I hope this AFP report today reflects the tone that MSM will take in these few days till Easter - it is exceptionally objective and does not interject the reporter's opinion aa the definitive judgment of events!
Paedophile priest scandal casts
pall over pre-Easter celebrations
ROME, April 2, 2010 (AFP) -The paedophile priest scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church cast a pall over pre-Easter celebrations Thursday as Pope Benedict XVI avoided direct references to the crisis.
Celebrating Maundy Thursday Mass at Rome's Saint John in Lateran Basilica, the Pontiff commemorated Christ's Last Supper by washing the feet of 12 priests representing the apostles in a symbol of humility.
Earlier Thursday, the Pope made an oblique reference to the scandals as he recalled Jesus preaching to turn the other cheek.
"When he was reviled he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly," the Pontiff said in his homily at a Holy Thursday Mass in St Peter's Basilica.
The scandals have engulfed churches across Europe as well as the United States over the past five months.
Benedict himself has come under intense pressure with allegations published in the
New York Times that, as archbishop of Munich and later as the chief Vatican enforcer of Catholic doctrine and morals, he failed to act against priests accused of child abuse.***
The Pontiff, 82, received a boost from the head of the US Catholic Church who Thursday defended his record in fighting predator priests, praising him for introducing measures to combat the scourge.
"It was Pope Benedict who gave us, in different ways, the ability to handle this crisis more quickly and in a way that helps to heal," Chicago Archbishop Francis George told Vatican Radio.
George said the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), "enabled us to keep the predators out of the priesthood permanently in ways that were not possible before and... encouraged us to reach out to victims."
Benedict headed the CDF from 1981 to 2005.
Late Wednesday, the current head of the CDF, Cardinal William Levada, slammed the Times' article, calling it "deficient by any reasonable standard of fairness" in a statement published on the Vatican website.
In the United States, a lawyer Tuesday went to court seeking to have Benedict questioned on what the Vatican knew about the long-running scandal.
The motion says Benedict was aware of clergy sex abuse in the United States and that he "discouraged prosecution of accused clergy and encouraged secrecy to protect the reputation of the Church" while heading the CDF.
It says documents released last week by the New York Times "unequivocally link Pope Benedict XVI... to child sexual abuse cases in the United States." [AFP is, of course, simply reporting what the absurd nuisance motion is about - still, it's the motion itself that is deepest purple!]
The Vatican newspaper
Osservatore Romano last week denounced what it called an "ignoble attempt" to smear the Pope and his closest aides "at all costs."
In an editorial, the paper touted the Pope's "transparency, firmness and severity" in response to cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy.
A French bishop who met the Pope earlier this month said the Pontiff had been deeply affected by the accusations of paedophilia against the Catholic Church.
"
He is not being allowed the presumption of innocence: I have confidence in his will to bring clarity," said Michel Dubost, bishop of Evry, near Paris.
Benedict has continually spoken out and apologised for the "heinous crime" of child sex abuse by priests, meeting victims in the United States and in Australia.
The Roman Catholic Church has designated 2010 the Year for Priests, and Benedict said Thursday's Chrism mass -- in which priests renew their vows including that of celibacy -- would "take on a particular significance."
The paedophilia scandals have led to calls for the Church to rethink the centuries-old requirement of celibacy for priests, but several leading prelates have rejected any link between the two.
Benedict earlier this month defended celibacy as a "sign of full devotion" and of an "entire commitment to the Lord".
On Friday, the Pope is to preside over a "Way of the Cross" procession at Rome's Colosseum recalling the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Saturday evening Benedict will hold an Easter vigil in St Peter's Square, where he will also celebrate Easter Mass on Sunday to be followed by his "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world) blessing.
***
Has anyone noticed that all the MSM have simply parroted the Times accounts of Munich and Milwaukee, without ever attempting to obtain their own facts? When journalism was an honorable profession, each news organization would have carried out an independent fact check, if only to add something of their own to what was at best a secondary news source.
In this case, they did not even bother to check the documents that the Times itself posted which belie the pre-fabricated narrative. The Times was right only on one point - and they were clever enough to make it their headline - because in fact, the Vatican {by which they mean Cardinal Ratzinger's CDF) did not defrock Murphy.
But the CDF could not possibly have done that at the time, because 1) the Milwaukee diocese's own canonical proceedings - undertaken 35 years after the alleged offenses took place - had not been concluded; and 2) in 1996-1997, the CDF did not even have jurisdiction over sexual abuse cases yet, much less the direct authority to defrock priests. That belonged before 2001 to the Roman Rota.
However, the fact that Murphy wrote Cardinal Ratzinger asking for the canonical case to be dismissed against him was a convenient red herring for the Times. Because then-Archbishop Bertone used some of Murphy's reasons, not to tell the diocese to dismiss the case, but to propose immediate measures to insulate the diocese from any chance that Murphy could offend again, while the proceedings went on against him.
The 'PR' problem here is that the public has only seen the Times version of events, now perpetrated by all the other MSM - and even if they somehow get to see Father Brundage's statement, the poison instilled by the Times story has already crystallized in the public mind!
If the media were honest today, and interested in the truth rather than pushing their ideological agenda, they could not have failed to report on Father Brundage's demolition of the Times version of the Murphy case. And yet they ignored it totally! If Fr. Brundage had sent the letter to the Times as a letter to the editor of the Times, would they have published it, or even acknowledged it? From their record of having refused to publish a letter sent by Archbishop Dolan last October, I don't think so!
And I was naive enough when the Brundage statement came out to be near-delirious that the truth had come out, and that therefore, at least his side would be heard! It seems my own decades of personal experience in and with the media had not made me cynical enough, as I thought I was.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/04/2010 12:54]