Later On

And a good thing, too. One of the great strengths of the US is that it is not a Christian nation, or Muslim nation, or Jewish nation, or … The US is in fact a secular nation, one that (in theory) welcomes adherents of any religion and does not impose a religion on its citizens. Most see this as a good thing, the exception being those who think everyone should believe as they do, but those people—ignorant and intolerant and uncharitable—are relatively rare. Steve Benen:

The U.S. Constitution is, of course, an entirely secular document, but for years, the religious right movement and its allies have been anxious to declare the U.S. a "Christian Nation."

It was great to hear President Obama, during a press conference in Turkey, set the record straight.

At a press conference in Turkey, President Obama casually rebuked the old chestnut that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation.

"One of the great strengths of the United States," the President said, "is … we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Republicans are, not surprisingly, already criticizing Obama’s entirely accurate remarks, and it’s probably safe to assume the far-right will be thoroughly displeased.

But is there anything even remotely controversial about what the president actually said? We have a secular constitution that established a secular government. Our laws separate church from state. No religious tradition enjoys official sanction over any other. Of course we’re not a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation.

The usual argument is that most of the U.S. population is Christian. That’s true, but irrelevant. Most of the U.S. population is white — does that make the United States a "white nation"? We also hear arguments that most of the Founding Fathers were Christians. That’s also true, but also irrelevant. Most of the framers were also men — does that make our country a "man’s nation"?

It’s time to retire this old conservative canard. I’m glad to see Obama help out.

The UK, of course, does have an established church and is a Christian nation.

Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker:

On October 31, 1517, a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, Dr. Martin Luther, put the finishing touches on a series of bullet points and, legend has it, nailed the result to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany—the equivalent, for the time and place, of uploading a particularly explosive blog post. Luther’s was a protest against the sale of chits that were claimed to entitle buyers or their designees to shorter stays in Purgatory. Such chits, known as indulgences, were being hawked as part of Pope Leo X’s fund-raising drive for the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica. The “Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” touched off a high-stakes flame war that rapidly devolved into the real thing, with actual wars, actual flames, and actual stakes. The theological clash that sundered Christendom didn’t just change the face of Western religion; it birthed the modern world.

Half a millennium later, the present agony of Catholicism is very far from being in the same league, even though the National Catholic Reporter has called it “the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in Church history.” The crisis is not about doctrine, at least not directly. It’s about administration; it’s about the structure of power within the Catholic Church; it’s about the Church’s insular, self-protective clerical culture. And, of course, like nearly every one of the controversies that preoccupy and bedevil the Church—abortion, stem-cell research, contraception, celibacy, marriage and divorce and affectional orientation—it’s about sex.

It’s also about indulgence—the institutional indulgence, fitful but systemic, of the sexual exploitation of children by priests. The pattern broke into public consciousness in the United States a quarter of a century ago, when a Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to thirty-three counts of crimes against children and was sentenced to prison. Since then, there have been thousands of such cases, civil and criminal, involving many thousands of children and leading to legal settlements that have amounted to more than two billion dollars and have driven several dioceses into bankruptcy. In 1992, Richard Sipe, a Catholic psychotherapist and researcher who served for eighteen years as a priest and Benedictine monk, told a conference of victims that “the current revelations of abuse are the tip of an iceberg, and if the problem is traced to its foundations the path will lead to the highest halls of the Vatican.”

America’s liberal system of tort law, along with the enterprising reporting of journalists at newspapers like the Boston Globe, brought the problem to light earlier here than elsewhere. But it can no longer be dismissed as an epiphenomenon of America’s sexual libertinism and religious indiscipline. In Ireland, for example, where Church-run orphanages and other institutions for children are supported by the state, a government commission reported last year that the Dublin Archdiocese’s preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Ricks:

When I ran an item last week that was critical of Michelle Obama, it provoked the most responses of anything I’ve ever posted on this blog. Some of the responses made it clear to me that many people don’t understand what the big deal is. So I asked one Army wife (her husband used to be an Apache pilot in the 82nd Airborne, and is now a major in the medical branch) to explain. Here is her response: 

By Rebecca Noah Poynter
Best Defense guest columnist

I’m a military wife. We don’t mind that America doesn’t know the 685,000 of us. We learned during that first deployment years ago that there are times in the middle of the night when there is no one to talk to assuage the loneliness, the frustration and the chilling worry that in fact nobody might really care.

