The Pope and the New York Times [Best Analysis Yet!]

APRIL 6, 2010 The Pope and the New York Times Cardinal Ratzinger did more than anyone to hold abusers accountable. By WILLIAM MCGURN

Unlike the Roman papacy, in certain circles the New York Times still enjoys the presumption of authority. So when the front page carries a story headlined "Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Deaf Boys," people notice.

Written by Laurie Goodstein and published March 25, the thrust is twofold. First, that the Rev. Lawrence Murphy, a priest who abused children at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from the 1950s to the 1970s, went unpunished. Father Murphy, she wrote categorically, "was never tried or disciplined by the church's own justice system."

This all feeds the kicker: "the effort to dismiss Father Murphy came to a sudden halt after the priest appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger for leniency." In other words, Murphy got off scot-free, and the cardinal looked the other way.

Ms. Goodstein cites internal church documents, which the Times posted online. The documents were provided by Jeff Anderson and Mike Finnegan. They are described as "lawyers for five men who have brought four lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee."

What she did not tell readers is that Mr. Anderson isn't just any old lawyer. When it comes to suing the church, he is America's leading plaintiffs attorney. Back in 2002, he told the Associated Press that he'd won more than $60 million in settlements from the church, and he once boasted to a Twin Cities weekly that he's "suing the s--t out of them everywhere." Nor did the Times report another salient fact about Mr. Anderson: He's now trying to sue the Vatican in U.S. federal court.

Very interesting, and here’s another good analysis:

“Pope Benedict came to America to apologize for what these men did. And no one has been more aggressive in rooting out what he calls the “filth” in the church. And as the recent scandals have hit Ireland and Germany, why the attack on the pope here in America?

Answer: The New York Times is conducting a vendetta against this traditionalist pope in news stories, editorials and columns.

“Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys,” blared the headline over a Laurie Goodstein story that began thus:

“Top Vatican officials—including the future Pope Benedict XVI—did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys ...

“In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at that time.”

The facts: That diabolical priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, was assigned to St. John’s School for the Deaf in 1950, before Joseph Ratzinger was even ordained.

Reports of his abuse of the deaf children surfaced in the 1950s. But, under three archbishops, nothing was done. Police and prosecutors were alerted by parents of the boys. Nothing was done.

Weakland, who became archbishop in 1977, did not write to Rome until 1996.

And as John Allen of National Catholic Reporter noted last week, Cardinal Ratzinger “did not have any direct responsibility for managing the overall Vatican response to the crisis until 2001. ... Prior to 2001, Ratzinger had nothing personally to do with the vast majority of sex abuse cases, even the small percentage which wound up in Rome.”

By the time Cardinal Ratzinger was commissioned by John Paul II to clean out the stable, Murphy had been dead for three years.

Yet here is Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s summation of the case:

“Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed ‘God’s Rotweiler,’ when he was the church’s enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys.”’

more http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/63763

Let’s get the truth out to as many people as we can.

As I predicted, the pre-Easter barrage against the Pope has almost trickled to a stop now that Easter Sunday has come and gone. There was hardly any reporting on it yesterday, and I had to really scour the internet to find any today.

It was never completely about the Pope anyway (although the gay reporters at the NYT and all others who hate the Pope and the Church are ready to attack at every opportunity).

No, this was about the Easter season and was part of the bi-annual (Christmas and Easter—you can set your watch by it) attempt to blacken the eye of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Now that Easter is over, it’s back to business as usual.

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