NORTH ANDOVER (MA)
Valley Patriot
April 7, 2019
By Joe D’Amore
“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low” Desmond Tutu.
God’s mercy is uniform, constant and unwaveringly applied to all who seek it. Justice, however, is a flawed mimicry of it because it is a human invention and therefore subject to discretion.
The fabric of the catholic church is torn and there’s no repair in progress. Once again after a cacophony of recent news of abuse by high ranking clergy, at the conclusion of a summit of bishops in Rome to address the issue, the Pope disappoints.
In a faux response the church announced through the Associated Press that it would issue a “ new law” creating a child protection policy that covers the internal bureaucracy at Vatican City. Perhaps, the Pope and the hierarchy missed the proverbial memo. Criminal sexual abuse of children has become institutionalized throughout the world for decades by the church as well as its coverup.
There is neither nothing new about this condition, nor are the crimes localized within the walls of Vatican City. Certainly, the application of the law directed at “ bureaucracy” provides a “ line-in-the-sand” whereby high-ranking officials are now finally at risk of being held materially accountable . Certainly, this is a novel approach.
But criminal conviction remains still the exclusive purview of civil authorities. The church’s internal authority is devoid of a genuine will to initiate comprehensive justice in its most basic forms:
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.