Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest

[TheQueen]

Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html?hp

[figmentmom]

America, Ireland, Germany, it goes on and on. As a practicing Catholic, it is truly appalling to me personally. From the New York Times:

Pope Accepts Irish Bishop’s Resignation in Abuse Scandal
By RACHEL DONADIO and EAMON QUINN
Published: March 24, 2010

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday accepted the resignation of an Irish bishop accused of mishandling allegations of sexual abuse by priests, adding to the fallout of a scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland and throughout Europe.

The bishop, John Magee, who served as private secretary to three popes, had stepped down earlier this month from his daily duties but had retained his title as head of the diocese of Cloyne, in southern Ireland, following allegations that he had not disciplined priests known to have abused children.

“As I depart, I want to offer once again my sincere apologies to any person who has been abused by any priest of the Diocese of Cloyne during my time as bishop or at any time,” Bishop Magee said in a statement on Wednesday. “To those whom I have failed in any way, or through any omission of mine have made suffer, I beg forgiveness and pardon.”

Bishop Magee’s was the first resignation since the pope last weekend released a long-awaited letter to Irish Catholics apologizing to victims of sexual abuse and expressing “shame and remorse.”

Yet Benedict’s letter did not call for any church leaders to be disciplined, feeding a growing sense of anger in Ireland, where many Catholics are calling on the country’s chief bishop, Sean Brady, to resign over his role as a young priest in the 1970s urging two children to sign secrecy agreements not to report abuse.

Benedict’s letter came after two scathing Irish government reports released last year revealed decades of systematic sex abuse of hundreds of thousands of Irish children and a widespread cover-up of the problem. The revelations have shaken the Irish church to its core; some fear it has lost a generation to the crisis.

Bishop Magee’s resignation was not unexpected, coming amid a steady drumbeat among Irish Catholics for more church leaders to step down.

Beyond Bishop Magee, four other Irish bishops implicated in the government reports for failing to protect children have offered to resign, but Benedict has accepted only one of their requests.

Colm O’Gorman, founder of One In Four, a campaign group against clerical abuse, said that Bishop Magee’s resignation was “a reminder that just because the church has policies that address child protection in Ireland does not mean that it is following its own guidelines.”

Mr. O’Gorman, a survivor of sex abuse who is also an executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland, added that the bishop had resigned only after much pressure from victims groups. Advocates have called on the Irish government to extend its investigation to all 26 Irish dioceses.

As new revelations of sex abuse by priests continued to emerge in Benedict’s native Germany, as well as Austria and the Netherlands, Mr. O’Gorman said that the Irish crisis “has lessons for other countries confronting clerical abuse.”

In December 2008, an investigation by a church panel into abuse allegations in Cloyne found that Bishop Magee had failed to respond to charges of abuse by two priests and said that policies to protect children were severely lacking. The report set off a storm of calls for Bishop Magee’s resignation.

Bishop Magee, 73, relinquished his administrative duties last March, but had retained his title.

On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Cloyne diocese, Father Jim Killeen, said that Bishop Magee had “taken personal responsibility” for the findings of the investigative panel, the National Body for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church.

Bishop Magee has since been assisting a separate, government-sponsored investigation into Cloyne being conducted by Judge Yvonne Murphy, which last November published a damning account of priestly abuse and widespread cover-up in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

Bishop Magee will likely continue to perform pastoral work, the Cloyne diocese spokesman said.

At the Vatican, Bishop Magee was best known as the personal secretary who was among the first to find the body of Pope John Paul I, who died after a month in office in 1978. John Paul II named him bishop of Cloyne in 1987.

Rachel Donadio reported from Vatican City and Eamon Quinn from Dublin. Jack Healy contributed reporting from New York.

[Garyhoov]

It seems to me that incidences of abuse in the Catholic church are becoming like Brittney Spear's cooch. We've seen it so many times, people don't even pay attention anymore.:lookaroun

[figmentmom]

It seems to me that incidences of abuse in the Catholic church are becoming like Brittney Spear's cooch. We've seen it so many times, people don't even pay attention anymore.:lookaroun

The Irish aren't taking it well at all, I can tell you. And Benedict is widely perceived as doing far too little, far too late.