But we really thought Michelle Obama did — because she told us so. She visited our bases during the campaign. Then, in May, she said in an Army press release that, "I promise you that I will use every ounce of my energy to make sure that America always takes care of you." Then she suggested Americans should take us to lunch for Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

But she wasn’t there for us when the going got serious. In November, new legislation gave spouses a home state, something service members have had since WWII. The new law offers us civil protections for income, voting, property tax. Some 14,000 spouses celebrated our first political victory on Facebook. Not included was Michelle Obama because the First Lady’s office indicated no real interest. The bill was signed into law on Veteran’s Day with only the virtual Facebook party for spouses across the country, the day after the shootings at Fort Hood.

In December the Defense Department said the new law, the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act, was "confusing," even though it simply supports the same rights offered to the military by the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act.

Where was Michelle? On the same day of that announcement about the MSRRA, a Defense Department press release told us that the "First Lady Delivers Toys For Tots."

Which do you think matters more to us? "The markers and board games" collected from her staff (the largest of any First Lady’s, yet without anyone dedicated full-time to her declared issue of military families), or acknowledging the MSRRA, which Army Times called "landmark legislation" for equal and civil rights for military spouses. The Pentagon and the First Lady had both missed their first opportunity of the new administration to genuinely support us.

In January there was another scripted moment at the Armed Forces Officers’ Wives Club annual luncheon. With a smile and two thumbs up, Mrs. Obama announced that there would be "$84 million for spousal career development including tuition assistance." Just weeks later that tuition program, the Career Advancement Account (also known as "MyCAA") was shut down, without notice to spouses.

Mrs. Obama’s office said nothing about that. Military wives were less shy. The "Take Action Against MyCAA Shutdown" site was established on Facebook within hours.

• Breanne wrote, "My next class starts in 4 weeks… as if working fulltime, school full time and a husband who is deploying soon isn’t stressful enough."
• Deborah added, "I quit my job to accompany my husband to his new duty station and I have not started working, I applied but keep hearing ‘don’t want to hire another spouse.’ I was depending on MyCAA."
• Jacey Eckhart cited MyCAA as proof that "a new generation of military spouses has arrived. We aren’t dependents anymore. We are reliable partners in the business of military life."

The math tells us that there were only enough funds allocated to cover 15,000 to 30,000 spouses, but that 132,000 spouses had signed up. It seems that Pentagon officials didn’t do the math before offering the program. Worst of all, they didn’t even tell us when they stopped it. It may seem strange, but we heard from spouses via Facebook who had found their on-line accounts inaccessible.

Surprised spouses began posting on Defense Department sites. "Shame on DoD!" admonished Paulette.

Then this message popped up on the Pentagon’s MyCAA website: "Please be advised that the My Career Advancement Account (MyCAA) program has been suspended." The insult to military spouses could have been avoided if DOD had run the numbers or even had an idea of how many spouses need to build portable careers to survive as reliable partners in this American military life. This should have been done before implementing the program. And the First Lady would have been saved some embarrassment if someone in the administration had done the same before she was sent out to announce its availability to military spouses.

We responded by going to Congress, by writing to Defense Secretary Gates, by giving interviews to newspapers and television stations. To my knowledge, spouses who contacted the First Lady’s office did not receive a reply.

The official who had overseen the program, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Military Community and Family Policy Tommy T. Thomas, a political appointee of the administration, apologized and resigned. The MyCAA was partially reinstated, with the currently enrolled getting the promised benefit, but no new registration permitted.

It is time for the First Lady to get to know the stories of the American military spouse. She can start by reading our Facebook page (MyCAA Shutdown). Then, Mrs. Obama, let’s really do lunch, behind closed doors, with no media present, and we will tell you about MyCAA and the positive career opportunity it has given us and our hope that it will again be available for all military spouses who want and need it.

Rebecca Noah Poynter is an Army wife and writer. She has published in the Washington Post and the Military Times newspapers. She led military spouse support of the MSRRA. She is co-founder of the Military Spouse Business Association.

I’m just a snapshot photographer, but I know some serious photographers are among the readers, so I wanted to point out this Cool Tools review of Lensrentals.com. Sounds like a good idea for rarely used specialized lenses.

