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A historic, if misguided, legal landmark is unfolding before our eyes: for the first time in history, a U.S. court will decide whether The Vatican and The Pope can be held liable for negligence in the growing nationwide priest abuse scandal.
The case against Pope Benedict XVI was filed in Louisville by William McMurry, with three men claiming to have been abused by priests in Kentucky. They also claim that the Pope and Vatican officials did nothing about it, and maintain this makes them legally liable.
Don't expect the case to go very far, however. The notion that a man sitting in Rome can be held personally responsible for the acts of men he's never met doing scurrilous things in Kentucky is pretty ridiculous, and not likely to hold up in court. The leader of a religion cannot keep in check his millions of followers any more than the CEO of a global corporation can keep tabs on the day-to-day doings of its blue-collar workers in plants around the world.
Such actions - largely seen by some as a biased anti-Catholic attempt to use the scandal to stir up dirt against the subject of their disdain - are already having a backlash around the world. Today, 4000 students held a protest against the media and handed the Pope a letter pledging their support.
The letter read, in part:
"We notice that many have taken advantage of some episodes that are painful for the Church and the pope to spread doubts and suspicion.
To these sowers of mistrust we wish to say with clarity that we do not accept their ideology ... we demand from them respect for our faith and the recognition of the right that we have to live as Christians in a plural society."
The Vatican has also attacked the media for its attempts to directly place the blame on the Pope for the misdeeds of individual Catholics around the world, calling it an "ignoble attempt" to smear the reputation of Catholicism.
According to FOX News:
McMurry is eager to find out what the Vatican knew and did, in particular, about Rev. Louis Miller, who was removed from the priesthood in 2004 by the late Pope John Paul II after pleading guilty in 2003 to sexually abusing one of the Kentucky defendants and other children in the 1970s. He is serving a 13-year prison sentence.
McMurry is seeking class-action status, saying there are thousands of victims across the country. "This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."
Opus Dei has published a stern rebuttal to the media hype, and so has the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops:
"We know from our experience how Pope Benedict is deeply concerned for those who have been harmed by sexual abuse and how he has strengthened the Church's response to victims and supported our efforts to deal with perpetrators."
Meanwhile, CNN's Anderson Cooper, known for playing fast-and-loose with fact-checking and fairness, has brought the rabidly anti-Catholic Sinead O'Connor onto his show and treated the washed-up singer as if she were some sort of valuable expert on the subject. Never mind that she's been generally regarded as a hateful nutcase in the show business industry for years, even before she tore apart a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live years ago. Talk about the fox investigating the chicken coop.
McMurry, who claims his lawsuit includes "all victims of priest abuse", says Pope Benedict XVI should be deposed and held under oath in a court of law because of his "unique knowledge" of the priest sex abuse cases.
The Holy See plans to argue that the Pope has immunity as head of state.
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ADD A COMMENT
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Steve Coomes
wed mar 31 2010
at 2:29 pm
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A New York Times piece I read just weeks ago puts Benedict, when Card. Ratzinger, at a key juncture in investigating claims of abuse. by the Times account, he let many just go unacknowledged and let many priests be moved around to different congregations without sanction.
Is that guilt by association or guilt by indifference or guilt by denial? I haven't decided yet. What I'm confident of is he did little to nothing to stop it. At least I've never seen evidence to prove he did. |
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J.S. Holland
wed mar 31 2010
at 2:51 pm
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I've heard those same rumors about Ratzinger also, but rumors are only that. I don't know what really happened. I wasn't there. And neither was anyone else blowing their horn about it, including Anderson Cooper.
That the Vatican needs a spring cleaning is obvious; but the media's tendency to assign a scapegoat as a simple solution to a complicated situation is what I'm grousing about.
Blaming the Pope for what some pervs in Kentucky did is like blaming Steve Jobs personally for any crimes committed by a schmuck working in a podunk Apple store. |
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Steve Coomes
wed mar 31 2010
at 5:30 pm
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I don't iL Pappa for the actions of the various Fathers Pervie in KY, only actions that he literally ignored, reports that came across his desk and did nothing about. No rumors. the stuff is documented. McMurray is going too far, no doubt. And as gross is this abuse is, when does a statute of limitations set in? I thought the suing was all done. |
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J.S. Holland
wed mar 31 2010
at 8:26 pm
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John L. Allen Jr., writing for Vatican Radio, makes a case that at least *sounds* good (but consider the source, of course) in defense of the Pope's record on combating errant priests:
http://www.oecumene.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=367826
But my point anyway is not to defend the Pope so much, but to call attention to the media's tendency (and society's tendency in general) to simple-mindedly reduce a problem to one man or one thing. Even Watergate was reduced to Richard Nixon's guilt and Iran-Contra to Oliver North's, despite a whole vast group of people being involved in these cases.
People's minds just can't get a grip on 100 people each being just a little bit guilty - they'd much rather it be one man who is very guilty. It's crunchier and more satisfying. |
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feelthatfire
wed mar 31 2010
at 8:44 pm
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J.S. Holland
thu apr 01 2010
at 1:34 pm
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shadowknight
thu apr 01 2010
at 4:07 pm
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this will go no where,to many Catholics in high places.But this is not the first scandal to involve the leaders of leaders of this church, |
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J.S. Holland
fri apr 02 2010
at 8:17 am
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Right you are. I originally said "Largely seen" and then changed it to "seen by some" but forgot to remove the word "largely". |
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bicuspidsmith
fri apr 02 2010
at 9:37 am
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catholics would be ok by me if they werent so gung ho about taking away womens right to choose |
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J.S. Holland
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I'm a multi-purpose media interloper working around the globe to make our world a weirder place to live in, but choose to call the dark and bloody ground of Jefferson County, Transylvania (some still call it Kentucky) my home base of operations.
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