Pope Francis in Belgium: ‘Crisis of faith’ in the West requires a return to the Gospel 

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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The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz, Austria, is the largest church building in that country. / Credit: Dein Freund der Baum, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Deutsch, Jul 9, 2024 / 16:25 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig … […]

Rome, Italy, Mar 6, 2019 / 03:10 am (CNA).- As Christians prepare to engage in the fasting and abstinence of Lent, they can find guidance in the words of Pope St. Leo the Great’s sermons.

Stressing Lenten discipline as a way to struggle against our sins and against the devil’s temptations, the fifth century pope advised self-scrutiny, purification, forgiveness of enemies and almsgiving to the poor.

“Let us prepare our souls for fighting with temptations, and understand that the more zealous we are for our salvation, the more determined must be the assaults of our opponents,” he said in his Lenten sermons, elsewhere adding “there are no works of power, dearly-beloved, without the trials of temptations, there is no faith without proof, no contest without a foe, no victory without conflict.”

Pope Leo I was involved in the theological questions of the fifth century, most famously affirming Christ’s two nature, human and divine, for the Council of Chalcedon.

He also led a delegation which successfully negotiated with Attila the Hun to turn his invading forces away from Rome.

He was named a Doctor of the Church in the eighteenth century. His writings and sermons proved enduring and influential. While some of his comments are specific to his time, as a whole he offers special advice for Lent.

True peace and true freedom come only “when the flesh is ruled by the judgment of the mind, and the mind is directed by the will of God,” he said in his sermons.

For St. Leo the Great, the Christians’ enemies are often our vices, disordered desires and sins.

“We cannot otherwise prevail against our adversaries, unless we prevail against our own selves,” he counseled. The contrary desires of flesh and spirit must be disciplined, and the mind will lose to the body if bodily desires become too strong.

When the mind is subject to God and delights in heavenly gifts, when it has “trampled underfoot the allurements of earthly pleasure” and has not allowed sin to reign, Leo says, “reason will maintain a well-ordered supremacy, and its strongholds no strategy of spiritual wickedness will cast down.”

“Christian people, whatever the amount of their abstinence, should rather desire to satisfy themselves with the Word of God than with bodily food,” said Leo the Great.

He counseled self-scrutiny to root out discord and wrong desires and to be attentive to God’s commandments. Citing St. Paul, he said Lenten fasting is a time to cleanse ourselves “from every defilement of flesh and spirit.”

“Now let godly minds boldly accustom themselves to forgive faults, to pass over insults, and to forget wrongs,” he said in one sermon.

“Let all discords and enmities be laid aside, and let no one think to have a share in the Paschal feast that has neglected to restore brotherly peace,” he said in another.

Care for the poor and others in need should be an even greater priority.

“Let us not pass over the groans of the poor with deaf ear, but with prompt kindness bestow our mercy on the needy, that we may deserve to find mercy in the judgment,” said the saint, later adding “let each bestow on the weak and destitute those dainties which he denies himself.”

“Let our humaneness be felt by the sick in their illnesses, by the weakly in their infirmities, by the exiles in their hardships, by the orphans in their destitution, and by solitary widows in their sadness: in the helping of whom there is no one that cannot carry out some amount of benevolence,” he continued.

Warning against the dangers of spiritual pride and hypocrisy, he also gave advice on how to follow Lenten disciplines.

“The self-restraint of the religious should not be gloomy, but sincere; no murmurs of complaint should be heard from those who are never without the consolation of holy joys,” he said, adding “no one is so holy that he ought not to be holier, nor so devout that he might not be devouter.”

At times, the foes of Christians are not simply the flesh, but even the demonic, he said. The approach of Easter makes the devil grow “furious” and “consumed with the strongest jealousy and now tortured with the greatest vexation.”

It is a time when “the Christian army has to combat him, and any that have grown lukewarm and slothful, or that are absorbed in worldly cares, must now be furnished with spiritual armor and their ardor kindled for the fray by the heavenly trumpet.”

The approaching baptism of new Christians at Easter, and the growing penitence of lapsed Christians, is also a target of the devil’s anger.

“For he sees whole tribes of the human race brought in afresh to the adoption of God’s sons and the offspring of the New Birth multiplied through the virgin fertility of the Church,” St. Leo the Great said. “He sees himself robbed of all his tyrannical power, and driven from the hearts of those he once possessed, while from either sex, thousands of the old, the young, the middle-aged are snatched away from him, and no one is debarred by sin either of his own or original.”

The devil sees, too, those who have lapsed, “deceived by his treacherous snares,” now becoming “washed in the tears of penitence” and seeking mercy and reconciliation in the Church.

Leo the Great also promoted fasting as a way to prepare to conquer earthly foes.

When the Hebrews and Israelites were oppressed by the Philistines “for their scandalous sins,” they restored their mental and physical powers by commanding a fast in order to be able to overcome their enemies.

“For they understood that they had deserved that hard and wretched subjection for their neglect of God’s commands, and evil ways, and that it was in vain for them to strive with arms unless they had first withstood their sin,” he said.

Abstinence from food and drink was “the discipline of strict correction,” he said. In order to defeat their foes, they “first conquered the allurements of the palate in themselves.”

Similarly, those of us who face opposition and conflict “may be cured by a little carefulness, if only we will use the same means.”

Though all seasons of the year are full of God’s blessings, St. Leo the Great said, Lent is a time when “all men’s minds should be moved with greater zeal to spiritual progress.” Lenten discipline “should heal us and restore the purity of our minds, during which the faults of other times might be redeemed by pious acts and removed by chaste fasting.”

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