The Rooney got an excellent lather from the Gentlemen’s Best “Chilled” shaving soap. A very pleasant soap, and if it does have any menthol (for the “chilling” effect), it’s a modest amount. Very nice fragrance and, as mentioned, excellent lather.

The Goodfella open-comb razor, with a newish Wilkinson Sword blade, did a fair job. The problem with the razor for me is that the handle is difficult to grip: too slick, too short, and no knob at the end of the handle (important when you do an against-the-grain pass). My tendency is to keep this razor out of my rotation, but I imagine that some shavers love it.

A splash of Alt Innsbruck brought the menthol to a higher level. A nice aftershave.

Ed Brayton:

Remember that crazy case out of Pennsylvania where the school was remotely turning on the webcams on laptops supplied by the school to spy on students? According to court filings from the family of the victim, it may we far worse than originally thought.

The LANrev software program took screen shots and webcam photos every 15 seconds when activated. The district thereby captured over 400 screen shots and webcam images of Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins, according to court filings this week in his lawsuit…

"Thousands of webcam pictures and screen shots have been taken of numerous other students in their homes, many of which never reported their laptops lost or missing," Haltzman wrote in a motion filed Thursday.

The school has already conceded that they were wrong to use the webcams in this manner; the real issue now is how far did their wrongdoing go — and who is going to take the blame? Turns out only two people had access to the program:

According to Haltzman, technology coordinator Carol Cafiero refused to answer his questions at a recent deposition, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She and technician Michael Perbix were the only employees authorized to activate the webcams. Perbix did not fight the deposition.

Haltzman called Cafiero a possible "voyeur" and wants access to her personal computer to see if she downloaded any student images. To support the charge, he cited her response to an e-mail from a colleague who said viewing the webcam pictures was like watching "a little LMSD soap opera."

"I know, I love it!" Cafiero allegedly replied.

But given what was done with those pictures, those two are likely not the only ones culpable. Someone must have instructed them to take those pictures for them. This is going to get very interesting.

The cover-up begins to unravel. The reported incident is a glaring example of bad faith, dishonesty, lack of transparency, and a tacit admission of guilt. In the Irish Times:

A former vicar-general in the archdiocese of Munich has claimed that he was pressurised last month into taking the blame for a mistake made 30 years ago by the then Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), concerning the case of a paedophile priest.

Fr Gerhard Gruber has now said he did so only after coming under huge pressure from unnamed Catholic Church sources to take responsibility, so as to “take the pope out of the firing line”.

In a letter to a friend, seen by German weekly magazine Der Spiegel , Fr Gruber wrote that he was “begged” in numerous phone calls and after receiving a prepared statement by fax for him to sign. The magazine said Fr Gruber expresses unhappiness in the letter at being given the sole blame in public.

A spokesman for Munich archdiocese has dismissed the report as “completely made up”, saying Fr Gruber was at no point forced to sign anything but that he merely assisted in formulating the statement.

Last month media reports claimed that in 1980, Pope Benedict, as Archbishop of Munich, had mishandled the case of paedophile priest Fr Peter Hullermann. The priest was moved to Munich for “therapy” in 1980 after abusing a boy. The psychiatrist dealing with his case warned he was not to be allowed work with children.

Fr Hullermann was allowed return to parish duties in Munich within weeks of arriving there. The priest reoffended and in June 1986 he was convicted of the sexual abuse of other minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence. When this emerged last month, Fr Gruber assumed total responsibility, thus seeming to absolve Pope Benedict.

Meanwhile, according to the Spanish daily La Verdad , Colombian cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos said at a weekend conference in Murcia that Pope John Paul approved the policy of not reporting to the police clerical sex abuse crimes.

In a September 2001 letter, recently published by the French Catholic publication Golias , Cardinal Hoyos wrote to French bishop Pierre Pican to congratulate him for not reporting an abuser priest. Earlier that year, Bishop Pican received a suspended three-month sentence for not reporting serial abuser Fr René Bissy, who was eventually given an 18-year prison sentence for child sex abuse crimes between 1989 and 1996…

Continue reading.

