LOOSING MY RELIGION. Do I need a Religion? Is God Part of a Religion?
Losing their religion? Catholicism in turmoil
Sex abuse scandal prompts soul-searching across the globe
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Vatican scandal heats up during Holy Week March 29: Pope Benedict chose not to address the growing sex abuse scandal on Monday, choosing instead to focus on the fifth anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul the Second during an elaborate Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica. NBC's Anne Thompson reports. Nightly News |
updated 1 hour, 7 minutes ago
WARSAW, Poland - An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.
As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.
There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.
"There's too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened," said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.
Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.
"This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant," said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.
'Incompetent people'Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.
"People are outraged really, they're furious with the complete failure of the church's leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people," Collins said.
That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.
One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed bythe letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful earlier this month in which he chastised Irish bishops.
"I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope's letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we've had in the last thousand years," said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. "I couldn't disagree with that. I don't really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they're supposed to be infallible, but I'd say most Catholics today would accept that nobody's perfect — not even the pope."
But across the Atlantic, Jasmine Co said her faith in the church was badly shaken.
The 56-year-old nurse, who recently moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.
"I don't believe in confession to the priest because I don't know if that priest is more of a sinner than I am," Co said after attending a Palm Sunday service in central Philadelphia.
On Sunday in London, about 50 protesters staged a demonstration calling on the pope to resign — something that hasn't happened in 700 years.
Church of Christ, not 'Lord Pope'
The criticism is also coming from pulpits. Udo Fischer, an Austrian priest known for his liberal views, avoids mentioning Benedict and other church leaders by name during his Masses — at least until he sees stronger signals of remorse from the Holy See.
The criticism is also coming from pulpits. Udo Fischer, an Austrian priest known for his liberal views, avoids mentioning Benedict and other church leaders by name during his Masses — at least until he sees stronger signals of remorse from the Holy See.
"We always stress that this is the church of Jesus Christ — that of the Lord Jesus and not that of the Lord Pope," Fischer said after a Palm Sunday service in his parish in Paudorf, a village near Vienna.
Parishioners young and old squeezed into pews in Fischer's modern and airy church clutching bunches of pussy willows blessed by the priest.
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Traditionally Catholic Austria, shaken by clergy abuse claims in past years and again in recent weeks, risks a drop in already dwindling support for the church if no concrete action is taken to prevent further abuse and cover-ups, says Regina Polak of the University of Vienna's Institute for Practical Theology.
"The situation is very fragile right now," Polak said. "The potential for frustration is high."
In the pope’s native Germany, the Roman Catholic diocese in the western city of Trier said Monday that 20 of its current and former priests had been accused "in recent weeks" of sexual abuse.
The allegations involved incidents from the 1950s to 1990, AFP reported. Ten of the accused priests have since died and another two have retired.
The BBC reported that the church was launching a hotline for German abuse victims.
In Spain, a heavily Catholic country where secular lifestyles are eroding church attendance, a coalition of more than 100 liberal-minded lay and clergy-based groups called the Vatican's handling of the scandal "irresponsible and insufficient," saying it failed to "put itself firmly on the side of the victims."
In Norway, Oslo's Bishop Bernt Eidsvig told Catholics in a letter last week that "the culture of silence that certain bishops advised is a betrayal."
Perhaps most ominous is the threat to the pope's own authority.
David Gibson, author of "The Rule of Benedict," a biography of the pope, said the criticism focusing on Benedict puts the "the mystique of the papal office" in peril.
"And above all, it diminishes his credibility, his ability to convince people of his message, to have people listen to him. It distances many Catholics, I think, even further from the institutional hierarchical church," said Gibson
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