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Friday, April 25, 2008

Does This Sound Like A Consensus?


From Catholic World News, "Off The Record"

Ideological allies? Absolutely not. But although they disagree on many other things, these voices are singing in tune on one topic. See if you can pick out the dominant note:

  • Voice of the Faithful press release:

    Voice of the Faithful has publicly called for the Holy Father to ask for the resignations of all bishops who put the interests of the institutional Church before the safety of Catholic children.
  • Sister Maureen Paul Turlish (writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer):
    Not one bishop has been removed from office because of his own complicity, collusion or cover-up of the church's continuing sexual-abuse problems. Nor has anyone been forced to resign for violating Canon Law or criminal or civil laws.
  • Victims' lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (quoted in the Boston Herald):

    Mitchell Garabedian, a Boston attorney who has represented hundreds of clergy abuse victims, said Benedict needs to do more than meet with victims. He needs to remove the notorious bishops and supervisors who knowingly shuffled pedophile priests from parish to parish, allowing abuse to continue for years.
  • CWN editor Phil Lawler (quoted in a Dallas Morning News editorial):

    Mr. Lawler, a conservative Catholic and Benedict supporter, told us yesterday that he's comforted by the pope's admission of shame over abusive priests but that it isn't enough. Said Mr. Lawler: "It would be truly liberating to hear him acknowledge that he is also ashamed of the bishops whose negligence – and even complicity – allowed the scandal to fester and undermined public confidence in the church."
  • Victims' spokesman Peter Isely (quoted by AP):

    "It's easy and tempting to continually focus on the pedophile priests themselves," said Peter Isely, a board member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "It's harder but crucial to focus on the broader problem - complicity in the rest of the church hierarchy."
  • Bishop Accountability project (quoted in the New York Times):
    Anne Barrett Doyle co-director of Bishop Accountability, a Web site that documents the sexual abuse scandal, expressed similar skepticism. She said that what the pope did not say is more important that what he did. “Rather than shifting attention to pedophile priests, he needs to focus on the culpability of bishops,” she said. “The crisis occurred because many U.S. bishops were willing to hide their priests’ crimes from the police with lies.”

1 comment:

  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    August 15, 2008

    GEORGE JUST ANOTHER ENABLER

    From Boston to Los Angeles, billions of dollars have been spent in attempts to avoid public revelation of files and records of known sexual predators and depositions of the some of the highest U.S. Catholic Church leaders.

    Now we are able to read the deposition of Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who remains the archbishop of Chicago as well as the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and it is damning beyond belief.

    Our church leaders protected and enabled known rapists and child molesters for much of their clerical careers while giving no thought to the trail of broken bodies and souls these sociopaths left in their wake.

    Can one believe the excuses and rationalizations that would indicate an incompetence beyond belief or is George yet another archetypal figure representing a clerical system corrupted beyond imagination?

    Should anyone accept George's words when he says, "I apologize again today to the survivors and their families and to the whole Catholic community?"

    No, not until he submits his resignation to Pope Benedict XVI. Until then those words remain hollow.

    He is just another enabler.

    Sister Maureen Paul Turlish Victims' Advocate
    New Castle, Delaware
    maureenpaulturlish@yahoo.com

    ReplyDelete