UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Patrick Beretta
Leaves fall early in Montana. On the first day of October, the trees, in front of St Patrick Church in Butte, seemed to welcome Bishop George Thomas with bare, ascetic arms. He was coming to our church to deliver a solemn message on the terribly dark subject of child abuse. On all of us gathered, the crisis had taken a heavy toll. None of us knew what to expect. As we waited, our souls felt as naked and cold as branches.
Just as humanity has always been on the move, from its origins the Church has also been in motion. Since the time of the apostles it became a pilgrim church on the Silk Road, Roman thoroughfares, Mediterranean sailings. But the primary journey of the Church has always been interior. Some of these pilgrimages within were transcendent, some were tragic. The recent child abuse scandal has been a pilgrimage of great shame and sorrow.
My only personal encounter with the horror of child abuse was not within the Church. Years ago, I had a restaurant employee who, one evening, did not come to work. After days of wild speculations and contradictory rumors, his daughter came to see me. Nothing in life had prepared me for the experience she recounted. Her father had been arrested because, as a child, she had been sexually abused by him. The staff and I knew them both very well and we literally felt physically sick for days afterwards. The dreadful abuse of one child had made victims of all of us.
Since the painful subject of clergy sexual child abuse came to the attention of the media, a false narrative has emerged. The scrutiny and the numerous investigations and reports have given the false impression that child abuse is essentially a catholic scourge. Whereas all surveys in the US and other countries have shown this crime to be widespread and not specific to particular religious affiliations. Indeed some evidence shows that the incidence in public institutions is higher. And, further, most abusers by far are family members and home is the most common setting
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