[TheQueen]

It seems to me that incidences of abuse in the Catholic church are becoming like Brittney Spear's cooch. We've seen it so many times, people don't even pay attention anymore.:lookaroun

I know what you mean. But even after all that's come before and after, this part was still shocking to me.


In 1993, with complaints about Father Murphy landing on his desk, Archbishop Weakland hired a social worker specializing in treating sexual offenders to evaluate him. After four days of interviews, the social worker said that Father Murphy had admitted his acts, had probably molested about 200 boys and felt no remorse.

Jeeeeezzzzeeeeee!!! 200 boys and felt no remorse!!

[Garyhoov]

The Irish aren't taking it well at all, I can tell you. And Benedict is widely perceived as doing far too little, far too late.

I'm afraid this could get very ugly. I'm not Catholic, but I've always liked the idea people like the Pope and Dalai Lama - who could stand up there as symbols of people striving to do the right things.

Now, the very real thought that the Pope could be scurrying around behind the scenes, Nixon-like, looking for and destroying any documents that could link him to poor decisions of the past is beyond disturbing.:no

[erika]

I'm afraid this could get very ugly. I'm not Catholic, but I've always liked the idea people like the Pope and Dalai Lama - who could stand up there as symbols of people striving to do the right things.

Now, the very real thought that the Pope could be scurrying around behind the scenes, Nixon-like, looking for and destroying any documents that could link him to poor decisions of the past is beyond disturbing.:no

It comes at a really bad time, too, when so many have been struggling with issues relating to the church. It's not exactly a confidence booster.

[figmentmom]

I'm afraid this could get very ugly. I'm not Catholic, but I've always liked the idea people like the Pope and Dalai Lama - who could stand up there as symbols of people striving to do the right things.

Now, the very real thought that the Pope could be scurrying around behind the scenes, Nixon-like, looking for and destroying any documents that could link him to poor decisions of the past is beyond disturbing.:no


It comes at a really bad time, too, when so many have been struggling with issues relating to the church. It's not exactly a confidence booster.

I agree.

[Oscar Brito]

I don't know how other Catholics feel out there...but seriously, could the Cardinals have picked a more scary looking person to be Pope? :lookaroun

[Garyhoov]

I don't know how other Catholics feel out there...but seriously, could the Cardinals have picked a more scary looking person to be Pope? :lookaroun

:lol

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlLA/original/pope_looks_like_palpatine_02.jpg


Does anybody know (and lets hope it doesn't come to this and maybe I shouldn't even bring up the subject, but I'm curious) is there any way the pope could be removed if anything really ugly comes out?

I don't know if I've ever heard any dsicussion of that. I seem to remember some discussion, when the previous one was getting pretty frail, that unless he removed himself, he was in there until death.

Is that true? I'd guess that if anything really bad came out, he would likely voluntarily step down, but if he decides he wants to stay, would there be any way to force him out?:shrug

[Doug11]

He'd have to do something really bad to out-shine some of his middle-ages predecessors, wouldn't he?

His is a job for life and the people who put him there knew what they were getting. :shrug

Best of luck to him, and the church needs our continued prayers.

[BeeJay]

Does anybody know (and lets hope it doesn't come to this and maybe I shouldn't even bring up the subject, but I'm curious) is there any way the pope could be removed if anything really ugly comes out?





http://www.slate.com/id/2247262/

The Vatican is fending off accusations that Pope Benedict XVI helped cover up sexual child abuse in the Catholic Church when he was archbishop of Munich and Freising in the 1970s and '80s. If more evidence turns up against Pope Benedict, can the church fire him?

No. The Code of Canon Law has no provision that allows a pope's removal from office— for any reason, even poor health or psychological trauma. That's because, according to church law, there is no higher authority than the pope: He "possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church, which he is always able to exercise freely." A pope may resign, but his resignation must be "made freely," and he doesn't have to tender his resignation to any particular authority. (The last pope to resign was Gregory XII, who did so in 1415 to end the battle for the papacy known as the Western schism.)

