Now here’s a peculiar story which is doing the rounds. The current cycle of scandal stories began with an attempt to link Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger with the reassignment of a known paedophile priest when he was in Munich. However, with 1,000 priests in the archdiocese he may not have known about this. And his vicar-general at the time, Gerhard Gruber, said that he was to blame for the error.
But he was just a scapegoat to protect his boss, is the latest scoop from Der Spiegel. The German magazine says that he was browbeaten and bullied into taking the rap for the Pope. It gives times and places where this plan was hatched.
On the morning of March 12, while the press office was busy drafting a statement in which Gruber was given the full blame for H.'s appointment to serve as a pastor, and that included Gruber's personal apology, a church official was badgering the retired priest on the phone.
But Gruber, who felt put under pressure, later confided in theologian friends. He told them that he had been emphatically "asked" to assume full responsibility for the affair, and that church officials had promptly faxed him a copy of the statement and instructed him to make any changes he deemed necessary.
What is the source for this story? Has Fr Gruber spoken to Der Spiegel? No, as a matter of fact. Has Fr Gruber written to Der Spiegel? No. Has anyone in the Archdiocesan offices spoken on the record or off the record to Der Spiegel, other than to deny the story? Well, actually not.
So where does the story come from? it was gossip from those “theologian friends”. Fr Gruber has gone on a trip and never said one word to Der Spiegel. .
Anyone willing to bet that the “theologian friends” were the same ones who helped Der Spiegel to write its vicious April 6 article, “Helpless in the Vatican: The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI”? Der Spiegel’s scoop is tabloid trash.
