The following site shows the location of the quotes:
The Vatican was recently forced via a court order to post the document, but they watered it down from the original sent to every Bishop in 1962.
Evidence for this? The difference between the two documents seems merely to be that the “official” one is a much better translation into clear English–the typescript was clearly done by someone who was having trouble understanding the Latin, or else someone for whom English was not the native language. I could not find a place where the official document watered anything down.
It’s immediately obvious that the document was specifically designed to silence the child victims.
It’s immediately obvious to
me that it’s nothing of the sort. First of all, it doesn’t just apply to minors but to anyone solicited by a priest. And in the second place, the concern seems to be primarily to prevent the ecclesiastical officials involved from breaking the seal of secrecy. I can’t detect any particular concern with silencing the accuser–in fact, the typescript has a rather unintelligible clause which seems to be making an exception from the “censure” on behalf of the accuser. The official document makes it a little clearer (and not in a way that particularly benefits the Vatican, in contrast to your claim above)–it appears that all it’s saying is that the accuser won’t be censured unless they were explicitly warned. I’m still a bit confused about this, but I certainly see no reason to think that the document was primarily intended to silence accusers.
I also note that you say “victim” instead of “accuser,” implying that all accusations are true. This is clearly an unjust assumption on your part. A concern for secrecy is justified in part because even a frivolous accusation of this kind can destroy someone’s career/ministry. I agree that this concern should not have too much weight over against the need to protect innocent victims, and that the clericalism of the Roman hierarchy has led them to give it too much weight–but it remains a valid concern and not a sinister conspiracy.
Any attempt of the victim to communicate the abuse to authorities
Other than Church authorities. Also, it’s not clear if this oath would bind the victim not to speak of the abuse, or just not to divulge what had happened in the trial. The wikipedia article on Crimen Sollicitationis claims the latter–I don’t find it to be obvious one way or the other from the document itself.
If the oath did apply just to the contents of the trial, then that would explain the confusing language implying that a censure wouldn’t always be necessary for the accuser. In some cases, other confidential information might be divulged, and the accuser would be bound to be silent about
that. I may be wrong in my interpretation here.
But it seems pretty clear to me that to read the document as concerned with silencing accusers/victims is to read it wrongly. One can make a very good case that it’s not nearly concerned enough with the way its implementation would affect victims, but that’s a different (though still disturbing) accusation.
Edwin
