Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God Page #8

It was like we were all little

sheep lying in our beds

We were good

innocent Christians.

The wolf would come in,

pick his prey, and molest them.

I sent that letter off to him

and I got no reply,

so I wrote

a second letter to Murphy.

Still no reply.

Weakland was always

considered to be someone

who stood up for the Vatican.

He really was the bte noire

of the conservative church,

because he was the leading

spokesman for an intelligence,

progressive wing

in the church.

Weakland inherited Murphy in 1976

and all through the '70s and through

the '80s and up until that letter

Archbishop Weakland does

absolutely nothing with him.

Not a thing.

He keeps gathering

information on Murphy

because victims keep coming

to the archdioceses about him.

"What's happening with him?

What are you doing with him?"

He does psychological and

criminological assessments of Murphy

where they determine he has

assaulted probably 200 children.

The therapist's handwritten

notes on her interviews with Murphy

not only determined that he was

untreatable,

they also revealed his complex

justifications for his crimes.

Father Thomas Brundage

called priest paedophilia,

quote, "a form of homicide", unquote.

In that it takes away

children's innocence.

Would you agree or disagree

with that observation?

If you had asked me that in 1979,

I would not have agreed,

but if you ask me that

now in the year 2008,

I would say in almost every case, yes.

I wrote a letter to

Archbishop Weakland

and Archbishop Weakland

called me in to have a meeting.

What do you do about Father Murphy?

It's a question that kept repeating

itself over and over again.

The statutes of limitation

had expired

so criminal charges in the courts

were out of the question.

Statute of Limitations

in the Church courts,

according to Church law, Canon law,

had expired long before the others.

Then it became evident

that it might be possible

to still submit the Murphy case

on the basis of the way

in which he used the confessional.

That was one where the Statute

of Limitation never expires.

I submitted that to

Cardinal Ratzinger's office.

Finally, I think after a year,

we got an answer back saying,

"Yes, we can open the case."

A Catholic going to confession is at his

or her absolutely the most vulnerable.

The priest uses his power over

these vulnerable helpless children

to solicit some form of sexual

gratification from him.

I don't think there's a

vocabulary that we have

that can adequately describe how

horrendous and duplicitous this is.

I did receive a receipt,

proving that the Vatican

had received the letters.

But nothing happened,

and that was truly disappointing.

The way in which we

wanted to handle it then

was to take it out

of ministry totally,

and that's why we took the case to him.

Weakland had a private conversation

with Cardinal Ratzinger.

In the end, Cardinal Ratzinger said,

"Well, you probably shouldn't be docile."

Weakland also had a formal

meeting to plead his case

at the Congregation

For The Doctrine Of The Faith.

The deaf community in Milwaukee

wanted to dismiss Father Murphy

from religious life,

so my heart went out to them.

And it went out to

the kids in particular

because they had not been

believed by anybody.

This meeting was held

in the last week of May.

In the middle of the summer,

towards August, we got a letter

that this case would not go forward

because Father Murphy was quite ill.

I felt awful having to go back

and to say

there was nothing more I could do,

I felt awful about that.

Weakland actually

made an effort to do

what any ordinary citizen would do -

get the guy out and protect others.

However, he did it without

sacrificing his standing

in the clerical culture

and with the Vatican.

He had his own sexual activity

that he had to hide and keep secret

and that distorts the whole picture.

Weakland's activity was a

homosexual affair that he had had

with a graduate student who

ultimately blackmailed him

and the Church for $450,000.

Weakland's fall from grace

had nothing to do with

sexual abuse really,

I mean, it was

a consensual relationship

with somebody who was 35.

The big problem was the payoff,

the paying for silence.

That was the real scandal.

People who are concerned about about me

asked me how I feel at this moment.

The best nouns to describe

this feeling would be

"remorse",

"contrition",

"shame",

and "emptiness".

He is slandered all the time, people

carelessly saying he's a paedophile,

which is all nonsense.

He's come out and said very openly

that he is gay,

which also drive people nuts.

We've got an archbishop

that said that he's gay.

This scandal distracted people from

a key element of the Murphy story.

Rome may have refused to

move against Murphy

because of a letter that Father Murphy

had written to Cardinal Ratzinger.

"I have repented of any of

my past transgressions"

"and have been living peaceably

in northern Wisconsin for 24 years."

"I simply want to live out

the time that I have left"

"in the dignity of my priesthood."

It's not just, "I'm an old man.

I'm an old PRIEST. I'm an old priest."

"Don't throw me away

because I have this special mark."

"I am another Christ."

See, there is a heresy

that the Church teaches.

When a man is ordained a priest,

he is changed ontologically.

He is made a different

brand of human being.

A little less

than the angels.

These are people set apart.

They are called, they are chosen

by God, they want to protect

the sacramentality, the

supernatural element and so that is

why they were very, very careful

to do anything to the priest.

A priest can take bread and wine

and make Jesus Christ

present on this altar.

He has power

over heaven and hell.

Somebody comes to you

in confession

and you say,

"I won't absolve you" -

He'll be damned.

The church court informed me

that Murphy couldn't go to

his church hearing,

because he was too ill.

And Murphy wouldn't

live much longer.

But Murphy went to play the slots.

And then he collapsed

and was taken to the hospital.

Murphy passed away and he was

buried in his priestly vestments,

in a Catholic cemetery.

Did you ever meet Murphy?

Once!

I made him come down

and visit me, and..

I.. I don't, I don't know how to,

how to analyze someone like that.

I don't.

Self-delusional..

uur..

what's sincere and what isn't.

I couldn't work that out.

He certainly didn't come off as

an evil, angry person, and so on..

Probably child-like

it's the best way I could..

is best way

I could describe it.

'God helps throughout history.

'While contemplating the mystery

we give thanks to God, and proclaim,

'We thank you, oh Father.'

There are many people

inside the Vatican

who still don't see

how serious a matter this is.

And the code of Omerta,

the code of silence,

keeps people from speaking out.

It's part of the whole psyche

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