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	The Media Declare Open Season on the Catholic Church By David A. Zubik Pittsburgh Post Gazette April 18, 2010 http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10108/1051048-109.stm I was wondering how bad it could get. Then Sally Kalson began her column in last Sunday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with the following: " 'When I was growing up, just about every parish had its pedophile priest and everybody knew who it was,' said my friend Carrie, who attended Roman Catholic schools just outside of Pittsburgh in the 1960s." I didn't have to wonder any longer. That charge was the lead in Ms. Kalson's column and a slap in the face of the 342 priests of this diocese who serve so faithfully with me. It was an attack on my flock, the nearly 800,000 members of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. It was never qualified, never modified. It simply was there in print as fact. If you crunch the numbers of priests and parishes at that time, Ms. Kalson basically let the claim stand unchallenged that roughly 60 percent of the priests serving in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s were pedophiles. Slanderous and outrageous? Sure. But that's how bad it has become. We have been inundated daily with stories, both obscure and sensational, from everywhere concerning allegations of abuse by clergy. It might be a story from India, Germany, Norway or Spain. It usually involves decades-old allegations. Responding to the various stories is like herding cats. You answer one and immediately another takes off. But by the time you have responded to the first story, it has already become part of media shorthand and fodder for columnists. And on and on it goes. Let me be blunt. Reports of sexual abuse by clergy anywhere in the world bring nothing but sadness, anger and shame from me. If there is anywhere that children, or anyone, should be safe, it should be in their homes and in the church. It is also true that the response of some within the church in Europe in the past -- and in the United States -- was to rely on the therapeutic culture of the times. There was a belief by a whole host of professionals -- lawyers, counselors, judges, psychiatrists, police officers and, yes, bishops and priests -- that sexual offenders could be cured through a mix of therapy and repentance. As we have all learned painfully, this was not true. It only made tragedies more tragic. While no one made such decisions thinking that children would be hurt, too often predators were returned to ministry after treatment and victimized young people again. This happened in America decades ago. It happened in Europe and elsewhere. And in every entity, secular or religious. What is most disconcerting, however, is that in this recent spate of allegations, everything the church has done over two decades to address this tragedy has been completely ignored -- and Pope Benedict XVI has been portrayed as somehow a co-conspirator in protecting guilty priests from punishment. The Holy Father, in his papacy and when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been a leader in making certain that the "filth" -- his word for those who would abuse children -- would be cleaned out of the church. In regard to the crime, the evil of child abuse, the Catholic Church in the United States put in place in 2002 a 17-point comprehensive "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People." This codified an entire series of best practices for addressing this tragic issue, practices which have been in place in some dioceses for at least a decade or more, including the Diocese of Pittsburgh. The key elements of the charter are: 1) We respond with compassion to victims/survivors; 2) We work diligently to screen those working with children and young people; 3) We provide child-abuse awareness and prevention education; 4) We report any accusations of suspected abuse to civil law enforcement; and 5) We account for our efforts to protect children and youth through an outside annual national audit of our practices. In the midst of all the slanderous news stories over the past month, the findings of the most recent annual audit -- conducted by an outside investigative agency made up primarily of former FBI agents -- were released and ignored by most media. The audit noted that U.S. dioceses last year invested more than $21 million for child-protection efforts, such as training programs, background checks and staff support. It said clear mandates and procedures for reporting suspected abuse have been put in place. Almost 6 million children (96 percent) in Catholic schools or religious education programs, underwent safe-environment training last year. And the audit found that background evaluations were performed on more than 2 million priests, deacons, seminarians, educators, employees and volunteers. In the Diocese of Pittsburgh, well over 40,000 priests, seminarians, religious, teachers and volunteers have been screened and trained. And by the way, our guidelines on those who must be screened far exceed the demands of Pennsylvania law. We have lay eucharistic ministers who have served for decades yet still must undergo screening from secular authorities and training. The "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" has provided the guidelines-with-teeth that make the response of the church the singular most effective and widespread program in the United States to address and counter the tragedy of abuse. It has provided the model for addressing this issue to the church -- and secular organizations -- throughout the world. And it has done so because the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, was instrumental in making certain that the charter -- and the norms of church law that enforce it -- were approved and implemented. As Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz recently noted, "Pope Benedict, both before he became pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue. He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims. He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization." Pope Benedict XVI is not the cause of the tragedy of abuse or how it was handled in the past by the church. He has been a critical part of the solution. It might be too much to hope for that we have seen the last of the outrageous charges, the last of the unwarranted attacks on the Holy Father, the last of the slanderous generalizations about the priests of Pittsburgh past and present. But I do hope there will be a little more care taken before we give credence to every charge, along with a little more responsible thinking before dragging through the mud a church that has done more to address this horrible tragedy than any other entity.
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