The Dish

A reader writes:

This latest scandal with the Pope, which I have learned about almost entirely from your blog, drives home our society's unending ability to focus on the trivial over the critical. Outrage just never seems to be directed at the right people, places or institutions.

Compare the MSM's coverage of the allegations against Bill Clinton for his misbehavior with their coverage of the allegations against the Pope for his misbehavior. The Beltway pundits have wrung their hands about Obama's choice of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff more than they ever did about McCain's choice of Palin as Vice Presidential nominee. The modern GOP is more outraged about Democratic parliamentary tactics than about the fact that many Americans will die this year due to lack of health care — and the MSM just follows right along.

In other words, I read your blog because you seem outraged about the right things.

He is to the Vatican what Jackson Diehl is to the Israeli government. A reader writes:

John Allen’s lens for evaluating Benedict’s record as pope on sexual abuse matters in the National Catholic Reporter is skewed toward an insider’s apologia for the pontiff. “For those with the eyes to see” (like Allen), the days of lethargy and cover-up are over, and Benedict is a “Catholic Elliot Ness.” Please.

The question is the degree to which one should be expansively grateful for progress that essentially moves the ball from a minus zero to maybe plus 3 or 4, on a scale of 10. It’s in the right direction but such a meager standard for justice hardly merits high praise.

Allen cites:

1) disciplining Roman favorites Burresi and Maciel,
2) meeting abuse victims twice,
3) embracing zero tolerance,
4) apologizing.

On every count, Allen is misguided.

1) Burresi and Maciel were removed from ministry, but without ruling they were molesters and without vindicating their victims. Maciel had already declined re-election as superior so his removal was essentially moot; he claimed innocence until death. Benedict’s refusal of a clear pronouncement of guilt denied justice to survivors.

Allen’s claim that a guilty verdict seemed clear is not true for the survivors themselves or the world in general, best I can tell. Playing verbal gymnastics may be an inside Vatican game, but I find it dishonest at heart. This is the first time I ever saw a direct statement from Allen that Maciel was nevertheless guilty.

2) Meeting abuse victims abroad after, what, five years since the scandal broke is a huge achievement? Each got about five minutes. Two of them told me by phone recently they are disgusted by lack of outreach.

The actor who played Christ in Gibson’s movie was invited to the Vatican itself; such an invitation has yet to be extended to survivors, even though several went to Rome about 2004 and were rebuffed. Allen notes approvingly that Benedict “devoted five full paragraphs” to abuse in a speech, calling it evil and a sin. Is that such a remarkable effort?

3) Zero tolerance – demanded by public response. There would have been hell to pay without it, but a helpful sign. Still, no voluntary document releases to expose the truth, and Vatican refusal to cooperate with Ireland’s Murphy Commission.

4) Apologies are often in the passive voice, conditional, not in the pope’s name personally, filled with theological reflections about evil as red herrings that skirt bishop accountability. Non-apologies expressing shock, horror, etc. sorrow for the pain you suffered, not the pain that we as bishops caused by criminally endangering your children.

Remember: Cardinal Law still holds power. I believe Allen is inaccurate that Law was asked or instructed to resign. Law begged Battista Re (Congregation of Bishops head) to help him get out after his first offer of resignation was turned down. And I hazard it was not the 51 priests speaking out or the demonstrators or VOTF’s call for resignation that prompted Rome to let him leave.

It was, IMHO, in large measure because the expected subpoena from the MA AG’s office, which happened to arrive the morning Law went by car to NJ to take Peter Lynch’s private plane to Rome (on his second trip). Rome could not take the chance a sitting cardinal might be indicted, especially if my understanding is right, after a contact in law enforcement hinted, “You better get him out of here.” That and the damaging loss of support by diehard major donors after the latest revelations from secret archives.

The details, be what they may, will come out over time.

"The United States has a profound interest in redressing the long-standing grievances of the Palestinian people — not with expectation that Islamic extremism will thereby vanish, with Muslims everywhere falling in love with America, but in order to strip away every last vestige of claimed moral justification for violent jihadism directed against the West.

To pretend that this divergence of interests does not exist or does not matter — or to sustain the pretense that the fraudulent "peace process" holds out any real prospect of producing a solution — is the equivalent of allowing a sore to fester.

The inevitable result is to allow infection to spread, with potentially fateful consequences. Here in the ninth year of the Long War, with U.S. policy toward the Islamic world one long record of folly and miscalculation, what we need is more candor, not less," – Andy Bacevich, noting that none other than general David Petraeus has now endorsed a key thesis of Walt and Mearsheimer and many others in the reality-based community: Israel's strategic interests in the post-cold War world are not always America's interests.

And the reason for the current battle is not personality or internal Israeli politics or anti-Semitism; it is that this fact can no longer be ignored. In my view, at some point soon, the US needs to propose the details of a two-state solution and take active steps to enforce it.

A reader writes:

It worth noting the fact that by having the "failing" stigma attached to schools, there could also be downward pressures on real estate markets where those schools are located.  I am an urban planner. While this is anecdotal, the number one thing I hear from new suburban devotees is they are living out in the 'burbs for the benefit of their children's education.  Often this is the only reason I here from parents, as they often lament the isolation and traffic.  If schools across the nation are being slapped with failing ratings, I suspect that real estate agents are more frequently having issues selling in communities that they once had no trouble selling in.

