I am forced to use this story because it reports a number of developments, including a reaction from the New York Times, but be warned that it was written by AP's most vicious Vaticanista, who loads his report with all the value-laden adjectives and verbs he can mobilize to reflect negatively on the Pope and the Vatican.
Vatican lashes out
against sex abuse coverage
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
VATICAN CITY, April 1 (AP) –
Cardinals rushed to Pope Benedict XVI's defense on Holy Thursday amid accusations [And by whom exactly? Not by anyone in the Church, but by the media and the money-obsessed, publicity-hunting lawyers representing some victims] he played a role in covering up sex abuse scandals, as an increasingly angry Vatican made a stinging attack on the U.S. media for its coverage.
The relationship between the Church and the media has become increasingly bitter as the scandal buffeting the 1 billion-member Church has touched the pontiff himself. On Wednesday, the Church singled out the New York Times for criticism in an unusually harsh attack.
Western news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported extensively on the burgeoning scandal, and new revelations have emerged on an almost daily basis.
[New revelations? On an almost daily basis? There has not been a single new revelation in two weeks, and outside of the New York Times with its three carefully orchestrated 'revelations' on the Hullerman case in Munich and the Murphy case - which were not new insofar as the abuses the two priests were accused of, but new in terms of seeking to discredit the Pope for, at the very least, tolerating both priests in the Church even in the light of their offenses. An accusation that they are able to insinuate only by manipulating their presentation of the facts to ignore the context of the limited action the future Pope carried out with respect to each of them.]
Venice's Cardinal Angelo Scola expressed solidarity with Benedict in his Holy Thursday homily in the lagoon city, describing him as a victim of "deceitful accusations." He praised the Pope as seeking to remove all "dirt" from the priesthood.
Warsaw Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz said the church should take notice of individual tragedies and treat sex abuse cases very seriously, but at the same time. he criticized the media for "targeting the whole church, targeting the pope, and to that we must say `no' in the name of truth and in the name of justice."
And Vienna's Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, speaking of Benedict's long years as head of a Vatican office that investigates abuse, said the future pope "had a very clear line of not covering up but clearing up."
He earlier reflected on the issue at a service in Vienna's cathedral Wednesday evening:
"I admit that I often feel a sense of injustice these days. Why is the church being excoriated? Isn't there also abuse elsewhere? ... And then I'm tempted to say: Yes, the media just don't like the church!
Maybe there's even a conspiracy against the church? But then I feel in my heart that no, that's not it."
[Fine! 'Make nice" as usual, with everyone!, even when they are clearly in the wrong!]
The Church on Wednesday presented its highest-level
official response yet to
one of the most explosive recent revelations regarding sex abuse — a story the
Times broke on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.
[BTW, Cardinal Levada's response was a personal response, not an official response, although the Vatican has now posted on its resources site.]
It was the
latest in a series of attacks on the press [That's the way the liberal ideologues are - and we in the United States can cite evidence piling up of the Obama Democrats carrying out exactly this shameful completely amoral behavior: when the media is making accusations, no matter how unfounded, distorted or exaggerated, they ar being righteous. When the Church (or whoever their target happens to be) responds with the truth - 'just the facts, Ma'am', as America's favorite cop from Dragnet used to say - to correct false or misrepresented information, she is attacking! She does not have a right to answer accusations, just or unjust? The media have started Crusades in the past if they thought that some accused person - even if he has admitted to murdering someone - was not given a chance to tell his side.]
Last week,
L'Osservatore Romano, denounced what it said was a "clear and despicable intention" by the media to strike at Benedict "at any cost."
In the article posted Wednesday on the Vatican's Web site, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote: "I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, the
New York Times, as a paragon of fairness."
Levada, an American, said the newspaper wrongly used the case of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to find fault in Benedict's handling of abuse cases.
A Times spokeswoman defended the articles and said no one has cast doubt on the reported facts.
[No one casts doubt on the facts themselves - only on the highly misleading story that the Times chose to make of those facts, using them to report half-truths and innuendoes obviously meant to be damaging to the Pope. They would never construct such arrant trumpery about one of their favorites, say, Barack Obama, would they?, let alone report on his actual faults and errors.
The glaring reality is that the Times - and the rest of MSM which has always had a herd mentality - have thoroughly and completely ignored the statement of Fr. Brundage which contradicts their account of the facts in many important ways. But the liberal media stand together, and so the AP, too, ignores that very obvious fact, one it would never ignore if the news organization shown to be loose with the facts were Catholic! The Catholic news organizations should hammer that home - after Holy Week.]
"The allegations of abuse within the Catholic church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions," said Diane McNulty. "Any role the current Pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story."
[Fine, but report the facts as they are, not as you want them to be! Everyone who has had the privilege of knowing Benedict XVI in person is unanimous that he does not need anyone to defend him - he will stand or fall on his own record, and that's a record that has now been seriously falsified in the public eye by the anti-Catholic media. On the basis of two csaes in which his tenuous personal involvement has been gleefully inflated short of accusing him of moral turpitude himself!]
Two sidelights from last Wednesday's General Audience:
Youths from the International UNIV Congress
show their support for the Pope
Adapted from
March 31, 2010
University students from all over the world have given Benedict XVI a letter and their thanks on the fifth anniversary of his papacy.
