The Fight to Reveal Abuses by Catholic Priests - and Hierarchy Coverups

The Roman Catholic Church despite the nice words of Pope Francis on a few occasions remains one of the most anti-gay churches on the planet.  In terms of official dogma, nothing has changed and the Catechism of the Catholic Church continues to describe gays as "inherently disordered."  Paradoxically, the Church at the same time remains filled with gays, including gay prelates at the highest levels, and the Church hierarchy also has been shown to have conspired on a world wide basis to protect pedophiles and child molesters.  The disconnect between dogma and the pattern of knowing cover ups could not be more complete.  A lengthy article in the New York Times looks at the difficulty experienced by those seeking to identify  predator priest and to hold their protectors accountable.  Here are some excerpts:

Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, is in no way the principal face of the sexual abuse scandals that have buffeted the church and its priesthood almost without pause for three decades. But he embodies a certain mind-set among some in the highest clerical ranks. It is an attitude that has led critics, who of late include the authors of a scathing United Nations committee report, to wonder about the depth of the church’s commitment to atone for past predations and to ensure that those sins of the fathers are visited on no one else.

The conditional nature of the apology, a style favored by innumerable politicians caught with hands in the till, was not lost on many listeners. Nor was the cardinal’s use of “mistakes” to describe a pattern routinely described by district attorneys as a cover-up. As if that were not enough, the reluctant penitent turned thoroughly unrepentant a decade later. By then retired, he withdrew his apology.

That sort of unyielding stance amid institutional promises of change continues to bedevil the American church, the Holy See in Rome and, no doubt, many among the faithful. 

By now, the story is amply familiar. Thousands of wayward clerics have been found to have sexually abused and emotionally scarred many more thousands of boys and girls. It is, too, a story of the church hierarchy as enabler: bishops who ignored the criminality, or evaded public exposure by shuffling abusers from parish to parish. The scandals have cost the church dearly, both in lost moral suasion and in its coffers. 

Nor is this a uniquely American peril. Similar scandals have erupted in Europe, Latin America, Canada and Australia.

For sure, sexual maltreatment of children and cover-up are not Catholic monopolies.  . . . . The existence of a website like StopBaptistPredators.org points to problems in other denominations. As for secular institutions, who could be unaware of abuses within the Boy Scouts of America and at Penn State?

But the Catholic Church has a hierarchical structure unlike any other, not to mention two millenniums of tradition and a claim to universality. 

Then again, the church in this country has plenty of concerns other than sexual misconduct. . . . The number of American priests, 39,600 last year, is two-thirds what it was at the time of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. Ordinations of new priests, 511 in 2013, amount to barely half the total of five decades ago. The painful closing of Catholic schools by financially burdened dioceses has become routine.

But it is the abuse scandals that loom ever-large. In early February, the report by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child sternly took the Vatican to task for, in the panel’s view, not having acknowledged the extent of past criminality and not doing enough to protect today’s children. The relatively new pope, Francis, recognizes the problem. 

Yet as popular as Pope Francis is, he has left some skeptics wondering where his heart lies. He did not endear himself with support groups for abuse victims when, in an interview with two newspapers in early March, he said of the scandal: “The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. Yet the church is the only one to have been attacked.”

To some ears, those remarks sounded almost Egan-like in defensiveness.

Let's be blunt.  Unless and until Francis sacks numerous current bishops and cardinals and ends the cushy retirements of men like Cardinal Egan, Cardinal Roger Mahony and Cardinal Bernard Law, his credibility will remain suspect.  Meanwhile, between the Vatican's refusal to end the anti-gay jihad being pushed by many bishops and cardinals and its failure to severely punish those who enabled predators, the Church's membership will continue to plummet in all but backward and ignorant areas such as Africa.  Hispanic immigration will help disguise the Church's decline in America for only so long.  And, with America providing some 60% of the Church's financial inflow, the decline will become catastrophic at some point.