Advising The Vatican

"I think there was a certain culture of secrecy along with an ignorance of the psychological consequences of sexual abuse in parts of the Church in which people were displaced instead of really taking the problem very seriously. [For those who committed abuse] there was no coherence between their lives and pastoral service" Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Appointed by the Vatican to assume a prestigious, influential role, to leave Ottawa for the refined, illuminated precincts of Vatican City, Cardinal Ouellet favoured an national newspaper journalist with an updating interview, revealing some glimpses of the wisdom he brings to the hierarchical executive of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

But really, how discerning and wise is it to attribute the zeitgeist of the times of generalized relaxed morals to the miserable failures of the Church and all too many of its priests who preyed on the trusting and the defenceless? Excuses do not solutions make, nor do they do much in the way of encouraging a public to believe that the lesson has been well learned.

The Church has always held itself apart, while being of the world. The world's culpability in lax morals did not reflect those of the Church. And now, in this interpretation, they did and do?

The fact of the matter was that for far too long Catholic priests did not take their vows of celibacy and loyalty to the Church and protection of their flock that seriously that they would restrain their base impulses to insult the former two and violate the latter, irreparably.

Perhaps even more amazingly corrupt was that Church officials at every level took stringently covert and illegal and immoral means to protect their errant brethren.

Far more concerned - taking their cue from the very office, under the patronage of the current Pope, and to which office Cardinal Ouellet ascends - to protect the reputation of the Church and to shield the events from public scrutiny. The moral obligation to protect and give comfort to the wronged, superseded by the imperative to hide the evidence and spirit away the offender. Enabling him to continue his miserable predations elsewhere.

But Cardinal Ouellet appears a man of true conviction, a kindly figure, one whose espousal of Catholic values and their importance in the larger scheme of civilized humanity's ongoing attempts to remain civilized, seems fit for the critical importance of the position he will hold.

"My role is to help the Holy Father to provide the best pastoral leadership for the Church. And that's the big challenge ahead of me, especially in the context of what has gone on. We need people who can teach with eloquence and compassion the moral implications of the Gospel."

Heaven knows, the Catholic Church needs all the help it can get, and where else would it seek to obtain that direction than from within itself? For Pope Benedict, a man infallible in his vaunted position as God's emissary on Earth, yet so appallingly fallible in his conversation with his flock, needs the steady hand of a guiding intelligence whose ability to analyse and to interpret and to communicate has thus far eluded him personally.

Perhaps Cardinal Ouellet will be that man. Yet there are intimations of doubt in careful criticisms of the Vatican II, esteemed as a modernizing of a sclerotic institution at the time, an enlightened alteration of institutional values that had outlived their usefulness, but which Cardinal Ouellet holds to have been grossly misunderstood, setting people adrift from 'the core of their faith'.

"After the council, the sense of mission was replaced by the idea of dialogue. That we should dialogue with other faiths and not attempt to bring them the Gospels, to convert. since then, relativism has been developing more broadly." Cardinal Ouellet

Is this entirely negative? Should the Catholic Church return to its mission of declaring itself the one true path to God? It has, it seems, already embarked on that road, welcoming to its fold disappointed Anglicans intent on leaving the Anglican communion. For them, the Vatican is prepared to overlook priestly marriage, while denying it to the broader priesthood.

Will the Catholic Church now withdraw from its concessions to error in its past relations with other factions of the universal faith? Will its relations with Judaism, relieved in the shadow of Vatican II now revert to tradition?