I think this finding reflects on Bush, who was in office for those years. You’ll recall that Bush had close friendships with many crooked Texas businessmen ("Kenny Boy" Lay of Enron, for example). Justin Elliott reporting for TPM Muckraker:

In news buried by the Goldman fraud charges, the Inspector General for the SEC issued a blistering 159-page report Friday concluding that the agency’s Fort Worth office knew that Texas businessman Allen Stanford was operating a Ponzi scheme in 1997 — but didn’t make a serious effort to pursue the matter for eight years, until 2005.

Stanford, a flamboyant Texas billionaire, is currently in jail facing charges of operating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

The inspector general’s report paints the enforcement section of the Fort Worth office as the main culprit. The IG concludes:

"[T]he SEC’s Fort Worth office was aware since 1997 that Robert Allen Stanford was likely operating a Ponzi scheme, having come to that conclusion a mere two years after Stanford Group Company (‘SGC’), Stanford’s investment adviser, registered with the SEC in 1995. We found that over the next 8 years, the SEC’s Fort Worth Examination group conducted four examinations of Stanford’s operations, finding in each examination that the CDs could not have been ‘legitimate,’ and that it was ‘highly unlikely’ that the returns Stanford claimed to generate could have been achieved with the purported conservative investment approach.

Fort Worth examiners dutifully conducted examinations of Stanford in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2004, concluding in each case that Stanford’s CDs were likely a Ponzi scheme or a similar fraudulent scheme. The only significant difference in the Examination group’s findings over the years was that the potential fraud grew exponentially, from $250 million to $1.5 billion."

Despite all of that, "no meaningful effort was made by Enforcement to investigate the potential fraud or to bring an action to attempt to stop it until late 2005," according to the report.

Why not? The report continues:

We found that senior Fort Worth officials perceived that they were being judged on the numbers of cases they brought, so-called "stats," and communicated to the Enforcement staff that novel or complex cases were disfavored. As a result, cases like Stanford, which were not considered "quick-hit" or "slam-dunk" cases, were not encouraged.

The OIG investigation also found that the former head of Enforcement in Fort Worth, who played a significant role in multiple decisions over the years to quash investigations of Stanford, sought to represent Stanford on three separate occasions after he left the Commission, and in fact represented Stanford briefly in 2006 before he was informed by the SEC Ethics Office that it was improper to do so.

There are other sections of the report — one is titled "After Stanford Refused To Produce Documents, No Further Investigative Steps Were Taken" — that point to remarkably lax posture from the Fort Worth enforcement division. Read the whole report here (.pdf).

I’ve generally respected the US Marine Corps, but this scandal is very very bad. Barbara Barrett reporting for McClatchy:

For 30 years, thousands of Marines and their family members at Camp Lejeune, N.C., drank, cooked with and bathed in water that was laced with dangerous chemicals, but when outside contractors began raising questions about the toxic water, documents show, base officials rebuffed them and ignored the warnings or ordered more tests.

The worst-offending wells finally were shut down in November 1984, more than four years after the first warnings. In that time, more than 2,500 babies may have been carried in utero on the base or born at Camp Lejeune hospital, according to estimates by federal scientists.

Strung together, thousands of pages of documents tell the story of how the contamination was allowed to continue. They show that Camp Lejeune officials had been told consistently that something very foul flowed through the base’s pipes.

The Marines say they closed the wells within days of learning details about the contamination.

"The kind part of me wants to say (the Marines) took a while to figure it out," Mike Hargett, an outside contractor who raised questions about the toxic water in 1982 and 1983, said in an interview with McClatchy. "The unkind part says somebody was sloppy and negligent," said Hargett, who now lives in Rutherfordton, N.C., about an hour west of Charlotte.

The Marine Corps says it’s difficult to know what might or might not have been done in response to the warnings, because the record of thousands of related documents is exhaustive but not necessarily complete.

"Just because it’s not in the record doesn’t mean something wasn’t done," Marines spokesman Capt. Brian Block said.

The water contamination has launched years of scientific inquiry, spurred a congressional investigation and, many think, sickened thousands of Marines and their family members.

There may be more to be learned.

Last month, federal scientists sent the Department of the Navy and the Marine Corps a letter indicating that the military still hasn’t turned over all documentation…

Continue reading.

