Benedict commented during his visit when referring to the sexual abuse scandal: "Responding to this situation has not been easy and ... it was sometimes very badly handled."I am assuming that he is referring to how some bishops in the United States "badly handled" the sexual abuse crisis. This slight acknowledgment that the bishops may have had something to do with the sexual abuse scandal, and not just a rotten group of priests is a step in the right direction.
But I also noticed how this sentence is in the passive mood and does not contain the word bishop.
With Benedict's meeting with victims of sexual abuse and his semi-acknowledgment that some bishops may have handled it badly, Benedict accomplished more good on this trip than I expected. At the same time, this is all a first step and a far cry from remedying the fact that bishops are given too much authority for which they are not held accountable.
Two of the biggest criminals are still at large: Cardinal Law at St. John Lateran in Rome and Cardinal Mahoney in Los Angeles. I believe that these criminals need to be removed from their posts before any real trust can be re-established.
A Faithful Catholic
3 comments:
You can bet that the Pope's statements were all vetted by a bunch of lawyers.
Of course the bishop's must take a large share of the resonsibility. But even more the church's antiquated and absurd 'teachings' on sex are the main culprit. That a church that is so anti-sex should have sex among its priests is what is being covered up. These bishops are not covering up for the church's image so much as for sexual activity among its clergy. And the fact that most of the abuse was on males is doubly galling to a hierarchy that has pedophiles and homosexual in its own ranks against church teaching. Until the church comes to grips with its almost perverse teachings on these matters it will continue to have trouble.
I'd add Weakland to the list of bad bishops.
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