UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Sexually violating an innocent child in one’s care is unthinkable. Sexually violating more than 200 deaf children in one’s care is beyond unthinkable! HBO’s current award winning documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa” shows, horribly, that this is what a lone Milwaukee priest allegedly did. The Vatican, its complicit hierarchical subordinates and subservient local prosecutors evidentally failed repeatedly to curtail it.
Moreover, too many reliable reports, catalogued extensively and accessible to all at BishopAccountability.org, make it clear that the unthinkable has been, and continues to be, pervasive in religious organizations, especially in my Catholic Church, in the USA, as well as in Australia and so many other countries.
This revealing documentary captures the common pattern found in too many U.S. Catholic dioceses, from Los Angeles and San Diego in the West and Philly, New York and Boston in the East and many cities in between. While papal apologists try to obfuscate the pattern in mystical smokescreens, it is mainly and simply about ACCESS, OVERSIGHT and ACCOUNTABILITY.
The recurring pattern is:
(1) EASY ACCESS: Spirtual “power” enables many sexual predators to abuse young children very easily;
(2) BAD OVERSIGHT: Religious leaders, like bishops, frequently fail to curtail the abusers, who then abuse others; and
(3) NO ACCOUNTABILITY: Local prosecutors bend to bishops’ political power permitting abusers to continue abusing.
ACCESS and OVERSIGHT are mainly under bishops’ control. ACCOUNTABILITY is mainly under your control, if you exercise it.
In only 30 seconds you can help change this continuing pattern by applying your political clout. Just click on, as many others are now doing, and sign the petition to President Obama:
[Click here for the petition.]
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