A Summary

of the sex-abuse scandal in the Church and the MSM coverage of it:

Media's deadly ammunition of half-truths:

A retired Hollywood actor and Catholic convert whom I had the honor of sponsoring, regularly sends me clippings about the Catholic sex scandals from newspapers and news magazines -- his only source of news other than television, since he fastidiously eschews the world of computers. I do not know how much help he finds from his priest in sorting out fact from fiction in the daily media onslaught. One feels considerable sympathy for our priests, who doubtless feel besieged and confused by the anti-Catholic onslaught in the media and may prefer to ignore the issue in their homilies. The result, however, is the reinforcement of an unhealthy fortress mentality, where the Faith is increasingly isolated from the issues of the day and rendered irrelevant. Legions of parishioners like my actor friend need answers. Hence, the issues must be addressed.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.)

Whack-A-Pope

continues with interesting results. Now that the Vatican push-back is impossible to ignore, the MSM tries to fan the flames of a Catholic-Queer smackdown. A potentially entertaining tangle of absurdities results:

Card. Bertone in Chile strikes some sparks, MSM puffs on the fire:

From CBS/AP ... yes.. AP again…



My E & C.

SANTIAGO, Chile, April 12, 2010

Pope’s No. 2: Sex Abuse Tied to Homosexuality

Cardinal Bertone’s Remarks Cause Uproar; U.S. Priest Slams Vatican for "Incompetence and Irresponsibility"



(CBS/AP)   Updated at 7:15 a.m. Eastern.  [The original title seems to have been "Sex abuse not tied to celibacy"]



The Vatican’s second-highest authority says the sex scandals haunting the Roman Catholic Church are linked to homosexuality and not celibacy among priests. [There are the two points… homosexuality and celibacy.  But they shifted the title of the story.]

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

Defrocking

doesn't, strictly speaking, have any meaning in Catholic usage. "You are a Priest Forever" actually means what it says for the Church. There are two ways of leaving the ministry: by ejection, as a penalty ["degradation" in the old usage or "dismissal from the clerical state" (1983 CIC 1336.1, n. 5)], or by having a request for dispensation granted [laisization]. These distinctions do not register with those in the MSM who would be teaching us, though:

Mt. Rainier, Puyallup and Defrocking:

One of the ways that Out of Staters periodically embarrass themselves when they visit Washington (the New England of the West Coast) is by making casual knowing references to things they know little about. So, for instance, when somebody insouciantly declares that they are going to take a drive out to "Renyay" or visit "Poo yall up" Washingtonians smile cryptically and look at the floor. (Hint: It's "Pew al up" and "Rayneer" and you aren't from around here, are you stranger?)

When I read the hysteria in the daily installments of the Get Benedict Campaign that the media has ginned up, I feel the same way. Everybody keeps screaming about "defrocking" and seems to think they know what they are talking about about. So we were breathlessly informed us that Benedict refused to punish a pervert California priest with "defrocking". The mob shouts in righteous indignation!

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

A Priest Can Dream, Can't He?

Father Z goes on a reverie that warms the cuckolds of this old heart:

Is Benedict XVI a “better Pope” than John Paul II? A couple views and then Fr. Z really rants.:

[...] If I were Pope, I would form a small corps of monsignori tasked to obtain some resignations…  I think I would recruit them from, say, Sicily.  They seem to know how to do this sort of thing quietly, with a smile.  "Eccellenza… our Holy Fadher isa greatly concerned fora your healt." One sits down a little too close to the bishop. The other, still standing, opens his jacket, reaches in and draws out a beautiful Waterman fountain pen and thick, folded sheet of paper.]

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

Fisking

is an art form, best left to practioners with intelligence and insight. I give you Father Z on an AP hack writer:

Another ridiculous AP article deconstructed:

AP, which unprofessionally has declared open season on Pope Benedict – engaged in a relentless ad hominem – has a piece which cites as the mainstay non other than Richard McBrien. They drag in a 'conservative' for reasons of ballast, but they crack on upon their course.



My emphases and comments.

Pope's ivory tower past adds to his detachment



By VANESSA GERA, Associated Press Writer Vanessa Gera, Associated Press Writer [AP's correspondent in Poland] - Sun Apr 11, 1:41 pm ET



VATICAN CITY - Long before entering Vatican life, Pope Benedict XVI won renown as a theologian and a German university professor, penning more than 40 books and winning a devoted following of students who respected his prodigious memory and brilliant mind.



One thing absent from his resume? Significant time as a parish priest. [I think what we are about to see here is a common liberal trope: when you want to discredit someone or something, say that it or he isn't 'pastoral'. Personal anecdote: I was once told by a chancery hack in a diocese where an ultra-liberal bishop was in charge that their concern about me was that I was conservative but I was intelligent. I am not making this up. If I were 'less intelligent', and, say, more 'pastoral', well... then.... First, liberals only think liberals are really intelligent. But when they run across [FILL IN BLANK] on the other side which is smart, effective, successful, etc., they label that thing or person 'not pastoral'. A perfect example is what Bp. Trautman says about the new translation. I already have the sense that that is what you are going to see in this article.]

