Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI and "The Murphy Case"

First, the charge:

• Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys, by Laurie Goodstein (New York Times March 24, 2010) charges that "Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church":

  The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal. ...

  The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

  In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

  But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

  “I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood,” Father Murphy wrote near the end of his life to Cardinal Ratzinger. “I ask your kind assistance in this matter.” The files contain no response from Cardinal Ratzinger.

  The Times cites as evidence " letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims’ affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Father Murphy and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican."
  
  

  According to the Times, "Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims":

  Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

  Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

From the Vatican, the full text of the statement given to the New York Times on Wednesday by Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office:

The tragic case of Father Lawrence Murphy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, involved particularly vulnerable victims who suffered terribly from what he did. By sexually abusing children who were hearing-impaired, Father Murphy violated the law and, more importantly, the sacred trust that his victims had placed in him.

During the mid-1970s, some of Father Murphy's victims reported his abuse to civil authorities, who investigated him at that time; however, according to news reports, that investigation was dropped. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not informed of the matter until some twenty years later.

It has been suggested that a relationship exists between the application of Crimen sollicitationis and the non-reporting of child abuse to civil authorities in this case. In fact, there is no such relationship. Indeed, contrary to some statements that have circulated in the press, neither Crimen nor the Code of Canon Law ever prohibited the reporting of child abuse to law enforcement authorities.

In the late 1990s, after over two decades had passed since the abuse had been reported to diocesan officials and the police, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was presented for the first time with the question of how to treat the Murphy case canonically. The Congregation was informed of the matter because it involved solicitation in the confessional, which is a violation of the Sacrament of Penance. It is important to note that the canonical question presented to the Congregation was unrelated to any potential civil or criminal proceedings against Father Murphy.

In such cases, the Code of Canon Law does not envision automatic penalties, but recommends that a judgment be made not excluding even the greatest ecclesiastical penalty of dismissal from the clerical state (cf. Canon 1395, no. 2). In light of the facts that Father Murphy was elderly and in very poor health, and that he was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the Archbishop of Milwaukee give consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts. Father Murphy died approximately four months later, without further incident.

Further responses

• Cardinal Ratzinger An Evil Monster? - blogging for the National Catholic Register, Jimmy Akin provides an excellent point-by-point analysis of the charges and evidence (or lack thereof) in the Murphy case.

• "Shame on the New York Times" says Michael Sean Winters (America):

  ... I will grant that there is something to the argument that the victims’ right to have their story told, to receive justice for the crimes against them, demanded a canonical trial of the priest no matter his physical condition. I will grant that there is a coldness in the correspondence that seems more focused on the reputation of the Church than on the rights of the victims. I will grant that it was the victims of this priest’s abuse, not Cardinal Ratzinger, who had a right to decide when and how to show mercy to Father Murphy. It is not difficult to see that Cardinal Ratzinger might have made the wrong decision in this case, but I submit that there is nothing in the documents the Times presents that suggests Cardinal Ratzinger’s moral culpability for the abuse itself or for any cover-up of that abuse. And the Times article certainly suggests moral culpability even though the documents do not support the charge.

• The Pope and the Murphy case: what the New York Times story didn't tell you - Phil Lawler (CatholicCulture.com) examines the evidence and finds that

  ... his is a story about the abject failure of the Milwaukee archdiocese to discipline a dangerous priest, and the tardy effort by Archbishop Weakland--who would soon become the subject of a major scandal himself--to shift responsibility to Rome.

