MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Joe Soucheray
POSTED: 11/16/2013
If I were the archbishop, and the chances of that are certainly off the board, I would call a news conference. In fact, I would call one every day if I had to just to keep pace with attorney Jeff Anderson and the St. Paul police, who have reopened an investigation of a child pornography case involving a former Hugo priest.
I was made privy to a letter that Archbishop John Nienstedt apparently sent to Catholic school principals assuring them that the archdiocese is on the job and taking full responsibility for its failure to act more thoroughly on past charges of abusive priests. It was … wooden. It was too written by committee without heartfelt personality. It was boilerplate, is what it was.
This is not the time for boilerplate. The vibe emanating from the chancery offices is off key. The church authorities are not out in front of this mess; they are entangled in it, as though they are peeking from behind the drapes wondering what is going to hit them next.
A thought of admonition, which is not at all to excuse abusive priests, who should have been thrown out of the church and not moved around. That is the significant downfall that compels the current misery, that church authorities for too many years did not properly address low-functioning or even criminally bent employees.
Oh, the admonition. As depleted as modern newsgathering institutions are, they will find the energy to go after the Roman Catholic Church. That is just the way it is. The church is seen as white, powerful and wealthy. And we live in a time when the discipline and ritual of theology is seen as folly, at least through the eyes of post-modernism.
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