NYT Attack Mode

The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI:
how it looks to an American in the Vatican

by Cardinal William J. Levada
Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

In our melting pot of peoples, languages and backgrounds, Americans are not noted as examples of “high” culture. But we can take pride as a rule in our passion for fairness. In the Vatican where I currently work, my colleagues – whether fellow cardinals at meetings or officials in my office – come from many different countries, continents and cultures. As I write this response today (March 26, 2010) I have had to admit to them that I am not proud of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness.

I say this because today’s Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein, a senior columnist, headlined “Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest,” and an accompanying editorial entitled “The Pope and the Pedophilia Scandal,” in which the editors call the Goodstein article a disturbing report (emphasis in original) as a basis for their own charges against the Pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting.

In her lead paragraph, Goodstein relies on what she describes as “newly unearthed files” to point out what the Vatican (i.e. then Cardinal Ratzinger and his Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) did not do – “defrock Fr. Murphy.”  Breaking news, apparently. Only after eight paragraphs of purple prose does Goodstein reveal that Fr. Murphy, who criminally abused as many as 200 deaf children while working at a school in the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1950 to 1974, “not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims.”

But in paragraph 13, commenting on a statement of Fr. Lombardi (the Vatican spokesman) that Church law does not prohibit anyone from reporting cases of abuse to civil authorities, Goodstein writes, “He did not address why that had never happened in this case.” Did she forget, or did her editors not read, what she wrote in paragraph nine about Murphy getting “a pass from the police and prosecutors”? By her own account it seems clear that criminal authorities had been notified, most probably by the victims and their families.

Goodstein’s account bounces back and forth as if there were not some 20 plus years intervening between reports in the 1960 and 70’s to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and local police, and Archbishop Weakland’s appeal for help to the Vatican in 1996. Why? Because the point of the article is not about failures on the part of church and civil authorities to act properly at the time. I, for one, looking back at this report agree that Fr. Murphy deserved to be dismissed from the clerical state for his egregious criminal behavior, which would normally have resulted from a canonical trial.

The point of Goodstein’s article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time. She uses the technique of repeating the many escalating charges and accusations from various sources (not least from her own newspaper), and tries to use these “newly unearthed files” as the basis for accusing the pope of leniency and inaction in this case and presumably in others.

It seems to me, on the other hand, that we owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors. These efforts began when the Pope served as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and continued after he was elected Pope. That the Times has published a series of articles in which the important contribution he has made – especially in the development and implementation of Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela, the Motu proprio issued by Pope John Paul II in 2001 – is ignored, seems to me to warrant the charge of lack of fairness which should be the hallmark of any reputable newspaper.

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The Times editorial wonders “how Vatican officials did not draw the lessons of the grueling scandal in the United States, where more than 700 priests were dismissed over a three-year period.” I can assure the Times that the Vatican in reality did not then and does not now ignore those lessons. But the Times editorial goes on to show the usual bias: “But then we read Laurie Goodstein’s disturbing report . . .about how the pope, while he was still a cardinal, was personally warned about a priest … But church leaders chose to protect the church instead of children. The report illuminated the kind of behavior the church was willing to excuse to avoid scandal.” Excuse me, editors. Even the Goodstein article, based on “newly unearthed files,” places the words about protecting the Church from scandal on the lips of Archbishop Weakland, not the pope.  It is just this kind of anachronistic conflation that I think warrants my accusation that the Times, in rushing to a guilty verdict, lacks fairness in its coverage of Pope Benedict.

As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s “disturbing report.” But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his “successor” Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

See the full story at:

  http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_card-levada2010_en.html

Comments

[mike]

why shouldnt they be in attack mode? the church has known about these kind of abuses for years and years and has done nothing except ship the abusive priests around to other parishes and diocese. only recently when more light has been shed on this matter has the vatican taken some action. They continue to cling to the silly notion that only men can be priests and that those men must be celibate. then we wonder why these kinds of things happen. They continue to put the institution and themselves before the rights and safety of the individuals. The vatican's answer is to make this the year of the priest and to make every church say this silly prayer for vocations. How about if we fix the problem. There is a novel idea. What a joke

[Constantine]

Don’t miss this sleight of hand by the good Cardinal.

When William Cardinal Levada complains, in paragraph 3 of this article, about paragraph 9 of Laurie Goldstein’s NYT article, he does so in an artfully deceptive way. It should be noted that Goldstein’s objection is that Fr. Murphy was never tried by a Church court OR the civil authorities. However, Levada’s protestation has only to do with the civil neglect in this case and not the ecclesial: “By her own account it seems clear that criminal authorities had been notified, most probably by the victims and their families.” In other words, “Let’s just leave the Church out of this because the Sheriff didn’t do his job, either.” Cardinal Levada obfuscates Goldstein’s true complaint in an effort to save his boss.

But even more damning is the use of the phrase that the criminal authorities “had been notified, MOST PROBABLY by the victims and their families.” (Emphasis added.) Where was the Church? Why hadn’t they MOST PROBABLY notified the authorities but instead left it to the victims to do so? They, after all, had at least 24 years to do so! The thunderingly loud answer to that question lays bare the Catholic Church’s obvious and apparent complicity in the crime. And that responsibility goes to the highest level, as we will now see.

What about Benedict?

