Vatican Spin - Pope Being Set up Over Munich Sex abuse Case

Apparently, the Vatican has been taking notes on the spin and disinformation practices of the Christian Right in the USA. You know, the Christian majority that they allege is being constantly persecuted? Now, with the sex abuse scandal in Germany sweeping ever closer to Pappa Ratzi, the Vatican says it's all a set up to damage the Pope. I don't think so. Rather, it may be a case that shows that what goes around sometimes comes around - sometimes decades after the original misdeeds. At this point, it is pretty clear to all but Kool-Aid drinkers that the official Church policy for at least 50 years was one of secrecy, cover ups, and intimidation of victims of sexual abuse and that the policy was implemented in pretty much every Catholic diocese in the world. Including Pappa Ratzi's when he was an archbishop in Germany. The one constant wherever abuse has been discovered is that the Church has lied and tried to hide the truth. A story in The Guardian looks at the Vatican's frantic spin campaign endeavoring to stave off the likely truth of the matter from coming out.

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The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.
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Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.
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"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed."
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Today, the pope's former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow's edition of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the city's archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a rectory. The records suggested that "it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out due to sexual relations with children". But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement said, the diocese's then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least one child was subsequently abused.
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The church's attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which tomorrow is holding "sidewalk vigils" in more than 30 US cities in support of European victims. David Clohessy, the network's national director, said: "As a high-ranking church official for decades, if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups."
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The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among choirboys in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15-year-old boy who said that in the 1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars.
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[A] German lay group noted, the pope did not take the opportunity to express sympathy with victims, and doubts remained as to how many of his pastors understand the gravity of the situation. The day before, one of the bishops closest to Benedict, Gerhard Müller, declared that the scandal was over "cases from 40, 50 years ago" that had been blown out of proportion by "a big media clamour".

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For the sake of all the victims of abuse by Catholic clerics I hope the full story comes out and that all guilty bishops and cardinals are publicly identified. That includes Pappa Ratzi if he assisted in cover ups and the reassignment of sexual predators.