  Lawler lists six notable points:

  1. The allegations of abuse by Father Lawrence Murphy began in 1955 and continued in 1974, according to the Times account. The Vatican was first notified in 1996: 40 years after Church officials in Wisconsin were first made aware of the problem. Local Church leaders could have taken action in the 1950s. They didn't.
  2. The Vatican, following the standard procedures required by canon law, kept its own inquiries confidential. But the CDF never barred other investigations.
  3. Milwaukee's Archbishop Cousins could have suspended Father Murphy from priestly ministry in 1974, when he was evidently convinced that the priest was guilty of gross misconduct. He didn't.
  4. Having called the Vatican's attention to Murphy's case, Archbishop Weakland apparently wanted an immediate response, and was unhappy that the CDF took 8 months to respond. But again, the Milwaukee archdiocese had waited decades to take this action.
  5. This was, in effect, the final result of the Vatican's inquiry in this case; Father Murphy died just months later.
  6. The correspondence makes it clear that Archbishop Weakland took action not because he wanted to protect the public from an abusive priest, but because he wanted to avoid the huge public outcry that he predicted would emerge if Murphy was not disciplined.

• Damien Thompson (The Times UK) "smells a stitch up":

  Murphy? Guilty as hell. Various bishops? Likewise. But the fact that in 1996 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger may have approved the decision not to pursue complex canonical procedures against Murphy on the grounds that the guy was dying anyway doesn’t strike me as much of a smoking gun.

  I do, however, get the very strong feeling that the Pope’s enemies, including his enemies in the Church, are trying desperately hard to discover serious complicity on his part in a child abuse case. Because that would be just so convenient, wouldn’t it?

• As Riccardo Cascioli of Avvenire concludes: The documentation published by The New York Times contradicts its own thesis, which accuses Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of not being sufficiently energetic in the case of an American priest who the Church punished for acts of pederasty.

Update!

The following circumstances are worthy of note, says Fr. Raymond J. de Souza in his response to the New York Times (National Review):

The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.
• The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him. Archbishop Weakland had responsibility for the Father Murphy case between 1977 and 1998, when Father Murphy died. He has long been embittered that his maladministration of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee earned him the disfavor of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, long before it was revealed that he had used parishioners’ money to pay off his clandestine lover. He is prima facie not a reliable source.
• Laurie Goodstein, the author of the New York Times story, has a recent history with Archbishop Weakland. Last year, upon the release of the disgraced archbishop’s autobiography, she wrote an unusually sympathetic story that buried all the most serious allegations against him (New York Times, May 14, 2009).

• A demonstration took place in Rome on Friday, coinciding with the publication of the New York Times story. One might ask how American activists would happen to be in Rome distributing the very documents referred to that day in the New York Times. The appearance here is one of a coordinated campaign, rather than disinterested reporting.

Update!

• Father Thomas T. Brundage, JCL, who oversaw the canonical proceedings against Fr. Murphy, challenges the New York Times on the veracity of its reporting(The Catholic Anchor March 29, 2010):

  I will limit my comments, because of judicial oaths I have taken as a canon lawyer and as an ecclesiastical judge. However, since my name and comments in the matter of the Father Murphy case have been liberally and often inaccurately quoted in the New York Times and in more than 100 other newspapers and on-line periodicals, I feel a freedom to tell part of the story of Father Murphy’s trial from ground zero.

  As I have found that the reporting on this issue has been inaccurate and poor in terms of the facts, I am also writing out of a sense of duty to the truth.

  The fact that I presided over this trial and have never once been contacted by any news organization for comment speaks for itself.

  My intent in the following paragraphs is to accomplish the following:

  To tell the back-story of what actually happened in the Father Murphy case on the local level;

  To outline the sloppy and inaccurate reporting on the Father Murphy case by the New York Times and other media outlets;

  To assert that Pope Benedict XVI has done more than any other pope or bishop in history to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of child sexual abuse and provide for those who have been injured;

  To set the record straight with regards to the efforts made by the church to heal the wounds caused by clergy sexual misconduct. The Catholic Church is probably the safest place for children at this point in history.

  Read the rest.

• Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki of Milwaukee, WI spoke out on clergy abuse at the end of the March 30, 2010 Chrism Mass:

  ... The Holy Father does not need me to defend him or his decisions. I believe, and history will confirm that his actions in responding to this crisis, swiftly and decisively and his compassionate response to victims/surviovrs, speak for themselves. The Holy Father has been firm in his commitment to combat clergy sexual abuse; root it out of the Church; reach out to those who have been harmed; and hold perpetrators accountable. He has been a leader, meeting with victims/survivors and chastising bishops for their lack of judgment and leadership.

