UNITED STATES
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
BY JOEL CONNELLY, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Published 10:17 a.m., Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Catholic prelates around the country have mounted the bully pulpit against what local Catholic Archbishop J. Peter Sartain calls “threats to religious freedom in this country” and religion “being pushed out of discussion in the public square.”
The bishops’ crosier rattling may turn into the latest case of clerical error.
As its pundits railed at the Obama administration last week, Fox News released an eye-opening poll: By a 61-34 percent margin, Americans approved of the administration’s requiring all employee health plans to provide birth control coverage as part of health care for women. …
A full decade has passed since the Boston Globe first exposed priest pedophilia in the Archdiocese of Boston and the practice of shipping “problem” priests from parish to parish without advance warning.
Initially, the church hierarchy blamed the media, and the moral climate in America, even growing acceptance of homosexuality. Cardinal Law resigned, but was given a plush sinecure in Rome.
Last week, 10 years later, victims of clerical sexual abuse are finally speaking out at a conference in Rome. Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, talks about prelates “learning more” about the problem.
At the same time, retired New York Cardinal Edward Egan gave a newspaper interview in which he retracted his 2002 apology over how the church handled sex abuse. He now says the diocese was “incredibly good” at dealing with the problem. “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”
Huh? Slow, self-protective response has robbed the church hierarchy of much moral authority.
“The sad truth is, if the number of Catholics leaving the church are any indication, most Catholics in the United States see the hierarchy more as victimizers than victims,” National Catholic Reporter columnist Jamie Manson wrote this week.
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