CHAMPAIGN URBANA IL
News Gazette
January 7, 2019
U.S. Catholic bishops, meeting as a group in suburban Chicago, get what could be described as a severe scolding from the pope. His message seemed directed particularly at bishops in Illinois who recently were content to blame their predecessors for the clergy abuse scandal in the church.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall as the Catholic bishops of the U.S., meeting in Mundelein, read through a highly critical letter sent to them last week by Pope Francis. His key message was that without personal humility and Gospel-inspired ways of responding to clergy abuse victims, “everything we do risks being tainted by self-referentiality, self-preservation and defensiveness.”
Indeed, that self-preservation instinct came through clearly from many of the bishops in Illinois after Attorney General Lisa Madigan issued a preliminary report in December that said that the church had seriously understated the number of priests in Illinois who had been accused of abuse.
Madigan’s report said the six Illinois dioceses “have lost sight of both a key tenet” of policies laid out by the church as well as “the most obvious human need as a result of these abhorrent acts of abuse: the healing and reconciliation of survivors.”
Soon after Madigan’s report was released, the local dioceses each issued statements that solemnly apologized for the past abuse but uniformly threw past bishops, priests and administrators under the bus.
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