Again, Cardinal Levada attempts a poor evasion:

“The point of Goodstein’s article, however, is to attribute the failure to accomplish this dismissal to Pope Benedict, instead of to diocesan decisions at the time.”

But ever since Vatican I, it is the pope – and not local diocesan officials – that has the “primacy of jurisdiction”. The Code of Canon Law says that the pope has not only a “primacy” over the whole church but “the primacy of ordinary power [sic]offer all particular churches and groups of them.” (Canon 333 §1). By personalizing his defense of Benedict or offering Bishop Weakland as a scapegoat, the Cardinal undermines the very structure of Catholic authority. With the “primacy of jurisdiction” surely comes the “primacy of responsibility” – no matter who is in the chair of St. Peter. So the proper thing, in the Fr. Murphy case, is not to absolve Benedict, but to say that Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II were all guilty – unless of course, you were to admit that they really didn’t have “primacy of jurisdiction”.

But the coup de grâce of the whole matter is Levada’s statement, “we owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors.” Isn’t that great? For you see it’s all about “procedures” and “helping the Church”. I wonder if those poor deaf little boys feel the same “gratitude” now that the Church has been so ably helped?

It’s an interesting observation ofchurch history that God frequently uses the pagan world to correct the church. The NYT in attack mode? I say, “Sic ‘em!”

“It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” Luke 17:2.

[Andrew]

Mike and Constantine: I have the feeling that you are less interested in the suffering of the abused than in demonstrating your animosity toward the Catholic Church. In doing so, you both seem to stand firmly in the long-standing American tradition of anti-Catholicism, anti-clericalism, and anti-intellectualism.

To be sure, there is plenty of blame here. Abuse by ANYONE in in a position of authority is reprehensible, and the cover-up of such abuse is equally worthy of condemnation, sanction or punishment. Nevertheless, estimates of the number of Catholic priests who have committed such crimes range from 2-4%. There are approximately 41,500 priests in the US (out of about 400,000 worldwide). While no compassionate human being would minimize the suffering of those who have been abused (for whom statistics are irrelevant), it is a leap of logic generalize the actions of 2-4% to the entire group.

I am a one of 6.2 million teachers in the United States; there are aournd 55 million k-12 students. The US Department of Eduction "found that nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students reported having been targeted with sexual attention by school employees." The number who have been abused by school employees, therefore, could be as high as 5.5. million. One study found that about 290,000 students were sexually abused in the decade 1991-2000.

Contrast this with around 68 million Catholics in the US. In the five decades since 1950 there have been 11,000 reports of clergy sexual abuse. Even if we were to double that number to account for unreported cases, there is clearly a difference in magnitude in both numbers and sufferings. Yet, as Prof. Charol Shakeshaft of Hoftstra University, who prepared a report for the US Dept. of Education on the subject, concluded that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests." CBS News reported that "during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools." If this doesn't suggest to you a bias against the Catholic Church and clergy, please explain your reasoning.

I do, if fact, agree that the Church has allowed, knowingly and unknowingly, far too much suffering. Having done so, it is right and proper to criticize the institution, and to expect justice and compensation for those who have been harmed. It may come as a surprise to some that many Catholics this way, too. Nevertheless, the manner in which you condemnation of the Church, the clergy, and laity do more to demonstrate your prejudice and superficial understanding of the several issues you put forth than to present valid criticism.

Above all, we must never neglect the very real pain and suffering of those who have suffered the trauma of sexual abuse--of whose number I am one (and not by a priest). Nor should we use their pain and suffering as fodder for our biases and prejudices.

http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/4/5/01552.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/24/opinion/main1933687.shtml
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/007108.html

[Alex Benziger.G]

Mike's comments are motivated, prejudiced . Mr Mike, you look at your early life.
Alex Benziger.G

[Trust in Jesus]

The more things change the more they remain the same.
They strew palm fronds and shouted hosanna to the son of David and a week later the same crowd shouted that Pilate release Barabbas and crucify Jesus.
Who remained steadfast when He was ridiculed and humiliated? Very few -His mother, 2 other women, and the disciple John were there. The others hid in fear and trembling.
So too today, we have a choice. Do we deny Christ or do we stay? The Mystical Body is sorely wounded.
Does not faith demand that we stay knowing that He is with us all days and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against Her?
Trust in Jesus. He keeps His promises.
You clamour in your pages for the demise of a good and saintly scholar who is doing all that he can to undo the damage caused to the innocent children who stopped living in accord with Christ's teachings.Judas walked away from Christ and betrayed him.Why? Did he want a more militant powerful aggressive messiah? Did he mistake the strength of Jesus' gentle humility and patience for weakness?
Benedict is doing all that he can and will continue to do so. He is a great teacher with a clear grasp of the way evil works He grew up in a culture where evil had gained supremacy. He knows the moral danger that sloppy reasoning and false philosophy and theology can bring. That is why the devil hates him and is doing all he can to try and diminish his power and influence.Do you not think a man who saw the dreadful impact Hitler's madness had on the the world does not grasp the horror of the abuse of children. Don't you think it is a cause of immense sorrow to him that any religious could betray Christ in this manner?
Do you care?People claim their concern is for the victims of abuse Are you praying for the victims? Are you encouraging them to turn to Jesus and His Mother?