printIn 2008, on this space, I inquired naively, “Ever wonder why the epidemic of allegations that has almost bankrupted the Catholic Church has not caught on in the UK and Europe? I venture that this is because the pop-psychology that undergirds the allegations and the attendant class-action law suits that ensued is American through-and-through.
But, two years hence, Americans can boast of one lucrative EXport, or shall I say SEXport!? The repressed memory mythology, and my priest-did-me syndrome have been adrift at sea, but have finally dropped an anchor across the pond.
My favorite Pope, Benedict XVI, has stood up admirably against the exported $2 billion lawsuit industry:
“Christ guides us towards goodness and does not let us be disarmed by ingratitude.” He also spoke of how man can sometimes “fall to the lowest, vulgar levels” and “sink into the swamp of sin and dishonesty”.
The Pope represents an aristocracy of the mind. The Catholic Church, in its wisdom, has put in place a much-needed hierarchy for the worshiping mass of humanity.
Against this, the religion of Democracy preaches the rule of the mob and the masses—in particular instituting the lowest common denominator in all spheres of life, from morals to aesthetics. The Catholic Church is among the last historical institutions where the masses are ministered to by their betters (mostly). The impetus and instinct to bleed it dry is a manifestation of a democratic—or is it demonic?—uprising. It is driven by those who’ve, in the Pope’s words, “fallen to the lowest, vulgar levels … into the swamp of sin and dishonesty.”
Reread “SEX, GOD & GREED” by Daniel Lyons for a dissection of the veracity of the sexual abuse claims against the Church.
Update I: The “Another” of the post’s title alludes to the health care revolution, ushered in by the Obama coup.
Update II (March 30): What did I miss? Was there a priestly ritual murder? Plain murder? Boer murder? Evidence beyond hearsay of all the rest? You’d thinks so, wouldn’t you, at least from Schmidt’s hyperbole hereunder. I suggest, as I already have, the reading of Daniel Lyons’ “SEX, GOD & GREED.”
Update III: In reply to Hugo: Thanks for your always provocative posts. Still, it’s baffling to see an Objectivist poo-poo standards of evidence and due process—class action suits being but one legal emblem of the abuse of the principle of a case-by case adjudication.
Also perplexing is it to encounter an Objectivist, which I know Hugo to be, blame genocide in Rwanda on anyone other than the barbarians who, with malice aforethought, took machetes to their innocent neighbors (I was just revisiting that for my book).
Update IV (March 31): A discussion on Hardball with Pat Buchanan, a Catholic, of cover-ups and papal culpability. No discussion of the veracity and standards of the evidence, though.
Somehow I can’t see, in view of all this hysteria, the “JP2 We Love You” crusade which was so fashionable a few years ago getting much further traction. Especially since so much of the sacerdotal kiddy-fiddling which really did take place (as opposed to the much greater amount of sacerdotal kiddy-fiddling which never occurred outside the litigious imaginations of professional victims) occurred on the late pope’s watch.
No less a theological authority than Bono (yes, that Bono) spoke of the late pontifical Mr. Showbiz as “the best front man the Roman Catholic Church has ever had”. The source is a magazine which is itself Catholic:
“http://www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/archive-did%20they%20love%20you.htm
Er – John Paul II knew that Cardinal Bernard Law was protecting the rapists and torturers of children. This hideous practice has been going on for a long time in the Church and has nothing to do with repressed memories, and everything to do with the power that the Church still wields in Catholic Ireland and Bavaria.
It now appears that Benedict has at least played a complicit role in one of the most hideous crimes on the books. This isn’t something that can be simply ignored.
I have read that article. It doesn’t deny my basic charge – that the Church and the current Pope are complicit in one of the most hideous crimes its possible to commit. I don’t know why murder is being dredged into this, but I could point out the role of the Catholic Church in the Rwandan genocide.
But that wasn’t what was being discussed. Nor was whether or not there are some types making money off human suffering.
No. There’s only issue: was there widespread rape and torture of children and did the current Pope help conceal it? The answer to both is yes.
I’ll refer you to Christopher Hitchens last three articles in Slate.
To see the sin of the sexual predators is easy. To fail to see the sin of the frauds, the avaricious, and the vandals, all self- sanctified by self-righteousness, is dangerous. In Dante’s Inferno the second circle of hell was reserved for sexual sinners and the eighth, the one nearest Lucifer, for hypocrites, barrators, frauds, and falsifiers.
