The Vatican came out swinging yesterday against the New York Times. And whiffed bad. The Vatican accused the Times of reporting "deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness," and insisting that then-Cardinal Ratzinger had nothing to do with the decision by his deputy to suspend a canonical trial against Father Lawrence Murphy, an unrepentant multiple rapist of deaf children, because he was nearing death.

The only way this can be the case is, again, if control-queen Ratzinger knew nothing of the final decisions of his number two in a meeting in Rome on a case where hundreds of defenseless deaf children had been raped and molested by an unrepentant priest for decades. That's the agit-prop being pushed out by some Vatican-sympathizers. They argue that because Ratzinger's CDF only got responsibility for child abuse cases in 2001, he cannot have been responsible for the 1998 decision. But Ratzinger was in charge of the case in 1996 to 1998 because