The outrage over the abuse scandal in the Catholic Church is from the point of view of German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller hypocrisy.
„Since behaves the company quite hypocritical,“ said Brandmüller the German Press Agency shortly before his 90th birthday this Saturday. „What has happened to abuse in the church is nothing other than what happens in society at all.“ Sexual abuse is anything but a specifically Catholic phenomenon. The real scandal was that the church representatives on this point did not differ from the whole society.
„It is no less unrealistic to forget or conceal that 80 percent of cases of abuse in the church environment affected male adolescents, not children,“ criticized Brandmüller. It was also „statistically proven“ that there was a link between abuse and homosexuality.
A study presented last year showed that in Germany between 1946 and 2014 a total of 1,670 Catholic clerics allegedly sexually molested 3677 mostly male minors. In addition, the scientists commissioned with the study identified problematic structures in the Catholic Church that could still promote abuse – such as the controversial commitment of priests to celibacy (celibacy) and the pronounced clerical power of individual clergy.
The chairman of the Catholic German Bishops‘ Conference, Reinhard Marx, had pointed out that celibacy and homosexuality „in isolation“ did not cause any abuse.
Even the theologian Paul Zulehner had spoken out against mixing. „I do not share this mix of homosexuality and abuse for scientific reasons,“ he wrote on his blog. „I know many homosexuals and heterosexuals who have mature and integrated sexuality and do not abuse children. But I also know married people whose sexuality is not integrated despite marriage and abuse the children. It is not a question of sexual endowment, but of sexual maturity. “
According to Brandmüller, homosexuals should not become priests. „For the simple reason that a homosexual predisposition is very hard to deal with,“ he said. „In addition, a priest must be fatherly. Anyone who is emotionally incapable of normal human love and responsibility for the family would encounter difficulties even as a priest. “
Brandmüller belongs to a group of conservative cardinals who also openly challenged the Pope. He is considered one of the fiercest critics of Francis‘ modernization course. In the so-called Dubia letter he called together with the now deceased Joachim Meisner of Francis a clarification on its opening to remarried divorced.
The Pope is aggravated in the criticism because he does too little against abuser. At the end of February, a summit will take place in the Vatican.
