Canonical judge in Milwaukee case corrects the record, rips Times reporting [CWN]

[CWN_News]

The priest who presided over the canonical trial of the late Father Lawrence Murphy-- the priest whose case has prompted heavy media criticism of Pope Benedict XVI-- has written a …

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[curlycool89]

Talk about flipping the whole thing on it’s head. Most of what we’ve heard so far has just been plain wrong.

 

[losh14]

THIS NEEDS TO BE REPORTED
The newspapers need to know about this. Please, send this to your local paper, call your local journalists who are working on this story and tell them what has been put out here. Make them report fairly and accurately.

And please, prove wrong my deeply uneasy feeling that no paper will pick this up and run it with the same vigor they run condemnations of our Church leaders.

 

[momor]

Help me out with this. I am posting a link to the documents cited by the NYTimes in their story. I am asking that people take the time to look at these before coming to any conclusions. Please don’t just read dueling media articles. We need to get to the truth.
Especially look at documents beginning about half way through, page 40 and after.

bishop-accountability.org/docs/milwaukee/Murphy_Lawrence_C/2010_03_25_NY_Times_Documents.pdf

I have read through a couple of times and it looks to me that although the CDF did not intervene to actually stop a trial, they discouraged it (by letter and also during a meeting in Rome), and recommended that other pastoral steps be taken instead. They cited a section of canon law about the steps to be taken which I have not read yet. Father Murphy’s letter to Cardinal Ratzinger in Jan 1998 asking that the proceedings be dropped seems to have had some effect on the CDFs recommendations.
It appears that the parties involved in the US were going to take the CDFs advice even though it is documented that they were very concerned that the deaf community would not understand it and would be very upset if a trial was not held.

**So, did the CDF by discouraging a canonical trial basically put a stop to it or not? **Perhaps the Times exaggerated but can it really be said they were wrong?
I don’t know, but based on the church documents I don’t think it is black or white as to who is really telling the truth, or at least the whole truth.

I also thought Fr Brundage’s article of Mar 29 in the Catholic Anchor (linked to in the OP) implied that the Milwaukie Archdiocese opened the investigation on it’s own. It appears to me it was pressure from the deaf community that got things rolling. That bothers me if I am correctly reading things. Does anyone else get the same impression?

 

[MJE]

Main stream journalism is corrupted. The NYT is certainly a leader in the main stream journalism/media. It is not a matter of them not knowing their sources are not credible & their facts are made up but they don’t care. Their agenda is paramount to the truth.

 

[homoreus]

Especially look at documents beginning about half way through, page 40 and after.

bishop-accountability.org/docs/milwaukee/Murphy_Lawrence_C/2010_03_25_NY_Times_Documents.pdf

I have read through a couple of times and it looks to me that although the CDF did not intervene to actually stop a trial, they discouraged it (by letter and also during a meeting in Rome), and recommended that other pastoral steps be taken instead. They cited a section of canon law about the steps to be taken which I have not read yet. Father Murphy’s letter to Cardinal Ratzinger in Jan 1998 asking that the proceedings be dropped seems to have had some effect on the CDFs recommendations.
It appears that the parties involved in the US were going to take the CDFs advice even though it is documented that they were very concerned that the deaf community would not understand it and would be very upset if a trial was not held.

**So, did the CDF by discouraging a canonical trial basically put a stop to it or not? **Perhaps the Times exaggerated but can it really be said they were wrong?
I don’t know, but based on the church documents I don’t think it is black or white as to who is really telling the truth, or at least the whole truth.

I also thought Fr Brundage’s article of Mar 29 in the Catholic Anchor (linked to in the OP) implied that the Milwaukie Archdiocese opened the investigation on it’s own. It appears to me it was pressure from the deaf community that got things rolling. That bothers me if I am correctly reading things. Does anyone else get the same impression?

The Jan 1998 letter and the 30 May 1998 seem unrelated. The result of the Jan 1998 letter was the CDF asking about Canon 1341, which **requires **that pastoral measures first be exhausted before prosecution. That was a standing order then, and the Bishop’s response was that all reasonable pastoral measures had been exhausted, i.e., pastoral measures have in fact been used and found ineffective, Canon 1341’s requirements have been fulfilled and the path to prosecution was all-clear.

Looking at the original and translated records of the 30 May 1998 meeting, it’s hard to tell whether the CDF was encouraging a stop to the trial. The issues raised by the CDF seem to me extremely “normal” considerations from a prosecutorial perspective. If you know you don’t have enough evidence to discharge the burden of proof, proceeding with the charge is misfeasance. The evidential issues raised were in fact quite obvious and the biggest gorrilla in the room, from a lawyer’s perspective. What I don’t get, is why Milwaukee responded to say their JV had abated the proceedings. As far as I knew, the only “live” proceedings then were in Superior, not Milwaukee. It could be that the previous Milwaukee proceedings were merely suspended but the context of the Milwaukee letter doesn’t support that. What is clear, however, is that at the diocesan level there were legal procedural cockups owing to unfamiliarity with the procedural law and at one point, unfamiliarity with jurisdiction. So it seems to me the first set of proceedings, which were in Milwaukee, were stopped due to wrong procedure. The next set of proceedings, also in Milwaukee, were commenced under the 1962 Instructio, but stopped for lack of jurisdiction. The third set of proceedings commenced in Superior under the 1961 Instructio. As far as the documents show, these were stopped by the death of LM.

So even if the CDF had intended to pressurise a stop to the trial, which to me is a completely unwarranted conclusion based on the dry documents alone, that intention certainly had no effect - LM died a defendant, whilst on trial. As is common in criminal trials in most places, the death of a defendant before the trial proper abates the proceedings. Whether you want to consider that a “stop”, well, depends.

As for Brundage’s article, there were two different issues here. The first was the abuse generally. That much was already dealt with in the 70s. No coverup there. Even the civil authorities were unable to prosecute, so that says something. The reason a subsequent investigation commenced in the 90s was because within the abuse allegations was disclosed the crime of Solicitation in the Confessional, which is a particularly grave crime under canon law and which was not for the civil authorities to prosecute. It’s the crime of the sexual abuse, “plus plus”. The sexual abuse component is a matter for the civil authorities (and look how far they got on that) but the fact of that happening within the confessional is an internal matter for the church and warranted the church taking up proceedings against LM even though the pith and substance was already the subject matter of the failed civil proceedings of the 70s. This Solicitation issue required writing to the CDF because the local authorities didn’t know how to handle the matter (not surprising - as I said, the documentation reveals unfamiliarity). Looks like they also threw in a request to waive the limitation period, which the CDF granted, and which LM opposed, and which the CDF reiterated against LM’s wishes.