The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you

[mark_a]

But the time has come to ask some serious questions about why the Times is working overtime with wholly discredited lawyers to uncover dirt in the Catholic Church that occurred a half-century ago.

Those questions will be raised in an ad I am writing that will be published in next Tuesday’s New York Times

Sounds like a win-win situation for NYT.

 

[mark_a]

God bless Bill Donohue!

 

[Abenadar]

I happened to be touring Ireland when Bill Donohue was interviewed by someone on RTE radio.

Victims of abuse were calling the program to tell of their experieces and the host involved Donohue for comment.

The most charitable way I can put this is his tone and manner won no friends that day.

And possibly lost many.

Yeah, but that’s probably understandable. The guy is generally a voice of reason among jerks and bigots…who try to paint him and the Church as a group of jerks and bigots. The thing is, as far as I know, he usually talks directly to organizations, not individuals, so maybe his tone was a little off…not sure.

There is definitely a HUGE double-standard in the media when it comes to Catholicism, and in spite of Donahue’s efforts to point it out, people on the other side can’t help but ignore him…because it would be far too damning not to.

 

[Abenadar]

God bless Bill Donohue!

I agree.

 

[Guyonthestreet]

The thing is, as far as I know, he usually talks directly to organizations, not individuals, so maybe his tone was a little off…not sure. .

Equally I dont know if what I heard that day was his normal self or not, to be fair.

But the impression he left with the radio host, the callers, and the majority of catholic listeners to the show, judging by the followup phonein, was not a good one.

I dare say he has good points to make regarding the hypocricy of the media in general.

 

[RobbyS]

The big problem is that there are too many abuse cases always coming up! What are we to believe? The Pope has too many questions to answer. The ordinary Catholic is perplexed. I, for one, will not give any more money to help pay for thes abuse cases. I am disgusted with the Pope, Cardinal Mohoney, and the Church, I once loved.

A lot of these cases are decades old. If you were to compress the record of child abuse in the public schools over the last forty years, you would want to shut the schools down. The point that the Catholic league is making is why these cases are being presented as though these abuses were unique to the Church AND why the Time is not telling the facts. The irony being that most of these are abuses are homosexual crimes and the Times is telling us that homosexual actions are normal. The Times may quibble andsay, say but child abuse is wrong. Yet homosexuals do not think it immoral for an adult to sleep with a sixteen year old, except in some cases, just as I do not think it wrong, ipso facto, for an adult male to marry a sixteen year old girl.

That aside, the thing that has shook the Church is the gap between the actions of a large number of priests and our expectations for them. They are supposed to be saints, heroes of Christ, yet here we see them doing dispicable things.

AsI see it, however, the clergy have always tended to form a caste within the Church, and the natural resentment of this often takes the form of anti-clericalism. All Christians need but to read Paul’s letters to Timothy to see how they should behave but especially how a bishop or priest ought to behave. We have many priests who live up to that ideal, but then we have those like Murphy–and Weakland, his bishop-- who are moral monsters–traitors to Christ. Unfortunately, no bishop will stand up and say this, about Weakland, anyway. As to Mahoney, I think he is a snake, but maybe he just seems like one.

 

[sablouwho]

As to Mahoney, I think he is a snake, but maybe he just seems like one.

I live in LA and am about to be confirmed. I know almost nothing about Mahoney, and am curious why he is disliked by those on this thread who mentioned him.

However, I don’t want to mess up this thread by side tracking it. Maybe it would be better discussed in a new thread?

 

[RobbyS]

I live in LA and am about to be confirmed. I know almost nothing about Mahoney, and am curious why he is disliked by those on this thread who mentioned him.

However, I don’t want to mess up this thread by side tracking it. Maybe it would be better discussed in a new thread?

My opinion of Mahoney is based on his devious behavior with regarded to the priest scandals. He seems to be directing attention away from his own role in the matter. Plus"his" Cathedral. Except for the tapestries, this is a very ugly building, yet he has spent huge amounts of the Church’s money on it. I hasten to say that he is not my bishop, and What I say is more of an impression than anything, and this is not favorable.

 

[anode]

Then you better quit paying taxes too, which help fund public schools, where abuse cases are a hundred times more prevalent than in the Church…Which are never reported in the secular media.

Yes, abuse in the CC is terrible. Yet it’s much more prevalent elsewhere, and yet there’s never a peep about it in the paper.

Also, how many claims of child sex abuse have there been since 2002 (when the priest sexual abuse story really broke)? 40? And yet, things are going along just as they always have, (i.e. on a much larger scale, and unabated) in the public schools because they don’t receive the scrutiny that the Church does.

PS - I am also disgusted with Cardinal Mahoney, and can’t wait until his mandatory retirement at the age of 75 (next February, I think!).

I don’t know abut your local newspapers, but any whiff of abuse in our public schools is *all over *our newspapers–and I suspect all over yours also. The press is always looking for abuse and they publish what they find wherever they find it.

