UNITED STATES
Associated Baptist Press
David Clohessy of SNAP denounced a seminary president’s advice against reporting church matters to the press as “self-serving, unhealthy and often dangerous.”
By Bob Allen
A leading advocate for victims of clergy sex abuse says a Southern Baptist leader’s advice not to take congregational disputes to the media “flies in the face of common sense and civic duty.”
David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, credited church whistleblowers in just the last three weeks with helping to expose three credibly accused clerics in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Clohessy, who advocated for victims during the Roman Catholic sexual-abuse scandal a decade ago, said Southern Baptists are a different denomination, but the cover-up of clergy child sex crimes doesn’t happen just in Catholicism.
Clohessy responded to an Oct. 15 sermon by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary President Paige Patterson claiming the prohibition in First Corinthians 6 on church members suing one another “also means that you don’t take matters to the press.”
“We don’t take matters before unbelievers,” Patterson said. “What goes on in the church of God doesn’t go to the press.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.