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	Our View: Heartbreak for Catholics South Coast Today March 28, 2010 http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100328/OPINION/3280347/-1/NEWS MASSACHUSETTS -- Through the long agony of the clergy abuse scandal, Roman Catholics have known that some bishops and cardinals in the American church allowed priests who were known pedophiles to continue to prey on children. The cover-up of crimes committed by a small minority of priests reached the office of Cardinal Bernard Law and other high-ranking bishops in dioceses across the United States. It has now been alleged, however, that the policy of protecting the institution and its clergy instead of victims of child rape and molestation reached the highest levels of the Vatican, which has responded as it often has — by issuing unsupported denials, deflecting blame and accusing news organizations of waging an attack on the Roman Catholic Church. The clergy abuse scandal has migrated from the United States to Canada, Australia, Brazil, then Ireland, Italy and Germany. And, as usual, the church has been slow to respond to horror tales of the abuse of thousands of children in cases that have resulted in administrative procedures against about 3,000 priests worldwide. Last week brought the most troubling accusations yet. In stories that were reported by The New York Times, lawyers representing some of the 200 alleged victims of a priest at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee released documents showing that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would ascend to the papacy as Benedict XVI in 2005, had been personally informed of the allegations and declined to defrock the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, despite the urging of U.S. bishops familiar with the matter. (It must be noted that civilian authorities contacted independently by some of Murphy's victims also failed to act, and Murphy was transferred to other duties in northern Wisconsin, where he also had ready access to children.) At the time, Ratzinger was in charge of overseeing clerical discipline in cases involving clergy sexual abuse while he served as the right arm to the late Pope John Paul II. Further, a new report found that Ratzinger was notified in a memo of the transfer in 1980 of a diocesan priest accused of molestation while Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich and Freising in Germany. The Vatican on Friday denied that he knew about the case. The new allegations are in direct conflict to the promises Pope Benedict gave to Catholics in Ireland, where decades of systemic sexual abuse have led to widespread disappointment and anger. The pope wrote that the church would meet with victims and conduct a full and open investigation, and he urged clergy to cooperate fully with civilian authorities in their investigation of the allegations. The pope must reconcile those words and his recent strong condemnation of the abuse scandal with at least some of his past actions, which appear to have been in line with the church's attempts to protect the institution rather than the victims. The Vatican's initial response to the reports of then-Cardinal Ratzinger's involvement have not been promising, as its newspaper characterized the Times' reports as part of an effort to besmirch the church. That is a red herring. If Ratzinger, in fact, ignored the urgings of American bishops to act against Murphy, then the issue is not whether the newspaper reports were intended to damage the church, but whether the future pope's actions were akin to those of Cardinal Law and others who ignored serious, substantiated allegations against priests and enabled those priests to continue preying on children. This series of events brings the clergy abuse scandal to the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican in both heartbreaking and shocking fashion. The pope and the Vatican have no way out except to uncover and acknowledge the truth, tend to the victims and hold themselves personally responsible if they failed to act in the best interests of thousands of believers. Anything less would be to undermine further the faith of all Catholics in the entire church hierarchy and to once again leave the vast majority of Catholic clergy who are without blame in this crisis to be painted with the same brush as those who were responsible. The world more than ever needs the moral authority which the Roman Catholic Church commands, but it will only be able to continue to wield that authority if the world and adherents to the faith are able to believe in the leaders of the faith. That is in peril now. The Vatican and Pope Benedict must acknowledge the truth, regardless of the cost of learning that truth, and then hold themselves accountable for whatever role they played in this international scandal that threatens to undermine the church's very foundation.
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