UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Roy Speckhardt
Executive Director, American Humanist Association
The Catholic Church continues to struggle with the crisis originating from its widespread and at least decades long practice of allowing child molesters within its midst to escape justice for their crimes. In a number of cases the failure to take responsibility for the actions of their clergy went as far as allowing abusive priests to continue to work with young children vulnerable to attack. The severity of the public backlash with both Catholics and non-Catholics may have even contributed to the abrupt departure of Pope Benedict XVI, who left office with just 43% of Americans viewing him favorably.
The Church’s new, more popular Pope Francis, viewed favorably by 70% of Americans, publicly committed to righting the church’s wrongs when it comes to child sex abuse. The Pope met with sex abuse victims in Philadelphia to apologize for the church’s complicity in their abuse, saying that “God weeps” for the sexual abuse of children.
But the Pope and Church hasn’t done much more than speak about child abuse, and have instead chosen to continue many of the irresponsible practices which led to the current situation. As Laurie Goodstein noted in an article for the New York Times, “Francis appears to have accepted the resignations of three American bishops who were in the midst of escalating scandals over their mishandling of abuse allegations: two bishops in Minnesota in June and one in April in Kansas City-St. Joseph in Missouri, where the bishop was the first to ever be criminally convicted of shielding a pedophile priest. But the bishops were allowed to leave office without the Vatican’s ever making clear why, and all three remain bishops.” This latest action is part of a long appalling tradition within the Catholic Church which allows either the perpetrators or enablers of child sex abuse to escape persecution and often keep their rank within the church.
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