'I never tried to cover up abuse', Benedict says

John L Allen, Jr
National Catholic Reporter
September 24, 2013

In itself, the fact that the pope made the front page of a major newspaper Tuesday is hardly surprising. Over the last six months, the papacy has been a global phenomenon, making waves and generating interest well beyond the borders of the Catholic church. Which pope did so this time, however, is a different matter.

Instead of Francis, the newsmaker in this instance was Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down Feb. 28 and who has stayed largely out of the spotlight ever since.

On Tuesday, however, the Italian daily La Repubblica published lengthy extracts of an 11-page letter by the 86-year-old emeritus pontiff to an Italian mathematician and philosopher named Piergiorgio Odifreddi, who had published a 2011 book challenging Benedict's take on Jesus of Nazareth titled, Dear Pope, I'm Writing You.

It was the second time in recent weeks La Repubblica published a letter from a pope to an atheist intellectual after a Sept. 11 missive from Francis to Italian journalist and leftist activist Eugenio Scalfari.

In general, Benedict thanks Odifreddi for seeking "an open dialogue" on matters of reason and faith, and for having approached his thought "in a respectful fashion, trying to do it justice," while also offering spirited defense of his views on several fronts.

Odifreddi says he received the letter Sept. 3 and waited three weeks to publish it in order to get Benedict's approval for doing so.

In terms of news value, probably the most interesting section of Benedict's letter regards the church's child sexual abuse scandals, which the pope says cause him "deep dismay."

"I never tried to cover up these things," he writes.

"That the power of evil penetrates to such a point in the interior world of the faith is, for us, a source of suffering. On the one hand we must accept that suffering, and on the other, at the same time, we must do everything possible so that such cases aren't repeated," Benedict says.

"It's also not a motive for comfort to know that, according to sociological research, the percentage of priests guilty of these crimes is no higher than in other comparable professional categories."

"In any event, one must not stubbornly present this deviance as if it were a nastiness specific to Catholicism," Benedict writes.

Overall, the letter is devoted to an unfailingly polite, though occasionally pointed, response from Benedict on several stock subjects in the exchange between believers and their atheist critics:

Whether theology can be considered a "science"
Whether empirical sciences such as biology, and even mathematics, also have their flights of fancy -- what Benedict describes as lapses into "science fiction"
The humanitarian contributions of religion, expressed in luminaries such as Francis, Vincent de Paul and Mother Teresa
How much can be known about Jesus as an historical figure
The historical-critical method of Biblical interpretation, with Benedict insisting that far from rejecting such methods, he sees them as essential so that Christianity is not merely proposing "myths using historical images"

Benedict also faults Odifreddi for proposing a "religion of mathematics" which fails to consider what he believes to be "three fundamental themes of human existence": freedom, love and evil.

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