BishopAccountability.org
	Thank You, Archbishop Nichols. Your Apology for the Child-Abuse Horror Is Exactly What We Needed By George Pitcher Telegraph April 22, 2010 http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTrackerArchive/2010/04/#033886 Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has shown the Roman Catholic Church, from Ireland to the Vatican, how to do it in his response to his Church's institutional child-rape revelations. With real humility and genuine penitence, he has expressed a "heartfelt apology and deep sorrow to those who have suffered abuse, those who have felt ignored, disbelieved or betrayed." By saying "the failings of some bishops and religious leaders in handling these matters…are aspects of this tragedy which we deeply regret and for which we apologise" directly flies in the face of dreadfully high-handed, self-satisfied and complacent responses to the crisis that have emerged from some quarters of his Church. This is not, as some Catholic bishops have appallingly claimed, about an anti-papist media conspiracy. Nor is it about "idle gossip" or the Church not responding to "dominant opinion", as the Vatican has variously and repulsively claimed. It is not, God help us, the consequence of "homosexuality" in the priesthood as one episcopal wiseacre revoltingly had it. It is about the most terrible crimes committed against vulnerable children by the very people that they should have been most able to trust for holy, unconditional love.
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