BishopAccountability.org
	More on "Vengeance Time" By Frank Douglas Voice from the Desert [United States] April 22, 2007 http://voicefromthedesert.blogspot.com/2007/04/more-on-vengeance-time.html Last Tuesday, April 17, 2007 we published a point by point response by SNAP President Barbara Blaine to "Vengeance Time" by Mark A. Sargent (Commonweal 4/20/07). Here, with the author's permission, is additional commentary by Lynette Frankovich on the Sargent SNAP hatchet job (a.k.a. an essay). • • • After reading "Vengeance Time" by Mark A. Sargent (Commonweal 4/20/07), one wonders whether or not his article was itself an act of vengeance. His references to SNAP and their advocates as being vigilantes, and his implication that their activism is what has created hostility toward the church, were misdirected at best. As documents have proven time and again, the people repeatedly taking the law into their own hands, and blocking attempts for the American judicial system to determine guilt or innocence, and generating hostility by their own volitions, have been, and continue to be, church officials, not SNAP. In addition, as Dean of the Villanova University School of Law, Mark Sargent knows that statutes of limitation and bankruptcy laws were never intended to protect church officials from the evil they perpetrated, and thus are not an "appropriate" use of such "devices" as he states. Furthermore, as a (presumed) Catholic, Mark Sargent is well aware the road to reconciliation requires complete and genuine honesty on the part of the offending parties. The hierarchy's continued unwillingness to accurately acknowledge their offenses and the impact of their behaviors remains a true reflection of who doesn't "care." It is painfully obvious that the fiscal liabilities in this ongoing scandal have been, and continue to be, the perpetrators, those who protected them, and those who continue to defend the indefensible. To attempt to inflict shame and guilt for possible pension losses on survivors of sexual abuse, and to further categorize their cries for accountability as the desire to "abase and punish," appears to indeed be "vengeance time." If Mark Sargent is looking for someone who has squandered moral authority, it may be best he look in the mirror. Lynette Frankovich Midland, Michigan
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