 

[didymus]

National Review Online:

A Response to the New York Times

The New York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors.
The story is false. It is unsupported by its own documentation. Indeed, it gives every indication of being part of a coordinated campaign against Pope Benedict, rather than responsible journalism.
Before addressing the false substance of the story, the following circumstances are worthy of note:

• The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.

• The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him. Archbishop Weakland had responsibility for the Father Murphy case between 1977 and 1998, when Father Murphy died. He has long been embittered that his maladministration of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee earned him the disfavor of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long before it was revealed that he had used parishioners’ money to pay off his clandestine lover. He is prima facie not a reliable source.

Please read the whole article, it gives a chronology of events from the first allegations against Fr Murphy (1974) to his death in 1998, explaining all the actions not taken by Archbishop Weakland and the responses from Cardinal Bertone in Rome when, in the late 90s the case came to his attention.

 

[Abenadar]

I don’t know abut your local newspapers, but any whiff of abuse in our public schools is *all over *our newspapers–and I suspect all over yours also.

This is exceedingly rare…yet the incidence, according to statistics, is high.

The press is always looking for abuse and they publish what they find wherever they find it.

Not true. The press has been looking in one direction only…That’s why there’s this Catholic witch-hunt - that spans, what, 50 years - while there’s nothing in the press about all the other pervs out there, past or present. Another difference is that if a Catholic does it, it’s front-page national news. If somebody else does it, and it happens to get reported, it’s buried deep in the local paper. Other double-standards include:

catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1693

 

[lemonbeam]

The New York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors.

The story is false. It is unsupported by its own documentation. Indeed, it gives every indication of being part of a coordinated campaign against Pope Benedict, rather than responsible journalism.

Before addressing the false substance of the story, the following circumstances are worthy of note:

• The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.

• The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him. Archbishop Weakland had responsibility for the Father Murphy case between 1977 and 1998, when Father Murphy died. He has long been embittered that his maladministration of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee earned him the disfavor of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long before it was revealed that he had used parishioners’ money to pay off his clandestine lover. He is prima facie not a reliable source.

• Laurie Goodstein, the author of the New York Times story, has a recent history with Archbishop Weakland. Last year, upon the release of the disgraced archbishop’s autobiography, she wrote an unusually sympathetic story that buried all the most serious allegations against him (New York Times, May 14, 2009).

• A demonstration took place in Rome on Friday, coinciding with the publication of the New York Times story. One might ask how American activists would happen to be in Rome distributing the very documents referred to that day in the New York Times. The appearance here is one of a coordinated campaign, rather than disinterested reporting.

It’s possible that bad sources could still provide the truth. But compromised sources scream out for greater scrutiny. Instead of greater scrutiny of the original story, however, news editors the world over simply parroted the New York Times piece. Which leads us the more fundamental problem: The story is not true, according to its own documentation.

The New York Times made available on its own website the supporting documentation for the story. In those documents, Cardinal Ratzinger himself does not take any of the decisions that allegedly frustrated the trial. Letters are addressed to him; responses come from his deputy. Even leaving that aside, though, the gravamen of the charge — that Cardinal Ratzinger’s office impeded some investigation — is proven utterly false.

Read more here: corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZDkxYmUzMTQ1YWUyMzRkMzg4Y2RiN2UyOWIzNDVkNDM=

 

[Phemie]

Whatever Girl, It hurts me too. I hurt for the real victims & sometimes I’m angry at their parents, also. I know that, if I or any of my brothers had told our Father that a priest had molested one of us, he would have beaten the priest to a pulp, gone to law enforcement & THEN called the Bishop…

It hurts to know these things happened, but as much as I loved my parents I think their first instinct would have been to call me a liar and to protect the Church, and our family, from public embarrassment.

Pedophilia wasn’t much of a concern back in the day. A pedophile lived 4 doors away from us – everyone knew he’d molested little girls but the families who complained were the ones who were criticized, not the molester. Police did nothing.

As a young girl I overheard a conversation that didn’t make any sense to me; years later, after some very public abuse cases, that conversation returned to my mind and made much more sense. I questioned my dad about my conclusions and he confirmed what I’d figured out. The pedophile’s son & daughter-in-law had lived with him & his wife until they had a daughter and at that point they moved into their own place which everyone figured was because of the old man. Nobody did anything and that old pervert was treated as an esteemed member of the community.

 

[peregrinus_sg]

I really don’t think most people are only angry about the behavior of some Priests and others who abused children. I think that much of the anger and disbelief is regarding the actions of those who knew about it and acted inappropriately. That would include fellow priests, Bishops and others in positions of authority who did not do enough to stop it.

Not anger, but sadness, and a solidarity with the whole Church. As Catholics, we affirm that the good done by others redound to all, similarly, the sins of each member stains all of us. That’s why, in addition to instituting the necessary measures to prevent such, and other, filfth from taking root in the Church again, we must also collectively do penance together to make satisfaction for such mistakes. Each of us should take care also to examine ourselves and rid ourselves of the sins that still cling to us, and pray for one another.

No one wanted to rock the boat. Unfortunately, it is now taking on water very fast and Benedict and others are trying to bail it out with a spoon.

