Pope Ratzinger's Great Legacy!
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Re: Pope Ratzinger's Great Legacy!
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (an HBO documentary)
I have yet to see this, but I've heard that it's very interesting.
Another of his legacies...
https://www.hbo.com/documentaries/me...lpa/index.html
And an interview on Democracy Now!, excerpted below.
https://www.democracynow.org/2012/11...ew_doc_exposes
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about Father Murphy. Tell us about your film.
ALEX GIBNEY: Father Murphy was a priest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who ran St. John’s School for the Deaf. And he was actually very charismatic. He raised a ton of money for the school. He was an expert signer. And he was actually much loved in the deaf community. But not unlike Jimmy Savile, his role in the community gave him access to his victims. And he was a—he was a criminal, it’s fair to say. And he abused over 200 deaf children at St. John’s School for the Deaf.
AMY GOODMAN: How? How did this happen?
ALEX GIBNEY: Well, you have to remember, these kids were under his control. It was a boarding school. And very often, it happened in the confessional. And that ultimately became part of the church’s aborted case into this. And the church itself often refers to abuse in the confessional as a kind of soul murder, because you’re taking kids who are so vulnerable and using that vulnerability against them—in this case, by learning things about them. So he, for example, learned which kids had parents who couldn’t themselves sign. And then he would go after them, because they literally couldn’t communicate with their own parents, and often would have to communicate with their parents through Father Murphy, who was the predator.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is a horrific story. I watched your film last night. It is also deeply moving, and it’s a story of courage. But the descriptions of these now men, boys in the confessional, and Father Murphy would say, "Pull down your pants."
ALEX GIBNEY: That’s right. I mean, I think—this guy was a predator. I mean an absolute predator. And it’s haunting to see the images of these children, who were so innocent, being so deeply abused by somebody in such a position of power.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about how this case broke.
ALEX GIBNEY: Well, the case broke, in a way, only fairly recently, to some extent, because there was an article in the New York Times by Laurie Goodstein talking about the Lawrence Murphy case, which really took place back in the '50s, ’60s and ’70s. Murphy himself was forced out of Milwaukee because of the threat of lawsuits, but there was never a prosecution, nor was there any kind of a defrocking process, until very much later, in the ’90s. So, we know about this case kind of in reverse, in part because of the courage of these deaf men, who worked so hard to see if they could get him defrocked and also to sue the church. As a result of the lawsuits, documents were uncovered which linked this case to the Vatican and the Vatican's cover-up of this case.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about the Pope.
ALEX GIBNEY: I think one of the most interesting things about Pope Benedict, the current pope—and there’s a lot about both him and the previous pope, John Paul, in this film—one of the most interesting things about him was, before he was pope, he was Cardinal Ratzinger, and he ran what was called the Congregation [for] the Doctrine [of] the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. After 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger got all sex abuse cases sent to his office. So Cardinal Ratzinger actually knows more about clerical sex abuse than any human being on the planet. And then he became pope. But it was while he was Cardinal Ratzinger that the case of Murphy was brought to the Congregation [for] the Doctrine of the Faith.
Interestingly enough, you know, instead of moving quickly to defrock him, they took pity on the priest himself, who wrote a very poignant letter saying, "Look, I’m an old guy now. This was so long ago. I’m so sorry. Please let me die as a priest." And that is the wish that was granted by the Vatican. And so there was no justice for the deaf victims.
... ... ...
AMY GOODMAN: Last question—I mean, the beauty of this film is that these men are speaking in their own voices through their own hands. But do you feel that the story of the Catholic Church has been fully told, at the global level, the story of the Catholic Church and the preying on young people?
ALEX GIBNEY: I think what hasn’t been properly told is the cover-up. And that is a global story, and that is a global story that’s ongoing. And remarkably, the Catholic Church has not disgorged itself of its documents relating to the sex-abuse scandal, not only to show us what happened in the past, but to give us information about abusers in the present to protect other children. That story has not been told at all, and that’s part of what we intended to do in this film.
