Laurie Goodstein only interested in Sex Abuse if it's Catholic

Continue Reading at The Media Report

Pope Lauds Benedict For Abuse Response

From the Catholic League

Pope Francis (Left) with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Bill Donohue comments on remarks made today by Pope Francis on the sexual abuse scandal:

No one has done more to check the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church than Pope Benedict XVI, but he receives very little credit for doing so. That is why what Pope Francis said today matters: he singled Benedict out for his yeoman efforts. “Benedict XVI was very courageous and has opened a new way.” Because of Benedict, he said, “the Church has done much, perhaps more than all the others.”

Pope Francis is twice right. Long before Benedict became pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation, called for swifter and stronger procedures to punish molesting priests. That was in 1988. In 2001, he was given exclusive jurisdiction over these matters, and in 2003 he was awarded the power to police priestly sexual abuse. When he became pope, he made it more difficult for practicing homosexuals to enter the priesthood, the net effect of which has been a sharp decline in the number of abuse cases.

In his interview today, Pope Francis said, “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution that has moved with transparency and responsibility. No one has done more, and yet the Church is the only one that is being attacked.” The pope was obviously referring to the highly politicized, and maliciously conceived, United Nations report on the Vatican’s response to this issue.

Pope Francis not only speaks truth to power, and to the people, he tells it like it is to those who selectively rally to his side. Yesterday, his comments condemning anti-Catholicism were, as I predicted, all but ignored. His remarks today lauding his predecessor will similarly be given short shrift. Such is the politics of the left, religious as well as secular.

New York Times Turns a Blind Eye to Child Sex Abuse

From the Catholic League

Yesterday, the New York Post ran a story titled, “Brooklyn DA Releases Names of 46 Convicted Child Sex-Abusers Who Terrorized the Orthodox Jewish Community From Within”; this covered a four-year period. This alarming story was not reported either yesterday or today in the New York Times. Take note: there haven’t been 46 credible accusations made against 40,000 priests in the United States in the last four years.

New York Times: "Go Easy on Child Abusers"

Except if they're Catholic priests.

Thanks to the Catholic League.

Widespread sex abuse reported at juvenile centers

By Pete Yost, Associated Press - June 6, 2013.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government says 1 in 10 youths at juvenile detention facilities around the country reported having been sexually victimized by staff or by other youths.

The study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that among the more than 1,300 youths who reported victimization by adult staff, 9 out of 10 were male juvenile detainees reporting sexual activity with female staff members.

Continue reading at Yahoo News.

Another Anti-Catholic Publicity Stunt Fizzles

International Court Case Against ex-Pope Fizzles

New York, 13th June 2013, Rachel Zoll, AP.

The International Criminal Court has rejected a longshot request by clergy sex abuse victims to investigate former Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity.

The tribunal, based in The Hague, told attorneys for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests that "there is not a basis at this time to proceed with further analysis."

"The matters described in your communication do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court," a court official wrote in a May 31 letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the nonprofit legal group that represents the victims. The legal organization released the letter Thursday.

Jeffrey Lena, the U.S. attorney for the Vatican, had called the 2011 request to the court a "ludicrous publicity stunt."

Continue reading at The Seattle Times.

More from the Catholic League.

Tim Minchin - !@%# his Pope Song

Comedian Tim Minchin will be in Brisbane in March. Like many comedians he's sometimes funny and sometimes a complete tosser. Minchin's "Pope Song" shows just how ugly the comedian can be. The "Pope Song" is a completely unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI filled with one lie after another. Given Tim Minchin declares himself a fan of Richard Dawkins one shouldn't be surprised at his difficulty with facts.

Tim Minchin's "Pope Song" with a running commentary can be seen below.
Click the "YouTube" or expansion button for a better view. Warning - much swearing.



Of course there is no credible evidence that the Pope is guilty of anything Minchin accuses him of. So why write the song, if not to give expression to his own bigoted anti-Catholic feelings.

Numerous articles defending Pope Benedict against the attacks from the likes of Tim Minchin can be found here.

Revisiting Geoffrey Robertson’s plan to arrest the Pope

Should the Pope be tried for crimes against humanity?

Mercator Net, Michael Cook | Friday, 9 April 2010

A United Nations jurist wants to put Benedict XVI in the dock for condoning sex-abuse. The real question is, how many others should be there with him?

A prominent Australian-British human rights lawyer and United Nations jurist has suggested that the Pope be put on trial for crimes against humanity. I think that this is a brilliant idea.

Geoffrey Robertson outlined his scheme in The Guardian and a number of Australian newspapers. Although he feels strongly that the Vatican is fraudulently representing itself as an independent country, the Pope should be brought to account for systematic abuse of human rights during his pontificate. Since 2002, he points out, heads of state are no longer immune from prosecution before the International Criminal Court. For instance, a warrant has been issued for the arrest of the president of the Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In Pope Benedict’s case, Robertson argues that this includes sexual abuse of minors:

Continue reading at MercatorNet: Should the Pope be tried for crimes against humanity?

