Catholic Church Protects Bishops

Today's Washington Post has an article dear to my heart - the Catholic Church's utter failure to discipline and remove bishops (and Cardinals and Popes) that covered up sexual abuse and/or enabled sexual predatory priests to continue to prey on minors. Despite his crocodile tears during his recent visit to the USA, Pope Benedict XVI - and his less than saintly (in my view) predecessor, John Paul II - have done NOTHING to clean house in terms of the bishops and cardinals who would have been removed form office were they in any other type of institution or organization. Unless and until such action is taken, then perhaps John Hagee's accusation of the Catholic Church being "the great whore" is not totally off the mark. Here are highlights from the Post's article:

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It's getting a little uncomfortable for Catholic Bishop Carlos Sevilla these days. Several times in recent months, the Yakima, Wash., clergyman has had to defend himself against accusations that he concealed sexual misconduct by priests and employees. In one case, a priest who had worked in the diocese was convicted of felony abuse for fondling a 14-year-old girl. In another case, Sevilla hired a former seminarian after the man was charged with viewing child pornography.

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Doing more, a lot more, is just what Catholic activists want the church hierarchy to do about bishops who have covered up cases of sexual abuse. . . . "What is the pope going to do now? If it's nothing, then that is a terrible thing," said Terry McKiernan, president of BishopAccountablity.org, based in the Boston area. "There has been no public action by the Vatican since the pope's visit." . . . "Action has been taken against some priests, but action hasn't been taken against U.S. bishops," McKiernan said. "Nobody loses a day's pay," added David Clohessy, national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

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"Until the pope takes action as regards to those folks . . . we can't really believe that anything is going to change," McKiernan said. "It's quite intolerable that bishops who are responsible [for cover-ups] are still in positions of honor, positions of responsibility, in dioceses."

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"Our diocese has repeatedly erred on the part of protecting offending clerics," said Robert Fontana, a former Yakima Diocese employee who now works with an activist group, Voice of the Faithful. "There is no mechanism in place to challenge the bishop's behavior except media exposure and lawsuits. We still haven't gotten beyond that. That's amazing to me."

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An interesting article that looks at Benedict's role in the cover ups can be found here.