One bête noir that I battle is the use of "President" as a title for persons who were once (but are no longer) President. That is simply wrong. While some titles (governor, ambassador, senator, judge, field-rank military, and so on) are kept as courtesy titles (Adlai Stevenson was routinely addressed as "Governor" (former governor of Illinois) or "Ambassador" (former ambassador to the UN), the title of "President" is not one of those. There is always only one person who bears the title "President": the current holder of the office.

Once out of office, the former president resumes his (or, someday, her) place as a private citizen, and is addressed as simply "Mr." Thus references to Bill Clinton nowadays should refer to him as "Mr. Clinton" or "Governor Clinton" (since he is former governor of Arkansas).

This rule seems quite easy to master, and is to be found in various places.

For a former President:

Letter address: The Honorable John J. Jones

Letter greeting: Dear Mr. (Mrs., Ms.) Jones

Spoken greeting: Mr. (or Mrs., Ms.) Jones

Introduction: The Honorable John J. Jones

Wikipedia:

Continued use of a title depends on the office: Offices of which there is only one at a time (e.g., President, Mayor, or Speaker) are only used by the current office holder); titles for offices of which there are many concurrent office holders (e.g., Ambassador, Senator, or Captain) are retained for life.

From the Center for American Progress in an email:

Fifteen years ago today, anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh blew up a truck laden with 5,000 pounds of explosives outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil before 9/11. In a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Friday, former President Bill Clinton spoke of this pivotal moment in his presidency and "drew parallels between the antigovernment tone that preceded that devastating attack and the political tumult of today." "Before the bombing occurred, there was a sort of fever in America," Clinton recalled. "The fabric of American life had been unraveling, more and more people who had a hard time figuring out where they fit in. … It is true that we see some of that today." Speaking before Clinton, Center for American Progress Action Fund President John Podesta noted that while dissent is "patriotic" and should be encouraged, "when any leader promotes fear-mongering or distortions, it can create a climate where violence is more imaginable." Given the disturbing uptick in anti-government extremism, Clinton noted that it takes only one Timothy McVeigh to cause extreme violence and urged leaders in politics and the media to be more responsible with their rhetoric. "Words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and our responsibility, we have to take responsibility for," Clinton said, adding, "Don’t bet against America."

Read the rest of this entry »

Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal:

Who wrote the music of Johann Sebastian Bach? Not the Man from Leipzig. It’s self-evidently absurd to suppose that an overworked church organist with 20 children could possibly have had enough brainpower (or spare time) to will into existence such supreme utterances of Western art as the B Minor Mass, the St. Matthew Passion and the Brandenburg Concertos. Besides, if Bach wrote his own music, where are the letters in which he describes the creative agonies that he suffered while writing it? All he ever talked about was money. . .

OK, you get the idea. I am, as should be apparent, poking fun at those benighted souls who believe that someone other than William Shakespeare—the most prominent candidates being Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford—wrote "Hamlet," "Macbeth" and "Romeo and Juliet." In a saner world, nobody would need to poke fun at them, for nobody would give them the time of day, there being no credible evidence whatsoever to support their claims. Alas, such is not even close to the case, for the ranks of Shakespeare deniers have included, incredibly enough, such noted figures as Mark Twain, Henry James and Sigmund Freud, not to mention a fair number of theater folk.

James Shapiro has thus done yeoman service by writing Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? In this no-nonsense study of the zanies whose theory-mongering has blighted the world of legitimate Shakespeare studies, Mr. Shapiro not only probes the peculiar mentalities of the most prominent deniers, but provides a brilliantly pithy, devastatingly final summing-up of the mountains of incontrovertible evidence proving that the not-so-mysterious "man from Stratford" did in fact write the greatest plays ever written. Read the last chapter of "Contested Will" and you’ll never need to read anything else about what is known in polite circles as "the authorship question."

It doesn’t surprise me that such lunacy has grown so popular in recent years. To deny that Shakespeare’s plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself—a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal blow to the pride of those who prefer to suppose that everybody is just as good as everybody else. But just as some people are prettier than others, so are some people smarter than others, and no matter who you are or how hard you try, I can absolutely guarantee that you’re not as smart as Shakespeare.

If anything, Shakespeare’s story reminds us of the existence of a different kind of democracy, the democracy of genius. Time and again, the world of art has been staggered by yet another "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" (to borrow a phrase from "The Great Gatsby") who, like Michelangelo or Turner or Verdi, strides onto the stage of history, devoid of pedigree and seemingly lacking in culture, and proceeds to start churning out masterpieces. For mere mortals, especially those hard-working artistic craftsmen who long in vain to be touched by fire, few things are so depressing as to be reminded by such creatures of the limits of mere diligence.

