UNITED STATES
USA Today
November 14, 2018
By Melinda Henneberger
Catholic to her church: After a lifetime of stubborn adherence on my part and criminal behavior on yours, you have finally managed to drive me away.
For months, American Catholics had been asked to be patient just a little longer. We were promised that the church’s “summer of shame,” following only the latest revelations about the systemic cover-ups of clerical sex abuse, would finally be addressed this week in Baltimore at the biannual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
This wouldn’t be just one more round of forced apologies, either, but would involve action — and maybe even a vote on a new standard of conduct for bishops, and an outside commission to review violations of it.
Only, to the astonishment of no one past the age of reason, that’s not going to happen after all.
Instead, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the bishops conference, who has himself shielded at least one predator, opened the meeting by announcing that the Vatican had insisted on delaying any action until after a February Vatican summit on the scandal.
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