AP guilty of bad journalism in Oakland abuse reporting, says Ignatius Press founder

I'm usually skeptical of anything that I read these days in which the source is any organization considered inside of the mainstream media. Only compounding my doubts about the accuracy and bias of these outlets is this most recent article from catholicnewsagency.com which relates the following inaccuracies and exagerrations raised by recent reporting in the previously discussed Kiesle case.

1. "Associated Press article that claimed a 1985 letter showed then-Cardinal Ratzinger “stalled” the case of a pedophile priest in the Diocese of Oakland, Ignatius Press founder Fr. Joseph Fessio (above left) said that the letter was not meant to address punishing the priest for sexual abuse. Diocesan spokesman Mike Brown also told CNA that contrary to the AP report, the priest had “no priestly role in the diocese” after he was accused of sexual misconduct."
   
   
2. "The AP then claimed that the case “languished” in the Vatican until Fr. Kiesle was “ultimately stripped of his priestly powers” in 1987. The Associated Press also reported that Fr. Kiesle served as a youth group minister in the diocese in the 1980s after being accused of sexual misconduct. "
   
   
3. "The AP article implied that Fr. Kiesle “just wandered about the diocese or had priestly ministries or was still quite active,” after being accused of sex abuse, (Diocese of Oakland CA spokesman Mike) Brown said. However, “the answer,” he stressed, “is absolutely not.”
   
   
4. "In 1979 shortly after his arrest and all of these charges,” Brown explained, Fr. Kiesle “was removed formally from active ministry in the diocese by (above right) Bishop Cummins. And from that period of November of 1979 forward, Kiesle served no priestly role in the diocese.” The implication, then, that Fr. Kiesle was “offending again and again during this hiatus before he was laicized is absolutely incorrect,” Brown insisted. "
   
   
5. "Responding to the AP's charge that Fr. Kiesle served as a youth minister within the diocese in the 1980s, Brown explained that Kiesle “through a pastor sometime in the 80s, volunteered on his own in a parish youth ministry program without any diocesan sanction or approval.” Upon learning of Kiesle's actions, Bishop Cummins “had the parish pastor remove Kielse immediately,”.
   
   
6. "Fr. Fessio took on additional inaccuracies in the AP story, stressing that the 1985 letter from Cardinal Ratzinger regarding the removal of Fr. Kiesle from the priesthood concerned the issue of dispensing him from his vows, not punishing him for sexual misconduct. "
   
   
7. "Priests are priests forever,” he (Fr Fessio) added, “and a question of whether or not a priest should be dispensed from his vows is a question which is on a different level from a question of how do we punish someone for abusing children.” Fr. Fessio also stressed that at the time of the Oakland case, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), of which Cardinal Ratzinger was prefect, was not responsible for dealing with sex abuse cases. In fact, it was at Cardinal Ratzinger's consistent urging that the CDF took on sex abuse cases in 2001, so that they could be dealt with in a more timely and efficient manner."
   
   
8. "The only reason that Cardinal Ratzinger even wrote that letter to Bishop Cummins in 1985, said Fr. Fessio, was because it involved the dispensation of the vow of celibacy. "

As it turns out, the Associated Press didnt even interview the diocese in question to let them present their side of the story. Why do that? After all, isnt the overall goal here to smear Chrsitianity and a traditionalist pope? Has anyone else noticed that the examples that the MSM are citing are from 30 years ago or longer?