Blowback from the Belgian Raid

I’ve watched this story for a couple of days and waited for the dust to settle a bit since it was hard to tell what was what from the stuff coming over the web. Rod Dreher, as is unfortunately his custom these days, leapt on the story, paused briefly to say, “I do not know if the Belgian raids were justified or unjustified” and then, incredibly, proceeded to shout across the Bosporus at the Pope and declare him “wrong” to denounce the raid anyway. The consensus of the Pope Should Shut Up commenters in his comboxes and elsewhere was, of course, that all this is obviously necessary to Help The Victims. The consensus was also, of course, that the Pope’s motivations in denouncing must be sinister indeed. There simply can be no rational justification for protest and said protest is only evidence of his guity and inbred contempt for victims.

Yeah. Well, here’s the thing about that whole “Hulk SMASH!” approach:

A Belgian man who says he was sexually abused by a priest filed a complaint with Brussels prosecutors Tuesday after his confidential testimony to a church-appointed panel was seized by Belgian police.

Jan Hertogen, a 63-year-old sociologist, said he told his story to the panel on the condition it would not be passed to authorities. He said the police raids — which also targeted a Catholic cathedral, church offices and a crypt — were an invasion of his privacy.

“After all those years, I told my story to the (sex-abuse panel) insisting it not be shared,” he said, adding that he was now willing to speak to the media because he was so distressed at the victims’ loss of privacy.

Hertogen wants all 475 men and boys who contacted the panel with allegations of abuse to complain to the Brussels prosecutor’s office and register as “injured parties.”

So it looks like the Pope wasn’t all wet when he protested Belgium’s assault on due process. It even begins to appear that (surprise!) he had the good of victims in mind! Turns out the old guy may not be the monster people keep insisting he is, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Of course, Laurie Goodstein, who did such a spectacular job of bungling the hatchet job on Benedict during Lent, has to keep trying to prove otherwise (out of an objective love of truth, natch, and not out of an ideological need for payback after her shoddy job of reportage last time). So here she is again, relying on Rembert Weakland and Geoffrey Robinson, whose orthodoxy is so dodgy even Mahony denied him permission to speak in his diocese of LA, as her principal witnesses in the ongoing journalistic trial and execution of Benedict XVI.