NPR reporter Eric Westervelt ended a story on Catholic sex-abuse charges in Germany on Wednesday’s All Things Considered with a leftist critic who attacked Pope Benedict XVI as personally responsible. The reporter did not note that his critic was leftist – he was merely "renowned" – or that his critic even lamented that Pope Benedict should have run the church like Barack Obama. He declared:
In a scathing op-ed in today's edition of the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the renowned German theologian Hans Kung charged that the pope should be held personally accountable for the secrecy and what Kung called the worldwide cover-up that has protected priests and harmed children for decades. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Berlin.
Westervelt also omitted that Kung was stripped of Vatican approval to teach Catholic theology in 1979 by Pope John Paul II. In the same German newspaper as the one NPR cited, Kung wished in January 2009 that the pope wasn’t "trapped" in regressive thinking like George W. Bush:
The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government , legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night. permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama?
....Whereas President Obama is concerned for new cooperation with partners and allies Pope Benedict XVI, like George.W Bush, is trapped in thinking in terms of friend and foe. He snubs fellow Christians in the Protestant churches by refusing to recognize these communities as churches. The dialogue with Muslims has not got beyond a lip confession of `dialogue'. Relations with Judaism must be said to have been deeply damaged.
Whereas President Obama radiates hope, promotes civic activities and calls for a new 'era of responsibility', Pope Benedict is imprisoned in his fears and wants to limit human freedom as far as possible, in order to establish an `age of restoration'.
NPR and Westervelt might have considered that Kung's ardor against the Pope might sound like politics by other means against conservatives.
Westervelt also forwarded an accusation of a woman who claimed she was raped by a priest at the age of eight. The abuser was not "alleged," but treated as guilty:
ERIC WESTERVELT: Forty-five-year-old Astrid Mayer says when she was a child, she regularly attended Catholic church in a small village parish near Stuttgart. One day after Sunday school, when she was 8 years old, Mayer says her priest coaxed her into a dimly lit, wood-paneled back room.
ASTRID MAYER: But he told me he wanted to show me this bread he was transforming into the body of Jesus. And this made me very curious.
WESTERVELT: Mayer says the priest then raped her, a violation that left her reeling and dazed. As a child, she says she didn't understand and blamed herself.
MAYER: On my way home, I couldn't walk anymore because of the pain, and I had to lay down at a wall in the street. And that's what I am remembering. I only knew that it hurt and that it was horrible. But I mean, he was a priest, and I supposed he would do things that are right to me. And if I couldn't stand them, then it was my problem. And I didn't tell anybody. No, I didn't.
WESTERVELT: For years, Mayer, now a mother of two boys, says she feared a panic attack if she entered a wood-paneled room, but she really wasn't sure why. She says it was only three years ago, through intensive therapy, that she fully remembered all the details of the rape that took place nearly 40 years ago.
MAYER: It destroys trust. It destroys the trust you can have in people. It destroys it completely and, well, very simple things also. I mean, I didn't know I could say no to men until I was nearly 30.
WESTERVELT: Mayer left the Catholic Church in her mid-20s. She says the priest who raped her is now retired. He has not been charged. She recently tried to bring charges but says most lawyers are reluctant to take the rape case because it happened so long ago. He is old now, Mayer says of her abuser. I hope he is too old to molest children anymore. But, she adds, he’s still alive and not too old to own up to his crime.
MAYER: I want him to confess. I want that he tells his church and his community, the community he betrayed, whom he molested and whom he did harm. That's what I want.
NPR still reports on the Fort Hood shooting that "Nidal Hasan allegedly killed 13 people and wounded dozens of others." Shouldn’t the priest in this accusation receive the same assumption of innocence until guilt is proven?
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly stated that Cardinal Ratzinger was the chief doctrinal enforcer at the Vatican in 1979. He was appointed to that position in 1981.
