Lemonbeam’s defense of the Archbishop/Cardinal ignores the time line outlined in the
Fox News article and the documents.
I don’t think that Benedict ever was complicit in any cover-ups. But I believe that he was guilty of dereliction of duty. He, both as Archbishop and Cardinal, was ultimately responsible for what happened in his Archdiocese and his Congregation. The pope is a very smart, competent, learned man who strikes me as a hands-on type, when he wants to be. if the material is unpleasant, or repulsive or mundane, or it doesn’t interest him–he will delegate it. I think that he has already regretted this.
Regarding the Milwaukee case, Archbishop Weakland wrote Cardinal Ratzinger–not his secretary, but the Cardinal himself because he felt that the abuses plus what sounded like violation of the confessional required a trial. Why this took so long, I don’t know–the interviews with the perp were in 1993, Weakland’s letter was in 1996. However, the canonists in his archdiocese had finally determined that the nature of Murphy’s crimes required the attention of the Cardinal’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, so Weakland finally wrote him.
There is no evidence that Cardinal Ratzinger ever personally wrote or spoke with Archbishop Weakland. This in itself appears strange to me. Is not the nature of these crimes and their submission by a *US Archbishop *in a personal letter sufficient reason for the Cardinal’s oversight? There was no response, so Weakland opened a trial.The Congregation agreed to take it over but the investigation proceeded very slowly. Finally, the Cardinal’s secretary, in April, 1998, Bertone, who is now the Vatican Secretary of State, so probably was and is a trusted agent of the Cardinal/Pope’s advised a very weak penalty of retirement and penance, which the Milwaukee bishops thought clearly inadequate. Murphy died later that year. The Cardinal read Murphy’s appeal but at no time did he talk to the Milwaukee bishops, or write or otherwise communicate with Weakland.
In the Munich case, the question was brought up during a meeting of a priest from Essen getting psychiatric care in Munich needing room and board. this was given and the matter dropped. The man, who had been drummed out of Essen by angry parents, resumed active parish work in Munich 5 days after his treatment started. There was no supervision or followup by Archbishop Ratzinger’s office in Munich. Six years later the priest was convicted of child abuse. In the meantime, the Archbishop was very actively involved in maintaining doctrinal purity in his diocese, so he was capable of hands-on work. He could have asked the nature of the priest’s psychiatric problems, but he didn’t. Fr. Fahr was informed by Essen as to what those problems were, but didn’t follow up on it. It is a pity that the Archbishop did not ask a single question–what was the psychiatric problem? He could have spared himself a great deal of trouble.
In both cases, as Archbishop and as Cardinal, but especially the latter, he let a potentially very serious case slip through his hands–with devastating results. And, yes, he was responsible. Especially in such a rigid hierarchy as the Catholic Church, the buck really does stop here.