The article also says that as the head of a sovereign state (Vatican City), the pope is also immune to civil prosecution under the traditional rules of international relations. Nice gig if you can get it!

[Garyhoov]

Interesting. Thanks, BJ.

Immune from prosecution, huh?

. . . sort of like Dr. Doom.:lookaroun

http://www.mcnabbstudios.com/whats_new/topps_cards/dr_doom.jpg

[figmentmom]

He'd have to do something really bad to out-shine some of his middle-ages predecessors, wouldn't he?

His is a job for life and the people who put him there knew what they were getting. :shrug

Best of luck to him, and the church needs our continued prayers.

Like the Medici? :rotfl

Seriously, I think deliberately ignoring and/or covering up abuse qualifies as "something bad," don't you, Doug? :dunno Not that he was alone, by any means.

[TheQueen]

When all else fails, blame the Jews.:rollseyes

Bishop blames Jews for child molestation scandal
"Don't believe that Hitler was merely crazy," says Italian Catholic leader Giacomo Babini

We're living in the Age of Globalization, and it seems that chutzpah, like latkes, isn't just for Jews any longer. Last week, retired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the "eternal enemies of Catholicism, namely the freemasons and the Jews, whose mutual entanglements are not always easy to see through… I think that it is primarily a Zionist attack, in view of its power and refinement. They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God-killers."

You might think that the 81-year-old Babini had already said more than enough for one day, but once some people "pop," they just can't stop. "The Holocaust was a shame for all of humanity," the good bishop told the world, "but now we have to look at it without rhetoric and with open eyes. Don't believe that Hitler was merely crazy. The truth is that the Nazis' criminal fury was provoked by the Jews' economic embezzlement, by which they choked the German economy." He concluded that the Jews' "guilt is graver than what Christ predicted would happen to them, saying 'do not cry for me, but for your own children.'"

http://www.salon.com/news/antisemitism/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/04/12/bishop_blames_pedophilia_jews_open2010

[figmentmom]

When all else fails, blame the Jews.:rollseyes

Bishop blames Jews for child molestation scandal
"Don't believe that Hitler was merely crazy," says Italian Catholic leader Giacomo Babini

We're living in the Age of Globalization, and it seems that chutzpah, like latkes, isn't just for Jews any longer. Last week, retired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the "eternal enemies of Catholicism, namely the freemasons and the Jews, whose mutual entanglements are not always easy to see through… I think that it is primarily a Zionist attack, in view of its power and refinement. They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God-killers."

You might think that the 81-year-old Babini had already said more than enough for one day, but once some people "pop," they just can't stop. "The Holocaust was a shame for all of humanity," the good bishop told the world, "but now we have to look at it without rhetoric and with open eyes. Don't believe that Hitler was merely crazy. The truth is that the Nazis' criminal fury was provoked by the Jews' economic embezzlement, by which they choked the German economy." He concluded that the Jews' "guilt is graver than what Christ predicted would happen to them, saying 'do not cry for me, but for your own children.'"

http://www.salon.com/news/antisemitism/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/04/12/bishop_blames_pedophilia_jews_open2010

Oh my God. :faint

[erika]

WHAT?! That's insane, Gordon! The more they talk, the worse it gets!

And then there's this bit, which I just finished reading.


Vatican official: Pedophilia linked to homosexuality

Apr. 12, 2010 03:54 PM
Associated Press

SANTIAGO, Chile - The Vatican's second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the comments during a news conference Monday in Chile, where one of the church's highest-profile pedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true," said Bertone. "That is the problem."

His comments drew angry reactions from Chile's gay rights advocates.

"Neither Bertone nor the Vatican has the moral authority to give lessons on sexuality," said Rolando Jimenez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation in Chile.

Jimenez also said no reputable study exists to support the cardinal's claims.

"This is a perverse strategy by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility by making a spurious and disgusting connection," he said.

