I have not read the scurrilous article referred to by Damian Thompson, nor, from past experience, do I want to. But Thompson's commentary speaks for itself, and he would not misrepresent their misrepresentations! Unfortunately, the Pope's probable visit to the UK next year provides all the hostile elements of the British media with the opportunity - and they'll have a year to do it - to raise a conflagration from the smoldering embers of the systematic defamation they have mounted periodically against Benedict XVI since he became Pope.
Thompson reacted to the Guardian attack in two successive blog entries, as ff:
The Guardian's repulsive attack
on Pope Benedict XVI
Sept. 29, 2009
The Guardian this morning publishes the most poisonously anti-Catholic article to have appeared in the mainstream media for decades. It’s by a freelance journalist called Tanya Gold, who presents Pope Benedict XVI as little short of a mass murderer on the basis of his support for the Church’s teaching on sexuality. I suspect that Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger will regret publishing this piece, which, on a quick reading, makes defamatory claims that it is quite unable to substantiate. No, I don’t mean that the Pope is going to sue the paper, but that its Catholic readers – even those unsympathetic to this pontificate – will react furiously to such a crude diatribe. I’m off to do some research. More on this later.
'The Guardian' has blundered in throwing
wild accusations at Pope Benedict
Today
The Guardian published a vitriolic attack on Pope Benedict XVI by Tanya Gold which accused him of colluding in the protection of paedophiles and ended thus: “Welcome, Benedict XVI, Episcopus Romae, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles… Don’t tread on the corpses.”
I described it this morning as the most poisonously anti-Catholic article to have appeared in the mainstream media in decades. However,
The Guardian is anti-Catholic these days, and we do have free speech in this country, and on the whole I think professional offence-taking is a bad thing.
But, as CP Scott himself put it, “comment is free but facts are sacred”, and when Gold accuses the Pope of colluding in the protection of paedophiles she is making an accusation that requires a pretty high level of proof.
Which she doesn’t have.
She writes: “In May 2001 [the then Cardinal Ratzinger] wrote a confidential letter to Catholic bishops, ordering them not to notify the police – or anyone else – about the allegations, on pain of excommunication.”
No, he didn’t.
[It's obviously nothing new that anti-Church, anti-Pope journalists - especially in the British press - twist the facts to suit their ends, but it is right that the facts should be presented in immediate rebuttal. I don't know what the practice is in UK newspapers, but would a formal letter to the editor pointing out to demonstrably verifiable fact earn a correction by the newspaper which publishes the false, often defamatory, information?]
As Archbishop Vincent Nichols pointed out in 2006, when a BBC Panorama documentary made this allegation, the 2001 letter to bishops “clarified the law of the Church, ensuring that the Vatican is informed of every case of child abuse and that each case is dealt with properly.
“This document does not hinder the investigation by civil authorities of allegations of child abuse, nor is it a method of cover-up, as the [BBC] programme persistently claims. In fact it is a measure of the seriousness with which the Vatican views these offences.
“Since 2001, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took many steps to apply the law of the Church to allegations and offences of child abuse with absolute thoroughness and scruple.”
Gold’s article is also highly selective, not to say misleading, in its presentation of the facts relating to the Church investigation into the scandal surrounding Fr Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ.
Maciel was a favourite of Pope John Paul II, on whose instructions Cardinal Ratzinger closed down an investigation into various allegations.
Perhaps he should have refused to obey the Pope – but what Gold fails to mention is that the moment Ratzinger was free to reopen the case (ie, when JPII became mortally ill) he did so, and as Pope, he sent the dying octagenarian priest into exile while a proper investigation into this massively complicated case began.
It’s nowhere near finished, but Pope Benedict is determined that the truth comes out, even at the price of dismantling the entire order. Quite right: Maciel was a vile piece of work, a seducer of young men and the father of several illegitimate childrn – but even if you think Cardinal Ratzinger colluded in his protection, the awkward fact remains that the Mexican was not, so far as we know, a paedophile.
A nice distinction? Not in a court of law, which is where
The Guardian would end up if it had made these claims about an ordinary individual.
Gold’s attack on Pope Benedict doesn’t read like the work of someone very familiar with the detail of the paedophile scandals. I’d like to know how much research actually went into it.
The sad fact is that the upper ranks of the clergy are stuffed with prelates who were complicit in the protection of paedophiles – but the former Cardinal Ratzinger, whose
Congregation assumed responsibility for investigating the scandals only at the end of JPII’s pontificate, is not one of them.
On the contrary: Benedict XVI is currently engaged in “purifying” (his word) the Church of the “filth” (his word again) of priestly sex abusers. It’s one of his priorities as Pope.
It wasn’t one of John Paul II’s priorities, though it should have been. But he is dead, so Gold goes after his successor, intending to trash his reputation but actually doing serious damage to that of
The Guardian.
And yesterday, Thomspon had a commentary on how the Times of London reported an important nomination today for the Church in England:
Times report of Archbishop's appointment
turns into yet another rant about sex abuse
Sept. 30, 2009
I was going to blog about the cheering news that Bishop Bernard Longley of Westminster has been appointed Archbishop of Birmingham: the announcement will be tomorrow and I’ll write about it then, because the promotion of this self-professed “conservative” to England’s second See is fascinating.
But first… what the hell is wrong with Ruth Gledhill? On the day of Archbishop Vincent Nichols’s enthronement at Westminster, the
Times’s religion correspondent produced a report focussing on Irish child abuse and +Vincent’s supposedly inappropriate response to it. And now she’s done it again, damn her. This is how she announces Bishop Longley’s appointment on her blog:
Tomorrow the Holy See will name Bishop Bernard Longley as the new Archbishop of Birmingham. One of the favourites for Westminster, and already an auxiliary there, he will bring true class, wit and style to what will be a key appointment with the Newman beatification and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI pending next year.
But he will need also to be a canny operator. Because the issues around sex abuse by priests and male and female religious, of adults and teenagers as well as children, have not gone away. If anything, the signs are that they are about to return with more force than before.
So we’re on to kiddie-fiddlers by the end of the first par. That was quick. And the first person Gledhill cites? The cranky anti-Catholic bore Keith Porteous Wood, of the “International Humanist and Ethical Union”, whatever that is.
I’m not saying that
The Times shouldn’t devote as much space as it thinks fit to the dreadful scandal of clerical abuse. But this
business of shoe-horning the subject into virtually any story about the Catholic Church is bizarre. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve defended Gledhill against the charge of being anti-Catholic. More fool me.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/10/2009 20:52]