Speaking for myself, Dante’s taxonomy of evil and just punishments is near perfect.
Thank you so much for that. I don’t know how many times I have posted the URL to your 2008 blog entry since the wave of new abuse revelations took off not too long ago here in Germany.
There is less child abuse within the Catholic than within the Protestant Church and within both less than within the overall German population. It is a fact that celibacy has nothing to do with it, but homosexuality. But who cares? When the Green party entered the political scene here in the early Eighties, they pushed for legalizing sex with children and that was, too, mainly a man-boy thing. It didn’t go down very well with the public then, but it’s still on their political back burner.
Now back to the latest sexual abuse scandal, which went from Catholic institutions all the way to progressive “reform schools”. At least some people have twigged by now that if Catholic priests do it, it is considered a serious aberration and a sin, whereas among the “progressive pedagogic elite” it is part of the system and the apologists are crawling up from beneath their stones now.
It oughtn’t to be forgotten as well, at least so I think, that we owe the fact that those abuse cases remained hidden for so long to a considerable extent to feminism. This is not a “patriarchial conspiracy”, this is due to the fact that we have begun to perceive for quite some time ago now boys as less relevant, as irksome, rebellious and basically superfluous. Boyish ebullience is vilified, criminalised and pathologified. I am speculating here, but I’d wager that this, were it mainly about girls, would be long out in the open. Thank you feminists!
There are so many aspects and the moral quagmire is bottomless. German Federal Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger (That’s her name, no kidding!), who had viciously attacked the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church ONLY, is on the advisory board of of the Humanist Union, an agnostic-oriented “human rights” organisation with, it turned out, strong tendencies to de-criminalize sex with children.
1968 icon “Dany le Rouge” (Daniel Cohn-Bendit) let everybody know in his memoirs about his experiences with small children in a “progressive” kindergarden and what he felt when they opened his fly. All that, of course, pales in the light of the Catholic atrocities. When all is said and done, it’s all about politics and children have no lobby.
The old man in the Vatican has to carry twice the burden he’d have to carry anyway because he’s German. But we can safely assume that he knew that when he was elected. May God give him stregth and grant him a long life. There is nothing better to follow.
Ilana,
I guess there isn’t a hornet’s nest you won’t poke. First, Michael Vick and dog fighting, Israel and foreign aid, and now Popery and due process for sex offenders. My lord, girl, you are one tough Sinorita!!!
Perhaps I have been unclear in my points. I shall try and make myself clearer:
1. I never claimed that the Catholic church was responsible for the Rwandan genocide, but its countenancing and complicity is well recorded. This was response to the weird – to me, anyway – response that the Church hadn’t been involved in any form of ritual murder. Even if true, it wouldn’t excuse the scandal of child rape.
2. There may be some instances of base, opportunist, or hysterical accusations towards the Church. Those instances are to be counted against the accusers; they do not affect the central questions: 1. Has there been widespread rape and torture of children by the anointed of the Catholic Church? 2. Did the Pope have a role in concealing this crime? The answer to both is yes. To give one example, Ratzinger transferred one such predator from Munich to Essen. [Amazing: You manage to contradict yourself in one sentence. Your evidence of “widespread rape and torture” is the alleged transfer of ONE person, for which you offer no link/names/evidence. And you’re a highly intelligent man. Imagine the pitchforks out there!]
To put it at its most basic, I do not excuse child-rape and complicity with mass murder, whether it’s by the United Nations or the Catholic Church.
I will not have it claimed that I play fast-and-loose with evidence; the evidence can’t be repeated here in full, but it is damning, and I can substantiate it further. Also, the post above does not say the evidence isn’t sufficient – it claims that there’s nothing to this, period. [So far, you have not offered one shred of evidence; not even a hyperlink have you given us to the ONE case you’ve alleged. By golly do you libel liberally. Hearsay is not evidence.]
Ilana,
I thought you might want to take a look at this and perhaps even call the priest if you were so inclined to get to the truth. This is just one example of many that I could offer you in support of your defense of Pope Benedict and your understanding of this entire abuse scandal. Remembering that only G-d is good, I do appreciate your honesty in journalism but recommend hardly anyone ever place their hopes in princes — religious or otehrwise!!!