Bottom right photo: Natasha from Ireland gives the Pope a drum and a St. Patrick's Cross.
More than 4,000 students from 200 universities that participated in the UNIV congress held in Rome came to the General Audience Wednesday to show their support.
The Pope greeted them and thanked them in four languages for their visit during this significant time of Holy Week. “Greetings to the university students from different countries that are participating in the International congress promoted by the Prelature of Opus Dei.”
In his message, the Pope used words from St. Josemaria Escriva, Opus Dei founder and inspirator of the UNIV congress.
"The liturgies of these days invite us to ponder Christ’s saving sacrifice and his promise of new life. In this Year for Priests, the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass, at which priests renew the promises made on the day of their ordination, will take on a particular significance. May priests everywhere be conformed ever more closely to Christ as heralds of his message of hope, reconciliation and peace.”
“I invite all of you to pray for those priests who will renew their priestly promises along with their bishops tomorrow during Chrism Mass. We ask that their happiness and love for Christ grows stronger each day so that they’ll be able to deliver hope, reconciliation and peace to their brothers.”
In the letter handed to Benedict XVI, the students expressed their support in the midst of the issues facing the Church in recent weeks due to the sexual abuse crisis.
Some of the students at the GA expressed their feelings to Roem Reports:
Alfonso Herrero said "(we are here) overall, to recognize the Pope's work, his person and to recognize what he represents”.
Matt Anthony: "He has tremendous intellectual talents and has written widely and has been a professor, and he always uses his intellect and his writings to do what he can to spread the truth.”
Natasha, a participant from Ireland, thanked the Pope for his letter to Irish Catholics and for bringing attention to the sexual abuse cases.
She gave the Pope a drum, a symbol to resonate the Pope’s message, along with a cross of St. Patrick.
The Irish delegates also asked the Pope to bless 500 rosaries which they will distribute to pray for the pope’s intentions.
The UNIV congress participants will be in Rome until Easter Sunday to attend Holy Week ceremonies.
A second youth sidelight:
Benedict XVI is the first person to wear the hat pilgrims will wear during World Youth Day Madrid 2011, which is 500 days away.
The cap was presented to him by Paula Rodriguez, from a delegation representing WYD Madrid: “He took my hat, put it on, and looked me in the eyes as if saying, does it look good on me?”
During the Pope’s greeting, he thanked everyone involved in organizing World Youth Day.
Youths worldwide chose the cap design. Pilgrims will receive it in a backpack along with a shirt and a rosary.
The big bad media might just be mean enough to launch new stink bombs between Good Friday and Easter, and I hate to think we may have to deal with any new nastiness at this time.
In any case, I realized tonight just how little effect Father Brundage's statement made on the outside world, principally because the MSM followed the lead of the New York Times and ignored it completely - although they picked up Cardinal Levada's statement, not because of what he had to say but because of who he is. Not just a member of the Curia but Cardinal Ratzinger's successor at the CDF.
However, none of them give any details of his statement at all! Fine way to report a 'defense' when you don't even state what that defense is!
My eye-opener came when listening to the nightly news panel discussion on Fox News - in which the anchorman and his three panelists all clearly were unaware of the Brundage statement, and they were basing their opinions completely on the New York Times account.
One of them did not even know about the Pope's letter to the Irish and spoke as if the Church had not done a thing about this issue at all. Worst of all, they played a clip of an interview with Father Z, in which he agrees with the interviewer that this has 'tremendously damaged the moral authority of the Church around the world'.
With all due respect to Fr. Z, I look at the faithful who crowd St. Peter's Square and the Pope's liturgies, and I think they represent the overwhelming majority of us, simple faithful, to whom faith comes naturally. We have that faith in all the basic things that we have been taught about our religion - when you just 'know' in your heart and in your bones and in every fiber that they are 'right' and you do not even have to 'reason why' (though it would be good to follow St. Peter's admonition).
The moral authority of the Church does not come from the men who 'run' it but from God himself, and the Pope, who is Christ's vicar on earth, is the moral authority that he is, because he represents the authority of Christ. No media assault can beat that down!]
Fortunately, two of the panelists (one Jewish, one Protestant - both conservative) independently were of the opinion that in its 2000-year history, the Church has gone through worse things before and has managed to right itself, and will do so again this time.
Even better, they both reminded their colleagues and the viewer that the Church went through a similar, if not worse, crisis when the US scandals broke at the start of the decade, and the Church emerged much better for it, especially in the US, while other national Churches have learned from the US experience. [Indeed, a selective historical amnesia has been very obvious in the reporting of the current 'crisis' - in which the MSM feign shock, horror, disgust, censure and condemnation, as if they hadn't already gone through the same exercise eight years ago!}
In the merciless daily cut-and-thrust of the media who want the Church and religion to die a thousand deaths, and each death by a thousand cuts, we perhaps tend to forget that. It gives me a better perspective but no better tolerance nor patience for the dirty tricks of the media who long ago lost any sense of decency, fairness and justice.
Meanwhile, Oremus pro Pontefice nostro, and all his intentions...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/04/2010 13:32]