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Holy See urges ‘prudence’ in reading Vatican-related cables

By Tim Lister, CNN

December 11, 2010 10:15 a.m. EST

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/12/11/wikileaks.vatican.ireland/?hpt=T2

(CNN) — The Holy See's press office Saturday urged the public to read the latest Vatican-related diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks with “great prudence,” claiming the allegations cited in the documents reflect only the view of their writers.
Without going into specifics on a number of allegations that emerged with the U.S. cables, the Holy See Press Office said that the reports “reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself.”
“Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind,” the statement said.
Among the documents were cables showing that relations between the Vatican and Ireland deteriorated sharply as the Holy See appeared to ignore a commission looking into complaints of physical and sexual abuse of children by Irish priests.

Excerpted. More at link.

The Irish government at that time was aggressively anti-Catholic and the commission was, unfortunately, similar to SNAP and a number of other American organizations ostensibly formed to get at child molesters but which were really a combination of trial lawyers and radical liberal Catholics who saw this as a way to get inside the gates and attack the Church from within.

BTW, the Irish bishops themselves were quite liberal and some of them, even though personally implicated in these cases, suddenly decided to use this as a way to attack the Church and were welcomed as golden boys by the Irish government commission. This had nothing to do with eliminating either homosexuality or abuse of minors (many of the erring Irish priests were involved with teenage girls, btw) but was another way for them to get at Benedict. The Irish bishops actually hate him because he was the first Pope since weakening of Rome by Vatican II to dare to shake up their comfy little liberal world in Ireland.

The Vatican not only is the headquarters for the Catholic Church, it also happens to be a sovereign nation—all that was left of papal property after Italian unification.

If the International Court of the Hague summoned the President and other American officials for a hearing, does anyone here really think they should go? Even if it was a legitimate case?

Well, this is the same thing. A Socialist, anti-Catholic Irish government does not have the right to “summon” the citizens of another country to a hearing.

There WERE abuses that took place in Ireland, and the Irish courts can perfectly well investigate and prosecute those responsible, without this kind of illegitimate grandstanding.