Friday, March 26, 2010

"My Offer is This: Nothing."

NYT: For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest's Abuse

They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.

They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.
The GC and I (both still technically Catholic, by the way) were talking this evening and he said the following, which I think is all true (paraphrasing here, of course)...

Joey Rats will never step down. Ever. Get the thought out of your head. Because if he did, the Vatican will be broken. Whatever authority it still has -- and that authority remains considerable in parts of the world -- will crumble, and that simply will not be allowed. The worst that will happen to Ratzinger (or any number of other church creeps) is that they will become virtual prisoners inside the Vatican so as to elude some ambitious and enterprising little prosecutor from a place like Russia or China, where people aren't as squeamish as we are here about frog marching a guy in a clerical collar to a county lockup while he awaits trial. If anyone even alludes to it, the "Holy Father" will go Michael Corleone on whichever little Senator Geary had the temerity to suggest such a thing. Would you expect anything less of an institution that kicked Bernard Law upstairs to Mary Major? Joey Rats is as high as it gets. With nowhere to go but down, he isn't going anywhere.

That NYT article is sickening, by the way.

6 comments:

Jack K. said...

...Mrs. Jack K. and I were talking about this very subject tonight as we listened to an NPR segment about the controversy. We arrived at the same conclusion as "the GC" despite (or - who knows - perhaps because of) our Protestant/Reformationist heritage: the Pope isn't likely to pull the 'ejection' handle. The questions about God's will that would be raised by his resignation or abdication would reverberate so powerfully through the universe of The Church that the whole idea of Roman Catholicism might never recover. He will probably remain as the Pope for as long as he wants to because the alternative is too horrible for The Church to contemplate...

tucker55417 said...

If push comes to shove and the kitchen gets too hot, there is always the un-natural natural death. Grand old tradition of fuedal societies and criminal organizations.

pansypoo said...

but the catholic church is not a cult?

Anonymous said...

I remember various rumors surrounding the death of the liberal minded John Paul I. I understand they have big pillows in the Vatican.

Culture of TrÜth said...

Ratzi quit?? When hell freezes over he will still be there.

Buttermilk Sky said...

Boston Catholics got rid of Law by refusing to put their money in his collection baskets. If you want to get Ratzi's attention, nothing works like red ink.