BishopAccountability.org
	John Grogan | Indignation at Lack Thereof By John Grogan Philadelphia Inquirer [United States] June 28, 2005 I was having lunch recently with an area priest with whom I am friendly. When the topic of the clergy child-abuse scandal came up, the pain on his face was palpable. The embarrassment, the anger, the shame and sense of betrayal. It was as though, just by mentioning it, I had sucker-punched him. This priest is a good and decent man. He's reverent, not self-righteous. He toils quietly at his vocation in the hopes of leading the Catholics he reaches toward a happier, holier life. He is a man of fairly intimidating build, and my clear sense as we sat over brats and beer talking about abusive priests and the hierarchy that for so many decades enabled them was that he wanted to... kick somebody's butt. I mean that literally. And it wasn't the media's backside he wanted to kick for publicizing the long-hushed scandal. Or lay Catholics for asking hard questions. Or even the comedians for their cruel jokes. It was his fellow priests he wanted to clock for sinning so horribly, so criminally, so repugnantly. And his Church leaders who failed to take decisive action when they could have and should have. The Catholic Church, here in Philadelphia and across the nation, failed miserably toward that end. Every institution has its misfits. There are corrupt cops and lecherous coaches and pedophile scout leaders and, yes, unethical journalists. But the measure of a great institution is not the behavior of its aberrant members but how it deals with that behavior. A shameful silence In the case of the Catholic Church, the response - for decades - was subterfuge and damage control. It was to quietly shuffle priests from parish to parish, one step ahead of the allegations that dogged them. It was to keep credible charges of wrongdoing from reaching prosecutors. It was to close its collective eyes and hope (pray?) the whole dirty mess would evaporate. It was, at best, delusional denial, and probably something closer to criminal conspiracy. Last week, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia quietly made public the defrocking of seven priests for misconduct involving minors. This is a step in the right direction, and one that is occurring in dioceses across the country. And yet it seems inadequate. The announcement was buried inside an archdiocese newspaper, as if maybe no one would notice. It could not bring itself to call the misconduct sexual, but that's what it was. When my Inquirer colleagues called Cardinal Justin Rigali seeking comment, he declined. Excuse me, cardinal, but there are 1.5 million members of your flock who need to hear from you about this. More troubling news: The seven defrocked priests over the last four decades moved among some 35 parishes and five Catholic high schools across the region - a possible indication of the evasive pattern that served secrecy so well for so long. Now I wonder: With the fallen priests stripped of their vows, will the Church continue to monitor them? Or are they alone and on their own? A mass betrayal Catholics of every stripe have been betrayed. And so have the innocent men in Roman collars who must deal with the suspicious glances and wholesale assumptions they never dreamed possible when they were ordained. The pain is real and immense. And Cardinal Rigali declines to comment. Forgiveness is divine, but so is justice. Can anyone blame my lunch companion for, as he put it, wanting a pound of flesh from those who harmed not only children but every Catholic who must now confront the stark reality that evil can lurk anywhere, even behind altar vestments? As my priest friend vented, I nearly screamed aloud in the restaurant: "Will somebody please make this guy an envoy to the Vatican?" Or someone like him. Someone who has not forgotten how to be angry on behalf of stolen innocence, destroyed lives and shattered faith. Someone who is done worrying about defensive posturing and damage control. I want some of that anger. I want it at the highest levels of the Church. Reverend fathers, bishops and cardinals, why aren't you all mad as hell? And doing something more?