Father Di Souza, bless him!, has an excellent follow-through in this ongoing chapter of the culture wars - excellent because he recapitulates what has gone before, specifically in the matter of the New York Times defamations. It is always good to remind people that these are all lies and bad faith:
The Pope and the press
Father Raymond J. de Souza
April 8, 2010
Pope Benedict XVI was falsely accused two weeks ago by
The New York Times. That same false charge was repeated and amplified in
the National Post. The facts are now in, and even the
Times has corrected itself by rewriting the story.
[DID IT? I have to see that correction and post it! In fairness to the Times.]
Two weeks later, however, and despite its flaws, the story is reverberating around the world. Indeed, without the Times' accusations, the sexual abuse story would not have dominated Holy Week as it did.
On March 25, the Times set off a worldwide firestorm with a front page story that made an incendiary accusation: "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."
Falsehood upon falsehood -- four errors in the first paragraph.
- First, the case to defrock Father Lawrence Murphy was approved by the "top Vatican officials," was never stopped by anyone in Rome and was ongoing when Murphy died.
- Second, Cardinal Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict, is not shown in the documents to have taken any decisions in this case.
- Third, the real villain, aside from Murphy himself, was the compromised former Archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland, who had sat on the case for 20 years.
- Fourth, the files were not "newly unearthed"; a general chronology had been released by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee years ago, and the documents were released by the archdiocese itself.
The
New York Times was guilty of egregiously reporting --
or worse -- on a story of global implications.
['Or worse' is right. It was deliberately shoddy and obfuscating in order to cast 'guilt' on Joseph Ratzinger.]
While the case was not new -- the priest died in 1998 -- the charge landed on front pages around the world, including the
National Post, because the Pope was supposedly involved. Within days we learned that the Times was false on the facts, suspect in the sources and reckless in the reporting.
All of which the paper had to implicitly concede a week later in an extraordinary rewrite by the same author. So what happened? Were the reporter, Laurie Goodstein, and her editors merely careless, genuinely duped or willing collaborators in an orchestrated smear?
The story did not get the extra scrutiny it deserved. The documents on which the story was based did not support the newsworthy charge against the Pope.
After the National Post repeated the charges on our front page on March 26, I read all the documents, posted at the Times web-site. I wrote a point-by-point rebuttal, which was immediately linked to all over the world and played a contributing role in exposing the Times story. (It can be found now at fatherdesouza.ca)
For those who knew this file, the sources used screamed out for greater scrutiny. The first was Jeffrey Anderson, who gave the documents to Goodstein, a longtime reporter on Vatican affairs who covers the religion beat.
Anderson is the most prolific contingency-fee lawyer in suing the Church, from which he has made tens of millions. He has current civil suits pending against the Vatican. It is in his direct financial interest to promote the public perception of complicity by the Pope.
That alone should have prompted Goodstein to examine what the documents showed and to inquire of others whether there were other relevant documents that he did not give her. Instead, her story accepted fully the Anderson spin.
The next obvious step would have been to corroborate what was found in the documents. It was subsequently revealed that Goodstein did not even contact the key judicial official in the Murphy case, Father Thomas Brundage.
Had she done so she would have learned that the defrocking trial was still ongoing until three days before Murphy's death, when it was stopped by Weakland -- undermining the key accusation in her story.
After Brundage corrected the record publicly, Goodstein finally interviewed him, five days after her original story appeared.
The only other published source for the original story was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, the disgraced former archbishop of Milwaukee. He resigned in 2002 when it was revealed that he had a homosexual affair and then used $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to buy the man's secrecy.
Weakland detailed his other clandestine homosexual affairs, his mismanagement of sexual abuse cases and his longtime hostility to Pope Benedict in his 2009 autobiography. Did Goodstein know how discredited Weakland was? She knew, as she wrote a flattering story about the autobiography last year.
So when she approached Weakland for comment on the story, some basic questions might have been in order. She did not ask them.
