UNITED STATES
Bilgrimage
William D. Lindsey
And for those continuing to follow the controversy His Eminence Cardinal Francis George, the past president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, recently ignited when he compared his gay and lesbian brothers and sisters to the Ku Klux Klan, there’s the following:
As always, Jamie Manson provides incisive, theologically perceptive analysis at National Catholic Reporter. Her thesis (and this dovetails with what I’ve just posted about the movement of angry Anglicans back across the Tiber): in rebranding itself to appeal to the right-wing fringes, the Catholic church is, at present, negating its mission to those on the margins. …
And as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch notes with an editorial statement today, even as the USCCB lobbies against what it claims is a war to diminish Catholic freedom in the U.S., the Catholic bishops have just mounted another conspicuously ugly attack against survivors of clerical sexual abuse by targeting SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Dorris. The bishops’ lawyers are playing hardball games with SNAP, trying to force it to reveal privileged communications with victims of clerical sexual abuse–though the bishops themselves have never revealed a single scrap of their own files about abuse cases except under serious court and legal duress.
Catholics who support the bishops and who have not ever intended to make room in their hearts and in the Catholic community for survivors of abuse are gleeful that David Clohessy and SNAP are refusing to adhere to a court order to open files that contain confidential information about abuse victims. What must not be lost sight of in the midst of these legal games is that they’re designed to smear SNAP, to damage its credibility, and to make any and all victims of clerical sexual abuse anywhere in the U.S. afraid to come forward with claims.
It’s about, in other words, protecting the church’s assets and tamping down lawsuits by survivors. It’s about using the church’s huge bank accounts and overweening power to threaten and intimidate groups who advocate for survivors of sexual abuse.
What it is conspicuously not about is loving, welcoming, and healing survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
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