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	Says the Judge: Priest Was on Trial the Day He Died By Patrick Mcilheran Milwaukee Journal Sentinel March 31, 2010 http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/89602992.html Did the Vatican protect an old molesting priest? The canonical judge trying the priest says no. The claim is that the man now Pope Benedict XVI in the 1990s "refused" to defrock the notorious Father Lawrence Murphy, who molested boys from the 1950s to 1974 at a school for the deaf in St. Francis. This is the basis of the New York Times story of scandal over the past week. This is what made one protester in Milwaukee say the other day that "We're finally able to get it where we believe it belongs, and that's at the Vatican doorstep." So, did then Cardinal Ratzinger "refuse" to defrock Murphy? No, as even the Times' own documents show: Ratzinger's office only got word of the case in 1996, when Milwaukee's archbishop, Rembert Weakland, informed it that Murphy would face a church trial. It wasn't until 1997, when Murphy argued that church law's statute of limitations had run out, that the Milwaukeeans asked for something from Rome, the waiver of that limit. Ratzinger's office granted it, allowing the trial to proceed. Read the documents here. The remaining question is whether Ratzinger himself had the trial halted after Murphy wrote to him in 1998, asking, essentially, that an old priest be left to die in peace. If he did, this doesn't mean he was letting Murphy off easy. Church trials take a long time. In other cases after Ratzinger's office took control of the process in the 1990s, offenders were simply and more swiftly removed from ministry -- that is, they were given no work and, so, kept away from potential victims. This appears, from the Times' documents, to be what Ratzinger's office was suggesting about Murphy in summer 1998. Now comes this compelling piece of evidence: The account of the priest who was acting as canonical judge in Murphy's case. Father Thomas Brundage, now working in Anchorage, was the man in charge of the church's prosecution of Murphy. He says the New York Times botched the facts (and that the Times didn't bother to call and ask, either). Had they called the judge in charge of the process, Brundage could have told them: Nobody stopped Murphy's trial. The first word of any such stopping came in a letter from Weakland to the Vatican two days before Murphy died. Brundage writes: "The fact is that on the day that Father Murphy died, he was still the defendant in a church criminal trial. No one seems to be aware of this. Had I been asked to abate this trial, I most certainly would have insisted that an appeal be made to the supreme court of the church, or Pope John Paul II if necessary. That process would have taken months if not longer. "Second, with regard to the role of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), in this matter, I have no reason to believe that he was involved at all. Placing this matter at his doorstep is a huge leap of logic and information." Brundage points out that it was Ratzinger who pulled abuse cases out of a plodding church bureaucracy and sped up their handling. The well-regarded John Allen wrote on this point earlier this month: Ratzinger set off changes in how the church handles sexual abuse, changes that are "Copernican" in scope, swiftly taking down long-protected high-profile abusers and dragging the Vatican out of its crouching denial. "Therein, however, lies the rub," wrote Allen. "Relatively few people know or care how far the Vatican, or the pope, have come over the past eight years." How far? So much that the just-released outside audit of abuse claims found exactly 21 allegations of sex abuse of minors by American priests in 2009. That's 21 more than acceptable, of course, but it's fairly low for a church of 60 million people and it's a markedly lower rate than in other professions dealing with children. It does not jibe at all with the claim that the church continues to ignore the problem. Also: Rocco Palmo notes Tuesday's escalation in New York: Brooklyn's bishop urges Catholics to "besiege" the New York Times with the message that they won't tolerate its making the church a "punching bag." The Times, meanwhile, sics Maureen Dowd on the church -- including on Milwaukee alum Tim Dolan. What's with the combat? Palmo suggests it's because, unlike in past years, the church now has leaders who feel more able and willing to push back at attacks.
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