Defending Papa Benedict
By Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Pope Benedict has broken his self imposed silence to defend his record against attacks that he did not do enough to expose child molesting priests. London’s Daily Telegraph reports on the Pope Emeritus’ dialogue with a leading atheist about this issue here. The critics have jumped in with unfounded accusations that he never exposed a pedophile priest. They don’t know how the Church works. It was never his job to be a one man pedophile police force. Within his area of authority Benedict did everything he could to root out the evil, but too often the diocesan authorities themselves obstructed and hid what was going on. Nevertheless, the rot still goes on. This week a priest in Pennsylvania was charged with molesting a teenaged boy he met through Craigslist and the news reports about Fr. Curtis Wehmeyer in Minnesota make for depressing reading. The Vicar General in particular seems to be a classic case of an ignorant, arrogant, incompetent churchman of the highest order. With Wehmeyer we have a priest who was caught cruising gay pick up spots, was reported for making lewd suggestions in a public bookshop to young men and had a camper in which he took young boys…and the Vicar General treats the whole thing with a sort of casual concern and doesn’t think the creep is a danger to kids. Geesh, after all that’s happened we still get such total idiots running the show? What a broken down, incompetent, blind and deluded bunch we are…may the good Lord deliver us from ourselves. Lord have mercy.
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