Posted on 05/20/2010 6:30:39 AM PDT by marshmallow
Milwaukee, Wis., May 19, 2010 / 02:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Responding to a recent lawsuit that argues the Vatican is responsible for bishops who failed to report clerical sex abuse, Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee weighed-in on the issue Tuesday, stressing that according to cannon law, the responsibility “always falls on the shoulders of the bishops,” not the Vatican.
The Wisconsin archbishop made his comments to local TV channel WISN 12 News in the wake of attorney William McMurry's attempt to lodge a federal lawsuit against the Vatican in Louisville, Kentucky.
McMurry is seeking class-action status for a case involving three men who claim they were abused by priests decades ago. He also represented 243 sex abuse victims who settled with the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2003 for $25.3 million.
Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's lawyer in the U.S., argued on Monday that that U.S. bishops do not qualify as employees of the Vatican and that therefore the Holy See cannot be implicated for the failure of the bishops to report clerical sex abuse.
Archbishop Listecki said he believes the Vatican is trying to teach people about the difference between the actions of the bishops and the jurisdiction that the Holy See exercises under canon law.
“As individuals try to make the chain and try to go up and lay a larger and larger responsibility,” he said, “you have to take a look at what procedures govern the church, and I think the Vatican was just pointing that out to people, a type of education.”
“In canon law, the responsibility always falls on the shoulders of the bishops,” the archbishop underscored.
“The buck stops... ...somewhere LOWER than here!”
Agreed.
The fault lies with Pastors and Bishops/Archbishops first. In the past, the Bishops hid/moved priest around in order to conceal “scandals” not only from the public, but higher Church authorities as well. Once a scandal gets beyond the Diocese then follow the chain, but on particular cases, not by a broad brush.
As a Catholic and former alter boy, I think I can offer an opinion.
After Vatican 2, the Pope and Vatican leadership changed entrance requirements to the seminary. No longer was homosexuality something forbidden in the priesthood seminaries which quickly became the “Pink Mafia”.
Bishops and Cardinals today are the class entered of priests entered into the new gay reality. They are ones who prevented problems priests from being removed from the priesthood and shuttled them from parish to parish in hunt of new victims.
The current Pope Benedict was in charge of removing problem priests as a Vatican official and did not do his job. He said it would embarrass the church if these sex scandals became known to the public and he helped cover them up.
The Vatican knows what has been going on world wide with these pedophile priests yet took no action until recently when they were forced.
Take the case of Rev. Stephen Miller Kiesle who was sentenced in 1978 to three years’ probation after pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a church rectory.
Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict told the bishop of Oakland he needed more time “to consider the good of the Universal Church” as he reviewed a request to remove the priest.
Who are the bishop’s responsible to?
Nobody! Why don’t the Bishop who is responsible for the pedophile priest get put in jail for covering up the activities of these priest?
One of the key points of the Second Vatican Council was the notion of reviving the autonomy of bishops in their own dioceses as a college of equals.
The message brought home from that Council by the attending bishops was that the local bishop was the authority in his diocese every bit as much as the Pope was the authority in his own diocese of Rome - that the Pope was not the CEO of a corporation, but the general partner in a partnership who held the deciding vote in matters of dispute between brother bishops.
The term was "collegiality" and the bishops from 1965 until the promulgation of the new catechism in 1997 insisted on the most broad interpretation of that term possible.
So it is ridiculous for those who had boldly championed their autonomy and authority in their dioceses (Mahony of Los Angeles being one of the most outspoken in this regard) to pass the buck up to the Pope.
The bishops were given their collegiality and, lo and behold, about 90% of the abuse occurred during 1965-1997 - with the dioceses where the bishops were most vocal about their autonomy being some of the key centers of this behavior.
What a deceitful post.
Kiesle was already entirely removed from ministry.
The question at issue was that Kiesle - who had been fully deprived of his ministry - wanted the Church to release him from his priestly obligations as well so he could go from being a disgraced priest to being an anonymous parishioner.
Benedict XVI did not move to immediately grant Kiesle's wish to be given a free pass - and you are characterizing this as a failure by Benedict XVI?
