WOODLAND PARK (NJ)
North Jersey Record
February 14, 2019
How much of a stain does a priest’s garment carry? How much of a stench of shame?
Certainly not much for most priests, not for “good priests,” not for those who go about their daily walk ministering, first and foremost, to humankind and to the faithful who look to them for spiritual and emotional guidance.
And yet not all priests are good, and we are staggered by the sheer number of priests in New Jersey, past and present, who allegedly abused the trust, sexually abused children under their watch, and, shamefully, were protected by the Roman Catholic Church.
On Wednesday came a long-awaited reckoning for Catholic priests in New Jersey, some of the “bad ones,” believed to have abused young boys and girls, priests who too often were allowed to keep their cassocks and to keep performing Mass — even after their terrible secrets were known to the church hierarchy.
Cardinal Joseph William Tobin greets parishioners at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark before he is installed as head of the Archdiocese of Newark on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017.
Cardinal Joseph William Tobin greets parishioners at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark before he is installed as head of the Archdiocese of Newark on Friday, Jan. 6, 2017. (Photo: Michael Karas/Northjersey.com)
On Wednesday we at last saw the names, 188 of them, from New Jersey’s five Catholic dioceses, who the church said had been “credibly accused” of sexually abusing children. The Newark Archdiocese posted its list shortly after 9:15 a.m. — a total of 63 names that included 33 priests who are deceased. Some of the priests had one alleged victim, but 33 had multiple victims. The Paterson Diocese list includes 28 clerics.
The release of the lists came after Cardinal Joseph Tobin announced last year that the dioceses were in the process of reviewing clergy sex abuse cases. The lists, he said, were compiled during an “extensive review” of records dating to 1940.
The length of the lists and the length of years covered by the lists speak directly to the depth and breadth of the abuse, but it cannot speak to the horror of it.
It cannot speak for long-ago victims who were subjected to abuse by men of God, men who were supposed to be their protectors — not their predators.
It cannot speak for all those who were abused, who had no lifeline to which to turn, save the church, and who had, in the end, neither the strength nor the wherewithal to speak up or cry out for justice.
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