Vatican Lashes Out At New York Times Over Abuse Scandal

YahooNews.com:

The church on Wednesday presented its highest-level official response yet to one of the most explosive recent revelations regarding sex abuse — a story the Times broke on the church's decision in the 1990s not to defrock a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting deaf boys.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on the press: Last week, L'Osservatore Romano, denounced what it said was a "clear and despicable intention" by the media to strike at Benedict "at any cost."

In the article posted Wednesday on the Vatican's Web site, Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote: "I am not proud of America's newspaper of record, the New York Times, as a paragon of fairness."

Levada, an American, said the newspaper wrongly used the case of the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to find fault in Benedict's handling of abuse cases.

A Times spokeswoman defended the articles and said no one has cast doubt on the reported facts.

"The allegations of abuse within the Catholic church are a serious subject, as the Vatican has acknowledged on many occasions," said Diane McNulty. "Any role the current pope may have played in responding to those allegations over the years is a significant aspect of this story."

Listen, the Pope is the head of the Catholic church, therefore yes, he deserves some blame for longstanding child abuse within the faith--the buck stops with him and he can't run from that. But it's just like the Times and the rest of the liberal media (which less and less folks are reading, wonder why?) to use this scandal to not only degrade the Pope, but paint the entire church as nothing but a sex-crazed, orgy with leadership that looks the other way.

Bottom line, the Catholic church needs to enforce a strict One-Strike-You're-Out rule on priests caught abusing boys and they need to do a better job on working with local police to make sure these perverts with robes get locked up. Then too, change the damn rule already and let priests get married--it's not only practical in today's times, but it makes common sense and it'll help to rid the church of sexual abuse. I don't believe for a second that most Catholic priests molest boys. I'd think that most Catholics feel the same, but that doesn't mean that there still isn't a problem within the church that needs to be rectified immediately. And as busy and old as the Pope is, he needs to make sex abuse a priority. However, leave it to the liberal media with their bias and it's no surprise that they'd use this scandal to feed their own, personal hate for religion.