Thursday, April 8, 2010
"Anti-Catholicism," said writer Peter Viereck, "is the anti-Semitism of the intellectual." It is "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people," said Arthur Schlesinger Sr.
If there was any doubt that hatred of and hostility toward the Catholic Church persists, it was removed by the mob that has arisen howling "Resign!" at Pope Benedict XVI.
To American Catholics, the story of pedophile priests engaged in criminal abuse of children, of pervert priests seducing boys, is unfortunately all too familiar. That some bishops covered up for pedophiles and seducers and enabled corrupt clergy to continue to prey on boys was equally disgraceful.
But to American Catholics, this is an old story. The priests have been defrocked, some sent to prison, like John Geoghan, who was strangled in his cell. Bishops have been removed. "Zero tolerance" has been policy for a decade.
Pope Benedict came to America to apologize for what these men did. And no one has been more aggressive in rooting out what he calls the "filth" in the church. And as the recent scandals have hit Ireland and Germany, why the attack on the pope here in America?
Answer: The New York Times is conducting a vendetta against this traditionalist pope in news stories, editorials and columns.
"Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys," blared the headline over a Laurie Goodstein story that began thus:
"Top Vatican officials -- including the future Pope Benedict XVI -- did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys ...
"In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee's archbishop at that time."
The facts:
That diabolical priest, Lawrence C. Murphy, was assigned to St. John's School for the Deaf in 1950, before Joseph Ratzinger was even ordained.
Reports of his abuse of the deaf children surfaced in the 1950s. But, under three archbishops, nothing was done. Police and prosecutors were alerted by parents of the boys. Nothing was done.
Weakland, who became archbishop in 1977, did not write to Rome until 1996.
And as John Allen of National Catholic Reporter noted last week, Cardinal Ratzinger "did not have any direct responsibility for managing the overall Vatican response to the crisis until 2001. ... Prior to 2001, Ratzinger had nothing personally to do with the vast majority of sex abuse cases, even the small percentage which wound up in Rome."
By the time Cardinal Ratzinger was commissioned by John Paul II to clean out the stable, Murphy had been dead for three years.
Yet here is Times columnist Maureen Dowd's summation of the case:
"Now we learn the sickening news that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, nicknamed 'God's Rotweiler,' when he was the church's enforcer on matters of faith and sin, ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, a Wisconsin priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys."
In Goodstein's piece, Weakland is a prelate who acted too slowly. The controversy over his clouded departure from the Milwaukee archdiocese is mentioned and passed over at the bottom of the story. It belonged higher.
For Weakland was a homosexual who confessed in a 1980 letter he was in "deep love" with a male paramour who shook down the archbishop for $450,000 in church funds as hush money to keep his lover's mouth shut about their squalid affair.
According to Rod Dreher, Weakland moved Father William Effinger, who would die in prison, from parish to parish, knowing Effinger was a serial pederast.
When one of Effinger's victims sued the archdiocese but lost because of a statute of limitations, Weakland counter-sued and extracted $4,000 from the victim of his predator priest.
Dreher describes Weakland's tenure thus:
"He directed Catholic schools ... to teach kids how to use condoms as part of AIDS education and approved a graphic sex-education program for parochial-school kids that taught 'there is no right and wrong' on the issues of abortion, contraception and premarital sex. He has advocated for gay rights and women's ordination, bitterly attacked Pope John Paul II, denounced pro-lifers as 'fundamentalist' and declared that one could be both pro-choice and a Catholic in good standing."
Speaking of sex-abuse victims in 1988, Weakland was quoted: "Not all adolescent victims are so innocent. Some can be sexually very active and aggressive and often streetwise."
Just the kind of priest the Times loves, and just the kind of source on whom the Times relies when savaging the pope and bashing the church.
As the Catholic League's Bill Donahue relates, 80 percent of the victims of priestly abuse have been males and "most of the molesters gays."
And as the Times' Richard Berke blurted to the Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association 10 years ago, often, "three-quarters of the people deciding what's on the front page are not-so-closeted homosexuals."
Is there perhaps a conflict of interest at The New York Times, when covering a traditionalist Catholic pope?
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the book "Churchill, Hitler and 'The Unnecessary War."
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Comments
nick (anonymous) says...
Mr,.Buchanan: The only thing dying faster then the Catholic Church is the Republican Party. To understand why, look up the word "hypocrisy".
"a feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not; especially : the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion".
Without a good housecleaning, starting at the top, I say good riddance to both institutions.
April 8, 2010 at 6:28 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
trashcup (anonymous) says...
The pope could end all of this in one minute by allowing the criminal justice system to work instead of covering up the crimes of these pedophiliac priests. Moving them around, defrocking them, whatever doesn't deal with the issue that these guys are criminals and they need to be dealt with in our court system.
These guys committed crimes, the church should recognize that and stop trying to minimize their criminal activity.
April 8, 2010 at 6:46 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
palin4prez (anonymous) says...
I don't know how anyone could donate money to the Catholic church at this point. The money goes to legal fees!
And nicikie...the Republican party is far from dying. Sorry Bud, we're not going away and we are getting stronger by the day just to irritate you! hee hee
April 8, 2010 at 6:58 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ldffly (anonymous) says...