What are you saying? That the Pope did the wrong thing by not caving in to this felon's requests?
When the Catholic Church did the same thing, she called it "subsidiarity" and said it was good.
Only on FR, and only WRT the Catholic church, is it supposed to be bad.
I have feared this for a while, but the end result might be beneficial. It would put an end to some of the legal games that go on.
Spin however you want, but our current Pope protected pedophiles and this molestation scandal by priests has done more damage to the church than anything foe on the outside.
Consider this case.
Rev. Michael Teta from Tucson, Arizona. He apparently let the case ‘sit’ in Vatican for years, despite repeated requests by the bishop to have Teta removed from priesthood.
Bishop Manuel Moreno also wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger regarding another abuse case with Msgr. Robert Trupia, also from Tucson. He called Trupia “a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with.” There was no record of any response from Ratzinger regarding the case.
Records from the two cases further support allegations that Benedict, when he was a Vatican cardinal, had been part of a “culture of cover-up and confidentiality.”
Our church leadership is full of queers protecting each other.
In the 90’s Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) failed to act against a priest guilty of sexually molesting as many as 200 boys at a school for the deaf over the course of 20 years.
Instead of being disciplined, punished or prosecuted, the guilty priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, was quietly moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974. There he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.
Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) failed to defrock Murphy, even after receiving repeated warnings from U.S. bishops about the matter. Indeed, the future Pope Benedict failed to take any action against Murphy, even with the knowledge that Murphy was guilty of molesting as many as 200 children.
Apparently Murphy wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger, asking that he not be put on trial, because he had already repented, and was in poor health.
Father Murphy wrote the following in a letter to Cardinal Ratzinger (future Pope Benedict XVI):
“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood. I ask your kind assistance in this matter.”
Google “Crimen Sollicitationis” which penalizes sex abuse victims with excommunication if they report abuse to police.
That is a deliberate and malicious lie.
repeated requests by the bishop to have Teta removed from priesthood
The same deceitfulness again.
Teta was deprived of the ministry.
What the bishops wanted, and what the offending priests wanted, was for Teta to be released from his priestly vows.
In other words, the bishops wanted to not have any responsibilities for the offenders anymore and the offenders wanted to be relieved of any legal or moral responsibilities to their former employers.
In case anyone else is reading, they should know that there is a difference between being removed from priestly ministry and being released from one's priestly vows.
In every case, where there was credible evidence, the Pope consented to the removal of the offenders - like Teta and Kiesle - from the priestly ministry.
In most cases he did not release them from their priestly vows.
In other words, he was saying: "These criminals are no longer allowed to act as priests, but I am not going to reward them by releasing them from their vows of chastity and obedience."
This WaterBoard individual is deliberately misleading anyone reading this thread.
Either WaterBoard is lying about ever having been a Catholic and therefore has been caught in that lie by proving himself ignorant of the facts of priestly ministry or, alternatively, WaterBoard is telling the truth about having been a Catholic at some point but is deliberately conflating priestly ministry with priestly vows in order to confuse people and to slander the Pope.
Moreover, in the case of Trupia, Bishop Moreno had the right and the authority to remove Trupia from ministry if he thought it best. He had no need of the Pope's permission, since a bishop has fiull authority in his diocese - as any Catholic knows, if a priest wants to exercise any ministry in a diocese he must first have what are called "faculties", i.e. official permission from the bishop of that diocese to act as a priest within the borders of that diocese.
The Pope would have no need to respond to such a letter - the motivation for writing such a letter would be for the bishop to inform the Pope and put his opinion on the record.
Bishop Moreno had no need of any permission to remove any priest from the ministry.
Bishops do need permission from the Pope to release priests from their vows - but that is a different matter and one that is unrelated to abuse.
In the 90’s Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) failed to act against a priest guilty of sexually molesting as many as 200 boys at a school for the deaf over the course of 20 years.
The Vatican was never informed of Murphy's case until 1996 - Bishop Cousins kept it a secret and took it to his grave in 1988.
