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Editors of the New York Times should realize that they were “used” by a lawyer trying to sue the Vatican, Catholic commentator Scott P. Richert remarked in a recent lecture. Examining instances of biased reporting and manipulation of the media, he also discussed the causes of clerical sexual abuse and Pope Benedict’s efforts against it.
Richert, editor of both Chronicles Magazine and the About.com GuideSite to Catholicism, on June 3 delivered a lecture at the Illinois-based Rockford Institute on the topic “Clerical Sexual Abuse: Separating Fact, Fiction, and Anti-Catholic Bias.” [Great title!]
An excerpt of his lecture, posted on YouTube, shows Richert exposing the “dirty little secret” that the New York Times’ coverage of the Fr. Lawrence Murphy abuse case had its source in Jeffrey Anderson.
Anderson, who directed Times reporter Laurie Goodstein to his documentation on the story, is the “most famous” of the sexual abuse attorneys and has made at least $60 million off such cases. [Judas Iscariot went to law school! And he is still fighting for justice and the oppressed! Wow...]
“Unfortunately for him, he’s running out of clients,” Richert said. Less than a month after Goodstein’s article, he filed suit against the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI, using the Fr. Murphy case as its basis.
The New York Times attempted to connect the Pope to the case, claiming he “declined to defrock” the priest who abused dozens of deaf school children.
Critics including Richert pointed out that the documentation used by the Times’ story in fact exonerated Pope Benedict and showed how the Archdiocese of Milwaukee [headed by that sorry excuse for a Benedictine, for a priest, for a bishop and archbishop, Rembert Weakland who confessed to being a homosexual and who used church money to support his gay lifestyle and his lover! He should be the one that the New York Times is going after!] and secular authorities bore responsibility for inaction in the case.
Notoriously, one of the source documents about a key meeting between archdiocesan and Vatican officials was poorly translated from Italian using a computer program. [Google translate! That's a Peabody for you there! Hah!] This distorted or left out key information about the Vatican’s response to the case.
“If the editors of the New York Times are not complete and utter morons, they have to realize that they were used,” Richert commented. [I think they are both! Hah!]
In an article at About.com, he noted that the Times itself has reported that Laurie Goodstein was not working on the Fr. Murphy case when Anderson gave her the documents. In Richert’s view, this calls into question her claim her article was not done “at the instigation of lawyers.” [Oh really?]
In his Rockford Institute lecture, Richert cited Vatican attorney Jeffrey Lena’s comment that Anderson “shows how you can both create a media frenzy and then capitalize on it.”
He’s “very, very good at creating intense media interest and then shaping a narrative for the press to write their stories around,” Lena continued, saying Anderson “serves these media events up like nice little meals for reporters to chow down on. And they do.”
Richert discussed his lecture in an interview with Stephanie Block, founder of the Catholic Media Coalition, at her blog Orate Fratres.
He said that the campaign against the Church is motivated both by the greediness of “lawyers who are running out of clients” and by the hatred of Pope Benedict XVI for really believing what the Catholic Church teaches. [And because Pope Benedict is leading the charge against massive secularism, abortion, gay marriage!]
As one instance of bias, he noted that the final questions of a New York Times / CBS News poll read “like push polling” and used the questions to try to change attitudes rather than measure them.
The most egregious example, in his view, was a question that asked whether sexual abuse of children and teenagers is “a more common problem in the Catholic Church than it is in other walks of life, or is it just as common a problem in other walks of life?” [Too leading. That is journalistic objectivity for you folks!] This missed alternative responses like the view that abuse is less common in the Catholic Church, or that abuse is more common in other walks of life.
Explaining how clerical sexual abuse became such a problem, Richert said that one particular cohort of priests, born between 1925 and ordained between 1950 and 1975, were responsible for “the bulk of the crisis,” as were most bishops who transferred accused priests and covered up allegations.
“By 1980, they had begun to retire or die, and by 2002, most of them were no longer active priests,” he told Block.
He speculated that too many in the Church began to regard the priesthood as a profession or occupation [and in some cases, regretably though, as a way for a better chance at life.] rather than as a vocation. Some bishops then began to ordain men to the priesthood who “weren’t fit to be husbands and fathers,” Richert said, quoting Byzantine Catholic priest Fr. Thomas Loya.
Similarly, some bishops began to treat grave sin as a medical or physical problem and not a “metaphysical” one. [yeah like a kid gets possessed and they treat it as a psychological disorder.]
Richert explained that before he became Pope, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger successfully lobbied to have responsibility for cases of sexual abuse transferred from the Roman Rota to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). [TRUE!] Since April 2001, the CDF has investigated over 3,000 abuse cases and 85 percent of those cases brought to canonical trial have resulted in convictions. [And the mainstream media did not even bother to publish this.]
Despite the objections of other prominent Vatican officials, [like Cardinal Sodano who up to now, reportedly, refused to leave his office in the Vatican even though he is not Cardinal Secretary of State anymore.] Cardinal Ratzinger also ordered the investigation of Fr. Marcel Maciel, the powerful founder of the Legion of Christ who faced many allegations of sexual abuse. This investigation resulted in the priest’s removal from ministry and his exile to a monastery. [who died refusing Sacramental Confession!]
The future Pope Benedict also helped the U.S. bishops develop their charter to protect young people and put into place “strict new rules” to prevent the admission to the priesthood of both practicing homosexuals and those with homosexual tendencies. Since over two-thirds of U.S. priest abuse cases from 1950 to 2002 involved adolescent males, Richert contended, they are more accurately described as homosexual acts rather than pedophilia. [Still nothing from NYT!]
Questioning the motives of groups like the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), he noted that both oppose the ban on homosexuals in the priesthood, both call for an end to clerical celibacy, and SNAP in particular has agitated for women priests. [Wolves in sheeps clothing! And you think they are the victims? Think again. They are not only after the money of the Church but they are also after the total destruction of the Catholic Church!] According to Richert, SNAP has received “significant funding” from lawyers [I hope he gives names.] who have sued the Church.
Richert’s lecture is available for purchase at the Rockford Institute website, www.rockfordinstitute.org.
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Now the issue is clear.
Attorney's for the victims are after the money, not after justice.
NYT and SNAP are after the pope and the Catholic Church because of her doctrines.
If these groups are really after justice, why not go after Cardinal Mahony and Abp. Weakland? Apparently, these agents of evil do not want to touch these two men because:
1. Mahony is a liberal loved by liberal minded dissident Catholics, and non Catholics who hate the Catholic Church.
2. Weakland is a homosexual and a disgrace to the Church for how he destroyed the liturgical heritage of his cathedral in Milwaukee and how he lived an active homosexual life while as archbishop, even using the money collected every at every church in his archdiocese to support and shut his lover up.
And both men transferred offending priests, from one parish to another...
Yet the NYT and SNAP did not vent their energies against them, instead focusing their aim, like a laser beam, on Pope Benedict.
And they call Catholics bigots. Yeah, right.
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