From The Independent, which in its subheading, is painting the Pope’s proposed apology as an attempt to defuse the scandal. It seems to me more likely, that this is a genuine act of repentance by the Pope of behalf of his Church; in light of their recent buffoonery, manic secularists will probably remain unappeased.

Vatican hopes unprecedented act of penance at June jamboree will defuse anger over worldwide claims.

Pope Benedict XVI is planning to make the first general apology for the abuse of children and minors by Roman Catholic priests when he meets thousands of clergymen from around the world in June at the climax of the International Year for Priests, Vatican sources say.

In the past there have been papal or church apologies for individual cases of paedophilia or for abuse in specific countries, for example during the German pontiff’s recent visit to Malta. What is being prepared now would be the first time a pope seeks to atone publicly for the extent to which paedophilia has been a major stain on the modern history of the church touching a constellation of countries, say the sources at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy. It could be considered comparable to the historic step that the previous pope, John Paul II, took in apologising to the Jews for historic church anti-Semitism and for misdeeds during the Crusades, they say.

Vatican officials hope such an unprecedented act of penance by Benedict, together with thousands of clergymen in St Peter’s Square, 9-11 June, will do much to lay to rest the scandal and defuse protests that might disrupt his trip to Britain in September. The encounter will form the climax of the special year of events designed in part to encourage vocations to the cloth but which instead has been marred by the mushrooming paedophile scandal.

In Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov one of the brothers, an atheist, Ivan– a 19C Russian Christopher Hitchens – argues with Alyosha, a Christian on the meaning of suffering. He asks Alyosha whether mankind’s redemption would be worth torturing to death one innocent child:

Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature — that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance — and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth.”

“No, I wouldn’t consent,” said Alyosha softly.

Even though Dostoevsky was a Christian, I have always found the arguments he places in Ivan’s mouth convincing – though they present their own set of problems. Dostoyevsky’s own answer – told through Ivan – comes in the next section, the Grand Inquisitor, where Christ’s reply to the Inquisitor was not in words, but a kiss on the lips. Christ would only answer by demonstrating that he loved the Inquisitor. It didn’t change the Inquisitor’s thinking: “The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his idea.”

Christ, of course, was innocent in that he was sinless, and he was tortured to death for the redemption of mankind – a fate that was not thrust upon him: he chose it.

Innocent children do suffer, yet, however great the payoff, we would all be with Alyosha: we would not consent.

And all this is what makes the present scandal of child abuse in the Catholic Church so horrifying: through repeated cover-ups and the moving around of pederast priests, children were sacrificed, not to save mankind, but to save the reputation of the Roman Church and the miserable skins of abusive priests. To use the excuse that child abuse has been rife in every organisation is simply not good enough:

If the Church suffers more — in the innocent victims, in the faith shaken, in the credibility of her preaching — than other institutions, that too relates to her mission. Sexual abuse of the young is prevalent in staggering numbers in every dark corner of society; yet only very few cases are brought to light. If the Church should be the place where more cases are exposed rather than fewer, that is for the good, for there is the possibility of grace and healing. Consequently, if the Church as a whole feels the pain of shame and disgrace, that can be an expiatory suffering for a sexually dissolute and depraved age. Expiatory suffering is, amongst other salvific things, what the Church exists for.

“In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it’s General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both.”

The Roman church as the body of Christ has a higher standard set for it than General Motors, yet it has behaved in ways that would shame the most secular organisation. The Roman church as a human institution should be subject to the rules a civilised society applies to other human institutions: priests who engaged in criminal activity should be prosecuted. So should those who tried to cover up the criminal activity. And anyone who – even for a moment – placed the reputation of the church above the abuse of a child should be made to find another job.

From here:

A leading cardinal today claimed that the sex abuse cases rocking the Roman Catholic Church were due to ‘priestly celibacy’.

Calling for a ‘change of vision’, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, leader of the Catholic Church in Austria, said the causes of sex abuse by priests could be found in ‘priest celibacy’ and ‘priest training’.

In recent weeks the church has been rocked by a series of abuse scandals in Ireland, Holland and Germany – where Pope Benedict’s retired priest brother Georg Ratzinger has admitted to hitting choir boys.

The 65-year-old cardinal, who is tipped to be a future pope, made the shock claims in a religious magazine.

Cardinal Schoenborn said: ‘The causes of sex abuse by priests? These need to be found in priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution of 1968.

‘It also includes the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development.

‘It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the Church and of society as a whole, a change of vision.’

The abuse of children by anyone, in any way, is an unconscionable horror – particularly so if it is inflicted by church officials.

But to blame the sexual abuse of children on priestly celibacy makes as much sense as blaming animal abuse on vegetarians: there is no connection between voluntarily renouncing the God-given enjoyment of sexual intercourse and the evil of raping children.

Even though I don’t agree with Roman Catholic Church’s requirement that priests be unmarried, it seems fairly obvious that the problem is not one of priestly celibacy: it is that candidates for the RC priesthood are not being screened for pederastic sexual perversion.