Only an hour after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation from the papacy, and not ten minutes into Monday's Starting Point,
CNN's Soledad O'Brien hosted the director of an anti-Catholic
documentary who has called Pope Benedict a "criminal" and a "deeply
flawed human being."
Director Alex Gibney was O'Brien's first guest on her show. His new film on the clerical sex abuse scandal has been criticized [1] as distorted and misleading and "an anti-Catholic broadside masquerading as a documentary." O'Brien praised it as "riveting, absolutely riveting," however, and let him criticize Pope Benedict.
[Video below. Audio here [2].]
Gibney opined that "Pope Benedict's reign, if you can call it that, has been defined by the clerical sex abuse scandal." He also took a shot at Pope Benedict's handling of "dissenters":
"The other part that Benedict has played here is as a man who has gone very hard after dissenters in the church. He's tried very hard to uphold purity of doctrine. So a lot of people have been drummed out of positions only for questioning things like forced celibacy or gay marriage, or the role of women in the church. So, you know, that's the other aspect of Benedict's role that can't be overlooked. But that also was one which was coming under harsher and harsher criticism."
Meanwhile, O'Brien could only speculate about the cause behind the
Pope's resignation, but she did so anyway, wondering if it was the
"pressure and impact" of the clerical sex scandals.
In a recent interview [3] with The Daily Beast, Gibney called Pope Benedict a "criminal":
"I don’t see Ratzinger as a monster. I see him as a deeply flawed human being who aided and abetted criminality....But he lives within this institution, with this group of men who exist between mortals and the angels, and he favors protecting the institution to protecting the children. That to me is his great crime. It makes him weak, and, ultimately, I think it makes him a criminal."
He also ripped into the church discipline of priestly celibacy as a "lie" enabling predators within the church:
"What’s peculiar about the Roman Catholic Church is that at the heart of its doctrine is a lie—the lie of forced celibacy. One of the former priests ... did a study for the church to try to understand the sex lives of priests and found that over 50 percent of priests, that he could ascertain, were not observing celibacy. So that leads to a system of secrecy and blackmail, a kind of protective quality, with anything that has to do with sexuality. So as a result, I think that predators intuitively or instinctively sought out an environment like that."
He added that forced celibacy is "idiotic." Yet Gibney was O'Brien's first guest to talk about Pope Benedict's resignation.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on Starting Point on February 11 at 7:07 a.m. EST:
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: A bunch of the questioning about the why behind why
the Pope would be stepping down would be questions about the impact that
the sex scandal that has enveloped the Catholic Church would be having
on the Pope. Let's talk a little bit more – of course, Mr. Gibney did
the documentary about the Pope for HBO called "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence
in the House of God." He joins us by phone. Alex, thanks for talking to
us.
Lots of questions right now are about the why behind. And the news
we're getting from the Vatican seems to be that the Pope is old, frail,
exhausted physically, emotionally, and that these are the reasons behind
why the news that he would be stepping down on February 28th. That's
incredibly unusual, of course. There also has to be some pressure and
impact from what you really talked about in your documentary about the
sex scandal that has been a huge problem and enveloped much of the
Catholic Church over the last decade.
ALEX GIBNEY: Yes, there has. I think in a way, Pope Benedict's reign,
if you can call it that, has been defined by the clerical sex abuse
scandal. This is a man, after all, who as cardinal, head of the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which was the office which
was uniquely charged with overseeing this scandal. And so he's the most
knowledgeable person in the world when it comes to clerical sex abuse.
So I think his time as pope has been defined by this issue.
O'BRIEN: We were talking to Nic Robertson just a moment ago about what
would happen once a pope resigned. The last pope resigning happened back
in, 600 and some odd years ago. So what would be the guess on your part
about what possibly could happen, especially in light of this ongoing
investigation into some of these scandals? What happens when a Pope
resigns?
GIBNEY: You know, I'm not the person to ask about that. You'd have to
go back 600 years to get somebody to figure that one out. I do though
wonder whether or not it's in response to growing clamor over this
crisis, because in the wake of new revelations with Cardinal Mahoney in
Los Angeles, and the growing international flavor of the discoveries
over sex abuse crisis, it does seem this papacy is more and more
embattled.
O'BRIEN: Well, that's interesting, right? Because one of the things
that Nic was just saying to us a moment ago was the job of the Pope, of
course, was to have a aggressive and an intense travel schedule in order
to help invigorate the Catholic Church overall and also fight against
the erosion of the Church. How much of a role has some of the scandal
played in that?
GIBNEY: That's a good question. The other part that Benedict has played
here is as a man who has gone very hard after dissenters in the church.
He's tried very hard to uphold purity of doctrine. So a lot of people
have been drummed out of positions only for questioning things like
forced celibacy or gay marriage, or the role of women in the church. So,
you know, that's the other aspect of Benedict's role that can't be
overlooked. But that also was one which was coming under harsher and
harsher criticism.
O'BRIEN: Lots of questions why this morning. Alex Gibney is a
documentarian whose documentary about the sex scandal, clerical sex
scandal in the church, riveting, absolutely riveting.
-- Matt Hadro is a News Analyst at the Media Research Center