On the other hand, my little prefatory fantasia has a somewhat different point. For not only is Shakespeare the only major writer since ancient times whose authorial status has been seriously questioned by large numbers of people, but he’s the only major artist of any kind who has attracted such attention. This fact, of which Mr. Shapiro somewhat surprisingly makes no mention in "Contested Will," is for me the most puzzling aspect of the authorship question. Any scholar who dared to suggest that Bach’s work wasn’t by Bach or Rembrandt’s by Rembrandt would, I trust, be handled thereafter with the academic equivalent of padded tongs. Yet outside of the ambiguous evidence of their work, we know scarcely more about the inner lives of either man than we do about that of Shakespeare. Why, then, is he the only creative giant around whom an ever-growing edifice of pseudoscholarly fantasy has been erected?

The answer may be as simple as this: …

Continue reading.

A very good shave indeed. Valobra shave stick makes a great lather, a feat repeated this morning with the Sabini brush. Three passes of the Slant Bar with still newish Gillette 7 O’Clock SharpEdge blade, followed by a splash of Acqua di Parma, and I’m off to a good (if late) start.

Take a look.

I suggest you print that out, apply stick-on numbers to each photo, and take it to your local barista so that people can order by number.

Read this post (and his "about" page is good, too). It looks as though Goldman Sachs is in a heap of trouble.

I greatly enjoyed Who is Cletis Tout?, a 1995 caper movie with a great cast and a good script.

Or tomorrow, maybe. I’m cutting them up now to put them into a batch of Shari’s chicken marinade.

Via Andrew Sullivan. Hans Kung in the Irish Times:

VENERABLE BISHOPS,

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and I were the youngest theologians at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965. Now we are the oldest and the only ones still fully active. I have always understood my theological work as a service to the Roman Catholic Church. For this reason, on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the election of Pope Benedict XVI, I am making this appeal to you in an open letter. In doing so, I am motivated by my profound concern for our church, which now finds itself in the worst credibility crisis since the Reformation. Please excuse the form of an open letter; unfortunately, I have no other way of reaching you.

I deeply appreciated that the pope invited me, his outspoken critic, to meet for a friendly, four-hour-long conversation shortly after he took office. This awakened in me the hope that my former colleague at Tubingen University might find his way to promote an ongoing renewal of the church and an ecumenical rapprochement in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council.

Unfortunately, my hopes and those of so many engaged Catholic men and women have not been fulfilled. And in my subsequent correspondence with the pope, I have pointed this out to him many times. Without a doubt, he conscientiously performs his everyday duties as pope, and he has given us three helpful encyclicals on faith, hope and charity. But when it comes to facing the major challenges of our times, his pontificate has increasingly passed up more opportunities than it has taken:

Missed is the opportunity for rapprochement with the Protestant churches: Instead, they have been denied the status of churches in the proper sense of the term and, for that reason, their ministries are not recognized and intercommunion is not possible.

Missed is the opportunity for the long-term reconciliation with the Jews: Instead the pope has reintroduced into the liturgy a preconciliar prayer for the enlightenment of the Jews, he has taken notoriously anti-Semitic and schismatic bishops back into communion with the church, and he is actively promoting the beatification of Pope Pius XII, who has been accused of not offering sufficient protections to Jews in Nazi Germany.

The fact is, Benedict sees in Judaism only the historic root of Christianity; he does not take it seriously as an ongoing religious community offering its own path to salvation. The recent comparison of the current criticism faced by the pope with anti-Semitic hate campaigns – made by Rev Raniero Cantalamessa during an official Good Friday service at the Vatican – has stirred up a storm of indignation among Jews around the world.

Missed is the opportunity for a dialogue with Muslims in an atmosphere of mutual trust: Instead, in his ill-advised but symptomatic 2006 Regensburg lecture, Benedict caricatured Islam as a religion of violence and inhumanity and thus evoked enduring Muslim mistrust.

Missed is the opportunity for reconciliation with the colonised indigenous peoples of Latin America: Instead, the pope asserted in all seriousness that they had been “longing” for the religion of their European conquerors.

