UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
David Clohessy | Jun. 8, 2016
In the latest installment of an otherwise helpful series of articles, Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea paints a depressing and incomplete picture of the church’s ongoing clergy sex abuse and cover-up crisis.
Because she’s a therapist, she understandably focuses on the “healing” half of the crisis. But she gives remarkably short shrift, we feel, to the other and more pressing half: “prevention.” And she also offers a very limited portrayal of our organization.
No one doubts Frawley-O’Dea’s sincerity, academic qualifications, therapeutic skills or commitment to making the church a more healthy and safe place for all. But familiarity with individual abuse victims in one-on-one counseling sessions doesn’t necessarily translate into a sophisticated understanding of the ever-growing victims’ movement to, in the words of the SNAP mission statement, “protect the vulnerable, heal the wounded, expose the truth and deter future cover ups.”
Perhaps her most surprising claims are that “the church resolutely ignores SNAP’s voice” and that we have no “organized” approach to healing. Nearly 30 years of our history strongly suggests otherwise.
If one equates “church” with “bishops,” in a very narrow sense, Frawley O’Dea is right: in the short run, bishops often seem to ignore us. I can’t ever recall an instance in which, face-to-face, a Catholic official told a group of SNAP members “Gosh, I guess you’re right. I will take the action you’re seeking.”
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