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	Benedict XVI: Almost There on Preying Priests The News Tribune April 17, 2008 http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/337489.html Unfair as it is, child molestation is the first thing that now comes to mind for many Americans when they think of Catholic priests. It's unfair, because there's no reason to believe that Roman Catholic clergy are more prone to pedophilia than the clergy of other churches or secular authority figures who work with youth, for that matter. But the Catholic church is by far the largest denomination in America, and any problems among its tens of thousands of priests are magnified accordingly in the public eye. Pope Benedict XVI, unlike some Vatican officials of years past, seems painfully aware of this. Before his plane had touched down Tuesday for his six-day visit to America, he told reporters that he was "deeply ashamed" by predatory priests and considered pedophilia "absolutely incompatible" with the priesthood. "We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry," he said. "It is more important to have good priests than many priests." That's more clarity than the American church has sometimes gotten out of the Vatican. At times, the hierarchy in Rome has acted as if it weren't aware of the magnitude of this scandal, which has damaged the moral credibility of the church and leached $1 billion out of U.S. dioceses in settlements and legal costs. One authoritative 2004 study concluded that more than 4,000 priests had preyed on more than 10,000 children between 1950 and 2002. Those statistics are spread out over a half-century, but the exposure of such widespread abuse still should have set off all kinds of alarms in Vatican. Instead, church officials from Pope John Paul II on down have gone wobbly in dealing with one of the roots of the problem: bishops who let known pedophiles move to new parishes while doing nothing to alert congregations to the threat. One prominent American church leader, Cardinal Bernard Law, was forced to resign for tolerating pedophiles. But Law was then appointed to a prestigious position in the Vatican a slap in the face to many Catholics outraged by his role in the scandals. The pope's comments Tuesday sounded unequivocal. The next question is whether "absolutely" really means "absolutely" when it comes to purging the clergy of molesters. In church law, certain offenses automatically bar a man from the priesthood. These include murder, attempted suicide and self-mutilation. But as this scandal has demonstrated all too abundantly, the proven molestation of innocent children doesn't automatically bar the molesters from "the sacred ministry." Better late than never. This would be a good time for Benedict XVI to turn the shame he feels into canon law.
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