Finally there is the “kill the messenger” attitude toward the media that beat the drums of exposure the loudest, like the Boston Globe and Hartford Courant.
Whatever else these papers are and whatever their underlying motives they did a singular service to both the public and the victims of abuse by doing their jobs, exposing to light of day a great evil that the Catholic Church worked to keep hidden away.
What is often not discussed in the accounts is the damage to those who have their schools and churches closed because of money problems yet somehow the hierarchy has been able to find the money to pay a couple of billion dollars in judgments lost.
When the neighborhood church closes and is sold off to make a parking lot where do the parishioners turn? There's just not enough millstones to go around.
And since on priest can molest hundreds of kids, the abuse is a more far reaching problem than the statistics reveal. A perfect example of how to lie with statistics. |
*Only* 2% - 7% of the priests were abusive.
“ONLY”?!?!
This sort of thing is an abomination before God. The Catholic church deserves whatever judgment is pored out on it for allowing this kind of situation to persist for so long. Catholic church history is replete with examples of impropriety among the clergy.
The Catholic church’s continued existence in light of the corruption and immorality rampant within it isn’t evidence of GOD’s hand of protection on it, even though I have no doubt it IS being protected.
For Years, Deaf Boys Tried to Tell of Priest’s Abuse
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/us/27wisconsin.html
They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.
They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.