Christopher Hitchens on Papal Fallibility
Christopher Hitchens recently authored an article titled “The Great Catholic Cover-Up” for Slate magazine. In it he made a number of serious allegations against Joseph Ratzinger, currently the Pope.
The central allegations can be summarised as follows. Joseph Ratzinger was the supreme authority in a jurisdiction in which a priest abused at least one child. He became aware of these incidents and took the priest out of a position where he could harm other children. Crucially, he was also aware when this priest was placed back into a position where he could, and did, harm more children. The second claim is that Ratzinger, in his role as a senior Vatican official, wrote a letter to other bishops that required them to obstruct justice in matters involving the abuse of children. His third, peripheral, claim is that Ratzinger also sought to limit opportunities for victims to seek justice by imposing a ‘statute of limitations’ that would, by design, prevent victims achieving justice.
In regards to the first claim, that Ratzinger knew of a sexually abusive priest’s reassignment, Hitchens offers proof in the form of a quote from Catholic Priest Thomas Doyle. Doyle essentially claims that because of Ratzinger’s micro-managerial style he must have know of a matter as significant as the reassignment of an abuse priest. Doyle’s claims may be true, partially true, or false. Hitchens makes no attempt to demonstrate the merits of Doyle’s claim and simply assumes that it is true. Having ‘proven’ this allegation he moves his second claim.
Hitchens claims that Ratzinger, as a senior authority in a powerful Vatican bureaucracy, constructed an authoritative document in 2001 that ordered individuals with knowledge of abuse, even the victims themselves, to act in a way that prevented those involved in the abuse being properly dealt with by civil authorities. As proof of this claim, he quotes from the document itself, demonstrating the allegedly incriminating nature of the document’s words themselves, being an attempt by church to prevent civil authorities being made aware of abuse my Catholic clergy. In reality, the quotes are not contained in the 2001 Ratzinger document at all. He instead quotes from a document often referred to as Crimen sollicitationis that was written by Alfredo Ottaviani in 1962. Obviously, quoting from a different document by a different author does nothing to establish the meaning of the 2001 document. There is no indication he has even read the 2001 document, let alone properly interpreted it.
In addition to his own ‘assessment’ of the 2001 document he refers to two news articles on this document that he believes provide additional proof for this assertions. Again there is no evidence that Hitchens critically examined these articles, or even read them in any detail, rather than uncritically accepting bits of their content, regardless of their merits, because they support his preexisting prejudices. The first article he cites actually clarifies the distinction he fails to make, between the 1962 and 2001 documents, an indication the he didn’t thoroughly read an article he was using as evidence to condemn a person in the strongest of terms.
His final claim relates to an alleged additional attempt to obstruct justice by imposing temporal limits on the reporting of abuse. In this case he again uncritically accepts claims by others without assessing their objective merits, in this case, by accepting the claims made by Daniel Shea, a lawyer who sued the church and might conceivably have a vested interest in misrepresenting matters.
So, in conclusion, he makes three serious claims about Joseph Ratzinger, and as proof he asks us to uncritically accept the views of Tom Doyle and Daniel Shea, consider probative a quote from a completely different document, and accept on faith the reliability of two news articles.
Note:
Related Posts
- Richard Dawkins Loses Last Ounce of Credibility
- Recent Doyle Article
- Reverend Thomas Patrick Doyle
- ABC’s Hungry Beast Program Misrepresents the Catholic Church
- Jacob Prasch and Moriel Ministries
Comments
One Response to “Christopher Hitchens on Papal Fallibility”
Leave a Reply
[...] stand trial. In it, he cites, amongst other things, an article by Christopher Hitchens titled The Great Catholic Cover-Up as proof that the pope, at the very least, has a case to answer for in relation to the sex abuse [...]