On March 24th, the New York Times characterized “Pope Benedict XVI’s latest apology for the emerging global scandal of child abuse by predatory priests,” as inadequate, noting that Benedict “ made no mention of the need to discipline diocesan leaders most responsible for shielding hundreds of priests from criminal penalties by moving them from parish to parish to continue their crimes.” 
 
 The Catholic League responded the op-ed by running an ad in the New York Times criticizing the paper for its editorial and blaming the scandal on homosexuality: 
 
 The argument itself is confusing and contradictory. “As a believer,” he wrote in his statement, “I have no doubt that Murphy will face the One who judges both the living and the dead.” 
 
 Cardinal Levada said Benedict had played a “very significant role” as the “architect” of the Vatican’s 2001 norms that sent sexual abuse cases directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and streamlined procedures for bishops to report sexual abuse cases.
– The Vatican defended Pope Benedict's handling of long-ago abuse cases, lashed out at the New York Times for coverage “deficient by any reasonable standards of fairness,” and said the pontiff actually deserved praise instead of condemnation. “We owe Pope Benedict a great debt of gratitude for introducing the procedures that have helped the Church to take action in the face of the scandal of priestly sexual abuse of minors,” wrote a cardinal in a statement on the Vatican website. In Think Progress, meanwhile, Igor Volsky takes the Catholic League to task for calling the problem a "homosexual crisis" instead of a "pedophilia crisis" in a full-page ad. "What the Catholic League is trying to do is imply that there is a connection between homosexuality and molestation, just like segregationists once accused African Americans of raping white women, and Jews were accused of murdering Christian babies."