness that “a young person needs formation and education, yes, and also needs limits, but this can never be imposed and should never be imposed by physical violence or psychological violence or humiliation,” Zollner said.

But to make the point across the board, these rights must be explained and repeated, he said. We must also be realistic with the fact that while many, if not all, countries have signed the declaration, “not all have ratified them.”

When it comes to taking punitive action against those who were abusive in the past, believing it to be acceptable as the normal custom of the time, Fr. Zollner said holding them to account for their actions is a tricky question.

In most cases there is a statute of limitations, and “you can only hold people accountable for the time period that the law covers and for all those criminal acts that are punishable.”

“We don’t have general measures that would and could punish people for something that has happened decades ago if there is not a legal provision for that,” Zollner said.

A current trend for western charities funding Church or social work is to have the recipient sign up not only to obey the law in their country, but they are also required to sign a child protection/safeguarding policy that the charity maintains.

“People unfortunately are not just doing good things because they want to do it, but sometimes they also need to be forced to do it by such measures that are taken in case you do not follow the norms,” he said.

When it comes to the Church and her role in protecting children from predators, Fr. Zollner said the first thing to do is to learn from the mistakes of the past, particularly bishops and Church leaders as a whole.

This, he said, “gives us the possibility to do at least a little bit of justice to all those who have been harmed in such a terrible way.”

Practical steps include thorough screenings of employees on the part of Church institutions that carry our educational, social or pastoral work, delving into the person’s past and present, looking specifically at their interactions with youth.

It’s also necessary that “very clear guidelines and norms” are given, as well as initial and ongoing training for Church workers, which is a task the commission is specifically responsible for.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands, Jun 15, 2017 / 03:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new report estimates that between 50 and 80 percent of Christians have fled the countries of Iraq and Syria since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011.

Released by Christian advocacy groups Open Doors, Served, and Middle East Concern, the report estimates that at least 100,000 Iraqi Christians have fled or are internally displaced, and that the Christian population of Syria has been ‘roughly halved’, from about 2 million, since 2011.

“Factors for leaving included the violence of conflict, including the almost complete destruction of some historically Christian towns in the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, the emigration of others and loss of community, the rate of inflation and loss of employment opportunities, and the lack of educational opportunities,” states the report.

The information for the report was gathered through a series of interviews with various sources, including NGO staffers and religious leaders, and also includes the findings of academic studies.

The report tracked the emigration of those Christians who have fled the Middle East to Europe, even though others have traveled to Asia, Australia or the Americas.

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the rise of the Islamic State, increased violence in Iraq and Syria has resulted in the targeted killings and expulsions of many Christians, with many fleeing to Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, or beyond, while others are displaced within their home countries.

The arrival of the Islamic State made the situation especially dire for Christians, who were forced to either pay a tax, convert, or leave if they didn’t want to be killed.

That was the “tipping point” for Christians in the area who had already experienced an “overall loss of hope for a safe and secure future,” the report notes.

Iraq once had a Christian population of as many as 1.4-2 million in the 1990s, which declined to around 300,000 by 2014, and is now down to approximately 100,000. Most of those internally displaced have fled to Erbil.

Pinpointing the exact number of Christians who have stayed in or fled Syria is more difficult, though the report notes that numerous regions and towns that once had large Christian populations have decreased significantly since the start of the war, with some communities all but disappearing.

The report estimates that approximately half of Syria’s estimated 2 million Christians have left, and a survey found that of the Christians still in the country, about 35 percent wish to leave, compared to eight percent of the country’s Muslims.

Of the Christians who fled, many chose to seek resettlement in other countries through family or Church organizations rather than through state-sponsored refugee resettlement programs.

“Trust in churches allows people to feel more comfortable to register with them. Furthermore, it is seen to be less demeaning to have to line up to receive assistance ‘provided in a sensitive way in the safe space of a church,’” the report found.

The hope for return to their home countries varied among those who had fled. For the most part, those who were settled in their destination countries reported not wanting to return, while those who have encountered more difficulties in the resettlement process either have returned or hope to return someday.

Sweden and Germany have become popular destinations because of the ease of resettlement and the ability to find work, though the report found that due to new policies in these countries, that may change.

Published with the report was a policy proposal paper for the EU, since the report tracked only those Christians fleeing to Europe. It made several recommendations, including establishment of an “accountability mechanism,” to the European Union Parliament.

“Creating a national accountability mechanism for grievances is a long-term solution which aims to restore faith in a system that ensures all religious and ethnic communities are affirmed as equal citizens and deserving of protection, while also deterring negative actors from taking adverse actions against these communities,” it stated.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would authorize U.S. government funds to be given to aid groups directly providing assistance to displaced Iraqi and Syrian Christians. The bill has yet to clear the Senate. According to In Defense of Christians, thousands of Iraqi Christians have seen no financial aid from the U.S., despite the U.S. having given the Iraqi government millions of dollars for relief efforts.

