— For the past several years now, I have sat back and waited during the Lent and Easter seasons for the inevitable eruptions of sensational reports, purported exposés and clever reinterpretations of traditional Christian teachings. This year, would it be a new documentary concerning the discovery of the corpse of Jesus? Would it be another shallow, runaway bestseller such as “The Da Vinci Code”?

Nope. This year’s Easter surprise has been the relentless attacks against the Catholic Church in general, and Pope Benedict XVI in particular, from critics both outside and inside the Church. Who they are and what they say reveal a lot of what they want.

But before we go into that, let’s reaffirm what is accepted by all: This injury is largely self-inflicted. Years of negligent handling of sexual abuse allegations have brought us here. As Pope Benedict recently told the Irish bishops:

“It cannot be denied that some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously, to apply the long-established norms of canon law to the crime of child abuse. Serious mistakes were made in responding to allegations … it must be admitted that grave errors of judgment were made and failures of leadership occurred. All this has seriously undermined your credibility and effectiveness.”

 And to the accused priests and religious, he said:

“You betrayed the trust that was placed in you by innocent young people and their parents, and you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals. You have forfeited the esteem of the people of Ireland and brought shame and dishonour upon your conferees. Those of you who are priests violated the sanctity of the sacrament of Holy Orders in which Christ makes himself present in us and in our actions. Together with the immense harm done to victims, great damage has been done to the Church and to the public perception of the priesthood and religious life.”

The same papal observations would apply here, even though he didn’t state it.

Nevertheless, it is still somewhat shocking to me that one of the sources of a recent New York Times investigative piece on alleged Vatican complicity is none other than the former archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, an avowed homosexual who was forced to resign his office for embezzling money from the Church to buy his lover’s silence.

What’s worse, Weakland held to his information and waited with malice aforethought until the time when its release would cause maximum damage.

 Or consider dissident Swiss theologian Hans Küng, whose principal writings I’ve read and who, by my reckoning, once had important things to say about being a Christian and the nature of the Church.

In the 1970s, Küng proposed as facts his personal opinions in theological and moral matters that, in my view, not only attacked the integrity of the Christian message, but canonized the ethical relativism and the psychobabble that sustained the ecology of sexual abuse in the Church.

Now, he’s attempting to hold the pope accountable for his alleged complicity in covering up sexual abuse in his former diocese in Germany.

So, what’s their agenda?

Weakland and Küng are cogs in a machine seeking, if not the destruction of the Church, to render her ineffective in the public arena.

External critics understand that a discredited Catholic Church will be unable to speak convincingly in the defense of the poor, the downtrodden, the aged, the infirm and the unborn.

A weakened, discredited Church will be powerless to oppose trendy agendas such as civil and even ecclesiastical marriages between people of the same sex, or influence politicians to stop abortion-friendly reforms of our health-care system.

Internally, critics of the Church’s normative teaching intend to impose their views of married men and/or women in the priesthood, and relaxing the Church’s sexual ethics, particularly as it impacts the permissibility of artificial contraception and abortion.

Critics also seek to empower so-called Catholic organizations that often set themselves at odds with the teachings of the pope and bishops, as we have seen recently during the health-care debate.

Finally, critics and activists seek the rehabilitation of dissident theologians, such as Küng, and their elevation to the status of normative teachers.

Wrapped in the mantle of justice for the sexual abuse victims, the critics are getting away with it through endless litigations aimed at draining the Church of money and resources, while submitting the pope and bishops to relentless public dissent, criticism and ridicule.

Yet the mainstream media seem uninterested in questioning the critics’ motives, and that makes them complicit, in my view, in the

agenda to undermine the Church.

All things considered, it seems that for the Church’s enemies, the ends justify the means.

And that’s also an evil to be resisted.



Pedro O. Vega lives and works in Johnstown. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in Catholic theology. He may be contacted via his blog, Vivificat – http://www.vivificat.org.