I got thinking about this unintended outcome of NCLB after remembering your post about The Origin of Sprawl.  As the suburbs grew, their central city counterparts collapsed and so did their tax bases and abilities to provide services – good schools included.  This became a downward spiral.  Though, while the "good schools" argument may not have been an original cause of sprawl, it certainly has helped sustain its growth.  If suburban schools are being slapped with the "failing" rating, and then worse fail to get out from underneath it, the communities that support those schools could find themselves in the same downward cycle that the inner city schools found themselves in.

This scenario is of course a bit speculative, but so too is most of real estate.  This makes me wonder about the suburban and exurban communities hardest hit in the real estate downturn who also have the misfortune of having "fail" ratings attached to their schools.  Will "failing" ratings be just one more daunting impediment for these communities to overcome?  If so, we could easily see these communities as the analogy to what inner-cities became in the late 20th century.

TNC keeps talking:

There are rules for me, that aren't actually set by me. And just as I have had to learn to respect my individual agency, I've had to learn to respect that part of me that I don't control. I'm not religious, but I think there's a little God in that.

Dreher delivers his final thoughts.

Obama is well-regarded among non-wing-nut Israelis and the Israeli population at large, unlike the lobby that purports to represent them, is evenly split over the critical issue:

Nearly half the respondents (48 percent) said Israel must keep building in the capital, even at the expense of a rift with the United States, while 41 percent said Israel must accept the American demand (and Palestinian ultimatum) to stop building in Jerusalem until the end of the negotiations (which haven't begun yet)… Though the public remained composed in the face of the diplomatic fracas, poll respondents are not thrilled with the prime minister's conduct in the affair.

More people said Netanyahu's behavior was irresponsible than said he acted responsibly.

Meanwhile, Laura Rozen pens a drily hilarious sentence:

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren channeled Netanyahu's anticipated response to U.S. demands to the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl earlier Thursday.

Channeled.

"I never stop whipping," – Nancy Pelosi.

Today on the Dish, Ezra Klein assessed the CBO report, Chait prognosticated, and Obama rallied support from the left and center. Catholic groups here and here endorsed the HCR bill.

The Catholic rape scandal flared up in Ireland, Andrew clarified the situation involving Benedict here and here, Hans Kung spoke out, and the pope's defenders fought back. A reader wrote.

Goldblog tried to make sense of Israel's situation, Fred Kaplan did as well, and Bibi's brother-in-law spouted some troubling rhetoric. We saw some promising signs from young Arabs and Dan Choi made a statement. Shafer and Ezra tore into WaPo op-eds, Chait thwacked Thiessen, and Dan Zak shrugged at the census. The No Child Left Behind thread continued here and here.

— C.B.

A reader writes:

You wrote:

These people should not be demonized. Many of them are humane in private and not bigots in any personal way.

That second sentence is exactly why they should be demonized.  In many ways this is no different than the attempted rehabilitation of George Wallace.  The idea that they just said what was popular so that they could win office is no justification.  The ends do not justify the means.  And when you are a public figure, how you act in private does not justify advocating (and enacting) law and policy to the contrary.

Later in life, Wallace said, "You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."  That doesn't make what he said or did right.  Nor does the idea that he really wasn't a bigot, because even if he didn't believe in segregation, he took action to uphold it.

Really, this is the problem with the GOP, when people talk about good roads and good schools, the base doesn't listen.  But when they talk about faggots, the base stomps the floor.  The role, and obligation, of leaders is to say what is right and do what is right.  It is not to pander to build the slimmest of majorities to win elections.  As a side note, that really was the great political sin of Rove, he could not see beyond 51%, or 270 electoral votes, he could not see that winning elections is not enough, that you also have to actually govern at some point… Rove's political sin is becoming the original sin of contemporary Republicans.

Hans Kung, the greatest Catholic theologian of our time:

Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person? No other person in the Church has had to deal with so many cases of abuse crossing his desk. Here are some reminders:

In his eight years as a professor of theology in Regensburg, in close contact with his brother Georg, the capellmeister of the Regensburger Domspatzen, Ratzinger can hardly have been ignorant about what went on in the choir and its boarding–school. This was much more than an occasional slap in the face, there are charges of serious physical violence and even sexual abuse.

In his five years as Archbishop of Munich, repeated cases of sexual abuse at least by one priest transferred to his Archdiocese have come to light. His loyal Vicar General, my classmate Gerhard Gruber, has taken full responsibility for the handling of this case, but that is hardly an excuse for the Archbishop, who is ultimately responsible for the administration of his diocese.

In his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from around the world, all cases of grave sexual offences by clerics had to be reported, under strictest secrecy ("secretum pontificum"), to his curial office, which was exclusively responsible for dealing with them. Ratzinger himself, in a letter on "grave sexual crimes" addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe "papal secrecy" in such cases.

In his five years as Pope, Benedict XVI has done nothing to change this practice with all its fateful consequences.

Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own "mea culpa".

As Bishop Tebartz van Elst of Limburg, in a radio address on March 14, put it: "Scandalous wrongs cannot be glossed over or tolerated, we need a change of attitude that makes room for the truth. Conversion and repentance begin when guilt is openly admitted, when contrition1 is expressed in deeds and manifested as such, when responsibility is taken, and the chance for a new beginning is seized upon."

(Photo: Andreas Solari/AFP/Getty.)