It's Not Sunday, But...

Yet another instance where Joe "the Pope" Ratzinger's office covered up priestly child abuse. And, while it's just one of many, many cases of priestly child abuse, this one's a doozey.

Arthur Budzinski says the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He says he asked the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to hear his confession, and instead the priest took him into a closet under the stairs and sexually assaulted him.

Budzinski, now 61, was one of about 200 deaf boys at the St. John's School for the Deaf just outside Milwaukee who say they were molested by the priest decades ago in a case now creating a scandal for the Vatican and threatening to ensnare Pope Benedict XVI.

[...]

Murphy was accused of molesting boys in the confessional, in dormitories, in closets and during field trips while working at the school for the deaf from the 1950s through 1974.

[...]

Some of the allegations became public years ago. But they got renewed attention this week after documents obtained by The New York Times showed that Murphy was spared a defrocking in the mid-1990s because he was protected by the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now the pope.

  Yahoo

Is there any more heinous organization than one which protects and thereby makes it possible for its members to molest children?

Church and Vatican documents showed that in the mid-1990s, two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by Ratzinger to let them hold a church trial against Murphy.

However, Ratzinger's deputy at the time decided the alleged molestation occurred too long ago and said Murphy — then ailing and elderly — should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese, according to the documents.

Whoah! That's a little excessive, don't you think?

How anyone could give money to the Catholic Church these days is beyond me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

P.S. This all brings to mind the Boys Town of Nebraska scandal where young boys were being used by the archdiocese to entertain and entrap (obviously stupid, in addition to immoral) politicians at private parties. (My November 2004 post on the subject is here.) I wonder how long before the outing of Ratzinger (who was very aware of that sex ring) leads to some well-known politicians. Or, will it once again get clamped down and covered up?