WORCESTER (MA)
Telegram and Gazette
By David Clohessy
Posted Nov. 6, 2015
Soon, millions across the US will see “Spotlight,” a highly-acclaimed film that shows how dogged Boston Globe reporters, with the help of courageous abuse victims, unearthed horrific clergy sex crimes and cover-ups in the Boston archdiocese and beyond.
In anticipation of the movie, and the distressing picture it paints of complicit Catholic officials, Worcester church staff are disingenuously distancing themselves from both their neighboring diocese and their own indefensible track record of abuse. It’s smart public relations. But it doesn’t correspond with reality.
In a recent Telegram op-ed (Nov. 4), Judge Edward Reynolds claims the local Catholic hierarchy is “protecting children today by implementing nationally accepted protocols.” That’s wishful thinking.
Judge Reynolds and his colleagues should be promoting vigilance instead of complacency. They should take off their rose-colored glasses, look hard at the evidence, and admit that what church spin-doctors pass off as progress is really “smoke and mirrors” designed to mollify the flock, not actually safeguard the vulnerable.
Judge Reynolds was hand-picked by Bishop Robert McManus for an essentially meaningless abuse panel that is primarily “window dressing” mandated by a weak, vague national church policy. Judge Reynolds means well, no doubt. But he’s being fooled and exploited by church officials who continue to put their comfort and careers ahead of kids’ safety.
Here’s the clearest evidence of this. Bishop McManus, Judge Reynolds and their colleagues refuse to take the most simple and effective way to protect kids from child molesting clerics — posting their names, photos and work histories on diocesan and parish websites.
About 30 U.S. bishops have done this. Not Bishop McManus, however. None of those 30 bishops have expressed regret for having taken this easy, quick prevention step. It’s common sense: if a cleric is too dangerous to keep in a parish, then the public should be warned about him.
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