UNITED STATES
Hamilton and Griffin on Rights
Over the past few months, the film “Spotlight” has justifiably garnered a lot of attention and praise. It’s about how a team of Boston Globe reporters shined a long-overdue “spotlight” on the Boston archdiocese and its decades of successfully hiding clergy sex crimes.
For a few years afterwards, to a much lesser degree, other journalists did similar investigations in other US Catholic dioceses.
But public attention wanes quickly. And bishops aren’t dumb. They responded by doubling down on secrecy and hiring more expert public relations firms. They launched, and still relentlessly implement, a shrewd PR campaign: admitting what couldn’t be denied but minimizing it, shifting blame, offering apologies and making promises, while clamping down an even-tighter lid on their long-held, potentially devastating secrets.
So much remains hidden.
Here are nine places where “spotlights” are sorely needed now:
1—Church staff and defenders TALK of “zero tolerance.” But that’s the official church policy in only a handful of western democracies (as our colleagues at BishopAccountability.org point out). Across the vast majority of the world, bishops refuse to even promise – much less implement – “zero tolerance.” Why have virtually no news outlets reported this simple but telling fact?
2—Hundreds of priests who’ve been convicted, suspended or accused in one country have been sent or have gone abroad, only to work or live among unsuspecting families and colleagues. Not a single bishop, as best we can tell, has yanked a single passport from a single predator priest. Why is that? Not a single discussion has been held (unless behind closed doors) among church officials about this disturbing and likely growing practice. Why have just a few journalists (Brooks Egerton, Will Carless) reported this?
3—“We didn’t understand. We’re learning.” That’s the carefully-crafted, oft-repeated but disingenuous mantra of Catholic officials across the US (and increasingly, the rest of the world). If that’s true, and evidence suggests it’s not, then why has that “learning” stopped? Where’s the evidence that weak, vague, hastily-adopted church abuse policies are being strengthened, as bishops supposedly “learn” more about predators? It’s not happening.
4—Remember the National Review Board? That’s the body that was set up in 2002 to allegedly monitor whether US bishops were honoring their pledges of reform. Heard anything about or from them for the last few years? We haven’t either. Despite initially hopeful signs, they’ve become a “toothless tiger.” The purported “watchdog” has become a “lap dog.”
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