Pope Benedict, the previous leader of the Catholic Church, has released a letter addressing the clerical sex abuse happening in the church blaming the sexual movements of the 1960’s, and the secularization of the people from God as the cause. While this is in fact a problem throughout the church, we can’t solely focus on this without paying attention to the issues that arise within the hierarchy of the church.

Benedict, both before and during his papacy, was a strong theological leader. His focus was mostly on the doctrine of the church and wrote many books explaining doctrine and theological values. Because of this it only makes sense that in his first public appearance since becoming Pope Emeritus his main focus was based on the theological and moral value of the people.

Benedict says that the problem of abuse began “with the state-prescribed and supported introduction of children and youths into the nature of sexuality,” throughout the world during the sexual revolution of the 60’s. During this time he said that pedophilia was something that was trying to get normalized and for a short instance succeeded.

In his letter he mentioned how young children in school where taught what sex was, and in extreme cases taught how to perform it sometimes even putting on “shows” for their teachers. Some teachers were even encouraged to have sexual interactions with children and many people where fighting for “child sexual freedom” claiming it was the only way to proceed in society. He backs this up by bringing up the “Sexkoffer” which was  a “suitcase of sex education materials used in Austrian schools in the late 1980s.” It is also notable to realize that even though he mostly mentioned the sexual revolution in Germany the events that he is describing pertaining to sexualizing children where happening globally during this time.

Benedict in his letter was saying that these events combined with homosexual cliques in seminaries led to many of the abuse cases we see today. He says that this secularization of the world bled into the Catholic seminaries and led to the problems we see today with corrupt and abusive priest and clergy.

Even though what Ex Pope Benedict is saying is correct and these events did add to the problems within the church, the fact that it was able to hide within our church for long brings up problems with structure and the hierarchy. When in the debate of who to listen to between Benedict and current Pope Francis I believe that it is important to listen to both. It’s not a one’s correct and the other isn’t its a matter of fixing it and getting the the solution together and not separating further.