  Mistakes were made in the Lawrence Murphy case. The mistakes were not made in Rome in 1996, 1997 and 1998. The mistakes were made here, in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, in the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s, by the Church, by civil authorities, by Church officials, and by bishops. And for that, I beg your forgiveness in the name of the Church and in the name of this Archdiocese of Milwaukee. ...

  Read the rest.

• "The New York Times and Pope Benedict XVI: how it looks to an American in the Vatican" - The current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith weighs in (Catholic San Francisco):

  As a full-time member of the Roman Curia, the governing structure that carries out the Holy See’s tasks, I do not have time to deal with the Times’s subsequent almost daily articles by Rachel Donadio and others, much less with Maureen Dowd’s silly parroting of Goodstein’s “disturbing report.” But about a man with and for whom I have the privilege of working, as his “successor” Prefect, a pope whose encyclicals on love and hope and economic virtue have both surprised us and made us think, whose weekly catecheses and Holy Week homilies inspire us, and yes, whose pro-active work to help the Church deal effectively with the sexual abuse of minors continues to enable us today, I ask the Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.

ANNOUNCEMENT: New Vatican Website & Twitter Channels

From Vatican Radio:

The publication of the Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland regarding the clerical sexual abuse crisis is accompanied by two new Vatican internet services. The first is a new website:

www.resources.va

The second is a series of six channels on Twitter, each in a different language. The English channel is named: news_va_en. The other languages are French, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. And can be accessed by changing the final piece of the channel name to the proper language abbreviation. That is:

• for FRENCH: _fr
• for GERMAN: _de
• for SPANISH: _es
• for PORTUGUESE: _pt
• for ITALIAN: _it

Through these Twitter channels, Vatican Radio and other Vatican media outlets will inform users about the publication of news and multimedia content of particular relevance to the life of the Church.

Today there will be published texts, video and audio referring to the Pope’s Letter to the Catholics of Ireland Regarding the Clerical Sexual Abuse Crisis, using www.vaticanradio.org, www.resources.va, the four Vatican YouTube channels and the six Twitter channels.

Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland

Here is the full text of Pope Benedict XVI's pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland. It begins:

1. Dear Brothers and Sisters of the Church in Ireland, it is with great concern that I write to you as Pastor of the universal Church. Like yourselves, I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children and vulnerable young people by members of the Church in Ireland, particularly by priests and religious. I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them.

As you know, I recently invited the Irish bishops to a meeting here in Rome to give an account of their handling of these matters in the past and to outline the steps they have taken to respond to this grave situation. Together with senior officials of the Roman Curia, I listened to what they had to say, both individually and as a group, as they offered an analysis of mistakes made and lessons learned, and a description of the programmes and protocols now in place. Our discussions were frank and constructive. I am confident that, as a result, the bishops will now be in a stronger position to carry forward the work of repairing past injustices and confronting the broader issues associated with the abuse of minors in a way consonant with the demands of justice and the teachings of the Gospel.

2. For my part, considering the gravity of these offences, and the often inadequate response to them on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in your country, I have decided to write this Pastoral Letter to express my closeness to you and to propose a path of healing, renewal and reparation. ... [more]

Vatican rushes to Pope's defense against calumnious press

• Rocco Palmo (Whispers in the Loggia) offers a roundup of recent events concerning the priestly sex abuse crisis:

  ... with the president of the German bishops due to hold crisis talks with his countryman-Pope tomorrow morning, Austria's senior churchman -- once the lead editor of the first universal catechism in five centuries -- calling for an "unflinching examination" of (among other things) priestly celibacy in the face of scandal (then seeking to row back the comment), the Holy See's own newspaper on an astonishing front-page tear and, even if not personally responsible nor implicated, the specter of revelations reaching to the august choir led for three decades by B16's own brother [Georg Ratzinger], it's safe to say that, as never before and all in a matter of days, the "Long Lent" wrought by the global reports of sexual abuse by clergy -- and, above all, its woeful mishandling by church institutions -- has landed on the Vatican's doorstep with a seismic, shattering thud.

