BishopAccountability.org
	Sex Abuse Takes Back Seat to PR By Kris Kotarski Calgary Herald April 5, 2010 http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/abuse+takes+back+seat/2763355/story.html CANADA -- Bishop Fred Henry's pastoral letter sent to all of Calgary's Catholic parishes last week offers an example of what is wrong with the Catholic Church in 2010. The letter shows that the first priority of the Church is not setting its own house in order or the protection of victims of abuse, but a self-pitying public relations campaign to lessen the seriousness of the allegations and to discredit the credibility of the press. Henry's letter begins: "These are not easy times. Priests and people feel battered and scattered by the seemingly relentless media campaign about child sexual abuse in the Church. We, too, have entered into the dark regions of our fallen world. This is a painful, emptying and humbling experience." Let's stop here for a moment. The reason there is a "seemingly relentless media campaign about child sexual abuse in the Church" is that there is a seemingly endless amount of child sexual abuse cases that are tied, directly, to priests and other religious officials. In the United States alone, dioceses have paid out more than $1.1 billion in compensation, and that "priests and people feel battered and scattered" because of this is a triumph of the modern information society. No longer can cases such as that of the late Father Lawrence C. Murphy, a U.S. priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf boys between 1950 and 1974 despite the fact U.S. bishops knew he was a pedophile, be swept under the rug. This was the case the New York Times highlighted March 25 in an article entitled "Vatican Declined to Defrock U.S. Priest Who Abused Boys." This is the article Henry singled out for criticism because the author noted that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger failed to respond to two 1996 letters from Rembert G. Weakland, then Archbishop of Milwaukee, outlining Murphy's abuses. Henry notes that under canon law, the responsibility for dealing with the abuses lay first and foremost with the Archbishop of Milwaukee, who failed to do anything about the case until 1996. He mentions that nowhere in the official correspondence is Ratzinger implicated, but does not say that U.S. court documents show that Murphy sent a letter to Ratzinger asking that he be allowed to "live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood." Ratzinger never responded, but Murphy died a priest. Quite frankly, anyone who is concerned about the welfare of children should applaud the New York Times for raising the obvious question. Henry does not agree. "The New York Times flatly got the story wrong," he wrote. "Readers may want to speculate on why." Henry continues: "The sin and stigma of sexual abuse is not unique to Ireland, nor is it unique to the Catholic Church. It is a sin found in all societies and nations." Henry says: "Sexual abuse of children, like the abuse of women, has deep historical roots. Hopefully, by serious investigations of the social, psychological and cultural root causes of this behaviour, we can eliminate it as we have made encouraging progress in eliminating violence against women." The point should be to stay focused on the scandal at hand. And as for "serious investigations of the social, psychological and cultural root causes of this behaviour," how about starting at home? Henry himself brought convicted sex offender Father James Kneale to St. Patrick's parish in southwest Shawnessy in the summer of 2001 without informing the parishioners of the priest's conviction and nine-month sentence for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy. Kneale resigned a week after controversy erupted when a parishioner recognized the priest, and Henry told the Herald that "the diocese of Calgary has a zero-tolerance policy on hiring pedophiles. Father Kneale has never been formally labelled a pedophile and we have never hired a pedophile." This was a textbook example of the sort of "second chance" that priests the world over have been getting within the church. Still, that's not important. Better blame the New York Times.
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