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  The Boston List and the Boston Non-List

By Kristine Ward
National Survivor Advocates Coalition
August 26, 2011

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/press-release/

Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston has released a list of 159 clerics, including 157 priests and two deacons, accused of sexual abuse on the website www.bostoncatholic.org

The names of these clerics have already been made known either by the archdiocese or other sources, including the list made public by Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

While due notice will be given to the release of the list in news coverage and of course, on the Archdiocese of Boston's website, most likely on the Cardinal's blog and his diocesan newspaper, the National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) calls your attention to the Non-Lists:

the 91 Boston clerics that were not included

the religious order clerics not included.

Cardinal O'Malley included the first "Non-list'" 91 in his statement along with the following breakdown:

62 are dead, have never been publicly accused of abuse, and have never been investigated by Church officials.

22 faced accusations that could not be substantiated

4 are the subject of preliminary investigations and are no longer in active ministry

3 are former priests who have not been publicly accused of abuse

Such a neat and innocent sounding phrase "never publicly accused."

Wrapped up in this nomenclature is the giant shield of a policy that chooses cleric over child — a shield that protects Cardinal Bernard Law and other archbishops and cardinals of Boston.

A shield forged from expired statutes of limitations and imposed confidentiality agreements.

By Cardinal O'Malley's admission 62 of the clerics "never publicly accused" are dead.

These dead men have been judged by Almighty God. There is nothing any person on earth can do to enhance, mitigate or change this judgment.

No one should live, preach and believe this more than a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.

The comfort, the grounding sense of being believed, the end to the mistaken belief that perpetrators have only one victim, the beginning of understanding of why lives have gone so terribly wrong, could be given to survivors by the naming of these dead men.

This has not been considered a valid enough argument for a Cardinal who says he has met with hundreds of victims.

The second Non-list, the religious order clerics' list, may range anywhere from 40, (the number given by the Archdiocese of Boston) to a possible 350 clerics.

Cardinal O'Malley says the rightful dealing with the naming of these priests is with their religious orders.

These men could not have presented themselves as priests in the Archdiocese of Boston without faculties granted by the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston. No religious order superior grants faculties – bishops do.

A child knew what difference between a secular priest and a religious order priest when being raped and sodomized? What technicality of label spared them years of horrific suffering?

But for these religious order priests again the hedge, the dodge, the escape route is laid out.

Cardinal O'Malley has laid out a number of categories for his release of the names on the website.

Indeed in so doing, he has already created the tool that could have been used to release the names of the 91 "never publicly accused" and the religious order priests.

All that need be done is to simply put the headings above the lists – but release the names.

For the gathering of the 159 names on one website, we take note and have one hand clapping.

For the non-lists, not even that.

 
 

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