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	Our View: Sex Scandal Needs a New Spin (Vote in Poll) Colorado Springs Gazette April 6, 2010 http://www.gazette.com/opinion/church-96745-allegations-billion.html The best public relations campaigns are based in selfless compassion, truth and transparency. As a human organization with more than 1 billion members, the Catholic Church has an abundance of internal scandals in need of good PR. Pedophiles and pederasts have joined the priesthood and abused children, just as predators have become teachers, doctors and cops in order to harm those weaker than themselves. As Gazette religion columnist Mark Barna reported on gazette.com Tuesday, a billion-dollar industry of lawsuits has driven allegations against the church. Barna told of a case in which local attorney Martin Nussbaum is defending the church against allegations involving a victim and defendant who are deceased. A plaintiff's lawyer filed suit on behalf of the dead complainant's estate. Though some allegations are true and others are kooky, if not downright false, the Catholic Church is not just any organization. One episode of sexual abuse by a priest is completely unacceptable. The Catholic Church has the mission of defending and spreading the word of Jesus Christ. It has the responsibility of representing Christian values of peace, love, honesty, humility and charity — principles of truth our world desperately needs the church to preserve. The Catholic Church, the largest charitable organization in the world, defends the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the individual. When faced with scandalous allegations, Vatican officials should do as Jesus would do. They should focus their concern on any child who may have been harmed by an adult. They should project a sense of concern for others that's so strong it culminates in obvious selflessness. That's what the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops did in 2002, after an onslaught of stories about mismanagement of priestly sexual abuse allegations that were decades old in most cases. The conference made scant effort to refute claims. Bishops didn't excuse them with detail and context. They didn't point out that some other institutions have worse problems, but get far less press. Instead, the conference organized a summit in Dallas that resulted in a model of child protection that sets a gold standard that other institutions are beginning to copy. The bishops established a bureaucracy for child protection in Washington. Throughout the country they enacted their own diocesan zero-tolerance policies that have made Catholic churches and schools in the United States positively hostile to pedophile perverts. In most Catholic institutions on American soil, any adult seeking contact with children undergoes education and a criminal background check. Catholic school employees are fired for creating even the mere appearance of impropriety with children. The Vatican, by contrast, has gone on the defensive in response to recent allegations that Pope Benedict XVI mismanaged child abuse allegations while serving as archbishop of Munich for a short time in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Easter service in St. Peter's Square began with what The Associated Press describes as a breaking of tradition and a "ringing defense" of the pope by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Dean of the College of Cardinals. On Tuesday, the Vatican newspaper quoted Sodano saying "it's not the bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible." Other Vatican officials have made similar statements. It sounds a bit like executives at Toyota, who initially distanced themselves from the problem of runaway engines that had killed their customers. Nobody in authority intended harm. Yet they should have made the pain and suffering caused by the company's cars, regardless of the details and the exact cause, their only immediate concern. The pope did not cause or mismanage every crime committed by every priest who ever worked for him as a bishop, a cardinal and as pope. But all Vatican authorities should put the needs of others — even morally bankrupt plaintiff's lawyers who exploit tragedy and sometimes invent it — ahead of their own reputations. The truth will protect the church if its leaders act with selfless integrity. Ultimately, they're not vulnerable to false allegations. Perhaps the pope, who showed intolerance of sexual abuse while heading the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, should appoint an impartial expert panel to investigate the full scope of allegations and propose a long-term solution to prevent future abuse worldwide. Using this scandal to put the needs of others first would be the Catholic thing to do and the best possible public relations move for a church the world needs.
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