At least one of the highest-profile pedophiles in the Chilean church victimized young girls, including a teenager who became pregnant.

At the time, the archbishop of the capital, Santiago, received multiple complaints about Father Jose Andres Aguirre from families concerned for their daughters. But the priest — known to his parishioners as Father Tato — continued serving at a number of Catholic girls schools in the city.

Later the church sent Aguirre out of Chile twice amid abuse allegations. He was eventually sentenced to 12 years in prison for abusing 10 teenage girls.

One of the girls, identified as Paula, said that she and the priest started to have sex when she was 16 and that it lasted until she was 20.

She told the Chilean newspaper La Nacion: "I thought it wasn't that bad to have sex with him because when I told priests about it at confession they just told me to pray and that was it. They knew, and some of them guessed that it was Father Tato. But everyone looked the other way. No one corrected or helped me."

She said one of the priests she confessed to about her sex with Aguirre was Bishop Francisco Jose Cox, who himself was facing allegations of pedophilia.

Cox had been bishop in La Serena, in northern Chile, for seven years when he was removed in 1997 amid rumors that he was a pedophile. He was first transferred to Santiago, then Rome, then Colombia, and finally Germany. The Schoenstatt movement, a worldwide lay community within the Catholic Church, paid for the moves and his treatment.

In 2002, Santiago Archbishop Francisco Javier Erraruriz said Cox had agreed to be removed for "inappropriate conduct."

The archbishop acknowledged Cox had shown "affection that was a bit exuberant," especially toward children, but said, "I'm not aware of any formal allegation backed by evidence."

Erraruriz said Cox volunteered to be confined to a Schoenstatt convent in Colombia to continue "praying to God for his pardon for the errors he has made."

Last week, the archbishop admitted the Chilean church was investigating cases of priest pedophilia after playing the issue down for years.

"There is something to these pedophilia abuses — just a few, thank God," Errazuriz said in an interview on state television.


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2010/04/12/20100412pope-official-says-pedophilia-linked-to-homosexuality.html

[TheQueen]

Yeah, I just read that Erika. When all else fails...blame the Jews...and then the homos....and then the Jewish homos.

[erika]

Yeah, I just read that Erika. When all else fails...blame the Jews...and then the homos....and then the Jewish homos.

:no

[erika]

Just stepping in to say... all of it is unacceptable, but do not take the words of one priest or one retired old man priest as an official church stance on something. (the jewish thing)

And pedophilia is linked to pedophilia, jackass.

Again, broken record, it happens as often by "straight" men who are married with children as it does by a priest. Grown men molest their own children as often, but since there isn't a big conspiracy to cover it up (usually just a small one.. by their own family) we aren't here talking about it.

I wish they'd just admit it, get these guys behind bars, and move on.

Amen to that.

[erika]

The problem is that the one priest is a high ranking Vatican official.

As the Vatican's secretary of state, it is assumed that his words convey the official stance of the Church.

[BeeJay]

We Can't Let the Pope Decide Who's a Criminal
Bringing priestly offenders and the church's enablers to justice.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 12, 2010, at 10:47 AM ET

In 2002, according to devout Catholic columnist Ross Douthat, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke the following words to an audience in Spain:

I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign ... to discredit the church.

On April 10, the New York Times—the apparent center of this "planned campaign"—reprinted a copy of a letter personally signed by Ratzinger in 1985. The letter urged lenience in the case of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who had tied up and sexually tormented two small boys on church property in California. Kiesle's superiors had written to Ratzinger's office in Rome, beseeching him to remove the criminal from the priesthood. The man who is now his holiness the pope was full of urgent moral advice in response. "The good of the Universal Church," he wrote, should be uppermost in the mind. It should be understood that "particularly regarding the young age" of Father Kiesle, there might be great "detriment" caused "within the community of Christ's faithful" if he were to be removed. The good father was then aged 38. His victims—not that their tender ages of 11 and 13 seem to have mattered—were children. In the ensuing decades, Kiesle went on to ruin the lives of several more children and was finally jailed by the secular authorities on a felony molestation charge in 2004. All this might have been avoided if he had been handed over to justice right away and if the Oakland diocese had called the police rather than written to the office in Rome where it was Ratzinger's job to muffle and suppress such distressing questions.

