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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Over a year ago, Bishop Voderholzer proposed a revised script for the German “synodal path,” and was stiffed by the clericalists. Refreshing news, here, to find a German bishop speaking common sense, as if the truth mattered and still exists. The pygmies should have listened. They’ve been upstaged by one of the adults in the room.
Yes, forward (!) to the “central questions”: “Is it meaningful to speak of God? Can God have revealed himself in Jesus Christ? Is this revelation recognizable, and is it liberating for me? What does grace mean? How do grace and freedom go together? Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
Yes, one of the few outstanding German bishops. “They all knew that the revelation of God is self evident” (Voderholzer). That truth, Christ revealing of his Father’s essence is divine love, pure love, infinite, the supreme truth. It requires no supporting arguments, or proofs. We assent to what cannot be denied.
One German bishop who has something to say.
“Are faith in creation and a scientific approach to the world compatible?”
For 100 years, science has known that the universe does not exist without a conscious observer, who we know to be Adam kind, in it. It takes a conscious observer to physically experience the universe, which causes ‘wave collapse’, for a physical universe to exist. When man is not experiencing the universe, a physical universe no longer exists. This is non-intuitive, meaning, scientists could never have imagined this to be the case, until scientific data proved that this is the case.
The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Believer. Scientifically, there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes to look, touch, smell, hear, taste, and experience his Reality of their being a universe.
Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho
Why does the world not know that there can be no physical universe before Adam opened his eyes? Because atheist scientists don’t want you to know about it. So once the truth comes out about how the universe does not exist before Adam opens his eyes as a conscious observer, Christian Creationists are justified as the correct interpreters of when Creation happened. Creation happened on the week Adam was made. This will be a strong shot in the arm for the Christian faith.
Neils Bohr VS Albert Einstein.
Neils Bohr says that there is no universe when a conscious man is not looking at it. Albert Einstein says, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” After over a century of fierce debate and mountains of scientific research to settle the debate, Neils Bohr’s ‘ ‘Peek A Boo’ universe, a universe which does not exist when man is not looking at it, is dominating the debate, over Albert Einstein’s “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” By the end of the following video, the narrator indicates that there is only a slim chance that Albert Einstein’s ‘Realism’ can be salvaged. Proven science says there is no universe when Adamkind is not looking at it and experiencing it.
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Neils Bohr
“Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run the world.”
Scientists are up to sending 800 atom molecules through the double slit experiment. There is a, seen by man, 800 atom molecule coming out of the particle gun, but then there is only a fuzzy mixture of all possibilities going through the double slit, provided man is not looking at it, and then there is an 800 atom molecule, seen by man when hitting the screen. In other words, the 800 atom molecule exits, coming out of the gun with man looking at it, then does not exist when man is not looking at it going through the double slit, and then the 800 atom molecule is seen by man on the screen it hits. An 800 atom molecule just popping in and out of existence. Wow!
Not only does God know our every thought, hear our every prayer, know our soul, but our individual universe is completely controlled by God. When two people have different, individual Realities, the two Realities collapse into one, common Reality, when they discuss with one another their different Realities. Wow!
Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/
So what proven science is telling us, is that Adam kind is at the center of all that physically exists, and that God can select from all possible Realities, what an individual human being will experience as their Reality. Talk about having a personal relationship with our God! Wow!
When a subatomic particle is in wave form, it possesses all possible properties, which can be chosen from by God, to become all possible outcomes. All of these, ‘all possible outcomes’, are bouncing off one another to produce the wave effect, when traveling through the double slit. When man goes to experience his individual Reality, now only one, of ‘all possible outcomes’, is selected by God, to become a specific physical particle, with specific properties, in a specific place, and the rest of the ‘all possible properties’ no longer exist. In the case of a star, infinite subatomic particles make the wave collapse simultaneously, with all particles taking their single specific property, in their specific place, in their specific atom, in their specific molecule, in their specific star. Then when man is no longer looking at the star, all the infinite subatomic particles immediately return back to being a soup of all possibilities again. Wow! It is only God Who has the Power to do something like this! It is God’s miraculous, great Power selecting the property, and position that all, infinite, subatomic particles will transition into, from their wave state of all possible properties, when man looks at a star and triggers wave collapse. Wow! Wow! Wow! And when a man looks at a star, he is usually looking at a sky full of our one septillion stars!
There is no way a universe which only exists when man is looking at it, can come in and out of existence, without the miraculous power of God making it so! I believe the reason God allowed mankind to see His miraculous work at the quantum level, is that God is waving to atheist scientists, the world, and we His Church on earth. The atheist scientists are doing everything in their power, especially through Scientism, to silence our God’s miraculous Presence at the quantum level. The actual scientific data at the quantum level, is on the side of the Christian Creationist Believer.
Grasping the reality and seriousness of abortion, or, contraception, and trying to share it in your parish and community, is not “doing politics”. Four points about this:
1. It goes back to the first Council, the Council of Jerusalem: you are not “tearing up the seamless garment of the Church” when you preserve it. Look out; because people can try to demean you and belittle the subject matter, “calling it out” via wrong senses, like, “being controversial”, or, “doing heavy-duty evangelizing”, or, “running for office”/”want to stand out”, or, “stuck on ethics”.
2. What is happening today is not 3 abortions every 5 years by teens sneaking out to the malpractice doctor. It is a widespread phenomenon carrying ideological affects and developing alongside an organized industrial enterprise extracting and manipulating human flesh -all highly publicized and integrally promoted and defended.
3. We laypeople are meant to be in politics as well as apostolate.
4. There are and will continue to be attempts from many sides, to diminish and even snuff out pro-life politics as well as apostolates; but also trying to find ways to neutralize/anasthetize them.