UNITED STATES
Jersey Journal
Thursday, June 28, 2012
By Rev. Alexander Santora/For the Jersey Journal
When ever I hear or read comments by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, I am reminded of the boy who yelled “fire” in the crowded movie theater again and again.
Donohue finds a Catholic conspiracy under every rock. But when he defends the Church in the ongoing sex abuse trials and tribulations, I think he’s made the right call. If there were only one case of clergy sexual abuse, it would be tragic. That there were thousands substantiated coupled with the lax oversight by some bishops in the U.S. has damaged the church’s reputation.
For nearly two decades beginning in the early 1980’s, reporting of abuses by clergy began to mushroom and there were some attempts by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to address the problems, but they were not uniform.
Not until Boston’s cases exploded in 2002 did the bishops enact a national policy.
So ten years ago this month, the U.S. Bishops adopted “The Charter for the Protection of Children,” which stipulated that no clergyman with even one credible accusation of sexual abuse of a minor could function publicly, thus the zero tolerance policy.
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