Contrast this to the even more appalling case of the school for deaf children in Wisconsin where the Rev. Lawrence Murphy was allowed unhindered access to more than 200 unusually defenseless victims. Again the same pattern: repeated petitions from the local diocese to have the criminal "unfrocked" (an odd term when you think about it) met with stony indifference from Ratzinger's tightly run bureaucracy. Finally a begging letter to Ratzinger from the filthy Father Murphy himself, complaining of the frailty of his health and begging to be buried with full priestly honors, in his frock. Which he was. At last, a human plea not falling on deaf ears! (You should pardon the expression.)

It must be noted, also, that all the letters from diocese to Ratzinger and from Ratzinger to diocese were concerned only with one question: Can this hurt Holy Mother Church? It was as if the children were irrelevant or inconvenient (as with the case of the raped boys in Ireland forced to sign confidentiality agreements by the man who is still the country's cardinal). Note, next, that there was a written, enforced, and consistent policy of avoiding contact with the law. And note, finally, that there was a preconceived Ratzinger propaganda program of blaming the press if any of the criminal conduct or obstruction of justice ever became known.

The obscene culmination of this occurred on Good Friday, when the pope sat through a sermon delivered by an underling in which the exposure of his church's crimes was likened to persecution and even—this was a gorgeous detail—to the pogroms against the Jews. I have never before been accused of taking part in a pogrom or lynching, let alone joining a mob that is led by raped deaf children, but I'm proud to take part in this one.

The keyword is Law. Ever since the church gave refuge to Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston to spare him the inconvenience of answering questions under oath, it has invited the metastasis of this horror. And now the tumor has turned up just where you might have expected—moving from the bosom to the very head of the church. And by what power or right is the fugitive cardinal shielded? Only by the original agreement between Benito Mussolini and the papacy that created the pseudo-state of Vatican City in the Lateran Pact of 1929, Europe's last remaining monument to the triumph of Fascism. This would be bad enough, except that Ratzinger himself is now exposed as being personally as well as institutionally responsible for obstructing justice and protecting and enabling pederasts.

One should not blame only the church here. Where was American law enforcement during the decades when children were prey? Where was international law while the Vatican became a place of asylum and a source of protection for those who licensed or carried out the predation? Page through any of the reports of child-rape and torture from Ireland, Australia, the United States, Germany—and be aware that there is much worse to come. Where is it written that the Roman Catholic Church is the judge in its own case? Above or beyond the law? Able to use private courts? Allowed to use funds donated by the faithful to pay hush money to the victims or their families?

There are two choices. We can swallow the shame, roll up the First Amendment, and just admit that certain heinous crimes against innocent citizens are private business or are not crimes if they are committed by priests and excused by popes. Or perhaps we can shake off the awful complicity that reports this ongoing crime as a "problem" for the church and not as an outrage to the victims and to the judicial system. Isn't there one district attorney or state attorney general in America who can decide to represent the children? Nobody in Eric Holder's vaunted department of no-immunity justice? If not, then other citizens will have to approach the bench. In London, as already reported by the Sunday Times and the Press Association, some experienced human-rights lawyers will be challenging Ratzinger's right to land in Britain with immunity in September. If he gets away with it, then he gets away with it, and the faithful can be proud of their supreme leader. But this we can promise, now that his own signature has been found on Father Kiesle's permission to rape: There will be only one subject of conversation until Ratzinger calls off his visit, and only one subject if he decides to try to go through with it. In either event, he will be remembered for only one thing long after he is dead.

[erika]

Right, that one was the jackass comment :lookaroun the other was about the Jewish comment. Or maybe I misread, I thought they were two separate things.

Got it :lol I thought the first sentence was talking about both of them- one priest, one retired old man. I should really pay more attention :goofy