If you are interested in reading more, please check out MercatorNet's focus blog on the sexual abuse crisis -- Just B16

ABC’s religious department twisting the truth again.

Priest denies making claims about Mary MacKillop's excommunication

Clare Rawlinson and James Madden  The Australian October 07, 2010

THE priest who spent 25 years lobbying for Mary MacKillop's canonisation has angrily dismissed recent media reports.

The reports said the soon-to-be saint was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for exposing acts of child sex abuse by a South Australian clergyman.

Paul Gardiner, chaplain of the Mary MacKillop Penola Centre, said the claims, published on ABC Online and in Fairfax newspapers last month, were false, and he feared the misleading coverage was an attempt to take a swipe at the church and distract the public in the lead-up to MacKillop's canonisation on October 17.

ABC Online and Fairfax both reported that MacKillop's ousting from the church in 1871 was prompted by her exposure of a Kapunda priest's abuse of local children. The claims were based on remarks made by Father Gardiner in a documentary made for ABC TV's Compass program.

But both Father Gardiner and the program's executive producer deny ever making such an inference. "Early in 1870, the scandal occurred and the Sisters of Saint Joseph reported it to Father Tenison Woods, but Mary was in Queensland and no one was worried about her," Father Gardiner told The Australian.

Father Gardiner, considered the nation's foremost authority on the history of MacKillop, said his words had been twisted to suit the "ill will" of media outlets.

Continue reading Priest denies making claims about MacKillop's excommunication | The Australian

Jon Stewart Misleads Public about Pope Benedict XVI

Jon Stewart can be a funny guy... A moron too.

In the video below he uses a New York Times story (which is actually false) as the basis for a long skit to ridicule the Pope and the Catholic Church.

The truth is of course out their... Just not in the New York Times (or the Melbourne Age that ran with the same story) or on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show".

Plenty of rebuttals to the lies in the New York Times story that Jon Stewart used for his hate mongering can be found here.

If there's too many to choose from Jimmy Akin's article is a good summary.

Pope Benedict referred to the lies against him as gossip. Gossip like the New York Times story is usually lacking fact. I suppose Jon Stewart needs to resort to lies sometimes in order to get his laughs.

Response to CNN Documentary on the Pope

The Catholic League responses to another slur against the Pope.

William A. Donohue, Ph.D. Catholic League – 1st October 2010

The CNN documentary, "What the Pope Knew," which aired September 25, deserves a response.

The program begins with music and graphics that set the tone: those who think Pope Benedict XVI has been adept at combating priestly sexual abuse must realize that there is "a darker, more complicated story." Dark, yes, but from CNN's perch, the story is not all that complicated: the pope is guilty of "foot-dragging and, perhaps, obstruction."

We learn from CNN host Gary Tuchman that "For decades, before he became pope, Joseph Ratzinger was a high-ranking Vatican official who, more than anyone else beside Pope John Paul, could have taken decisive action to stem the sexual abuse crisis." Similarly, author David Gibson says the pope "always took the stalling tactic."

It is simply not true that Ratzinger was in charge of this issue "for decades." In fact, he wasn't given the authority to police the sexual abuse problem until 2001. What is truly astonishing is that Tuchman concedes as much later in the program. After he notes that "By 2001, the sexual abuse crisis was beginning to engulf the Catholic Church," he says, "The pope gave Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) the power to cut through the bureaucracy and handle all sexual abuse cases directly."

In other words, Tuchman was incorrect the first time when he said that "for decades" Ratzinger "could have taken decisive action." He couldn't have been in charge "for decades" if he wasn't given police powers until 2001 (he became pope in 2005).

Nowhere in the program is there any evidence that the pope was guilty of obstruction of justice. This is a serious charge—the most serious made in the course of the documentary. Yet to throw this out, without ever producing evidence to substantiate it, is malicious. It won't cut it to say that he was "perhaps" guilty of obstruction. CNN intentionally planted this seed and never explicitly addressed the subject of obstruction of justice again.

Continue reading at Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights

Not all Sexual Abuse is Equal

 Catholic League - October 1, 2010

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a news story about a former priest who molested a male listed as John Doe:

On September 28, the Chicago Tribune reported that "former Chicago priest and convicted sex offender Daniel McCormick sexually abused him [Doe] while he was a grammar school student." We then learn that the student was really a middle-school student, in the eighth grade, when the abuse began. The abuse reportedly continued for five years. According to the lawsuit, "McCormack inappropriately sexually touched, hugged, rubbed and/or abused Doe."