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

What He Said

I noticed some of the MSM touting the "Papal Scandal" alongside the NYT. For example, there were complaints in the blogosphere about the London Times just before the American Times resumed covering itself with shame. The BBC, which I like to watch for international news was following lockstep. And I join those who are curious about the timing of the "demonstration" organized in Saint Peter's Square that just happened to coincide with the Times latest assault on the papacy. So I'm in agreement with this:

Birds of a Feather:

Ruth Gledhill of The Times in London seems to be vying with Maureen Dowd for the 'Dumb Attacks on the Catholic Church' award. In this article she leapfrogs from Archbishop Rowan Williams snide comments about the Catholic Church to the sermon by Fr Raniero Cantalamessa quoting a Jewish friend who recognized elements of the persecution in the present campaign against the Catholic Church that...

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Mea Culpa

It's the Catholic thing to acknowledge one's guilt. In the Latin (curiously changed in the present-and-soon-to-be-replaced translation) we start each Mass by confessing our sinfulness: Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ([through] my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault--replaced with "through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do;"). So it is good for us to consider how we have been complicit in the Long Lent that we are still suffering through:

Happy Hour Links:

Peggy Noonan on the Catholic Church's catastrophe.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Campaign Standard.)

A Nice Summing Up

of the "The Pope Should Resign" party and it's malcontents:

Murphy Case: NYT Never Talked to Judge:

In a remarkable piece, we get a sense of confirmation, that the New York Times and the mainstream press are doing their best -during Holy Week, as usual- to (at the very least) foment disgust at the Pontiff and the Catholic Church and/or (at worst) create a climate that "demands" a papal abdication. But curiously...

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Internal Politics

in the Church?

“using the victims of clerical child abuse to fight internal political battles”:

Some analysis from the UK by Damian Thompson with my emphases and comments:

Some liberal Catholics are thinking: It’s payback time, Ratzinger!



By Damian Thompson



There is still no good evidence that Pope Benedict XVI is seriously implicated in the atrocious child abuse scandals that are – rightly – blackening the reputation of the institutions of the Catholic Church. But still the attempts to join the dots continue. To put it bluntly, there is an increasingly frantic media campaign against the Pope in which headlines are being written first and then facts shaved to fit them.  [What’s on the masthead of Hell’s Bible again?  "All the news that fits"?]

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

New York Times & Facts

Here's a link to a summary of the facts:

New York Times Smears:

From Father Raymond J. de Souza, a response to the New York Times.

The story is false. It is unsupported by its own documentation. Indeed, it gives every indication of being part of a coordinated campaign against Pope Benedict, rather than responsible journalism.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic Light.)

A Catholic Perspective

on the controversy:

The poisons that lurk in the mud:

In Robert Graves I, Claudius, the old emperor decides to let Nero be his heir knowing well that Nero will be so bad that people will cry for reform and the Republic to return.  In his cups, the old Claudius rumbles:

"It will be bad, exceedingly bad…worse even than Caligula but they have to have the whole terrible truth about just how bad it can be before they come to their senses.



Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out."

Read the whole thing.

(Via What Does The Prayer Really Say?.)

A Useful List

of links for those inclined to investigate the current media storm over the Vatican:

Wisconsin, Irish, German, and Other Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandals and Pope Benedict XVI: Collection of Factual, Non-Agenda-Driven Articles and Posts:

[ source ]

Read the whole thing.

(Via Cor ad cor loquitur.)

Perspective

Objectivity is difficult to attain. Catholicism and the Papacy in particular evince emotional responses that reflect our prior commitments, beliefs and life history. So the current news media assault on the papacy needs some distancing before reaching judgement.

There is no reason for a Catholic to assume that every decision made by a bishop who later becomes Pope is infallible. And given the history of the papacy, serious moral defects much be considered possible in the abstract. Criticism of Church leaders may be necessary for their own good as well as that of the Church as a whole.

But the Church is a Family which means that public humiliation of one's own family including parents and other family authority figures is only moral if there is no other way of achieving their salvation. So we must not refuse to consider the possibility of failure, even serious moral failure in the successors of the Apostles, even of Saint Peter himself. But neither must we engage in public speculation or condemnation unless as a very last resort.

So read the following and consider what merit, if any, these current news stories really have:

Keeping the record straight on Benedict and the crisis:

Intense scrutiny is being devoted these days to Pope Benedict XVI's history on the sex abuse crisis. Revelations from Germany have put his five years as a diocesan bishop under a spotlight, and a piece on Thursday in The New York Times, on the case of Fr. Lawrence Murphy of Milwaukee...

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)