- First, why did Weakland, who had jurisdiction over the case since 1977, wait nearly 20 years before moving against him?
- Second, during the very period the Murphy case was underway, Weakland was negotiating the terms of his former lover's blackmail payoff. Would that not make his comments about transparency and justice somewhat suspect?
- Third, was there any independent corroboration to support Weakland's own letters? It is possible that bad sources can still provide good information. But did news editors the world over even know enough about the principals in this story to demand extra scrutiny?
As others began to ask those obvious questions, and it became apparent that Goodstein had not asked any of them, she published an extraordinary follow-up story on April 1. This one appeared on page 6, not the front. Gone was the suggestive headline. This one had the banal title: "Events in the Case of an Accused Priest."
All of the accusations against the future Pope are dropped, the new information from her tardy interview with Brundage is included, Weakland's comments disappear and Jeffrey Anderson is gone altogether.
The April 1 story is for all intents and purposes a correction of the March 25 story. Had it come first, it would not have made the front page on March 25; it likely would not have made the paper at all. The firestorm of the past two weeks would not have occurred.
[OK, so apparently, the Times and Goodstein did try to 'make up' for their big mistake, and some credit must go to them for that... But they rightly counted that no one would report the correction! As I do not have the time to search individual sites one by one, I have to depend for English stuff on leads that I get from the Yahoo and Daylife headline lists which they update every time there is something new. I shall go back now and check the stories they listed on April 1, but I do not recall ever having seen the Times correction listed, much less picked up by the major news agencies. So for all intents and purposes, as far as the world at large knows, the story stands as it was written on March 25...]
Remember what the major items on the sexual abuse file were the day before Goodstein's story appeared.
- On March 20, Pope Benedict had published a blunt letter to Catholics in Ireland, apologizing to victims, lambasting the priest abusers and excoriating the failure of bishops to exercise proper oversight.
- On March 23, the annual independent audit of American dioceses revealed that in 2009, there were six credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors, in a church of 68 million people -- a sign of astonishing progress in stamping out this evil. That was the news - before
The New York Times decided to make its own.
P.S.
I finally found the Goodstein article, which I could not find at all using the search word 'Benedict XVI'. I only found it when I used the article title provided by Fr. Di Souza as my search term - and it comes under the heading of 'SEX CRIMES' - along with most of their reporting about sex abuses by priests and the current 'scandals'!
If that is not proof enough of bad faith, the article itself is! I'm sorry, Father DiSouza, but you are being too kind if you call this a correction. It virtually repeats everything that appeared in the earlier article, except for some mild insubstantial changes made, I suspect, o nly to make it appear corrections were being made.
Even worse, is what Goodstein chooses to use of Father Brundage's statement - chiefly to get him to admit he was wrong to have said the Times had quoted him wrongly, when they had not used his name at all previously.
NO WONDER EVEN THE WIRE SERVICES IGNORED IT COMPLETELY! THERE'S NO 'THERE' THERE... AND I TAKE BACK WHAT I SAID ABOUT GIVING THE 'TIMES' SOME CREDIT FOR MAKING A 'CORRECTION'!
Events in the Case of an Accused Priest
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: March 31, 2010
The case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf boys at a school in Wisconsin, stands out among the cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests because of the number and vulnerability of the victims, and the availability of documents revealing how Church officials handled the matter.
Father Murphy died in 1998, still a priest, despite documents showing that a priest had informed Church officials as early as the mid-1950s that deaf children had complained that Father Murphy was molesting them. The police and prosecutors in Wisconsin were also informed by the victims and their advocates, but failed to act.
The documents show that during the mid-1990s, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, facing the threat of lawsuits and hearing wrenching testimony from deaf adults who said they had been abused by Father Murphy, concluded that Father Murphy should be removed from the priesthood.
Archbishop Weakland appealed on July 17, 1996, to the Vatican office of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ratzinger then headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which had oversight of the case because Father Murphy was suspected of using the confessional to commit his crimes — a crime that is considered particularly serious under the church’s canon law because confession is a sacrament.
