BishopAccountability.org
	Lastest Priest Scandal Again Raises Questions about Church's Silence News Journal [Wilmington DE] October 24, 2006 http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061024/OPINION11/610240337/1112/OPINION There is something deeply unsettling about the latest tale of priestly abuse that made headlines over the weekend. A former Wilmington priest has been arrested in Syracuse, N.Y., and charged with molesting a 12-year-old boy. This news is bad enough. But it gets worse. Apparently, in 1993, Wilmington Catholic Diocese officials had received similar complaints about the priest when he was stationed here. The then-Bishop Robert E. Mulvee removed him from the ministry and sent him packing ... to do what? Prey on other 12-year-old boys? The argument can be made that the original Delaware incident happened in the 1960s but came to light 30 years later, long after the statute of limitations ran out. The diocese could rightly say that no criminal charges could be brought against the priest and therefore kept quiet about the matter. But that wall of silence crumbled in the past few years and the Wilmington Diocese had ample opportunity to make public the complaints against this particular priest. But it declined to do so. Is it possible that the latest victim could have been spared if the diocese had gone public? Over the years, much of the hierarchy's response has been disingenuous. In 1985, the bishops were given a report about the problem with a relative handful of priests. But the bishops did nothing. In the early 1990s, scandals popped up all over the country. The scandals exploded in 2002 when the Boston Globe published a damning series of abuse and coverups in the that city's diocese. It led to stories, suits and outrage across the nation. The bishops met in Rome, then in Dallas. They formulated a tough policy and acknowledged the names of many abusers. According to the Wilmington Diocese, it stripped the priest in question of his priestly duties and allowed him to retire. Certainly that is an improvement over the earlier practice of transferring culprits from parish to parish. But was the diocese's 1993 action enough? Was its refusal to name this priest recently justified? The answer is no.
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