It's time to ask some tough questions. Why did this young man not object earlier? Why did he allow the "abuse" to continue until he was 18? The use of the quotes is deliberate: the charge against the former priest is not rape, but rubbing. While still objectionable, there is a glacial difference between being rubbed and raped.

Here's what we know. We know that this case, like most of them, was the work of a homosexual, not a pedophile. And like most of the cases of priestly sexual misconduct, there was no rape involved. Inappropriate touching is morally wrong, and the offenders should be punished, but the time has come to object to all those pundits who like to say that the scandal is all about child rape. Most of the cases did not involve children—they were post-pubescent males—and most weren't raped.

Why does this matter? Because those looking to sue the Catholic Church for being inappropriately rubbed decades ago are not exactly the poster boys for the victims of child rape. And because those who hate the Church continue to use the term child rape as a way of discrediting the Church. They lie about this being a pedophilia problem and they lie about the nature of the misconduct. That’s reason enough to call them on it.

From Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights

Catholics may be sick of clerical sex abuse stories, but they can't be ignored

 By Greg Erlandson – Our Sunday Visitor

We’ve received several emails and letters from readers, pleading, essentially, “Enough!” of our coverage of the clerical sex abuse crisis. One said she was “weary of the continuing barrage of information on the sexual scandal in the Church. I know that it has happened; I know that the Holy Father is doing everything in his power to respond to it. I just do not think that we need to hear so much about it.”

Even as the co-author of a recent book on Pope Benedict XVI and the crisis, I find myself wanting to agree. We are all tired of this topic. It is a bad news story that won’t go away. Many of us have been dealing with news of the scandals since 1985 — a quarter of a century.

Continue reading Catholics may be sick of clerical sex abuse stories, but they can't be ignored: Our Sunday Visitor

How the New Atheists are abusing the truth | Spiked

Monday 13 September 2010. Brendan O’Neill.

Apparently the British state is about to roll out the red carpet for a seriously evil rape facilitator. Pope Benedict XVI is the boss of a church that acts as a ‘patron, protector and financier of child rape’, says one secularist writer. Last week the UK Independent reported that in America, ‘over 10,000 people have come forward to say they were raped as part of this misery-go-round’ overseen by His Holiness and His Lackeys. In Ireland alone, a tiny country of 4.5million people, ‘Thousands were raped in reform schools’, said a British broadsheet headline last year, ramming home the ugly truth of how many kids have been raped by the Catholic Church’s army of paedophile priests.

But how true is this ugly truth? Were 10,000 children in America and thousands more in Ireland really raped by Catholic priests? In a word, no.

Continue reading - How the New Atheists are abusing the truth | spiked

Has Geoffrey Robertson Lost The Plot?

From a Sydney Morning Herald article 9th September 2010:

THE Vatican should be treated as a kind of ''rogue state'' by the rest of the world until it stops using statehood - and the ancient rules of the canon law - to protect paedophile priests.

So says Geoffrey Robertson, QC, the veteran human rights lawyer and United Nations judge, arguing that the Catholic Church is the only religion permitted under international law to claim the privileges of statehood and its leaders immunity from civil or criminal action.

A response from Austen Ivereigh at America Magazine to similar claims of Geoffery Robertson:

Where to begin? [in addressing the nuttiness of Robertson's claims] (a) the Vatican does not deal with abusive priests, local dioceses or congregations do; (b) Where these have failed to act against abusive priests, it has not been because they have resorted to canon law instead of civil law, but because they failed to resort to either canon OR civil law; (c) the cases which have been referred to the Vatican (since 2001) have been referred precisely in order to ensure appropriate action IS taken; (d) confidentiality is imposed in canonical legal processes in those cases where -- as in solicitation in the confessional -- these are canonical crimes, not civil ones; (e) the canonical process (eg laicisation) only takes place after any civil action (prosecution, trial, sentencing) has taken place; (f) it wasn't the Vatican which back in the 1980s moved priests accused of abuse to other parishes, it was bishops. And so on.

If only Pope Benedict were an ordinary citizen, he could rightly sue Robertson for his wholly untrue and grossly defamatory claim that clerical abuse was allowed to take place because "Joseph Ratzinger, both as head of the CDF and as Pope, has insisted for the past 30 years that all such cases be dealt with in secrecy under canon law." That is a monstrous lie -- and, given Cardinal Ratzingers record in this area, simply laughable.

