UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism

Jerry Slevin

Outrage against current mass violence is courageous. Outrage against historical mass violence is less courageous. Selective outrage, however, is hypocrisy. Pope Francis vented calculatingly this week against 100 year old mass atrocities during World War I by Turkish Muslims against Armenian Christians. At the same time, he pointedly ducked a meeting with non-clerical members of his own illusory abuse commission seeking to curtail sexual violence by priests against hundreds of thousands of defenseless children worldwide.

Two abuse survivors, Marie Collins and Peter Saunders, along with London-based psychiatrist Baroness, Sheila Hollins, and French child/adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Catherine Bonnet, traveled to Francis’ residence, but he did not meet with them. For their widely publicized and considerable efforts, the commission members got a mere promise from Cardinal Sean O”Malley to tell Francis they are concerned, as indicated reportedly in the members’ statement released by the commission’s…