As of October 2016, the Chaldean Archeparchy of Erbil has received more than $31 million in funding from Aid to the Church in Need, in addition to support from 16 other Catholic organizations from around the world. The Knights of Columbus have a website dedicated to providing relief to displaced Christians in the Middle East.

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Rome, Italy, Sep 27, 2017 / 06:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A leading opponent of assisted suicide says that while the movement supporting euthanasia seems strong, the reality is that, at least in the United States, it has had few political victories.

“The difficulty in this issue is that the media sells us this as a tidal wave that’s coming; it’s inevitable, this is people’s rights, it’s going to happen anyway, and in fact none of this is true,” Alex Schadenberg told CNA Sept. 23.

While a handful of states in the U.S. have legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, “over and over and over again [euthanasia] bills have been defeated.”

Assisted suicide became legal in the United States when Oregon approved the practice in 1998. Washington State legalized it in 2009, Vermont in 2013, and Colorado, California, and Washington, D.C. in 2016. In Montana, the practice was permitted by the state Supreme Court in 2009.

However, while the legalization of euthanasia in these states has been “tragic,” the losses for the euthanasia movement far outweigh their victories, Schadenberg said, explaining that thus far in 2017, assisted suicide bills were introduced in dozens of states, and “all of them were defeated.”

“U.S. courts have universally found that there is no right to assisted suicide,” he added. “So in the U.S. you don’t have a tidal wave.”

Schadenberg is the executive director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition in Canada, and was a speaker during a Sept. 20-24 conference for MaterCare International in Rome.

In his comments to CNA, Schadenberg said “the [euthanasia] movement has lost more battles than probably any other movement in the history of the U.S., and yet there’s supposedly a tidal wave in favor.”

“And for a group that has the kind of money they have, they should almost be embarrassed,” he said, explaining that Americans “are not buying the news, they’re not buying their lies.”

The euthanasia mentality is built on a lie, he said, because while those supportive of legalization argue that euthanasia supports freedom and autonomy, though actual laws are focused on protecting doctors’ rights instead.

In Canada, which legalized euthanasia in 2016, laws protect doctors and nurse practitioners who assist in euthanasia from nearly any liability or error, “so long as it is reasonable error.”

By law, then, there’s essentially “no way (for) a doctor who intentionally does something, (that) you can prosecute them. The law is so tightly protecting of them,” Schadenberg said.

He noted that the American College of Physicians reiterated their stance against euthanasia and assisted suicide in a recent position-paper on topic, published September 19.

In the paper’s abstract, the college said they remain unsupportive of euthanasia because it “is problematic given the nature of the patient–physician relationship, affects trust in the relationship and in the profession, and fundamentally alters the medical profession’s role in society.”

“Furthermore, the principles at stake in this debate also underlie medicine’s responsibilities regarding other issues and the physician’s duties to provide care based on clinical judgment, evidence, and ethics,” the abstract read, and stressed the need to focus on palliative care.

“There is no tidal wave in the U.S…the doctors don’t even want this,” Schadenberg said. What actually happens in the states and counties where euthanasia has been legalized, he said, is“terribly sad, because lives are being lost and vulnerable people are being abandoned.”

“The reality is when you legalize euthanasia or assisted suicide, there is money that’s saved because you are ending the lives of people who are not always terminally ill…but might have a significant health condition, which means they are expensive,” Schadenberg said.

He condemned the “eugenics mentality” that he said drives the push for euthanasia, saying it’s a part of our culture “whether we like it or not.”

Schadenberg said that euthanasia supporters “look at certain lives as not worth living, they would look at certain conditions” and, coupled with the fact that euthanasia is money-saving and makes healthy organs available, “would be in favor of it for those reasons, they would say that’s actually a good thing.”

However, the average person who supports the euthanasia cause wouldn’t argue on these points, but rather on the prospect of eliminating suffering, Schadenberg said.

People are afraid to suffer, “and that’s a normal human reality,” he said, explaining that “we’ve got to break down the issue and talk about our normal human experience, and my experience as a human being is that when I’m going through a terrible situation, I become very emotionally upset, and that’s because that’s how we are as humans.”

“This is how we were made to be, whether you believe in God or not, we’re wired this way,” he said, adding that throwing in the idea of euthanasia when one is “emotionally and physically distraught” makes the situation worse.

Rather than freedom and autonomy, euthanasia and assisted suicide are about “abandonment,” he said. “It’s about abandoning people in a time of need, it’s not about freedom.”

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