Is the Catholic Church Sex Abuse Scandal About to Expolde in Australia?

Thanks to a Google search agent I use, I get daily digests of news stories from around the world.  And the sad reality is that there are stories about the molestation of children and youths - and the ever present efforts by the Church hierarchy to cover up for predator priests - somewhere in the world virtually every single day.  However, things appear about to explode to a new level in Australia where news reports indicate that three of that nation's top Catholic prelates have been exposed for covering up acts of sexual abuse of children and minors.  And contrary to the Church's efforts to always blame the gays for problem, many of the victims are girls.  Personally, as noted before on this blog, I believe the systemic sex abuse problem stems from (i) the Church's bizarre celibacy requirement which originated solely to keep property from being lost from the Church to the families of priests, and (ii) the equally bizarre obsession of the hierarchy and priesthood with all things sexual.   The Sydney Morning Herald looks at the growing calls for a government investigation of the Catholic Church.  Here are highlights:

PRECISELY six months after the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden was reprimanded but not reported by the church over allegations of child sex abuse, Father Brian Lucas told the Wood Royal Commission that ''to engage in a cover-up … is the very worst way of approaching it''.

Now Father Lucas, the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, is one of three senior Catholic officials being investigated by police detectives over the concealment of McAlinden's offences in the 1990s.  Strike Force Lantle is due to deliver a brief of evidence to prosecutors in the next few weeks.

 Despite an ''admission'' he made to Father Lucas, McAlinden was sent a letter as part of the censure process promising that ''your good name will be protected by the confidential nature of this process''. Archbishop Wilson has declined to undergo a police interview.

''A royal commission must now be urgently established to uncover the full extent of the church's systemic failure to deal with decades of child sexual abuse committed by priests in dioceses in NSW,'' the Greens MP David Shoebridge said.

Hunter man Lou Pirona, whose son John was sexually assaulted by a priest as a child and died last week after leaving a letter saying he was in ''too much pain'', said: ''Any inquiry that unearths the people who did these things to children, and those who hid it, is not only desirable but necessary.''

The Australian Broad Casting Corporation identifies the clerics at the center of the cover up controversy and sketches the scope of the problem as follows:

The priest at the centre of the allegations, Father McAlinden, died in 2005. The three senior leaders facing possible legal action are Father Brian Lucas, retired Bishop Michael Malone, and the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson. 

 

SUZANNE SMITH, REPORTER: Strikeforce Lantle has been investigating how the senior leaders in the Church dealt with this priest, Father Dennis McAlinden.  He arrived in Australia in 1949, and for 40 years was transferred from parish to parish as complaints emerged about his behaviour.

 

 DAVID SHOEBRIDGE, GREENS MLC: Well, we've seen today that there are senior members of the Church who are not talking to police. We now also know this is a systemic failing. It's not just one priest, it's not just one diocese - but there is a systemic failing by the church, and until we have a Royal Commission that uncovers the real truth, then those victims and their families will never have a sense of completion, will never have justice.

Yes, it is the same pattern that has been seen all over the world as the Vatican directed a worldwide criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice and protect vile predators from justice.  And the toll of damages lives of victims likely runs into the hundreds of thousands.  There are few institutions more foul than the Roman catholic Church.  Yet we continue to see politicians - here in America, typically Republicans - kissing the asses of the Catholic bishops rather than calling for investigations, criminal prosecutions, and jail sentences for the horrible morally bankrupt "princes of the Church."