I am not Catholic and would never convert for many reasons. For one, I don't believe the Church, the visible Church, has sole authority to teach on matters of faith and morals. This doctrine of the Magisterium has many insidious consequences. As to the sex abuse issues, this occasionally comes up in Protestant churches, mainly when a minister runs around on his wife or is chasing a member of the congregation. Sometimes, it does involve children. However, what makes a Protestant congregation different? Congregational polity. In most Protestant denominations, the congregation itself has authority. When this occurs in a Protestant church, the congregation has the authority to take care of the problem and they do. Fire the minister, if there is lawbreaking, turn the man into the police. Can a Roman congregation do this? No. They must respect the hierarchy of authority and there lies the source of the problem.
April 8, 2010 at 7:42 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
SteveO (anonymous) says...
This is for all of the anti-Catholic bigots (including those within the Church itself) who believe in the media accounts instead of the facts:
Fact: If you re-read Mr. Buchanan's column you can see that 80% of these cases are homosexual sex with adolescent males. "Pedophilia" rarely is the case but it is an "eye opening" term to use.
Fact: For nearly ten years now, the Catholic church in America has taken great strides in removing these characters from the ranks of its clergy, even at the risk of compromising due process.
Fact: The percentage of offenders (none of which is acceptable) relative to the overall clergy numbers in minuscule and actually less than society as a whole. But that doesn't stop those with an agenda against the Church. They need an issue to use in their effort to reduce the influence of the Church in society. One could conclude that the sex abuse issue is not as much a concern for the victims as a tool for them to help with the agenda.
Fact: There is more faculty-student abuse in the public school system than in the Catholic Church. Where are the complaints about this problem?
Fact: Without lessening the gravity of the issue, many of the Bishops relied on what was known at the time as competent psychology in order to make decisions on clergy deployment. They were wrong, this kind of psychology has been publicly renounced, and it is no longer considered.
The issue no longer is one about concern for sex abuse or the victims. Rather, it is about weakening the Church at its core and reducing the effectiveness of its leadership.
April 8, 2010 at 9:23 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ganoshome (anonymous) says...
Hey Steve, Fact I'll bet you got all your facts straight from the horses mouth, the Catholic Church.
April 8, 2010 at 9:39 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
teaparty_conservative (anonymous) says...
I jumped off the Catholic bandwagon several years ago. Not just because of the whole molesting thing, but for other reasons. However looking back at what has happened with decades of abuse and cover up I am glad that I have left the hypocritical church.
April 8, 2010 at 11:04 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
SteveO (anonymous) says...
Ganoshome,
I researched the subject in a variety of sources, including The Wall Street Journal. This kind of research helps with your grammar. I can see here that you're not reading the same material.
April 8, 2010 at 2:06 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nick (anonymous) says...
SteveO, Pat Buchanan states in his article "As the Catholic League's Bill Donahue relates, 80 percent of the victims of priestly abuse have been males and "most of the molesters gays."
What in the world is this creep, Bill Donahue, implying with this nonsensical sentence? Hey, it's not so bad after all? And, what do you expect when the victims have been ...?
Who's he slamming here? Gays? Young boys? Young girls? Or all three?
You are one gullible Catholic.
April 8, 2010 at 2:42 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ganoshome (anonymous) says...
Lets not compare education levels or research methods. You just are rehashing trash talk about people who were victomized twice once by the priests who were supposed to guide and protect them and them and again by the prelates of the church who only wanted to cover up the crime, protect the churches image and not punish the criminal. Shame on you and your church for spreading half truths and lies and who even to this day not taking responcibility for your actions.
April 8, 2010 at 3:38 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
GHutch (anonymous) says...
I was a member of the Catholic Church as a kid; The decision to leave it occurred when I was 20 years old, now 40 years ago.
I left it because then and now, I have the opinion that Popal infallibility, and other similar tenets, are: policy created by ordinary people like myself, who just happened to be in position of power. they created the policy to advance their control and prestige.
The Church has lost it authority over people. That authority was an enormous blind deference because of tradition and heritage. As time passed, people came to the
same opinion. Perhaps not exact same reasoning, but to sufficiently enough of the same conclusion.
Now this is not a denial of the existence of God, I am a theist !!.I do believe that there is God. God is imminent and eminent.
There was a Jesus Christ, at least several if not more. But only one was divinely inspired and rest were imitators. Still they had followers, and as they were eliminated,
the followers spread the Word. The Gospels were the written history of the preachings. The followers became the "Church" and finally Constantine decided to
bring peace to his empire the Nicea Conference was held. These 'ordinary people'
came to an agreement about what was the Christian faith.
That worked well until, Martin Luther got peeved about the indulgences and whatever else corruptions occurred.
What is occurring today in the Church is just another twist of the same, it only several centuries later.
And this deference is no longer granted to the Church. It leaders are recognized as
mere mortals like all of us.
April 9, 2010 at 5:04 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jessie (anonymous) says...
Thank you Mr Buchanan for a view that most are just not considering.
I believe the Catholic Church is trying to clear up the mess.....why just
the Catholic Church in the media, where is the news concerning public school teachers, coaches, neighbors whomever.Some just like to broadcast anything negative about the Catholic Church. That goes way back.
April 9, 2010 at 5:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
nick (anonymous) says...
I agree. Give the Catholic Church a couple of hundred years more and eventually they'll clean up this mess. As for the Republican Party, just keep them out of power and they'll do fine. They are very good at criticizing, but they just can't govern without screwing up and almost bankrupting the country (or world, if you prefer). (Reference: 2000-2008).
Good day!
April 10, 2010 at 10:01 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )