While the furor over the 1962 “smoking gun” Vatican document has died down here in the US (at least for now) in Ireland, it’s still going strong. A victim group, known as One in Four, claims that it shows that the Vatican had instructed the bishops to maintain complete secrecy about all allegations of abuse under the penalty of excommunication. Of course, the fact that the document doesn’t say any such thing doesn’t really matter to these people. Most people, including the journalists, aren’t going to bother reading the document for themselves, so if they tell the lie often enough, it will stick. And then maybe they can stop trying to wring money out of the Irish dioceses (which have pretty much settled all the cases) and turn their attention to the getting money from the Vatican.
After all, I can find only two motives for their continued attacks on the Church (seeing how the diocese have settled and reforms have been put in place): To destroy the remaining vestiges of respect and obedience to the Church among Irish Catholics and/or to get money out of the Vatican.
