Has Anything Changed?

KANSAS CITY (MO)
The Catholic Key

October 26, 2018

By Bishop James V. Johnston

Over the past weeks, I have received many letters from concerned Catholics over the renewed scandal surrounding child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. I am grateful for the time and effort that goes into writing one’s bishop, and grateful for the passion expressed in the desire that our Church be purified and restored, so that it can be that “city on a hill” and the “light of the world” which Jesus intends it to be.

One of the things I also became aware within the letters and of so many local and national comments that many of our members are not aware of the remarkable changes that have occurred in our Church, and specifically our diocese, over the recent years. The latest news events can give the impression that nothing has changed. The Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report which was the catalyst for the latest scandal was a historical review of behavior in several of the Pennsylvania dioceses going back 70 years, with the majority of the abuse in the seventies and eighties. What was somewhat new in the report was a more detailed description of how some bishops responded to those incidents with a lack of transparency and accountability. One can easily get the impression that nothing has changed in any diocese from the 1940s onward.

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