Bishop Ziemann recently passed away retaining all his faculties.
Why did Benedict XVI pick Lavada to replace him as head of the CDF? His unwavering loyalty, no matter how disgraceful, to a brother bishop and the church seems like the most logical answer. Silence is the golden rule. Levada has publicly proven the depths to which he is willing to sink in order to protect a fellow bishop from criminal prosecution. His is a sterling quality, a la Bernie Law, which is obviously deeply appreciated by the Pope. When handling future accusations of sexual abuse against priests and bishops, Levada has already shown how low he can be expected to drop the deviance bar. With Levada at the helm of the CDF, the culturally imbedded concept that bishops have the right and obligation to cover-up for abusers will carry on into the future.
Not being satisfied with Levada and Law, the pope has recently given Bishop Raymond Burke a slot at the Vatican. This is a man who handed out excommunications like pedophiles hand out candy. Like the queen of hearts in Alice and Wonderland, he ran around yelling, "To hell with your souls!" Burke is noted for his ability to silence victims as noted here.
But some members of Raymond Burke's former flock paint a far different portrait of the erstwhile bishop of La Crosse. If cases of clergy sex abuse were few and far between, they say, it was because Burke was a master at keeping a lid on them. Several victims who claim they were abused by priests in La Crosse tell Riverfront Times they were stonewalled by Burke, who declined to report their allegations to local authorities. And while some of his fellow church officials nationwide were reaching hefty settlements with victims, Raymond Burke was unyielding in his refusal to negotiate with victims' rights groups. He declined to make public the names of priests who were known to have been abusive, and he denied requests to set up a victims' fund. Most strikingly, Riverfront Times has learned, while bishop in La Crosse Burke allowed at least three priests to remain clerics in good standing long after allegations of their sexual misconduct had been proven -- to the church, to the courts and, finally, to Burke himself.21
Burke has recently been appointed by the pope to an office that will handle the worst cases of the clergy sexual abuse as the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. Once again, we have the pope planning for the future and insuring the status quo. What chance is there of change with men like these in positions of power?
Conclusion
The unified theory of clergy abuse shows how supposedly good men are so hypocritical in their nature, that they can one day preach justice and morality before a packed cathedral and the next day transfer a serial child rapist to another parish as easily a donning a vestment. It also explains the "less than" treatment of victims caused by the loss of humanity and exposes the sick culture that has put these values in place..
This is not only the pinnacle of hypocrisy, but it is so much more than that. It is about a totally corrupted culture that not only trains men to behave in this manner, but which has become the only quality that will ensure their promotion.
And what of the Catholic laity? Ashamed, embarrassed, angry, distraught, hurt, victims of a culture that uses fear and human sexuality to maintain control; what is to become of them? They have been trained well to pay, pray, and obey. Those that wake up to hypocrisy will leave discontented, others will pray for change, some will try to affect it, and the rest will pray and pay regardless of how outrageous the acts of the hierarchy become because more than anything else in the world, they want to go to heaven. It is thus fitting to close with a line from Defining Deviance Down. "A society that loses its sense of outrage is doomed to extinction."22 So is the Catholic Church!
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