The Hitch is back with more on the Pope, this time with a well thought out article in Newsweek entitled ‘Bring the Pope to Justice’. I feel like a lot of the writing out there regarding this whole scandal haven’t done a great job of pinning down just how shamefully complicit the Vatican has been in all this. Well, it doesn’t get more obvious or well laid out than this:
In 2002, I happened to be on Hardball With Chris Matthews, discussing what the then attorney general of Massachusetts, Thomas Reilly, had termed a massive cover-up by the church of crimes against children by more than a thousand priests. I asked, why is the man who is prima facie responsible, Cardinal Bernard Law, not being questioned by the forces of law and order?
This point must have hung in the air a bit, and perhaps lodged in Cardinal Law’s own mind, because in December of that year he left Boston just hours before state troopers arrived with a subpoena seeking his grand-jury testimony. Where did he go? To Rome, where he later voted in the election of Pope Benedict XVI and now presides over the beautiful church of Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as several Vatican subcommittees.
In my submission, the current scandal passed the point of no return when the Vatican officially became a hideout for a man who was little better than a fugitive from justice. By sheltering such a salient offender at its very heart, the Vatican had invited the metastasis of the horror into its bosom and thence to its very head. It is obvious that Cardinal Law could not have made his escape or been given asylum without the approval of the then pontiff and of his most trusted deputy in the matter of child-rape damage control, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
At every single turn they have made denials, withheld information, covered up, and obfuscated the truth. We all know countless people in power within the church have had many, many, many opportunities to do the right thing and bring these child rapists to justice. But they never did. In fact, they did the exact opposite.
