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Catholic League president Bill Donohue criticizes an op-ed article and a news story in the New York Times about Pope Benedict XVI's role in the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy: In yesterday's Times, columnist Maureen Dowd said that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope, "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." Wrong. Her own newspaper said it has no evidence that he even knew of letters that reached his office in 1996 about this matter. Today's edition of the Times has...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger tried to persuade Pope John Paul II to mount a full investigation into a cardinal who abused boys and young monks, one of the Church’s most senior figures revealed yesterday. But Ratzinger’s opponents in the Vatican managed to block the inquiry. As the future Benedict XVI put it: “The other side won.” The pervert cardinal was the late Hans Hermann Groer, removed as Archbishop of Vienna in 1995 following sex allegations. The source for the story is Groer’s successor in Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, an intellectual whom some commentators have tipped as a possible future Pope.The source...

 FOR decades now, Catholics have had to endure a never-ending stream of news headlines announcing scandal after scandal in the priesthood. "Priest Accused of…", "Cover Up", "Abuser Moved From Parish to Parish…" and on and on. It is heartbreaking, not only to the lay faithful, but to fellow-priests. It is such a profound abuse of power from the man in persona Christi—in the person of Christ—that one is often left in stunned silence, trying to comprehend how this is not just a rare case here and there, but of a much greater frequency than first imagined.  FOUNDATIONS LOSTThe reasons,...

The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you   By Phil Lawler | March 25, 2010 2:55 PM Today's front-page story in the New York Times suggests that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), under the direction of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, failed to act against a Wisconsin priest who was accused of molesting scores of boys at a school for the deaf.Is the story damaging? Yes. Should the Vatican have acted faster? Yes. Should the accused priest have been laicized? In all probability, Yes again.Nevertheless, before assigning all blame to...

From Oratio pro summo Pontifice/Prayer for the PopeLatin: V. Oremus pro Pontifice nostro N. Dominus conservet eum, et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius. [Ps 40:3] Pater Noster, Ave MariaDeus, omnium fidelium pastor et rector, famulum tuum N., quem pastorem Ecclesiae tuae praeesse voluisti, propitius respice: da ei, quaesumus, verbo et exemplo, quibus praeest, proficere: ut ad vitam, una cum grege sibi credito, perveniat sempiternam. Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Amen. English: V. Let us pray for N, our Pope. R. May the Lord preserve him, and give him life, and...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican on Thursday angrily attacked the media over its reporting of sexual abuse of children by priests, saying there was an "ignoble attempt" to smear Pope Benedict "at any cost." The editorial in a Vatican newspaper came on a day abuse victims protested near St Peter's Square to demand the pope open files on pedophile clerics and defrock "predator priests," and a cardinal spoke of a "conspiracy" against the church. "The prevalent tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and stretch interpretations with the aim of spreading the picture of the Catholic Church...

No doubt you’ve heard the story about how the Pope refused to “defrock” (a term not found in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church) a priest who abused 200 deaf children. It’s been on television news because it was in the New York Times (remember that network news decides what to cover based on what’s in the Times); and, of course, whenever the Times in involved, the truth is hard to find. The story is actually an old one. The priest in question, Father Lawrence Murphy, abused his victims between 1950 and 1974, while assigned to a school for...

1st Question: Why does the pope continue to assert that what he calls "holy" celibacy is a "precious gift", thus ignoring the biblical teaching that explicitly permits and even encourages marriage for all office holders in the Church?...The rule of celibacy is not a truth of faith, but a church law going back to the 11th Century... 4th Question: Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person? In his eight years as a professor of theology in Regensburg, in close contact with his brother...

The pope's entire career has the stench of evil about it. On March 10, the chief exorcist of the Vatican, the Rev. Gabriele Amorth (who has held this demanding post for 25 years), was quoted as saying that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican," and that "when one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia." This can perhaps be taken as confirmation that something horrible has indeed been going on in the holy precincts, though most inquiries show it to have a perfectly good...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican did not discipline a Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing up to 200 deaf boys in the United States from the 1950s to the 1970s as Church laws do not require automatic punishment, its spokesman said on Thursday. The New York Times reported on Thursday that the Vatican did not defrock Rev. Lawrence Murphy in the late 1990s despite receiving clear warnings from his bishops that his case was serious and could embarrass the Church. The report came amid mounting allegations of sexual abuse by priests in Europe and pressure on bishops, mostly in...

