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A "consumer report" on Roman Catholicism
The Vatican newspaper denounced an Italian journalist who posed as a penitent and confessed fake sins in order to write an expose on the sacrament of reconciliation.
"Fake confessions in search of a shameful scoop," the newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, headlined a commentary condemning the cover story of L'Espresso magazine, one of the country's leading weeklies.
"Shame! There is no other word to express our distress toward an operation that was disgusting, worthless, disrespectful and particularly offensive," the newspaper said.
The commentary said the article had exploited the good faith of confessors and offended the religious sentiments of millions of people.
"It was a sacrilege, because it violated the sacred space in which a self-recognized sinner asks intimately to receive God's merciful love," it said.
The reporter made his false confessions to 24 different priests in five Italian cities, including Rome. The magazine said the idea was to see how priests handle difficult pastoral situations and whether they followed the strict norms laid out by church teaching.
The reporter, for example, told two priests he was HIV-positive and wondered whether he should use a condom when having sexual relations with his girlfriend. One told him no, and the other said it was a question of conscience, the magazine reported.
More than once, the magazine said, priests gave quite different advice on his supposed "sins," which included matters relating to homosexuality, divorce, stem-cell research, euthanasia and prostitution.
One issue that found unanimous condemnation by confessors was abortion, the magazine said.
There's no better tactic to deflect attention away from yourself than to adopt the role of the injured party, as the Catholic News Service has done in defense of the church.
When you think it over, it's interesting how Rome, with all its heirarchy and doctrinal details, conducts nothing akin to quality-assurance testing among its priests. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that some were still selling indulgences, which is one of the practices that led to the Protestant Reformation, 490 years ago.
Moreover, the practice of priest-shopping when it comes to the confessional is well-known and of long standing among U.S. catholics. Growing up Protestant in a highly Catholic neighborhood, I would constantly hear my peers advise one another to avoid Father So-and-So, because he gave out more severe penances than some other choice.
Like the issue of priestly buggery that blew up several years ago, this is an open secret among Catholics, and it is almost laughable that only now--when forced to do so--will the Powers That Be even acknowledge this misfeasance, much less attempt to remedy it.