PAPAL WITCH HUNT DETOURED

 August 10, 2010 - Catholic League.
Attorney William McMurry, who sued the Holy See for being complicit in the sexual abuse of his three clients, is seeking to end the lawsuit; similar suits are still pending. McMurry won a settlement from the Archdiocese of Louisville in 2003 for $25.7 million.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this issue today:
McMurry acknowledges that "Virtually every child who was abused and will come forward as an adult has come forward and sued a bishop and collected money, and once that happens, it's over." That's right—once they got their check, they cashed out. But not McMurry: his motives were more primordial. Which is why he continued.
What collapsed yesterday was the heart and soul of McMurry's interest: his attempt to put Pope Benedict XVI on trial. It was his objective to hold men in Rome accountable for the behavior of men in Louisville, simply because they all worked for the same organization. McMurry knew this was a high bar to clear—proving culpability on the part of the Holy See for what goes on in Kentucky—and so he decided it was a futile exercise.
There was one other reason why McMurry quit: he couldn't find any more alleged victims. But it was not for lack of trying. He admits he searched in vain for months looking to find any man who may have been groped. "No one who has not sued a bishop is in a position to help us despite our best efforts over the past several months," McMurry said.
Just think about it. Every day, for the past several months, William McMurry and his colleagues went to work in hot pursuit of finding some adult man who may have settled out of court. It did not matter how trivial the offense, how many decades ago it occurred, or how old the alleged victim was, all that mattered was that the offender had to be a priest. No minister, rabbi, school teacher, coach, counselor or psychologist would do. And now the gig is up.
Catholic League: For Religious and Civil Rights

Priests Commit No More Abuse Than Other Males - Newsweek

8th April 2010

The priesthood is being cast as the refuge of pederasts. In fact, priests seem to abuse children at the same rate as everyone else.

The Catholic sex-abuse stories emerging every day suggest that Catholics have a much bigger problem with child molestation than other denominations and the general population. Many point to peculiarities of the Catholic Church (its celibacy rules for priests, its insular hierarchy, its exclusion of women) to infer that there's something particularly pernicious about Catholic clerics that predisposes them to these horrific acts. It's no wonder that, back in 2002—when the last Catholic sex-abuse scandal was making headlines—a Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 64 percent of those queried thought Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children.

Yet experts say there's simply no data to support the claim at all. No formal comparative study has ever broken down child sexual abuse by denomination, and only the Catholic Church has released detailed data about its own. But based on the surveys and studies conducted by different denominations over the past 30 years, experts who study child abuse say they see little reason to conclude that sexual abuse is mostly a Catholic issue. "We don't see the Catholic Church as a hotbed of this or a place that has a bigger problem than anyone else," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "I can tell you without hesitation that we have seen cases in many religious settings, from traveling evangelists to mainstream ministers to rabbis and others."

Continue reading Priests Commit No More Abuse Than Other Males - Newsweek

Bill Maher and his Bozo Fans

I'm not sure who to feel more contempt for - Bill Maher or his bozo fans in the audience. Maher is simply a lying shit-head and his approving audience must surely have shit for brains. There is no evidence that Pope Benedict XVI has been involved in any cover-up of sex abuse. I'm sure Maher gets much of his information from reading the rants of Christopher Hitchens. But so much of what Hitchens writes against the Catholic Church is easily refuted with the facts.

Tom Piatak from Chronicles Magazine debunks much of what Hitchens writes as does Sean Murphy who includes 80 footnotes in his article tearing to bits the lies of Hitchens.

From about 2:50 into the video Maher continues his lies this time directed at the Catholic League whose public criticism of Maher can be found here. It’s interesting to note the responses the Catholic League received from Maher bosses:

HBO spokesman stated ‘it’s a free country, and people are free to say silly things—even on HBO.’
And from Time/Warner, Maher’s anti-Catholic remarks were a matter of ‘creative freedom.’

Okay, so Bill Maher is a jerk who is permitted to lie and say silly things because comedians are given ‘creative freedom’. But what is funny about falsely accusing Pope Benedict of covering up sex abuse. Maybe Maher’s laughing fans are just bozos.

German inquiry into top cleric ends with no proof

The Associated Press 22nd July 2010

BERLIN — German prosecutors say investigators have found no proof that would justify holding the country's top Roman Catholic cleric responsible for hiring a priest known to have sexually abused minors.

Prosecutor Christoph Hettenbach says in a statement released Wednesday that the investigation into Freiburg Archbishop Robert Zollitsch has been closed.

The southwestern city of Konstanz had been investigating an unidentified complaint that alleged Zollitsch was responsible for hiring a priest in 1987 known to have sexually abused minors. Zollitsch now heads the German Bishops Conference and at the time was in charge of human resources at the Freiburg diocese.

The archdiocese has rejected the allegations.

The Associated Press: German inquiry into top cleric ends with no proof

Gerard Charles Wilson has about 20 links to articles defending Pope Benedict.

That so many in the Media would follow the New York Times in promoting outright lies to attack the Pope is truly despicable and an indictment on the quality of so many journalists. 
Link to Gerard Charles Wilson’s blog page linking to numerous articles showing the lies of so many journalist and editors.