Thorny questions, from the Vatican to Ogdensburg

For eleven years, I’ve reported on the struggles, scandals, and triumphs of the North Country’s Roman Catholic church.

It is, as an institution, more than just a faith. It’s also a cultural reference point, a social network, a source of education and vital services.

How powerful a force can the Diocese of Ogdensburg be?

The Ogdensburg Catholic Diocese has raised more than $180,000 for Haitian relief efforts. The money will be given to the United States Bishop Organization for International Relief and the Diocese says the money will focus on both immediate relief and long-term rebuilding.

Money from the organization has helped feed 260,000 people and provided medical care for more than 4,000.

For the first time in more than 70 years, the Diocese will soon be led by a local man, Father Terry LaValley, who was born in Mooers Forks.

(For a conversation with the new Bishop-elect, go here.)

Rev. LaValley takes the helm at a brutally complicated time for the Church.

Just last month, the Diocese of Burlington — which serves Catholics across Lake Champlain in Vermont — announced that it would sell a summer camp and its headquarters.

The reason? To pay victims of alleged sexual abuse perpetrated by priests.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Irish and German Roman Catholic churches have become embroiled in sex-abuse scandals of their own, turmoil that threatens to touch Pope Benedict XVI.

Here’s coverage from the Los Angeles Times.

The Vatican sprang to Pope Benedict XVI’s defense Saturday amid accusations that he tried to hush up reports of clergy sexual abuse and failed to adequately punish an offending priest in his native Germany before becoming pontiff.

Senior Vatican officials denounced the allegations as part of a smear campaign against the pope, who they say is committed to confronting the problem and cracking down on abusers.

“The accusations are failed attempts to involve the Holy Father” in the sexual abuse scandals, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said.

Controversy continued to rage in Germany over a serially abusive priest who was returned to a pastoral position during the pope’s tenure as archbishop in the Munich region about 20 years ago.

Church officials in the area acknowledge that the decision to reassign the priest was wrong but insist that it was not made by Benedict, who was then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger.

But the Pope is also attracting new scrutiny for instructions he sent to top clergy in 2001, advising them on how to deal with the then-burgeoning sex scandal.

This from the Associated Press.

The pope, meanwhile, continues to be under fire for a 2001 Vatican letter he sent to all bishops advising them that all cases of sexual abuse of minors must be forwarded to his then-office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that the cases were to be subject to pontifical secret.

Germany’s justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, has cited the document as evidence that the Vatican created a “wall of silence” around abuse cases that prevented prosecution. Irish bishops have said the document had been “widely misunderstood” by the bishops themselves to mean they shouldn’t go to police. And lawyers for abuse victims in the United States have cited the document in arguing that the Catholic Church tried to obstruct justice.

But canon lawyers insisted Friday that there was nothing in the document that would preclude bishops from fulfilling their moral and civic duties of going to police when confronted with a case of child abuse.

There is deepening tension surrounding the sex-abuse issue. Many Roman Catholics are convinced that lingering questions reflect a bias against their faith.

The scrutiny also comes at a time when the Church has taken an increasing role in America’s culture-war debates, speaking out on issues that range from same-sex marriage to abortion to secularism.

Complicating matters further is the fact that Roman Catholic leaders are struggling with transformative problems that have nothing to do with the scandal — the dwindling number of priests chief among them.

Rev. LaValley has already wrestled for years with many of these issues.

It may be that his tenure over the next few years will define for decades what kind of Roman Catholic church we have in the North Country.

Will it remain a powerful and largely positive force in this remote rural area, one that remains engaged with the broader quality of life in our small towns?

Or will we see more churches and schools close, while troubling questions linger?

Your comments and thoughts are welcome below. Remember to be civil and thoughtful.