Subject: Father Murphy
[A reply to an article that has appeared in atheist newspapers all over the country in recent days]
CatholicAnchor.org – Newspaper of the Archdiocese of Anchorage Setting the record straight in the case of abusive Milwaukee priest Lawrence Murphy Fr. Thomas Brundage, JCL, then-presiding judge for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee gives first-person account of church trial By Fr. THOMAS BRUNDAGE
29 March 2010
To provide context to this article, I was the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee from 1995-2003. During those years, I presided over four canonical criminal cases, one of which involved Father Lawrence Murphy.
Two of the four men died during the process. God alone will judge these men.
To put some parameters on the following remarks, I am writing this article with the express knowledge and consent of Archbishop Roger Schwietz, OMI, of the Archdiocese of Anchorage, where I currently serve. Archbishop Schwietz is also the publisher of the Catholic Anchor newspaper.
I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canonist and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.
As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing from a sense of duty to the truth.
The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.
My intent in writing this column is to accomplish the following:
To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;
To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;
To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;
To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.
Before proceeding, it is important to point out the scourge that child sexual abuse has been – not only for the church but for society as well. Few actions can distort a child’s life more than sexual abuse. It is a form of emotional and spiritual homicide and it starts a trajectory toward a skewed sense of sexuality. When committed by a person in authority, it creates a distrust of almost anyone, anywhere.
As a volunteer prison chaplain in Alaska, I have found a corollary between those who have been incarcerated for child sexual abuse and the priests who have committed such grievous actions. They tend to be very smart and manipulative. They tend to be well liked and charming. They tend to have one aim in life – to satisfy their hunger. Most are highly narcissistic and do not see the harm that they have caused. They view the children they have abused not as people but as objects. They rarely show remorse and moreover, sometimes portray themselves as the victims. They are, in short, dangerous people and should never be trusted again. Most will recommit their crimes if given a chance.
As for the numerous reports about the case of Father Murphy, the back-story has not been reported as of yet.
In 1996, I was introduced to the story of Father Murphy, formerly the principal of St. John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee. It had been common knowledge for decades that during Father Murphy’s tenure at the school
(1950-1974) there had been a scandal at St. John’s involving him and some deaf children. The details, however, were sketchy at best.
Courageous advocacy on behalf of the victims (and often their wives), led the Archdiocese of Milwaukee to revisit the matter in 1996. In internal discussions of the curia for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, it became obvious that we needed to take strong and swift action with regard to the wrongs of several decades ago. With the consent of then-Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, we began an investigation into the allegations of child sexual abuse as well as the violation of the crime of solicitation within the confessional by Father Murphy.
We proceeded to start a trial against Father Murphy. I was the presiding judge in this matter and informed Father Murphy that criminal charges were going to be levied against him with regard to child sexual abuse and solicitation in the confessional.
In my interactions with Father Murphy, I got the impression I was dealing with a man who simply did not get it. He was defensive and threatening.
Between 1996 and August, 1998, I interviewed, with the help of a qualified interpreter, about a dozen victims of Father Murphy. These were gut-wrenching interviews. In one instance the victim had become a perpetrator himself and had served time in prison for his crimes. I realized that this disease is virulent and was easily transmitted to others. I heard stories of distorted lives, sexualities diminished or expunged. These were the darkest days of my own priesthood, having been ordained less than 10 years at the time. Grace-filled spiritual direction has been a Godsend.
I also met with a community board of deaf Catholics. They insisted that Father Murphy should be removed from the priesthood and highly important to them was their request that he be buried not as a priest but as a layperson.
I indicated that a judge, I could not guarantee the first request and could only make a recommendation to the latter request.
In the summer of 1998, I ordered Father Murphy to be present at a deposition at the chancery in Milwaukee. I received, soon after, a letter from his doctor that he was in frail health and could travel not more than 20 miles (Boulder Junction to Milwaukee would be about 276 miles). A week later, Father Murphy died of natural causes in a location about 100 miles from his home
With regard to the inaccurate reporting on behalf of the New York Times, the Associated Press, and those that utilized these resources, first of all, I was never contacted by any of these news agencies but they felt free to quote me. Almost all of my quotes are from a document that can be found online with the correspondence between the Holy See and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. In an October 31, 1997 handwritten document, I am quoted as saying ‘odds are that this situation may very well be the most horrendous, number wise, and especially because these are physically challenged , vulnerable people. ” Also quoted is this: “Children were approached within the confessional where the question of circumcision began the solicitation.”
