UNITED STATES
The Daily Campus
By Brandon Bub, Michael Dearman
Emails: bbub@smu.edu, mdearman@smu.edu
Institutional reform necessary within Catholic Church
It is no secret that the Catholic Church is either directly or indirectly responsible for some of the worst atrocities perpetrated by a single institution in history. The Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades and witch hunts throughout the medieval era are just a few “incidents” that left tens of thousands of people dead.
However, I do not want to make this a “Let’s talk about how horrible the Church is” column. I might not be a Catholic anymore, but I come from a family of them and I feel like I have a vested interest in the state of the institution. I do not want to treat the Church as some monolithic entity that has consistently sought to oppress heretics, minorities and nonbelievers. The Church is linked to unspeakable crimes, but such crimes are committed by individuals, and I do not want to absolve these individuals of guilt by attributing it to something larger than them.
Nevertheless, as evidence has grown to illustrate the systemic nature of sexual abuse (and subsequent cover-ups of that abuse), it becomes clear that institutional reform is necessary. Priests who abuse children or other members of their congregation should rightly be defrocked and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The same ought to be true of clergy members who know of such abuse and willingly cover it up: much like how Joe Paterno and members of Penn State who covered up Jerry Sandusky’s abuse were dismissed from the university, so too should priests who try to protect the reputations of colleagues by moving them to other parishes to prevent crimes from being found be stripped of their Holy Orders.
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