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	Holy Father Can't Dodge '96 Scandal By Daniel J. Bauer China Post April 4, 2010 http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/the-china-post/daniel-j.-bauer/2010/04/04/251111/Holy-Father.htm TAIWAN -- William Blake's disturbing poem entitled "The Sick Rose," published in 1794, offers insight into a variety of realities we face in life, including sickness, secrecy, and "destruction." Sad to say, "The Sick Rose" seems today to apply very well indeed to the problem of sexual abuse by priests and other authority figures in the Catholic Church. The poem also speaks to questions of credibility now swirling around Pope Benedict XVI in the context of a mind-boggling case with which he was familiar as a high Vatican official in 1996. "O Rose, thou art sick. / The invisible worm / That flies in the night / In the howling storm," wrote Blake, "Has found out thy bed / Of crimson joy, / And his dark secret love / Does thy life destroy." Long before he became Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the church from 1981 until 2005. According to a recent report in The New York Times, in 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger's office received two letters from Rembert G. Weakland, archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, asking for instructions on how to deal with a priest in Milwaukee who had been accused of sexually abusing up to 200 students at St. John's School for the Deaf in nearby St. Francis. Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope, did not respond to those letters. Eight months passed, and the number two man at the Congregation, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, authorized bishops in Wisconsin to conduct a secret canonical trial that could have led to the errant priest's dismissal from the priesthood. Cardinal Bertone called a halt to the procedure against the cleric, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, however, after Murphy wrote personally to Cardinal Ratzinger and begged for clemency. According to The New York Times, Vatican files do not contain a single word of response to the case from the then Cardinal Ratzinger. As Holy Father, Benedict XVI now speaks of the need for forthright action in face of sexual abuse. He also emphasizes the value of transparency. From 1974 till his death in 1998, three Wisconsin archbishops hid Murphy's behavior. They never reported him to criminal authorities, and protected him from prosecutors. Cardinal Ratzinger's actions fit that shameful pattern of wrong. We need not be a noted poet to see the sadness of this story. By 1996, the Catholic Church should have known better than to let a Father Murphy slip from the grip of justice. All too obviously, the church should have taken his accusers seriously and defrocked their self-confessed abuser. The church should also have sought the help of the criminal justice system. John L. Allen Jr. defended the pope in "A papal conversion," a column he published in The International Herald Tribute on March 29. Allen points to aggressive reforms which Ratzinger affected in the Vatican's response to sexual abuse in 2001 as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Benedict XVI was, Allen reminds us, the first pope to ever meet with victims of abuse, something he did in Australia and the United States in 2008. Benedict remarked publicly on the moral wrong of abuse five times in his visit to the United States. Allen is right to speak of the positives in the Holy Father's record here. Still, nagging questions remain, and Vatican efforts to downplay the seriousness of the Ratzinger — Murphy story are a Blake-like worm in the rose of Benedict's credibility. How can it be that Cardinal Ratzinger, with all of his experience and power, could have known in 1996 what Father Murphy was about and still allowed him to go Scot free? And how many other Father Murphys were there in those same years? The role of the Holy Father is such that many who are not Catholic or even Christian look to his leadership as a source of hope in a world all too often overrun by the shadows so common in some of Blake's writings. It is not enough for the Vatican to now offer excuses for what happened in the Murphy case. To put it mildly but, I hope, to put it with all due respect, our Holy Father owes us much more than only that old song and dance. Father Daniel J. Bauer SVD is a priest and associate professor in the English Department at Fu Jen Catholic University.
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