The last two weeks have seen an explosion of news stories about the Catholic clergy sex abuse crisis, tracing the problem from the Vatican to Ireland, Germany and Milwaukee. This city and its abusive priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, have become Exhibit A in the ongoing international scandal. But amid all the heat, precious little light has been shed on the problem.
The media has been fixated on the question of just how complicit Pope Benedict XVI was in the Milwaukee scandal, resulting in a blizzard of stories on the arcane question of Murphy’s canonical trial, and whether it was ever approved by the Vatican. At times it has turned into a left vs. right debate: Thus, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s “Right On” columnist Patrick McIlheran rushed to the defense of Benedict, who is seen as a conservative, and claimed (along with the National Review) there’s a conspiracy afoot. Better to push the liberal former Milwaukee archbishop Rembert Weakland under the bus and blame him for everything.
The reality is, the scandal has nothing to do with right versus left; clerics and bishops and cardinals of every ideological persuasion have all rushed to hush up the problem. The clergy sex abuse crisis reflects a deep, systemic problem that permeates the Catholic Church. That becomes brutally clear if you read the probing story Marie Rohde did for Milwaukee NewsBuzz.
Church officials knew as early as the mid-1950s that Father Murphy was probably abusing boys at the old St. John’s School for the Deaf. Father David Walsh, chaplain to deaf boys in Chicago, began sharing his suspicions with Milwaukee church officials. But Milwaukee archbishop Albert Meyer chose to do little about it, as did his successor William Cousins, as did his successor Rembert Weakland, as did his auxiliary bishop Richard Sklba. Walsh finally wrote the papal nuncio, the pope’s ambassador to the U.S., (decades ago) and apparently never heard back (or if he did, nothing was done to remove Murphy from the priesthood).
Weakland was succeeded by Timothy Dolan, who opposed changing state law to make the statute of limitations less restrictive (as in other states) so more victims of clergy abuse can get their day in court. Nor will his successor, Jerome Listecki, support such a change. See a pattern here? The emphasis is always on protecting the church, not the victims of abuse.
There has been controversy over a letter that Benedict (back when he was Cardinal Ratzinger) sent to bishops around the world noting the Vatican office he ran at the time had authority over accusations of sexual abuse against priests and insisting upon “confidentiality” for such cases. You can argue about what that word means or ask a simpler question: Where is the letter from Ratzinger telling bishops to refer abusive priests to prosecutors for criminal charges? Where indeed is such a letter from Pope Benedict or the popes before him – or from any high-ranking church official?
Why has the standard operating procedure for every archdiocese been so similar: Hush up any scandal, transfer priests away from the problem (often to another post where they still have access to children), avoid alerting law enforcement authorities, and decline to release all files regarding abusive clergy. When everyone operates in the same fashion, it suggests a systemic problem radiating from the top.
Other religions have married ministers, which makes them seem more human and imperfect. Priests and nuns are celibate, suggesting a kind of saintly removal from temptation. So when the priest turns out to be an alcoholic or sex abuser (and sometimes the abusers have been nuns), that destroys the image and must be kept secret. And secrecy, in turn, invites corruption.
Rohde quotes Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk, to the effect that bishops must keep secret anything that will harm the church. Weakland testified that he routinely destroyed reports of sex abuse by priests, then clarified (sort of) that he only destroyed copies of the reports, not the originals. Yet when the archdiocese faced a lawyer’s request for documents on Father Lawrence Murphy, it at first said it had none. Only after attorney Jeffrey Anderson indicated he’d gotten some documents from the Diocese of Superior, Wis., (where Murphy also served) and threatened to go to court to make Milwaukee officials explain why they had no documents – only then did Milwaukee officials suddenly find the files. You get the feeling a coverup is standard operating procedure.
A Catholic canon judge named Thomas Brundage came forward to claim Ratzinger didn’t stop the church trial of Father Murphy, but Brundage was soon tripped up by documents suggesting his memory was faulty. The enduring impression, once again, is of church authorities seizing on legalistic and bureaucratic excuses, while the central problem of abuse never gets addressed. Father Murphy wasn’t defrocked or shamed in any way: He was still invited to gatherings of the Catholic deaf community in Milwaukee and was finally buried in his vestments. After his death, Weakland wrote to Rome, saying “we are still hoping to avoid undue publicity.” Even after Murphy’s death, secrecy was necessary.
CEO Pay Still Too High
On Sunday, The New York Times did its annual report on CEO salaries. Average compensation declined by 15 percent, to $9.5 million, the second straight year pay declined. CEO pay is now down to what it was in 2004. Of course, by that time, it had gone through a quarter-century explosion, rising from an average of $479,000 in 1978 to $8.1 million in 2003.
And Wisconsin CEOs came along for the ride. Sunday’s story ran salaries for the country’s 200 top execs, including three from Milwaukee. Johnson Controls CEO Stephen A. Roell’s compensation was $6.4 million, down 57 percent from the prior year, while the company’s revenue was down 25 percent. Manpower CEO Jeffrey A. Joerres clocked in with total compensation of $5.3 million, down 49 percent from the prior year, while the company’s revenue was down 26 percent. The top dog among the three was Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell, who earned total compensation of just over $9 million in 2009 (the year before was not listed), while company revenue actually increased 5 percent in 2009.
Average CEO salaries peaked at about 300 times more than the average worker in the U.S in 2004 and by last year stood at about 275 times higher. As company revenues begin to recover, it’s a safe bet that CEO salaries will rise anew. It has become, alas, the American way.
The Buzz
-On Sunday, the Journal Sentinel ran the shortened, syndicated story about a company called Talx that specializes in helping businesses beat employee claims for unemployment compensation. The original, full-length story in The New York Times, however, gave all kinds of detail about how Wisconsin has dealt with the problem, including an entire sidebar documenting five years of complaints about Talx by officials of this state’s unemployment compensation office. The office, by the way, is run by Hal Bergan, whom some will remember as the top policy adviser for former Democratic Gov. Tony Earl in the 1980s. The reporter who did the story is Jason DeParle, who lived for a time in Wisconsin while he wrote about welfare reform efforts here for the Times in the 1990s. it looks like DeParle still has good contacts with state officials here.
-Are lobbyists thumbing their nose at county registration requirements? Milwaukee News Buzz wades fearlessly into the controversy. NewsBuzz also looks at another (unreported) pot of stimulus money for Wisconsin.
-And the Sports Nut thinks the Brewers will make the playoffs. Is it because of what he discovered about Prince Fielder’s newest tattoo?