The documents show that Archbishop Weakland sent two letters to Cardinal Ratzinger, and one to the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest court, asking for guidance on whether to conduct a canonical trial of Father Murphy.
After eight months, on March 24, 1997, Archbishop Weakland received a response from Cardinal Ratzinger’s second-in-command in the doctrinal office, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state. Archbishop Bertone instructed the Milwaukee archdiocese to proceed with a canonical trial of Father Murphy, which could result in defrocking the priest.
On Jan. 12, 1998, Father Murphy sent a letter from his home in Boulder Junction, Wis., to Cardinal Ratzinger. He asked for a cessation of the trial because he was 72, had had a stroke and had repented, and because the case was beyond the statute of limitations.
On April 6, 1998, Archbishop Bertone wrote to Bishop Raphael M. Fliss of the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin, where Father Murphy was living, saying that the statute of limitations was waived in this case. But Archbishop Bertone suggested that given Father Murphy’s letter asking for leniency, Bishop Fliss should employ “pastoral measures” instead of a trial. [This has since been shown to be based on a computer translation of Bertone's letter who did not suggest stopping the trial.]
Under Church law, those measures can include prayer, repentance and restrictions on what kinds of ministry and sacraments the priest may perform.
Bishop Fliss wrote back to Archbishop Bertone on May 13, 1998, saying, “It is in my judgment that all reasonable pastoral methods have been exhausted” and that a trial against Father Murphy was necessary.
On May 30, 1998, while Archbishop Weakland, Bishop Fliss and the auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee were in Rome for a regular visit to the Vatican, they met with Congregation officials, including Archbishop Bertone.
A log kept on the Murphy case and signed “RJS” — the initials for the auxiliary bishop, Richard J. Sklba — briefly summarized the Vatican meeting on May 30, 1998: “It became clear that the Congregation was not encouraging us to proceed with any formal dismissal” of Father Murphy. The reasons were that for 24 years he had shown “apparent good conduct,” and that with so much time passed between the crimes and the trial, it would be difficult to try him.
The minutes of the meeting said that a trial would be difficult because of the problem of getting proof without increasing the scandal. The minutes said Archbishop Weakland should limit Father Murphy’s ministerial duties instead. Archbishop Weakland, the minutes said, “reaffirmed the difficulty he will have explaining this to the community of the deaf.”
The translated minutes were sent to Bishop Fliss on Aug. 15 by the Rev. Thomas T. Brundage, then the judicial vicar in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and the official responsible for presiding over the trial of Father Murphy.
A letter on Aug. 19, 1998, from Archbishop Weakland said he instructed Father Brundage to halt the trial. Father Murphy died on Aug. 21, 1998.
Father Brundage, who is now working in the Archdiocese of Anchorage, posted an essay this week saying he was never informed that the trial of Father Murphy had been halted.
He also said that he had been misquoted in both The New York Times and The Associated Press. In an interview on Wednesday, Father Brundage acknowledged that he had never been quoted in any Times articles about the Murphy case — and the paper did not misquote him. He said he was misquoted in an Associated Press article that was posted temporarily on the Times Web site, and he mistakenly attributed that to The Times.
He said the documents show that the Vatican had encouraged the Milwaukee Archdiocese to halt the trial, but they did not use strong language and actually order a halt. He said that he never saw the letter from Archbishop Weakland abating the trial until it appeared on the Times Web site last week.
“The only possible explanation I can come up with is that Archbishop Weakland withheld the letter, knowing the reaction I would have had,” Father Brundage said.
Father Brundage said he would have been appalled because he was absolutely convinced that Father Murphy should be put on trial, because, “This was a horrendous case.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 2, 2010
An article on Thursday that detailed the chronology of the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who was accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf boys at a school in Wisconsin over many years, misstated the date of his death in 1998. It was Aug. 21, not. Sept. 2.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 1, 2010, on page A6 of the New York edition.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/04/2010 21:51]