Cardinal: "Cover-up" is New Combat Term Against the Church

Retired Curia Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, 86, has commented attacks against Cologne Cardinal Woelki who refused to publish a commissioned "abuse report" because it was not serious (Die-Tagespost.de, December 16).

Woelki was also attacked for not having acted mercilessly against a priest accused of a fifty-years-old "abuse." The priest who couldn’t be questioned because of severe dementia, died two years later.

The oligarch media celebrate this as a "cover-up". For Cordes, they use this word as a combat term which aims at undermining confidence in the ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

Referring to the Barbarin and Pell trials, Cordes stresses that it would be "naïve" to consider the secular courts “more perfect” than the ecclesiastical ones.

Regarding pedophilia, he emphasises that the “Green Party" in North Rhine-Westphalia demanded its legalisation in 1985 or that paedophilia was considered curable. Until recently its "frightening human destructiveness" was not recognised far beyond the Church.

Only a "dumb know-it-all" could ignore this and call the earlier behaviour of the Church (or society) a "cover-up," Cordes stresses.

Picture: Paul Josef Cordes, © wikicommons, CC BY-SA, #newsDmwtadrnjq