In 1996, the Milwaukee investigated a complaint against him, but found no evidence and dismissed the charges. Only then did the local diocese get around to informing the Vatican.
Despite the dismissal of the charges, Benedict XVI pursued a canonical trial of Murphy to permanently strip him of his priestly ministry not just in his diocese but in any diocese.
Murphy, knowing that he would likely lose, wrote a letter saying he would voluntarily agree to abandon the priestly ministry.
A little over a year later, he was dead.
Your post is taken almost verbatim from the New York Times story, but it manages to be even more misleading and deceitful than the Times article.
Murphy died still bound by his priestly vows, but voluntarily stripped of his priestly ministry.
Benedict XVI, despite the deception of the Milwaukee archdiocese and the decision by the Milwaukee prosecutors not to pursue the case, moved immediately to prosecute and punish Murphy.
Then Murphy, seeing the game was up, agreed to accept the punishment rather than fight it in a canonical court - the canonical equivalent of a "no contest" plea.
Instead of being disciplined, punished or prosecuted, the guilty priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, was quietly moved to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974.
This is false. The case was known to the police and prosecutors, who failed to bring charges (that's not the church's fault, BTW). Murphy went to live with his mother in the Superior diocese.
Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) failed to defrock Murphy, even after receiving repeated warnings from U.S. bishops about the matter. Indeed, the future Pope Benedict failed to take any action against Murphy, even with the knowledge that Murphy was guilty of molesting as many as 200 children.
This is misleading to the point of being an outright lie.
It was the responsibility of the Milwaukee diocese to discipline Murphy, not the CDF (then headed by Cardinal Ratzinger). The CDF had no investigative responsibilities over abuse cases until 2001. In fact it was the Milwaukee archdiocese which was responsible for prosecuting Murphy and failed to do so, for close to 20 years.
They finally began proceedings against Murphy in 1996 after they learned that he had solicited his victims in the confessional (a more serious crime under church law than if he had solicited them elsewhere). At that point they began the formal proceeding to remove him from the priesthood (he was not in active ministry at the time). They also informed the CDF, as they were required to do because of the solicitation in the confessional. They did not need the CDF's permission to proceed.
There is no evidence that Cardinal Ratzinger was ever directly involved, nor did he need to be. At one point, his deputy, Cardinal Bertone, wrote a letter indicating that the formal canonical procedure should be dropped and Murphy disciplined by more expedient means, since he would be dead before the trial could be completed. That suggestion was vetoed by the Superior diocese, and the canonical process was ongoing against Murphy until his death. The priest prosecuting the case against Murphy testified to this, in a story that the NYT and other MSM sources simply ignored.
Google Crimen Sollicitationis which penalizes sex abuse victims with excommunication if they report abuse to police.
Have you actually read it? Your statement is completely false. In fact, the victims are the people who are exempted from any penalty for "going public" with their information. IIRC, it's in section 13.
Last time I checked, the president did not have the power to remove state governors from office.
The Pope on the other hand...
The Pope cannot remove bishops from their dioceses without a canonical trial.
The number of sitting bishops who have been canonically deposed from their dioceses in the modern era is tiny.
Yes. And that’s a real shame.
Your covering for pedophiles is a sin in my opinion but I will leave that up to the Lord to judge you for your motivations.
For those who wish to to see and hear the truth, here are the actual documents that US bishops (Weakland) sent to the CDF regarding sex abuse that were ignored by the current Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1996.
Letter from Bishop to Pope: http://documents.nytimes.com/reverend-lawrence-c-murphy-abuse-case#document/p29
But when the pedophile priest Father Murphy personally wrote to the Pope, then Cardinal Ratzinger, his sex abuse case was dropped.
Letter from Father Murphy to Pope: http://documents.nytimes.com/reverend-lawrence-c-murphy-abuse-case#document/p54
And finally a cover up letter from the Vatican to the local US bishops hoping to ‘avoid scandal’ and ‘still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the Church’: http://documents.nytimes.com/reverend-lawrence-c-murphy-abuse-case#document/p69
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