Catholic Priest Continued To Rape Boys
by tristero
What the hell were they thinking? I've tried to wrap my mind around it and can't quite grasp why the Vatican decided, on Good Friday, to grossly insult Jews. Here is the best that I can come up with.
The purpose of this sick little tactic is to change the subject. The Vatican is counting upon a journalistic truth: There is only so much room in the news for stories about any topic or group, say, for instance, Catholic priests. The time spent arguing about what a priest said is time NOT spent finding out more about what numerous priests actually did. At first, that's doesn't seem like much of a change of subject - after all, what that priest said, was pretty awful - but it is.
Instead of denouncing evil deeds, we are being urged to denounce evil words.
Evil words are very bad, but from the standpoint of people trying to manage a huge crisis, they are more easily explained and excused than evil deeds. And sure enough, they've started the process of diffusing the anger. Let's follow it and see what happens: Vatican spokesman the Rev Federico Lombardi later contacted the Associated Press news agency to say Father Cantalamessa was not speaking as a Vatican official.
He said such a comparison could "lead to misunderstandings and is not an official position of the Catholic Church".
Uh huh: However, Fr Cantalamessa's sermon was printed in full on the front page of the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
Get it? All this time you've spent reading about this he said/she said bullshit is time you have not spent reading about this:Father Murphy, who is accused of molesting as many as 200 boys at the school near Milwaukee, also used his family’s lakefront cottage as a lure in his sexual advances, bringing youths from the school into his home beginning at least in the early 1960s.
What has recently come to light in fresh documents and interviews is that he was in the company of boys not only from the Milwaukee area but in the Northwoods region. Two in the area have accused Father Murphy of abuse, one at the isolated family cottage and the other, as late as 1978, at a youth detention center near Boulder Junction.
Speaking with a therapist years later, Father Murphy denied having any sexual contact “with any person” after leaving the school for the deaf in 1974.
Got that? A boy-raping Catholic priest was not punished, either by the Church or the police. He was simply allowed to retire. Where he happily continued raping young boys.
If it is your job to manage an obscenely large and disgusting scandal, it is far, far better to shift everyone's focus onto some batty priest's intemperate and "unofficial" remarks than do nothing and have people learn even more salacious details about priest/boy buggery. And that is why that batty priest compared outrage over the coddling of sexual abusers to anti-Semitism.
Evidence that this is a deliberately planned and executed strategy of media relations can be found by examining the actual words the actually-not-so-batty priest said. Tellingly, it was not the priest who actually made the comparison. He'll have you believe that he just noted it:By a rare coincidence, this year our Easter falls on the same week of the Jewish Passover which is the ancestor and matrix within which it was formed. This pushes us to direct a thought to our Jewish brothers. They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms. I received in this week the letter of a Jewish friend and, with his permission, I share here a part of it.
He said: “I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism. Therefore I desire to express to you personally, to the Pope and to the whole Church my solidarity as Jew of dialogue and of all those that in the Jewish world (and there are many) share these sentiments of brotherhood. Our Passover and yours are undoubtedly different, but we both live with Messianic hope that surely will reunite us in the love of our common Father. I wish you and all Catholics a Good Easter.”
That's right. You can't blame that Catholic priest for such a bizarre comparison. After all, it was his friend, the Jew, who said it.
This oh-so-convenient Letter From A Hebrew is such a cynical tactic, but it's a cynical tactic that works. I can come up with only one way to confront it but it depends upon media outlets being aware that they are being manipulated and who won't permit themselves to be.
The Vatican is counting upon stories of the Good Friday sermon to squeeze out stories about more revelations of priestly diddling, Instead, the media should report both, with an emphasis on the most important of the two stories, the unspeakably awful sexual abuse and coverup.
In short, if the Vatican wants to double down on this story, the media should, too. The Vatican is counting on substituting one story for another. The media should run with both. Double the focus on the Church and its myriad sexual abuse scandals.
That's the last thing the Vatican wants. And so, as they realize it is in their interest not to make the story any bigger than it already is, I think there's a chance the hateful, bigoted remarks would rapidly end.
That's would be a very good thing. Nowhere near as good as bringing everyone involved in the abuse and coverup to justice, but putting a lid on hateful speech is a good thing, nevertheless.