Missed is the opportunity to help the people of Africa by allowing the use of birth control to fight overpopulation and condoms to fight the spread of HIV.

Missed is the opportunity to make peace with modern science by clearly affirming the theory of evolution and accepting stem-cell research.

Missed is the opportunity to make the spirit of the Second Vatican Council the compass for the whole Catholic Church, including the Vatican itself, and thus to promote the needed reforms in the church.

This last point, respected bishops, is the most serious of all. Time and again, this pope has added qualifications to the conciliar texts and interpreted them against the spirit of the council fathers. Time and again, he has taken an express stand against the Ecumenical Council, which according to canon law represents the highest authority in the Catholic Church:

He has taken the bishops of the traditionalist Pius X Society back into the church without any preconditions – bishops who were illegally consecrated outside the Catholic Church and who reject central points of the Second Vatican Council (including liturgical reform, freedom of religion and the rapprochement with Judaism).

He promotes the medieval Tridentine Mass by all possible means and occasionally celebrates the Eucharist in Latin with his back to the congregation.

He refuses to put into effect the rapprochement with the Anglican Church, which was laid out in official ecumenical documents by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, and has attempted instead to lure married Anglican clergy into the Roman Catholic Church by freeing them from the very rule of celibacy that has forced tens of thousands of Roman Catholic priests out of office.

He has actively reinforced the anti-conciliar forces in the church by appointing reactionary officials to key offices in the Curia (including the secretariat of state, and positions in the liturgical commission) while appointing reactionary bishops around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI seems to be increasingly cut off from the vast majority of church members who pay less and less heed to Rome and, at best, identify themselves only with their local parish and bishop.

I know that many of you are pained by this situation. In his anti-conciliar policy, the pope receives the full support of the Roman Curia. The Curia does its best to stifle criticism in the episcopate and in the church as a whole and to discredit critics with all the means at its disposal. With a return to pomp and spectacle catching the attention of the media, the reactionary forces in Rome have attempted to present us with a strong church fronted by an absolutistic “Vicar of Christ” who combines the church’s legislative, executive and judicial powers in his hands alone. But Benedict’s policy of restoration has failed. All of his spectacular appearances, demonstrative journeys and public statements have failed to influence the opinions of most Catholics on controversial issues. This is especially true regarding matters of sexual morality. Even the papal youth meetings, attended above all by conservative-charismatic groups, have failed to hold back the steady drain of those leaving the church or to attract more vocations to the priesthood.

You in particular, as bishops, have reason for deep sorrow: Tens of thousands of priests have resigned their office since the Second Vatican Council, for the most part because of the celibacy rule. Vocations to the priesthood, but also to religious orders, sisterhoods and lay brotherhoods are down – not just quantitatively but qualitatively. Resignation and frustration are spreading rapidly among both the clergy and the active laity. Many feel that they have been left in the lurch with their personal needs, and many are in deep distress over the state of the church. In many of your dioceses, it is the same story: increasingly empty churches, empty seminaries and empty rectories. In many countries, due to the lack of priests, more and more parishes are being merged, often against the will of their members, into ever larger “pastoral units,” in which the few surviving pastors are completely overtaxed. This is church reform in pretense rather than fact!

And now, on top of these many crises comes a scandal crying out to heaven – the revelation of the clerical abuse of thousands of children and adolescents, first in the United States, then in Ireland and now in Germany and other countries. And to make matters worse, the handling of these cases has given rise to an unprecedented leadership crisis and a collapse of trust in church leadership.

There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties. With good reason, therefore, many people have expected a personal mea culpa on the part of the former prefect and current pope. Instead, the pope passed up the opportunity afforded by Holy Week: On Easter Sunday, he had his innocence proclaimed “urbi et orbi” by the dean of the College of Cardinals.

The consequences of all these scandals for the reputation of the Catholic Church are disastrous. Important church leaders have already admitted this. Numerous innocent and committed pastors and educators are suffering under the stigma of suspicion now blanketing the church. You, reverend bishops, must face up to the question: What will happen to our church and to your diocese in the future? It is not my intention to sketch out a new program of church reform. That I have done often enough both before and after the council. Instead, I want only to lay before you six proposals that I am convinced are supported by millions of Catholics who have no voice in the current situation: …

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