• the Vatican has provided extensive details of its handling of priestly sex abuse cases in recent years and has strongly defended Pope Benedict XVI against accusations of covering up such crimes -- the information was conveyed by way of an Avenire interview with Msgr. Charles Scicluna, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who deals with cases of priests accused of abuse of minors. John Thavis (Catholic News Service summarizes the interview in the following points:

  1. The allegation that Pope Benedict covered up sex abuse crimes is “false and calumnious,” he said. As head of the doctrinal congregation, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger handled such cases with wisdom and courage, and as pope he has dismissed many priests from the clerical state.

  2. The Vatican’s insistence on secrecy in the investigation of these cases by church authorities does not mean bishops or others are exempt from reporting these crimes to civil authorities (a point made in our recent article on the same topic.)

  3. Since 2001, when the doctrinal congregation took over juridical control of accusations of sex abuse by priests against minors, it has processed about 3,000 cases, dealing with crimes committed over the last 50 years. About 60 percent of theses cases involved sexual attraction towards adolescents of the same sex, 30 percent involved heterosexual relations, and the remaining 10 percent were cases of pedophilia.

  4. Most cases have been handled without a church trial, because of the advanced age of the accused, and the penalties in such cases has usually been the imposition of strict limitations on the priest’s ministry. About 20 percent of cases resulted in a church trial, with most of the accused found guilty. In the most serious cases, about 10 percent of the total, the pope has dismissed the offender from the priesthood, and in another 10 percent the priest has been laicized at his request.

  5. The number of new cases of sex abuse by priests has declined; last year there were 223 cases reported from around the world. And while the majority of the 3,000 or so cases handed by the Vatican since 2001 have been from the United States, by last year U.S. cases had dropped to about 25 percent of the total.

  Read the full text of the interview here.

• Fr Federico Lombardi SJ addressed the scandal in a note from the Holy See's Press Office:

  “For some months now the very serious question of the sexual abuse of minors in institutions run by ecclesiastical bodies and by people with positions of responsibility within the Church, priests in particular, has been investing the Church and society in Ireland. The Holy Father recently demonstrated his own concern, particularly through two meetings: firstly with high-ranking members of the episcopate, then with all the ordinaries. He is also preparing the publication of a letter on the subject for the Irish Church.

  “But over recent weeks the debate on the sexual abuse of minors has also involved the Church in certain central European countries (Germany, Austria and Holland). And it is on this development that we wish to make some simple remarks.

  “The main ecclesiastical institutions concerned – the German Jesuit Province (the first to be involved, through the case of the Canisius-Kolleg in Berlin), the German Episcopal Conference, the Austrian Episcopal Conference and the Netherlands Episcopal Conference – have faced the emergence of problem with timely and decisive action. They have demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved date from many years ago. By doing so they have approached the matter ‘on the right foot’, because the correct starting point is recognition of what happened and concern for the victims and the consequences of the acts committed against them. Moreover, they have re-examined the extant ‘Directives’ and have planned new operative guidelines which also aim to identify a prevention strategy, so that everything possible may be done to ensure that similar cases are not repeated in the future. [more]

• As expected, some in the mainstream media are exploiting this as an opportunity to attack the Pope with scurrilous charges -- Tito Edwards (American Catholic) offers has the roundup, while Damien Thompson compiles Catholic reaction to a particularly vicious headline slander by the Times' Richard Owen, and Deacon Greg Kandra asks: "what did Benedict really do?" -- responding to a similar spurious allegation from blogger Andrew Sullivan.

Pope Benedict Roundup!

• Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church is preparing to welcome the Pope on March 14 (video - RomeReports.com).