The problem with these statements attributed to me is that they were handwritten. The documents were not written by me and do not resemble my handwriting. The syntax is similar to what I might have said but I have no idea who wrote these statements, yet I am credited as stating them. As a college freshman at the Marquette University School of Journalism, we were told to check, recheck, and triple check our quotes if necessary. I was never contacted by anyone on this document, written by an unknown source to me. Discerning truth takes time and it is apparent that the New York Times, the Associated Press and others did not take the time to get the facts correct.
Additionally, in the documentation in a letter from Archbishop Weakland to then-secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone on August 19, 1998, Archbishop Weakland stated that he had instructed me to abate the proceedings against Father Murphy.
Father Murphy, however, died two days later and the fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this. Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer.
Second, with regard to the role of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in this matter, I have no reason to believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information.
Third, the competency to hear cases of sexual abuse of minors shifted from the Roman Rota to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001. Until that time, most appeal cases went to the Rota and it was our experience that cases could languish for years in this court. When the competency was changed to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in my observation as well as many of my canonical colleagues, sexual abuse cases were handled expeditiously, fairly, and with due regard to the rights of all the parties involved. I have no doubt that this was the work of then Cardinal Ratzinger.
Fourth, Pope Benedict has repeatedly apologized for the shame of the sexual abuse of children in various venues and to a worldwide audience. This has never happened before. He has met with victims. He has reigned in entire conferences of bishops on this matter, the Catholic Bishops of Ireland being the most recent. He has been most reactive and proactive of any international church official in history with regard to the scourge of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Instead of blaming him for inaction on these matters, he has truly been a strong and effective leader on these issues.
Finally, over the last 25 years, vigorous action has taken place within the church to avoid harm to children. Potential seminarians receive extensive sexual-psychological evaluation prior to admission. Virtually all seminaries concentrate their efforts on the safe environment for children. There have been very few cases of recent sexual abuse of children by clergy during the last decade or more.
Catholic dioceses all across the country have taken extraordinary steps to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults. As one example, which is by no means unique, is in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, where I currently work. Here, virtually every public bathroom in parishes has a sign asking if a person has been abuse by anyone in the church. A phone number is given to report the abuse and almost all church workers in the archdiocese are required to take yearly formation sessions in safe environment classes. I am not sure what more the church can do.
To conclude, the events during the 1960’s and 1970’s of the sexual abuse of minors and solicitation in the confessional by Father Lawrence Murphy are unmitigated and gruesome crimes. On behalf of the church, I am deeply sorry and ashamed for the wrongs that have been done by my brother priests but realize my sorrow is probably of little importance 40 years after the fact.
The only thing that we can do at this time is to learn the truth, beg for forgiveness, and do whatever is humanly possible to heal the wounds. The rest, I am grateful, is in God’s hands.
Father Thomas T. Brundage, JCL
Editor’s note: Father Brundage can be contacted at brundaget@archmil.org or by phone at (907) 745-3229 X 11.
http://catholicanchor.org/wordpress/?p=601
Hugo Schmidt’s comments puzzle me. And not least because he refers to Christopher Hitchens as some sort of moral authority.
My understanding of the Rwandan catastrophe is that two – yes, two – Catholic nuns were convicted by a Belgian court (ahem, we all know how wonderful the Belgian justice system is, n’est-ce pas, especially in dealing with kiddy-fiddlers like Marc Dutroux?) on evidence that if offered under Anglo or Dutch legal systems would’ve been thrown out within five minutes:
http://www.afrol.com/News2001/rwa010_nuns_genocide.htm
And as for Schmidt’s assertion about “the power that the Church still wields in Catholic Ireland and Bavaria”, well, what parallel universe does he inhabit? Hasn’t he noticed the history of once-Catholic Ireland since 1994, and hasn’t he noticed the fact that the Bavarian Catholic hierarchy couldn’t even bring out the vote for its preferred candidate – local hero Edmund Stoiber – at the 2002 election for the German chancellorship? (Stoiber, with what can only be called pure political genius, managed to dissipate something like a 10% lead he’d had in the initial opinion polls.)