UNITED STATES
The Worthy Adversary
Posted by Joelle Casteix on August 28, 2015
Tell me what is wrong with these two excerpts from this week’s news:
From Newsday:
Francis, 78, a Jesuit from Argentina, is moving in a similar direction, McCartin said. He has overhauled the Vatican bureaucracy, encouraged open debate within the church, instituted a mechanism for removing bishops who covered up the priest sex-abuse scandal and adopted a simple lifestyle as pope, trying to emulate his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi. (emphasis mine)
From the NY Times:
Francis is not the first pope to have addressed the issue of sexual abuse of minors by members of the clergy, but he has drafted new rules giving prosecutors more leeway in the cases, allowing criminal charges to be applied to Vatican employees anywhere. He is also the first pope to take action against superiors accused of covering up for priests. (emphasis mine)
Have you guessed? Are you stumped? Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. Francis hasn’t taken action against superiors who covered up for abusing priests nor has he instituted a mechanism for removing bishops.
Allowing KC/St. Joseph Robert Finn to resign three years after a conviction for child endangerment or allowing Archbishop John Nienstedt to resign in the wake of a huge sex scandal is NOT a mechanism.
Unless “allowing complicit bishops to freely resign with full rights, power, and honors—and no punishment, accountability, or shame” is a mechanism, of course.
These men have not been publicly sanctioned. Francis has said NOTHING publicly about how these men allowed criminals to wreak havoc on the children in their dioceses. They were not forced out of their jobs. There was never a public reason given by the Vatican for accepting the resignations.
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.