BishopAccountability.org

OPINION EDITORIAL: Bishops need to get out of the way of abuse investigators

New York Post
August 18, 2018

https://nypost.com/2018/08/18/bishops-need-to-get-out-of-the-way-of-abuse-investigators/


Of all the horrors in the Pennsylvania grand-jury report on decades of abuse by Catholic priests, the greatest may be this: “Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected” — and “many, including some named in this report, have been promoted.”

The 1,400-page report covers decades of secret history for six of the state’s eight dioceses. It lists 300-plus priests who had engaged in abuse, mostly of boys but also of girls. The incomplete roster of victims runs more than 1,000.

Details include a child pornography ring, rape of a pre-teen girl in the hospital, sadistic “grooming,” a girl impregnated and then “helped” with an abortion and on and on and on.

The hierarchy routinely covered it up, regularly moving predators to where they could, and did, strike again. Leaders justified it as protecting the church from “scandal” — somehow ignoring the obscene scandal of their coverups.

Donald Cardinal Wuerl, now the DC archbishop but for 18 years the bishop of Pittsburgh, seems to be the highest-ranking enabler. He dealt harshly with some abusers, even fighting the Vatican when it ordered one predator reinstated — but also played the “just transfer them away” game, including with at least one priest from the unholy porn ring.

Before the report landed, Wuerl was talking about “a terrible disappointment” and not “some massive, massive crisis,” referring to the news about his DC predecessor, Theodore McCarrick — who has resigned from the College of Cardinals to face clerical trial on charges he was an abuser for decades. He then spent days walking back his comments suggesting bishops should lead any investigation into the cardinal-predator’s enablers.

At this point, the question isn’t whether the laity must take the lead in a too-long-delayed effort to get at the full truth of the hierarchy’s coverup of priestly abuse. It’s about whether any bishops or other high church officials can be trusted to assist.

And about finding lay leaders who won’t go soft — such as former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, who was forced off an abuse-investigative board back in 2003 after he refused to apologize for comparing the bishops’ coverup to the Mafia.

The Vatican on Friday broke its long silence on the Pennsylvania report, stressing that “victims should know the pope is on their side.” Will it act on those words?

In May, all 31 of Chile’s bishops offered their resignations to Pope Francis in the wake of a blistering 2,300-page report on the failure to address decades of abuse there.

That should stand as a warning to Wuerl and other “minimizers” in the US hierarchy: Denial is only deepening the scandal.




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