I would like the Pope to show some backbone and make the difficult but necessary decisions to restore trust and faith in the Church’s heirarchy.

The first thing he should really do is to listen to what God is guiding him in this matter. If God can multiply five loaves and two fishes to feed five thousand men, a spoon might well be the tool he intends to use to restore the Church. If the tempest of the world would quell, perhaps it might be easier for everyone, Pope, Bishops and others, to hear the whisper of God.

 

[lemonbeam]

It hurts to know these things happened, but as much as I loved my parents I think their first instinct would have been to call me a liar and to protect the Church, and our family, from public embarrassment.

Pedophilia wasn’t much of a concern back in the day. A pedophile lived 4 doors away from us – everyone knew he’d molested little girls but the families who complained were the ones who were criticized, not the molester. Police did nothing.

As a young girl I overheard a conversation that didn’t make any sense to me; years later, after some very public abuse cases, that conversation returned to my mind and made much more sense. I questioned my dad about my conclusions and he confirmed what I’d figured out. The pedophile’s son & daughter-in-law had lived with him & his wife until they had a daughter and at that point they moved into their own place which everyone figured was because of the old man. Nobody did anything and that old pervert was treated as an esteemed member of the community.

What was wrong with people, why didn’t the Police didn’t the police try to convict pedophile who lived 4 doors down from you?

Things where very different then.

 

[lemonbeam]

No accusation at all. More of a plea for right thinking and definitive action. And no, I do not think the Church condones any immoral behavior. But they allowed it to continue.

My solution is not to abandon the Church. It is that the Church leadership take the necessary steps to clean out the cancer inside it, and to make the biggest act of contrition the world has ever seen. The Church has lost most of the moral force it once claimed, and won’t get it back until it looks within itself and cleans up its act.

I really don’t think most people are only angry about the behavior of some Priests and others who abused children. I think that much of the anger and disbelief is regarding the actions of those who knew about it and acted inappropriately. That would include fellow priests, Bishops and others in positions of authority who did not do enough to stop it.

No one wanted to rock the boat. Unfortunately, it is now taking on water very fast and Benedict and others are trying to bail it out with a spoon.

I would like the Pope to show some backbone and make the difficult but necessary decisions to restore trust and faith in the Church’s heirarchy.

I understand your anger. We are not all angry about the cover ups that have happened, but what exactly do you want to happen that hasn’t already happened? Most of those Priests who where involved in sex abuse and the Bishops who covered for them are dead, it happened so long ago. What should we down now?

 

[rgorton]

Something that never ever is brought out- speaking from experience- i grew up in a highly abusive family, my mothers side were generational abusers- where did i find safety and refuge? the only place that i could find hope and peace? yep- the CC… and i will tell that to as many as will listen- you don’t hear about the good things in the real life of Catholics… the press is deliberately misrepresenting things- if you get a chance, go listen to these podcasts- catholictelevision.org/ we are in a battle, and we need to pick up our rosaries and start using them… that is the only thing everyone can do to protect our Pope…

 

[OriginalJS]

I don’t know abut your local newspapers, but any whiff of abuse in our public schools is *all over *our newspapers–and I suspect all over yours also. The press is always looking for abuse and they publish what they find wherever they find it.

Same here. Besides, the argument that someone else has offended worse is simply unpersuasive in this and other contexts.

 

[markomalley]

Lemonbeam,

You asked me in the (now) closed thread about this chart:

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/6583/incidentsyear.jpg

What that chart shows is that the majority of incidents that were reported occurred in the 1960s through the early 1980s. There began to be a steep drop-off of incidents starting in 1981. I personally think that this is significant when considering this to be a current problem. Any one child or adolescent abused by a clergyman is too many. But there are sharks in the water and people chumming the water who believe that there is a current, massive, institutional problem. This chart tends to refute that.

Compare that chart to this one:

http://img532.imageshack.us/img532/9560/yearreported.jpg

This chart shows when the majority of the incidents were reported. It explains the outrage. A huge number of incidents were reported in a very short period of time. But if you superimpose it upon the other one, you can see that the majority of the incidents that were reported actually happened decades before they were reported.

You can draw your own conclusions.

The reason I am showing those charts (which were made back in 2005 with the John Jay Study).

There was recently an update published covering the years since the original study. Thought you’d be interested in reviewing some of the results:



That doesn’t say much by itself…but compare that table to this chart:



Again, the reports primarily seem to be from incidents that happened long ago. This is, again, not to say that it was OK because it was long ago…but it continues to reinforce the idea that the problem was primarily one of the past and has already been corrected.

This one is, in my opinion, the MOST interesting chart:



According to this chart, it appears that the vast majority of the reports that are coming in now are unsubstantiated.

The bishops in this country started this reporting process back in 2002. I would be really curious to see similar come out from our European brethren.

 

[miguel]

This one is, in my opinion, the MOST interesting chart:

http://i42.tinypic.com/15xwqaf.jpg

According to this chart, it appears that the vast majority of the reports that are coming in now are unsubstantiated.

Good data. But I think you misread this one.