• Benedict XVI is encouraging the Brazilian bishops in their efforts to free people from the slavery to money and bring them back to God. (Zenit).

• The archbishop of Barcelona is affirming that Benedict XVI expressed interest in an invitation to consecrate the Sagrada Familia Church in that city, though he has not yet confirmed. (Zenit)

• Pope Benedict XVI urged Irish bishops to show “determination and resolve” in confronting the sexual abuse scandal convulsing the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland (New York Times February 16, 2010)

Addresses from Pope Benedict

• Pope's "Lectio Divina" to Roman Priests (Part 1) | Part II - given during his audience on February 18, 2006.
• Pope's Address to Roman Seminarians delivered Feb. 12 upon visiting the Roman Major Seminary on the feast of Our Lady of Trust.

Pope Benedict XVI: "Let us use the weapons of faith: prayer, listening to God’s Word and penance"

Lent is a long “retreat,” during which we return to ourselves and listen to God’s voice to overcome the temptations of the Evil One and find the truth of our being. It is a time, we could say, of spiritual “contest” to live together with Jesus, not with pride and presumption, but using the weapons of faith, that is, prayer, listening to God’s Word and penance. In this way we will be able to celebrate Easter in truth, ready to renew the promises of our baptism. May the Virgin Mary help us so that, guided by the Holy Spirit, we live this time of grace with joy and fruit.

Conclusion to Pope Benedict XVI's midday Angelus, prior to embarking on a Lenten spiritual retreat with his co-workers in the Roman Curiae. February 21, 2009.

Related

• Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi: "The Pope Is a Model for Living Lent"
• A Peek at the Pope's Retreat - Interview with Father Enrico dal Covolo, Preacher of the Spiritual Exercises.

"Repent and believe in the Gospel"

... The call to conversion, in fact, uncovers and denounces the easy superficiality that very often characterizes our way of living. To be converted means to change direction along the way of life -- not for a slight adjustment, but a true and total change of direction. Conversion is to go against the current, where the "current" is a superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and illusory, which often draws us, controls us and makes us slaves of evil, or in any case prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, instead, one aims to the lofty measure of Christian life; we are entrusted to the living and personal Gospel, which is Christ Jesus. His person is the final goal and the profound meaning of conversion; he is the way which we are called to follow in life, allowing ourselves to be illumined by his light and sustained by his strength that moves our steps. In this way conversion manifests its most splendid and fascinating face: It is not a simple moral decision to rectify our conduct of life, but it is a decision of faith, which involves us wholly in profound communion with the living and concrete person of Jesus.

Pope Benedict XVI receives ashes during the celebration of Ash Wednesday mass at the Basilica of Santa Sabina, in Rome. Source: AP

To be converted and to believe in the Gospel are not two different things or in some way closely related, but rather, they express the same reality. Conversion is the total "yes" of the one who gives his own existence to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ, who first offered himself to man as Way, Truth and Life, as the one who frees and saves him. This is precisely the meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus began the preaching of the "Gospel of God." "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15).

"Repent and believe in the Gospel" is not only at the beginning of the Christian life, but accompanies all its steps, [this call] remains, renewing itself, and spreads, branching out in all its expressions. Every day is a favorable moment of grace, because each day invites us to give ourselves to Jesus, to have confidence in him, to remain in him, to share his style of life, to learn from him true love, to follow him in daily fulfilling of the will of the Father, the only great law of life -- every day, even when difficulties and toil, exhaustion and falls are not lacking, even when we are tempted to abandon the following of Christ and to shut ourselves in ourselves, in our egoism, without realizing the need we have to open to the love of God in Christ, to live the same logic of justice and love.

~ Pope Benedict XVI Ash Wednesday Address 2/7/2010

"Cancel my liturgical dance lessons!"

