I saw Sullivan's article before seeing the link here and thought it was way over the top, particularly where it referred to the Murphy case, in which respect Joe has pointed up a crucial deception.

But every time I start to feel sorry for this wretched pope he reawakens my fury by ignoring the whole cover-up outrage. At the same time he supinely allows others at the Vatican to conduct a suicidal rearguard action. Thus his own pastor presents the hierarchy as victims with his antisemitism analogy (an analogy he now seems to have drawn by accident). And the dean of the cardinals' college dismisses serious allegations as "idle chatter."

Joe showed just how trite the defensive mindset can get with his ludicrous question: "How does a deaf person know that Milwaukee Archbishop Cousins "yelled at him" in 1974?" The stupid boy obviously didn't realise that the archbishop was only miming.