If prosecutors pursued cases of abuse that occur in the public school system with the same intensity and publicity that they pursue the Catholic Church, their investigations would have more credibility. As is, this seems to be singling out the Church for attention.
I understand that the disgraced, ex USCCB general secretary, Burrill, has been reassigned to a Wisconsin diocese. If true, the reassignment of Burrill to Wisconsin provides more fodder for conspiracy theorists, myself included.
The simple reality here is that many priests and bishops did very, very bad things.
What is complicated is discerning the degree to which this is part of a society-wide problem, and the degree to which it is specific to the Catholic Church.
Many outside the Church, including many in the media and law enforcement, seem to think it is a Catholic-specific problem because they think the Church's teachings and practices on sexuality in general--and celibacy in particular--are unhealthy and naturally lead to dysfunction. That is highly questionable in a factual sense, because (as I understand it) there is little indication that this sort of misconduct is more prevalent within the Church than in other institutions and professions that take very different views of human sexuality.
But it does not work very well for people within the Church to point that out, because the Church's own teachings and mission would suggest that wickedness like this should be *less* prevalent in the Church than in the world. That suggests that there *is* some kind of Church-specific problem here.
So we have a strange situation. A pure interest in preventing crime would certainly warrant the media and law enforcement taking note of what priests and bishops did and are doing, but it would not warrant focusing on the Catholic Church over other institutions in the way that has happened. But there is not really anyone within the Church who can credibly complain about that.
I'm in the Madison diocese where there have been very, very few sex abuse complaints at all in the history of the diocese (the most recent one determined by the courts to be without merit. there is nothing else pending), and the Madison diocese commissioned an independent full review of all diocesan records about this not long ago. There are so many protections in place. But the basic thing is that chastity has always been truly expected of all seminarians and priests or the man is not going to continue. It's flat-out the truth that there is ignorance and politics behind this targeted effort specifically toward the Catholic Church in WI. It's an effort to stigmatize the Church and the people doing it will never give the Church the credit due for cleaning up and rigorously improving and safeguarding. Where are the kudos to the Madison Diocese?
If prosecutors pursued cases of abuse that occur in the public school system with the same intensity and publicity that they pursue the Catholic Church, their investigations would have more credibility. As is, this seems to be singling out the Church for attention.
I understand that the disgraced, ex USCCB general secretary, Burrill, has been reassigned to a Wisconsin diocese. If true, the reassignment of Burrill to Wisconsin provides more fodder for conspiracy theorists, myself included.
The simple reality here is that many priests and bishops did very, very bad things.
What is complicated is discerning the degree to which this is part of a society-wide problem, and the degree to which it is specific to the Catholic Church.
Many outside the Church, including many in the media and law enforcement, seem to think it is a Catholic-specific problem because they think the Church's teachings and practices on sexuality in general--and celibacy in particular--are unhealthy and naturally lead to dysfunction. That is highly questionable in a factual sense, because (as I understand it) there is little indication that this sort of misconduct is more prevalent within the Church than in other institutions and professions that take very different views of human sexuality.
But it does not work very well for people within the Church to point that out, because the Church's own teachings and mission would suggest that wickedness like this should be *less* prevalent in the Church than in the world. That suggests that there *is* some kind of Church-specific problem here.
So we have a strange situation. A pure interest in preventing crime would certainly warrant the media and law enforcement taking note of what priests and bishops did and are doing, but it would not warrant focusing on the Catholic Church over other institutions in the way that has happened. But there is not really anyone within the Church who can credibly complain about that.
I'm in the Madison diocese where there have been very, very few sex abuse complaints at all in the history of the diocese (the most recent one determined by the courts to be without merit. there is nothing else pending), and the Madison diocese commissioned an independent full review of all diocesan records about this not long ago. There are so many protections in place. But the basic thing is that chastity has always been truly expected of all seminarians and priests or the man is not going to continue. It's flat-out the truth that there is ignorance and politics behind this targeted effort specifically toward the Catholic Church in WI. It's an effort to stigmatize the Church and the people doing it will never give the Church the credit due for cleaning up and rigorously improving and safeguarding. Where are the kudos to the Madison Diocese?