"Here Come the Drums..."

With the German Catholic Church's abuse scandal, the press smells blood in the water. They're going after the Pope:

Count on the London Times to offer the most sensational coverage of a news story involving the Catholic Church. The headline on today's report by Richard Owen screams:

Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry

That's grossly misleading, downright irresponsible. The reporter runs ahead of his evidence-- standard procedure for a Times journalist-- but even Richard Owen does not allege anything to justify the headline.Here's what we know: While the Pope was Archbishop of Munich, a priest there was accused of sexual abuse. He was pulled out of ministry and sent off for counseling. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger was involved in the decision to remove the priest from his parish assignment-- got that? remove him. [Editor's note: The preceding sentences are not accurate. Actually the facts provide an even stronger defense of the Pontiff...

After learning more about this case, I realize that the analysis above is not quite accurate, and the effort to implicate the Pope is even more far-fetched than I had originally thought. The accused was not a priest of the Munich archdiocese, but a priest from the Diocese of Essen, who had been sent to a facility in Munich for counseling. So the then-Cardinal Ratzinger was not responsible for his treatment; his only connection with the case was his decision to let the priest stay in a rectory in the Munich archdiocese while he was undergoing treatment there. There is no evidence that the Pope was aware the accused priest was an accused pedophile; he was evidently informed only that the priest had been guilty of sexual improprieties, and probably concluded that he was engaged in homosexual activities with young men.

Nevertheless, any number of people will walk away from this story with certain impressions implanted deep within their mind. The stage is being set for persecution.