Benedict causes a row with criticism of Labour's unjust "equality laws"

Pope Benedict XVI has criticised equality legislation in England in a remarkably direct speech to English and Welsh bishops during their ad limina visit to Rome. According to the Catholic Herald:

The Pope was meeting the bishops for the first time since the English and Welsh Church lost control of its adoption agencies. The Sexual Orientation Regulations, passed in 2007, compelled agencies to place children with same-sex couples, forcing Catholic adoption agencies to close down or break ties with the Church.

His comments also came a week after the House of Lords rejected parts of the Equality Bill that could have forced the Church to ordain women, sexually active gay people and transsexuals.

Here is the relevant text of Pope Benedict's address:

Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed. I urge you as Pastors to ensure that the Church’s moral teaching be always presented in its entirety and convincingly defended. Fidelity to the Gospel in no way restricts the freedom of others -- on the contrary, it serves their freedom by offering them the truth.

Continue to insist upon your right to participate in national debate through respectful dialogue with other elements in society. In doing so, you are not only maintaining long-standing British traditions of freedom of expression and honest exchange of opinion, but you are actually giving voice to the convictions of many people who lack the means to express them: when so many of the population claim to be Christian, how could anyone dispute the Gospel’s right to be heard?

If the full saving message of Christ is to be presented effectively and convincingly to the world, the Catholic community in your country needs to speak with a united voice. This requires not only you, the Bishops, but also priests, teachers, catechists, writers -- in short all who are engaged in the task of communicating the Gospel -- to be attentive to the promptings of the Spirit, who guides the whole Church into the truth, gathers her into unity and inspires her with missionary zeal.

The reaction to the Pope's criticism has been varied and widespread, but with support from many sides of the socio-political spectrum -- here is a sampling:

• Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth: "The Pope is right about the threat to freedom":

  ... using the ideology of human rights to assault religion risks undermining the very foundation of human rights themselves. When a Christian airport worker is banned from wearing a cross, when a nurse is sacked after a role-play exercise in which he suggested that patients pray, when Roman Catholic adoption agencies are forced to close because they do not place children for adoption with same-sex couples and when a Jewish school is told that its religious admissions policy is, not in intent but in effect, racist, we are in dangerous territory indeed. My argument has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with liberty.

• Andrew Pierce (London Daily Mail) on "Why I, as a gay man, agree with the Pope":

  Quite simply, I believe that the Government's decision to force the Church to abide by its equality legislation could hurt some of the most vulnerable members of our society - those whom I thought ministers had a duty to protect.

  Indeed, children such as me, raised for two years in a Catholic orphanage, could be the real losers of Harman's obsessive drive to force the Church to embrace her doctrine of legalised social engineering.

  In any given year, the 12 Catholic adoption agencies in England used to place a minimum of 200 children with adoptive parents. They have, by tradition, also handled a third of the boys and girls who have been judged 'most difficult to place'. Some of those children have to wait years before they are found a home.

  But the effect of the legislation from Harman is that those Catholic adoption agencies now have to consider placing children with gay couples, even though it goes against their spiritual teachings, or inevitably close down.

• Brendan O’Neill (Spiked Online): "It shouldn't take a Pope" "[to say that] Harriet Harman’s Equality bill is profoundly intolerant." (Index on Censorship)
• Christopher House (Telegraph) asserts Pope Benedict can hardly be said to be "meddling" in England's affairs by stating moral principles.
• Labor MP Martin Salter snipes: "[the] comments by the Pope on Britain’s lawmaking could possibly be the first time that a bloke in a dress has complained about equality legislation."

* * *

Here is the address of Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, the president of the bishops' conference of England and Wales, upon being received in audience by Benedict XVI.

"Justice" : Pope Benedict XVI's message for Lent 2010

• Pope's Lenten Message for 2010 "The Justice of God Has Been Manifested Through Faith in Jesus Christ"
• Cardinal Cordes Presents Pope's Message for Lent the Italian-language address given by Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, at the press conference that presented Benedict XVI's message for Lent.
• Hans-Gert Pöttering on Papal Lenten Message address given by Hans-Gert Pöttering, retired president of the European Parliament and president of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.