BishopAccountability.org
	Corrupt Vatican Too Soft on Pedophilia By Tyler Dawson The Gateway April 1, 2010 http://thegatewayonline.ca/articles/opinion/2010/04/01/corrupt-vatican-too-soft-pedophilia CANADA -- Recently, a bust in the Toronto area yielded 73 suspects in an international child pornography ring. The police stated that "the victimization of a child has a lifetime effect on their lives, their loved ones and the community at large," a statement that acknowledges the severity of child abuse crimes. Already, the arrests of two men have been made because of /immediate/ concern for the safety of children in their areas. Obviously, when such situations arise, we respond with severe legal consequences. But unfortunately, it would appear that in certain cases, if an institution commits pedophilic crimes on a colossal scale, they will be able to exercise their political clout to escape retribution. I speak, of course, of the Catholic Church, and the multitude of disturbing revelations that have come to light recently. Not only have members of the priesthood committed crimes of child molestation, but it's now clear that the highest echelons of the Catholic Church have been complicit in shielding members of the priesthood from justice. This phenomenon is global, but in the United States alone, over 10,000 children, mostly boys, have been abused by at least 4,000 priests. And these are just the priests that have been charged with sexual offenses. The scale of this abuse is unbelievable — and it gets worse. The degeneracy of the Catholic Church has very few limits. For example, Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy of Wisconsin had systematically abused 200 young boys at St. John's School for the Deaf for a quarter of a century. In 1996, archbishops complained to the Vatican about Murphy, accusing him of pedophilia. The response from the Vatican? Not a thing. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to whom these concerns were addressed, failed to respond to the letters of the American clergymen, including the Archbishop of Milwaukee. As Archbishop in the 1980s, Ratzinger approved the transfer of a known pedophile, Peter Hullermann, into his diocese in Germany, where he went on to molest a number of children in his parish. Joseph Ratzinger is most famous now as Pope Benedict XVI, the head of the Catholic Church. Not only did Ratzinger fail to directly respond to the concerns of his underlings in sexual abuse cases, but it was also an appeal for leniency made directly to him by Lawrence Murphy in 1998 that compelled Vatican officials to retain Murphy within the priesthood. Although Benedict XVI has a more aggressive record of dealing with pedophilia than his predecessor, when an obvious case of severe sexual abuse is dismissed, the legitimacy of the Vatican's internal rules is called into question. Indeed, despite the fact that victims of abuse have personally alerted other members of the clergy, the Vatican had the audacity to denounce this scandal as an ignoble attempt by the media to tarnish the reputation of the Church and the Pope. The evidence is compelling – the Catholic Church has systematically failed to act on numerous accounts of pedophilia. Their internal governance is clearly incapable of administering appropriate punishment. The solution is to apply secular, constitutional, and criminal laws to these men, and deal with them as justice demands — the institutional power of the Catholic Church be allowed to circumvent the rule of law. Indeed, British lawyers are planning a legal attack on Benedict XVI if he attempts to enter the United Kingdom this year. Let's hope they succeed — this is exactly the sort of judicial work necessary to bring a decidedly criminal organization to justice.
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.