Forces behind Lawsuits Care Nothing about Abuse

State Journal-Register
November 3, 2018

http://www.sj-r.com/opinion/20181103/letter-forces-behind-lawsuits-care-nothing-about-abuse

An attorney filed a lawsuit claiming Catholic clergy sexual abuse against every Catholic diocese in Illinois to “force each diocese to make public the names of all priests, living and dead, accused of child molestation.” It accuses two dead priests who can neither admit guilt nor claim innocence.

Catholic spokespersons refuted the suit’s claims with legal records and websites.

The suit appears based on a presumption of guilt until proven innocent of a never-ending series of charges, a strategy used by progressives to discredit conservatives. The real goal appears to be to silence pro-life Catholic voices like Bishop Thomas Paprocki locally and Pastor Frank Pavone of Priests for Life at the national level. In 1994 Pastor Pavone met with Mother Teresa, who subsequently wrote “I hope that many priests and deacons will join the Priests for Life.”

The attorney falsely claimed Bishop Paprocki “ascribed survivors coming forward to be devils.” The bishop said the “force behind (sex-abuse lawsuits) is ... the devil” for burdening whole congregations and charitable organizations. The bishop attacked the suits’ motivation, not the survivors.

What pro-choice hypocrisy! Planned Parenthood, for example, not only commits the ultimate abuse (abortion) but turns a blind eye to sexual abuse, as evidenced by its settling of a 2012 lawsuit for failing to report 13-years-old Denise Fairbanks’ abuse and impregnation by her father, instead giving the girl an abortion and returning her to her abuser. She suffered another year and a half of abuse. Pro-choice forces behind these lawsuits care nothing about abuse.

Douglas K. Turner