The Case of Father Lawrence Murphy of Milwaukee, WI

From: http://popebenedictandclergyabuse.blogspot.com/

The Charges

• Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys, by Laurie Goodstein. New York Times March 24, 2010. The charge: “Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church.”
• Events in the Case of an Accused Priest by Laurie Goodstein. New York Times March 31, 2010.

Critical Responses to the New York Times

• Smoking Gun Memo In Murphy Paedophilia Case!, by Jimmy Akin. National Catholic RegisterApril 5, 2010. “[An accurate translation of the memos] reveals just how completely wrong theNew York Times and the mainstream media have gotten this story.”
• Lost in translation, Vatican edition Get Religion April 8, 2010. “I hope that it’s possible to simultaneously condemn the abuse of children that has taken place, to criticize the Vatican’s handling of the problem over the years, and to hope that the media work to cover this storymore responsibly than we’ve been seeing.”
• Italian political paper: “New York Times needs consultants more than Vatican does” Catholic News Agency April 6, 2010. Charging a failure in translation, the influential Italian political newspaper Il Foglio published an article today criticizing the New York Times for relying on a computer-generated translation from Italian to English of important responses from the Vatican to a sex abuse case.
• Cardinal Levada to NY Times: Reconsider ‘attack mode’ against Pope Benedict March 30th, 2010. Catholic San Francisco‘s editorial by the current Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. “As I write this response today (March 26, 2010) I have had to admit to them that I am not proud of America’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness.”
• Milwaukee church judge clarifies case of abusive priest Father Murphy Catholic Anchor March 29, 2010. Fr. Thomas Brundage, JLC – then-presiding judge for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee gives first-person account of the canonical proceedings against Father Lawrence Murphy.
• Remarks by Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki at the end of the March 30, 2010 Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee:
  

  The Holy Father does not need me to defend him or his decisions. I believe, and history will confirm that his actions in responding to this crisis, swiftly and decisively and his compassionate response to victims/surviovrs, speak for themselves. The Holy Father has been firm in his commitment to combat clergy sexual abuse; root it out of the Church; reach out to those who have been harmed; and hold perpetrators accountable. He has been a leader, meeting with victims/survivors and chastising bishops for their lack of judgment and leadership.
  Mistakes were made in the Lawrence Murphy case. The mistakes were not made in Rome in 1996, 1997 and 1998. The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the Church, by civil authorities, by Church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness in the name of the Church and in the name of this Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

• Cardinal Ratzinger An Evil Monster? Point-by-point analysis by Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin (National Catholic Register March 30, 2010).
• A Response to the New York Times, by Fr. Raymond J. de Souza (National Review‘s “The Corner” March 27, 2010).
• Avvenire: New York Times Contradicts Itself A reconstruction of events by Riccardo Cascioli forAvvenire, the newspaper of the Italian episcopal conference. March 26, 2010.
• The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn’t tell you, by Phil Lawler (Catholic Culture. March 25, 2010).
• Vatican Statement on the “Murphy Case” Statement given to the New York Times on Wednesday by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office. Zenit News Service. March 25, 2010.

The Pope, the Scandal, and the Crib Notes for Journalism 101

“Ms. Goodstein has written that she strives to give views other than her own a fair shake. I believe her. Beyond that, I appreciate reporters who are game enough to spar verbally with comedian Stephen Colbert, as Goodstein did when divisions within the Anglican Communion were making news. But in trying to undercut the moral witness of the pope by suggesting that as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger he was too forgiving of the monstrous Fr. Murphy, Goodstein committederrors of fact, interpretation, context, and journalistic procedure that together make nonsense of any claim to objectivity on the part of theNew York Times.”

Patrick O’Hannigan // The American Spectator

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/05/the-pope-the-scandal-and-the-c

The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI: how it looks to an American in the Vatican

“I say this because today’s Times presents both a lengthy article by Laurie Goodstein, a senior columnist, headlined “Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest,” and an accompanying editorial entitled “The Pope and the Pedophilia Scandal,” in which the editors call the Goodstein article a disturbing report (emphasis in original) as a basis for their own charges against the Pope. Both the article and the editorial are deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness that Americans have every right and expectation to find in their major media reporting.”

Cardinal William J. Levada // Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_card-levada2010_en.html