Should we Catholics be angry at the Pope for ignoring the sex abusers of 200 deaf boys as in this report?
Question:
The Pope's New Outrage
by Barbie Latza Nadeau
As more emerges about the pope's role in a sex-abuse cover-up involving more than 200 deaf boys, the Vatican is in crisis mode. Barbie Latza Nadeau talks to victims who still can't get heard.
The seedy Vatican pedophilia scandal that has rocked Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland for the last few weeks has just taken an even more lurid turn. Allegations that a Wisconsin priest sexually abused as many as 200 deaf children over the course of 24 years are compounded by the fact that his superiors all but ignored the travesty. And worse still, a paper trail between the Wisconsin diocese and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith shows that the current pope was well aware of the cover up.
The priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, who was head of the St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis Wisconsin, even wrote directly to the man who now leads the Catholic church, appealing for leniency. The letter, published on The New York Times website, is addressed to “His Eminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,” now Pope Benedict XVI. In the letter, Father Murphy pleads for leniency based on the fact that the church’s statue of limitations had run out. “I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” he wrote to the man who is now Pope. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.”
The Wisconsin victims described how Murphy abused them in his car, in the confessional, and even at Father Murphy’s mother’s private home.
• Big Fat Story: The Vatican Fires Back The Vatican did order that Murphy be tried in a secret Vatican tribunal, but after the elderly priest appealed to Ratzinger, the investigation was mysteriously dropped. Murphy was never defrocked, and died in 1998 with a full Catholic funeral and full Vatican honors as a priest. “I wish I knew what this pope was thinking,” Barbara Blaine, head of Survivor’s Network for those Abused by Priests, told The Daily Beast in Rome on Thursday. She and other survivors of abuse held a small protest outside the walls of Vatican City, passing out copies of photos of predator priests and letters from victims, pleading for help from the Vatican. “What did he think this lack of action would accomplish? These were at-risk kids. They were deaf kids who had been taken from their homes to be cared for by the church. It was outrageous.”
Blaine and her group, which includes an abuse survivor from a different Wisconsin parish, were forcibly removed from near Vatican City by Roman police after about 20 minutes for protesting without a permit. Blaine says they were taken in squad cars to a local police station where they were detained for nearly three hours. The police confiscated the posters and letters they were handing out and let them go. Protests were held in Chicago, Milwaukee and other US cities, as well. The group will hold similar events in Munich over the weekend. “I’m still hopeful that this pope will do the right thing,” Blaine says. She and other survivors would like the church to lift the veil of secrecy and turn over criminal child investigations to the local authorities the moment they are reported, rather than treating accusations as an internal church affair. “Criminal investigations should not be the business of the Catholic church.”
Answer:
Well, obviously the safety and well-being of children is low on the priorities of the Catholic church, much lower than keeping priests out of court.
And equally obviously, it is not safe to leave any child of either sex alone with clergy from any religion, especially the Catholic religion.
It is detestable and despicable how this institutionalized abuse has been covered up for years, and how the Catholic church has failed to even attempt to deal with the issue.
Every human being, Catholic or not, should be outraged at this flagrant disregard for the safety of children.
The actions and inaction of the Catholic church are beneath contempt in this matter.
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