UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
Likely facing pressure from worldwide media observers assembled now at the Vatican to report on Family Synod issues, Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s seemingly “do nothing advisory commission on minors” made its latest pitch at trying to appear serious. Now as “chief papal protector of children”, Boston’s O’Malley is supposedly addressing the most important current Catholic family issue — clerical child sexual abuse, that the Family Synod is obscenely ducking, it appears.
Predictably, this “abuse commission”, after ten months (and 19 months of Francis’ papacy”), has not yet even finalized its membership or operating rules or even set up a permanent office. Indeed, its lone abuse survivor member, Marie Collins today (10/6) indicated to AP that she had been frustrated earlier in the year with the slow pace of work on the commission.
AP’s forthright Rome reporter, Nicole Winfield, honestly observed today that, while “Francis’ other expert commissions looking into Vatican finance and administration worked at a frenzied pace through 2014 and finished their projects in recent months, the sex abuse commission never seemed to get off the ground. It lacked organization, a clear mission statement, office space, funding and a full membership roster. …” Would that some other Vatican reporters had some of Winfield’s candor!
Winfield also noted that ” …O”Malley has pledged that the commission will develop “clear and effective protocols” to hold accountable bishops who covered up for abusive priests …” O’Malley seems to have made similar pledges before with little to show for it, it appears.
For the full AP report, please see:
As to Pope Francis’ new “papal protector of children”, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the recent National Catholic Reporter (NCR) comments of Jim Jenkins are revealing. Reportedly, Jenkins, a prominent California psychologist with some abuse survivor patients, has battled with Cardinal Levada, beginning a decade ago when Jenkins was on Levada’s San Francisco’s Archdiocesan child protection board.
Jenkins observes at NCR about O’Malley, in pertinent part:
“Hierarchs in the Vatican are only motivated by power and it’s twisted sister, money. This is a typical maneuver by Cardinal Sean O’Malley. He says the pious thing in public but in private, behind the scenes, he makes sure that the fix is in. This is the way that O’Malley has conducted himself ever since he became a bishop – it’s the way he has climbed the clerical ladder. O’Malley is the chief Vatican cleaner-upper who sweeps up after the elephant parade of abusers. … “
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