Standing on My Head
September 24, 2013 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.
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