UPDATE: On Thursday, April 1, Catholic League President Bill Donohue will appear on the Fox News Channel program "Your World With Neil Cavuto" to discuss the pope and his handling of recent allegations at 4:45 pm ET.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn has joined the chorus condemning the New York Times' attempt to implicate Pope Benedict XVI in clerical sex abuse cover-ups, saying that the Catholic Church will no longer stand to be treated as the paper's "personal punching bag."
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn has joined the chorus condemning the New York Times' attempt to implicate Pope Benedict XVI in clerical sex abuse cover-ups, saying that the Catholic Church will no longer stand to be treated as the paper's "personal punching bag."
"Enough is enough! Two weeks of articles about a story from many decades ago, in the midst of the Most Holy Season of the Church year, is both callous and smacks of calumny," said the bishop during his homily at a March 30 Chrism Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. James.
Cardinal Levada, who is the current prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), began his remarks by addressing a recent New York Times article by senior columnist Laurie Goodstein which leveled charges against the Vatican's handling of a Milwaukee sex abuse case. The prelate also took issue with an accompanying editorial which echoed Goodstein's perspective.
“I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, the New York Times,” Cardinal Levada wrote.“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,” stressed the cardinal, who then discussed what he found to be most troubling in Goodstein's March 24 article.
The mainstream media effort to tar Pope Benedict with the sexual abuse scandal has served to bring to the fore evidence that Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict - has in fact, in the words of one of his defenders, “done more than any pope or bishop” to halt the sexual abuse scandal. In recent days, numerous commentators, including in some cases even critics of the Church who believe that there is more that can be done, have stepped forward stating that the pope’s track record on the issue, rather than implicating him in a "cover-up," actually sets him apart as the member of the curia who has most vigorously attacked the issue.
1 comments:
Since I'm smarter than the Pope (or at least realize what the press wants, I'll draft an appropriate apology for him: "I'm so sorry for all the abuse of all the children over all the years by Catholic priests. This abuse is proof positive of three things: 1) The Catholic church's rules on sexual morality are hopelessly out-of-date and discriminatory, 2) There is no way to maintain a celibate male clergy and 3) Our leadership structure is hopelessly broken,
Therefore, effective immediately, the Catholic church will start to
1. Allow anyone to have sex with anyone/thing s/he wishes, providing the subject of lust is not a child and providing both parties agree, 2. Allow women to be priests, and give all priests their rights as noted in No. 1 above, and
3. Institute a democratic legislative method of determining doctrine and moral teachings in the future
Further, as all these people have been hurt, and as they all have lawyers to pay, we will sell all the art treasures in the Vatican and distribute the money to the victims and their lawyers"
Any less of an apology, any less of a commitment to action just isn't going to satisfy that crowd.
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