I haven't said much about the exploding sex abuse scandal at Penn State. The failure to act and insist that wrong doers be held accountable is disgusting and one has to shake their head that supposedly decent people basically just looked the other way after supposedly covering their asses by reporting to superiors. Superiors who did nothing. The parallels with the behavior within the ranks of the the Catholic clergy (although on a fraction of the scale compared to the tens of thousands molested by priests) in some ways are remarkable. The ultimate consequences, however, are shockingly different. At Penn State people are being fired and the president of the university has resigned. With the Catholic Church, no one in the hierarchy has been punished and cretins are even pushing for sainthood for John Paul II who had an active role in cover ups. It shows that the secular world has a far higher standard for morality and accountability than the supposed princes of the Catholic Church. Here are highlights from a New York Times piece that looks at the far different consequences and standard of accountability at Penn State:Joe Paterno, who has the most victories of any coach in major college football history, was fired by Penn State on Wednesday night in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal involving a prominent former assistant coach and the university’s failure to act to halt further harm.
Graham B. Spanier, one of the longest-serving and highest-paid university presidents in the nation, who has helped raise the academic profile of Penn State during his tenure, was also removed by the Board of Trustees. When the announcement was made at a news conference that the 84-year-old Paterno would not coach another game, a gasp went up from the crowd of several hundred reporters, students and camera people who were present.
“We thought that because of the difficulties that engulfed our university, and they are grave, that it is necessary to make a change in the leadership to set a course for a new direction,” said John Surma Jr., the vice chairman of the board.
The university’s most senior officials were clearly seeking to halt the humiliating damage caused by the arrest last Saturday of the former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky. . . . . Sandusky has been charged with sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year span, and two top university officials — Tim Curley, the athletic director, and Gary Schultz, the senior vice president for finance and business — have been charged with perjury and failing to report to authorities what they knew of the allegations. Neither Paterno nor Spanier was charged in the case, though questions have been raised about if they did as much as they could to stop Sandusky.
A grand jury said that Spanier, the university’s president since 1995, was made aware of a report of an incident involving Sandusky. Upon learning about a suspected 2002 assault by Sandusky of a young boy in the football building’s showers, Paterno redirected the graduate assistant who witnessed the incident to the athletic director, rather than notifying the police. Paterno said the graduate assistant who reported the assault, Mike McQueary, said only that something disturbing had happened that was perhaps sexual in nature. McQueary testified that he saw Sandusky having anal sex with the boy.
Contrast this with what was done with Cardinal Law of Boston. Rather than face punishment, Law was transferred to Rome - in part to get him out of the reach of civil authorities - and given a plum position where he lives literally in a palace. The moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy is truly complete. And yet as we saw when in Rome recently, the sheeple still flock to grovel to Benedict XVI who likewise was up to his ears in the cover up of the molestation of children and youths. It's a sad commentary on rank and file Catholics.
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