A report by Margret Warner of PBS Newshour from the Vatican to investigate how the Catholic Church is planning to deal with the Child Sex Abuse scandal, and instead describes the dangers of people communicating their opinions more freely over the internet.
VATICAN CITY | We've come to Rome for a week to explore how the new wave in the Catholic clergy sex abuse scandal is being seen and dealt with by the Vatican, the power center of worldwide Catholicism. Pope Benedict XVI is coming under increasing pressure, as hundreds of charges of alleged priest abuse of minors explode throughout Europe -- so we were eager to see him at the earliest possible opportunity.It was the last morning of a three-day conference on how the church should use and deal with the digital media of today. "Have they talked about the sex abuse scandal?" I whispered to a young reporter for Avvenire, the country's dominant Catholic newspaper. She smiled and shook her head: "Not a chance."
So what did the Pope have to say to the masses of people wanting answers and guidance from their religious leader when he arrived?
"The times in which we living knows a huge widening of the frontiers of communication," he said (according to our Italian fixer/producer) and the new media of this new age points to a more "egalitarian and pluralistic" forum. But, he went on to say, it also opens a new hole, the "digital divide" between haves and have-nots.Even more ominous, he said, it exacerbates tensions between nations and within nations themselves. And it increases the "dangers of ... intellectual and moral relativism," which can lead to "multiple forms of degradation and humiliation" of the essence of a person, and to the "pollution of the spirit." All in all, it seemed a pretty grim view of the wide open communication parameters being demanded by the Internet age.
We'll be keeping a close eye on what happens and what is said on this issue from the Vatican in the coming weeks.
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