ST. LOUIS (MO)
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
October 22, 2018
The Diocese of San Jose today released a statement regarding the news that one of the men on their list of “credibly accused” clergy was in jail on new charges.
In the statement Bishop Patrick McGrath said, “Prior to the Dallas Charter … these cases were handled differently based on the clinical psychological standards at the time of their convictions.” We believe it is disingenuous for the Bishop to claim that the Church did not understand the danger of returning men who abuse children to ministry.
As early as the mid-1950s, Father Gerald Fitzgerald, founder of the Servants of the Paracletes, an order established to deal with problem priests, wrote regularly to Bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials that clergy who abused children should be laicized immediately. Father Thomas Doyle and attorney Ray Mouton warned the Bishops again in 1985.
Bishops who now claim they just “didn’t understand” child sex abuse prior to 2002 are just making excuses for decades of cover-ups. Does anyone really believe that these well-educated men honestly thought that prayer would cure pedophilia?
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