UNITED STATES
USA Today
November 23, 2018
By Tim Roemer
Disappointed and angered once again by the Catholic Church, we lay people must act to protect our faith.
I have done a lifetime of public speaking, in the chambers of Congress in Washington and in a foreign country as a diplomat. But that was not enough to keep my knees from shaking when I stood up during Mass after the priest’s homily in August at St. Thomas à Becket and called out loudly: “Justice in the name of Christ. Justice for our children.”
It was righteous anger for our innocents — the hundreds of children recently revealed in a Pennsylvania grand jury report as victims of both sexual abuse and a cover-up by high-level Catholic clergy.
The Catholic Church has repeatedly tried to explain away its history of sexual abuse as a lamentable but distant part of its past. Yes, that was wrong, officials say, but it was a different time and we have changed.
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