Breaking News: I Got Stoned with the Pope!
. . . Perhaps NBC sensed the line of decency was breached a few weeks ago when it apologized to The Catholic League and the world for a scandalous and libelous smear against Pope Benedict XVI on its affiliate news channel, MSNBC. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bill Donohue and The Catholic League for not letting this one pass. It is also no coincidence that the lurid stories of priestly sex abuse and papal complicity rose to a frenzy in the U.S. in the same weeks that tax-payer funded abortion was being argued in the Obama health care bill. Writer and art historian Elizabeth Lev made this same point in a brilliant essay on PoliticsDaily.com entitled "In Defense of Catholic Clergy (Or Do We Want Another Reign of Terror?)" Ms. Lev cited English statesman, Edmund Burke's 1790 commentary on Catholic witch hunts during the French Revolution: "What would Edmund Burke make of the headlines of the past few weeks …? In 1790, Burke answered ... 'It is not with much credulity I listen to any when they speak evil of those they are going to plunder.' What would he think of the insistent attempt to tie [a] sexual abuser to the Roman pontiff himself through the most tenuous of links … as the present sales of Church property to pay settlements swell the coffers of contingent-fee lawyers and real estate speculators …?" . . .
Anatomy of a Sex Abuse Fraud
. . . It turned out that a year before making the claims, Sean Murphy and Byron Worth were inmates together at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Shirley, MA where they concocted the scam and rehearsed the details of their stories. Sean and Byron were indicted for fraud and larceny, and faced a 2-year return to prison for the scam. Sean’s mother was also indicted for the fraud. The Boston news media buried the story in the emerging tsunami of settlement demands for claims against priests. Sean Murphy’s return to prison was, for his own interests, time well spent. After his release, he made news again last year for masterminding a scam involving the heist of Super Bowl rings. . . .