Did Catholics Get A Lemon For A Pope? Ratzinger Failed To Act On Sex Abuse In Milwaukee
As more and more evidence grows against Pope Benedict XVI there would be no surprise if rank and file Catholics saw this pope in the same light as a used car that seemed to be one thing in the showroom, and quite another once parked in the garage. I can not say I was shocked to hear of more dirty dealings in regards to Ratzinger, and the fact the Vatican and Catholic Church put their self interests ahead of those who were molested. That is just common practice as we have seen and read over the years. The New York Times has fresh news on the matter that strikes to the heart of catholics in Wisconsin, that being in Milwaukee. I am sure that the offering plate will be sent around with a heavy heart by the priests to collect a little more for the lawyers and embarrassment fund come this weekend. The Catholic Church has always had a way of assuaging it’s sins with more cash.
Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.
The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.
The documents emerge as Pope Benedict is facing other accusations that he and direct subordinates often did not alert civilian authorities or discipline priests involved in sexual abuse when he served as an archbishop in Germany and as the Vatican’s chief doctrinal enforcer.
The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.
In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.
But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.
“I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.
