Pope Benedict XVI continues to sound a message of Church renewal through penance and conversion — not structural reform — in the wake of the clerical sex abuse scandal. In today's general audience, he focused on the work of St. Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century German Benedictine, who toward the end of her life became a traveling missionary for ecclesial renewal.

Last week on this blog, we relayed a report in the Irish Times that contradicted the common interpretation of Pope Benedict XVI's recently announced decision not to accept the resignations of two Dublin auxiliary bishops as a rebuff to their boss, reformer Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

There's just one problem: Turns out Archbishop Martin hasn't talked to the pope since February.

Noted Vaticanist Sandro Magister’s most recent post concerns the attacks on Pope Benedict and how the Pope understands these attacks.In the Sept. 3 post of his widely read e-newsletter, www.chiesa, Magister mentions two recent books analyzing the criticism of Pope Benedict:  Our book, “Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal” (Our Sunday Visitor), and  a new book by two Italian journalists called “Attack on Ratzinger” (Paolo Rodari, Andrea Tornielli, "Attacco a Ratzinger", Piemme, Milano). Two forthcoming documentaries from CNN and BBC are examples of the attacks.

At least in the English-language world, commentary on the latest allegation of clerical sex abuse — this time levied against a Belgian cardinal — has been necessarily tentative because most of the source documents remain in Dutch, and even then appear incomplete.

But in a nutshell, two Dutch papers have published the (partial) transcripts of secret tape recordings made by a sex abuse victim in April meetings with Cardinal Godfried Danneels, who retired in January as head of the Mechelen-Brussel archdiocese.

The abuser? A fellow Belgian bishop who resigned in disgrace shortly after the recordings were made. The victim? His now 42-year-old nephew, whom he had abused for 13 years, both before and after his 1985 consecration as bishop.

But the fresh scandal is that the transcripts show Cardinal Danneels...

Catholic News Service's Julie Asher has a new article on what led to the writing of "Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis: Working for Reform and Renewal."

Here's how it opens:

Greg Erlandson decided to write a book on the clergy sex abuse crisis because the secular media kept raising questions about Pope Benedict XVI's handling of cases in their coverage of a new wave of clergy sex abuse in dioceses around the world.

For him, there was a "genuine curiosity about...

This looks like vindication for observers (like us) who were slow to interpret Pope Benedict XVI's decision not to accept the resignation of two Irish auxiliary bishops as a "rebuff" to Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

Irish media are reporting, some with a degree of surprise, that this week the archbishop received a hero's welcome at a massive gathering of lay faithful in Italy, and that sources in the Vatican say he's been in regular, extensive contact with Pope Benedict XVI on the clerical sex abuse crisis.

 As Canadian Cardinal Marc Oullet heads to Rome to head up the Congregation for Bishops — arguably one of the most important Vatican offices to renewing the Church after the clerical sex abuse scandal — he's pledging transparency and an approach that offers greater recognition to the harm done to abuse victims.

Here's the salient section from a television interview he did with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation:

Don't miss this Rome Reports video interview with the authors of this blog and the book described by some as "essential reading" to understand facts of Pope Benedict XVI's handling of the clerical sex abuse crisis:

Jeffrey Epstein is probably glad he's not a Catholic priest. He is a billionaire who got a sweetheart deal with the government and a slap on the wrist for child sexual abuse, and nobody but thedailybeast.com seems to have noticed. Now other defense attorneys want the same sweetheart deals for their clients.

A French intellectual and Jewish convert to Catholicism says the clerical sex abuse crisis has damaged the Church's worldy reputation but "the Church is not a cover girl. She does not live on her image in the media."

In a recent interview, Fabrice Hadjadj, a 39 year-old French convert from Judaism twelve years ago and former atheist and anarchist, told the French newspaper Le Figaro that the current crisis lived by the Church is not unprecedented.