Facts Expose New York Times Buffoonery With Wisconsin Homosexual Case : Roman Catholic Church Largest Religious In The World, Is Bottom Of The List Statistically In Relation To Sexual Scandal!

A) Alleged victim’s family never reported to police in the 1950s.

B) Alleged victim’s family reported situation after 20+ years had lapsed. The police

investigated the issue and no charges were filed.

C) Vatican never learned about alleged homosexual abuse until 46 years had lapsed in 1996.

D) When Ratzinger learned of the allegations 46 years later he initiated an investigation.

E) The alleged abusive priest died in 1998.

Vatican defends action

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican defended a decision not to laicize a Wisconsin priest who sexually abused deaf children, despite the recommendation of his bishop that he be removed from the priesthood.

In a statement responding to a report in the New York Times, the Vatican said that by the time it learned of the case in the late 1990s, the priest was elderly and in poor health. The Vatican eventually suggested that the priest continue to be restricted in ministry instead of laicized, and he died four months later, the Vatican said.

The Vatican decision not to proceed to a church trial and possible laicization came after the priest wrote a personal appeal to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, who was head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation at the time, the Times article said.

On March 25, the day the article was published, members of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests held a brief demonstration in front of the Vatican, distributing copies of documents related to the case and calling on the pope to disclose how he and the doctrinal congregation handled allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Vatican officials who spoke on background said the New York Times story was unfair because it ignored the fact that, at the urging of Cardinal Ratzinger himself, new procedures to deal with priest abusers were put in place in 2002, including measures making it easier to laicize them.

“This would be handled differently today, based on jurisprudence and experience,” one Vatican official told Catholic News Service. “But you can’t accuse people of not applying in 1998 a principle that was established in 2002.”

The case involved Father Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee from 1950 to 1974. In the early 1970s, multiple allegations of sexual abuse against the priest were made to civil authorities, who investigated but never brought charges. He was placed on a leave of absence for a while and later returned to pastoral ministry in the Diocese of Superior, where he worked until 1993.

The Times story said that according to documents it obtained from lawyers involved in a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, then-Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland in 1993 hired a social worker who interviewed Father Murphy and reported that the priest had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse. The archbishop placed restrictions on Father Murphy’s ministry.

Archbishop Weakland wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger about the case in 1996 because he thought it might involve “solicitation in the confessional,” a sin which because of its gravity involved the doctrinal congregation.

Later in 1996, the doctrinal congregation told Wisconsin bishops to begin a canonical trial of Father Murphy, the Times article said. But it said that process was halted after Father Murphy wrote directly to Cardinal Ratzinger, saying that he had repented and was in poor health, and that the allegations went beyond the church’s own statute of limitations for such crimes.

When Archbishop Weakland met in 1998 with Cardinal Ratzinger’s assistants at the doctrinal congregation official, he failed to persuade them to allow a trial that could lead to the defrocking of Father Murphy.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the Father Murphy case was a “tragic” one that “involved particularly vulnerable victims who suffered terribly from what he did.”

Father Lombardi pointed out, however, that the Vatican was only informed of the case more than two decades after the abuse had been reported to diocesan officials and the police. He noted that civil authorities had dropped their investigation without filing charges.

The church’s canonical procedures in such cases do not envision “automatic penalties,” but recommend that a judgment be made, not excluding removal of a guilty priest from the priesthood, Father Lombardi said.

“In light of the facts that Father Murphy was elderly and in very poor health, and that he was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the archbishop of Milwaukee give consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father Murphy’s public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts,” Father Lombardi said.

“Father Murphy died approximately four months later, without further incident,” he added.

The Vatican spokesman underlined a point made frequently by church officials in recent weeks: that the rules on confidentiality in the church’s investigation of such allegations have never prohibited the reporting of child abuse to law enforcement agencies.

The Vatican’s doctrinal congregation was given oversight on all cases of sexual abuse of minors by priests in 2001. Under new Vatican rules established in 2001-2002, as the scope of the sex abuse scandal became clearer, the congregation was empowered in very grave and clear cases to laicize priest abusers without going through an ecclesiastical trial.

One Vatican official said that today, Father Murphy would have fallen into that category and would have been laicized.

Since 2001, about 20 percent of the approximately 3,000 cases processed have resulted in removal of the offender from the priesthood, a Vatican official said recently. In most other cases, removal from public ministry is the result.

The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said in a front-page commentary March 25 that the New York Times article was part of a media campaign against the pope.

It defended Pope Benedict, saying he had operated with “transparency, firmness and severity in turning a light on various cases of sexual abuse committed by priests and religious,” as shown in his recent letter to Irish Catholics.

“But the prevailing tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and to strain interpretations, with the aim of depicting the Catholic Church as the only institution responsible for sexual abuse, an image that does not correspond to reality,” it said.

This strategy, it said, reflects the “evident and shameful attempt to strike, at any cost, Pope Benedict and his closest collaborators.”

By Catholic News Service

By John Thavis, Catholic News Service

The Myth of Pedophile Priests

As more homosexual and/or pedophile priest scandals selectively air on media across Europe, we should be ashamed of the offenders and those who sheltered them and oppressed the victims. The guilty should be weeded out, removed from office and handed over to the civil authorities where they are guilty of crimes. Systems to avoid abuse must be established and rigorously maintained, and victims should be justly compensated for their suffering.However, Penn State professor Philip Jenkins (who is not a Catholic) has written the most objective book on the subject, and he summarizes his arguments in this excellent article. In light of his work, we should remember some basic facts and principles:

Priestly celibacy is not the issue – married men are more likely to abuse children than unmarried
Most child abuse takes place within the home.
All religious groups have pedophile scandals, and the Catholics (while the largest religious group) are at the bottom of the list statistically.
Child abuse is prevalent in all areas of society: schools, youth organizations, sports, etc.
Statistically, of all the professions, Christian clergy are least likely to offend. Doctors, Farmers and Teachers are the professions most likely to abuse children–not clergy.
Among clergy offenders Catholic priests are least likely to offend.
Catholic cases of pedophilia make more headlines because of anti Catholic prejudice and because the Catholic Church is bigger and more lucractive to sue.
Pedophilia and Euphebophilia are different problems. The former is sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. The latter is attraction to teenagers. Most cases branded ‘pedophila’ are actually ‘euphebophila.’
Most of the cases of euphebophilia are homosexual in nature, however the politically correct do not want this problem to be associated with homosexuality.
The number of Catholic priests guilty of pedophilia is very small.
What we now call ‘cover up’ was often done in a different cultural context, when the problem was not fully understood and when all establishment organizations hushed scandals. They did so for what seemed good reasons at the time: protection of the victims and their families, opportunity for rehabilitation of the offender, the avoidance of scandal to others. It is unfair to judge events thirty years ago by today’s standards.
When lawsuits are looming people smell money. We must be wary of false accusations.
The accused must be entitled to a fair hearing. The church should insist on hard proof of the abuse, and for the sake of justice, ensure that the innocent are not prosecuted.
When guilt is established the offender must be punished, not sheltered.
Distinctions must be made between types of abuse. Some offenses are worse than others. Verbal abuse or corporal punishment during a time when that was acceptable, while lamentable, is not the same as sexual abuse or extreme physical abuse.
Sexual abuse of an adult, or a sexually experienced older teenager is wrong, and damaging, and should be punished, but it is not the same as the sexual abuse of a younger, innocent child.
Number of offenses must be considered. One lapse is not of the same seriousness as repeated, persistent and premeditated offenses.