Post #23

Excerpt from PBS Television: "Cardinal Levada: 'We Should Hold Ourselves to a Higher Standard'."

As part of a series of reports from the Vatican, Cardinal William Levada, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that handles sex abuse claims, speaks to reporter Margaret Warner in his first television interview about the scandal rocking the Catholic Church.

MARGARET WARNER: Now many people we've spoken to, certainly in the States, in the church, are surprised that you all here seem surprised by this new wave. That, after all the American church went through this eight years ago, painfully had to come to a new way of operating after many revelations. Why was the Vatican not more prepared? Why is this a surprise?

CARDINAL WILLIAM LEVADA: Well I think that there are two things involved in the current media attention. I think one is the situation in Ireland, where the report on the Archdiocese of Dublin triggered a lot of attention not only in Ireland but in Europe and then I think throughout the world. The second frankly, I think, is if I will say a certain media bias. I shouldn't. I don't want to scapegoat anybody or have a conspiracy theory but I do think that the American media in particular, the question has been driven by information given by the plaintiff's attorneys who are looking for ways to involve the pope somehow in a court process or something like that, which are I think bound to be futile but nevertheless I think that has driven a fair amount of the media coverage if I may say so.

MARGARET WARNER: So do you think that some of the media are out to get the pope or the church?

CARDINAL WILLIAM LEVADA: Well you know I guess the media likes a good story but I think that by reasonable standards I think that they have not been fair in giving a balanced picture, a picture in context.

MARGARET WARNER: And what is that picture? What is that context that isn't being reported?

CARDINAL WILLIAM LEVADA: I haven't seen in the reporting much attention given to what the United States church has done. The bishops, it's true through media attention, constant media attention in 2002, met and took very concrete action. When you see the programs that have been developed, the educational programs for parents, for children, for all church workers, including priests and teachers, there is a real success story that I personally we ought to be proud of and say this also can be a model. We're not proud that we had to create it but it can be a model for public schools, Boy Scouts, some of these other groups where we're seeing now, while they don't get the media attention the church has in this --either we see, I see huge punitive damage case in Oregon was reported today for the Boy Scouts -- so I think that's one aspect of it.

MARGARET WARNER: So you don't think it's appropriate that people hold the church to a higher standard? There is more focus on the church?

CARDINAL WILLIAM LEVADA: That's a fair question. I think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard in the sense that this is not something that one would have expected that a bishop or anybody in the church, parents none of us would have expected this but I think the causes we will see go back to changes in society that the church and priests were not prepared for, particularly changes involving how to be a celibate person in a time of the sexual revolution, that's one of the causes I'd say.

To read the complete transcript of the interview, please click here.

To see the video of the interview, click here.