Questions are being raised about whether Pope Benedict was personally involved in covering up a case of child sex abuse by a Roman Catholic priest. Documents seen by the New York Times newspaper allege that in the 1990s, long before he became Pope, he failed to respond to letters about a US case. Fr Lawrence Murphy, of Wisconsin, was accused of abusing up to 200 deaf boys. Defending itself, the Vatican said US civil authorities had investigated and dropped the case. For more than 20 years before he was made Pope, Joseph Ratzinger led the Congregation for the Doctrine of...

A malicious storm is being stirred up over the Pope's alleged failure to deal with abusive priests, says Damian Thompson.After a week of disastrous publicity for the Roman Catholic Church, it's a fair bet that if you conducted a word-association test in the average British high street, the results would be as follows: Catholic priest? "Paedophile." Pope? "Nazi." The reputation of the Church internationally has never been lower. On Wednesday, St Patrick's Day, Cardinal Sean Brady, Primate of All Ireland, apologised for helping to persuade two boys – aged 10 and 14 – to sign letters agreeing not to tell...

The New York Times this morning printed an essay from German author Peter Schneider, who raised some pointed questions about the Church in the pope's homeland: Pope Benedict should also recognize how precarious the Catholic Church is in Germany. Like Americans, Germans have already had to cope with a general loss of trust in public institutions. First there were the bankers, with their insane bets and bonuses. Then the politicians, who couldn't stop the bankers. Now there is a loss of trust in the church. But unlike in America, religion in Germany is already weak. In the former Communist east,...

Under an all-but-full moon on the opening evening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, tens of thousands of Romans poured into St Peter's Square in a torchlight procession. Called to the window of his study by the multitude, John XXIII, the man Italians called "the good pope" (a term that speaks volumes about their view of the previous 260), delivered one of the great speeches of an eloquent decade. Its emotional high point came when he told the crowd: "Returning home, you'll find the children. Give your children a caress and say: 'This is the caress of the pope.'"Forty-three...

ROME, MARCH 22, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The attempt of the press to implicate Benedict XVI in the question of pedophilia is only the most recent sign of the aversion that many have for the Pope. It is necessary to ask oneself how this Pontiff, despite his evangelical meekness and honesty, the clarity of his words joined to the depth of his thought and of his teachings, arouses in some places sentiments of disgust and forms of anti-clericalism that it was believed had been surmounted. And this, it must be said, causes even greater astonishment and also distress when those who do...

MARCH 22, 2010 The End of Euphemism Benedict XVI and The Corruptions of Catholic Ireland. GEORGE WEIGEL In a March 20 pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Pope Benedict XVI vigorously condemned the physical and sexual abuse of “children and vulnerable young people” in which Irish priests and religious women had engaged for decades, and mandated an Apostolic Visitation of various segments of the Irish Church. The visitation seems likely to result in major changes in the Church’s leadership in what was once one of the world’s most intensely Catholic countries, and is now one of the centers of...

Currently there’s a great hue and cry emanating from the world press in relation to Pope Benedict xvi’s reaction—or rather perceived lack of reaction—to the publicity being given to pedophilia charges brought against certain priests in Europe. The loudest clamor surrounds cases in Germany, particularly in Benedict’s old diocese of Freiburg, Bavaria. Nothing justifies anything but absolute condemnation of the abuse of priestly office. But what is really behind this latest outcry against the Catholic Church and its spiritual leader? Dig behind the headlines and you see an agenda. It’s an agenda driven by fear of the rising power of...

It has become fashionable to claim that the sex abuse scandal currently afflicting the Catholic Church is “its biggest crisis since the Reformation”. Oh, really? Tell me about it. The abuse issue is just a small part of the much larger crisis that has engulfed the Church since the Second Vatican Catastrophe and which is more serious than the Reformation. Abolish clerical celibacy? The last thing a priest abusing altar boys needs or wants is a wife. There is no compulsory celibacy in the Church of England, but that has not prevented vicars and boy scouts furnishing gratifying amounts of...

NOT long after a portly, jovial priest in the German industrial city of Essen was accused of sexually abusing three boys in 1979, he was offered a new home in Munich by Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, who was Archbishop of Munich and Freising at the time, wanted Father Peter Hullermann — known to friends in the church as “Hulli” — to undergo psychotherapy. A psychiatrist quickly concluded that Hullermann was untreatable, however. “I told the church officials that Hullermann must never be allowed to work with children again,” said Werner Huth, the psychiatrist, in an interview...

Here below in full, the text of Pope Benedict's Pastoral Letter to the Catholics of Ireland. * * * 1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have...