MINNESOTA
Duluth News Tribune
By Damien Cronin on Apr 12, 2015
As a member of the Catholic Church that I love and as a victim of clerical physical and sexual abuse, I am appalled, embarrassed, but mostly profoundly saddened by the ways priests, bishops, cardinals and even popes deliberately and knowingly have mishandled clerical sexual abuse issues. Instead of being transparent, honest and law-abiding, they consistently have chosen to cover up these crimes, usually only releasing somewhat accurate information and evidence and only when they are dragged into court or forced to do so by laws that bound the rest of us.
I don’t believe the bishops, the cardinals and especially the entrenched bureaucracy in the Vatican and Catholic Church worldwide get it yet. For more than 50 years they have been aware of the accusations and the wrenching stories from thousands of victims.
How could they not get it?
Pope Francis gets it. He has many times publicly talked about the enormity of and prevalence of clerical abuse and the fallout for victims and the reputation of the Catholic Church. But he needs real, visible and active support from all priests, bishops and cardinals worldwide. Where is this leadership and support? If one needs a prime example of groupthink, look no further than today’s Catholic Church. The Church has circled the wagons and done very little else.
Enough. Over 1 billion Catholics can deal with the truth better than the hierarchy apparently can. Tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth regarding the whole sordid story of sexual abuse by priests and the equally sordid story of the Church’s organized cover-up of these crimes. We all need to clearly hear the what, the who, the where, and the when of incidents and complaints made against priests and how the bishops dealt with these complaints.
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