Des Moines Register
By BILL LaHAY
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
December 20, 2005
It's been more than a decade since the first media reports of the sex-abuse scandal began rocking the Catholic church. In news coverage, that's a geologic age. But as the recent grand jury report out of Philadelphia reveals, the stream of charges and legal battles surrounding this crisis shows no sign of slowing.
Catholics who long nostalgically for quieter times should know that patience and passivity will not put an end to this tiresome mess. From the abuse itself to its subsequent cover-up, this great shame of the church festered in a legacy of silence that feeds it still.
The silence took the victims first. As children paralyzed by a profound sense of shame and betrayal, most of us were literally dumbstruck by what happened. Who would believe us? Often threatened by our abusers, we said nothing and assumed we were alone.
Then the silence claimed more turf. Cardinals and bishops, afraid of the legal and financial fallout or dismissive of the severity of the abuse and its consequences, chose to tell no one. Instead, they ordered confidential and often perfunctory counseling for abusers, or reassigned offending priests to unsuspecting new parishes where many abused again. When bolder victims or their parents confronted the church, silence was again part of the cure: quietly settled claims that required confidentiality agreements.