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	Whose Moral Authority? Voice from the Desert [United States] May 3, 2007 http://voicefromthedesert.blogspot.com/2007/05/whose-moral-authority.html The following opinion piece addresses Commonweal's recent article, "Vengeance Time, When Abuse Victims Squander Their Moral Authority," (April 20, 2007 issue). The author is Sister Maureen Paul Turlish SNDdeN, a Victims' Advocate from New Castle, Delaware. • • • Whose moral authority should we really be discussing? My stomach turned and churned as I read the title of Commonweal's recent article, " Vengeance Time, When Abuse Victims Squander Their Moral Authority," (April 20, 2007 issue). If truth be told, and it is way past time that we start dealing in truths, who, more than America's bishops, have needlessly squandered their moral authority because of their history of collusion, conspiracy and cover-up in the handling of the clergy sexual abuse problem in the Roman Catholic Church? It didn't have to be that way and it shouldn't have come to this, but it has. And it really isn't getting any better. One only has to look at what is going on in courtrooms all over this country but especially as it is being played out on the west coast. Cardinal Roger Mahony in Los Angeles continues to stonewall the court's order to produce records and files and Bishop Brom in San Diego appears to be somewhat less than truthful in his testimony about diocesan assets. Recently published reports have noted that the number of men and women who have come forward publicly to say that they were sexually abused as children by clergy members has dropped by 34 percent since 2004, according to the self reporting that some, but not all, U.S. dioceses have done in compliance with USCCB mandated child protection policies. I am of the opinion that no institution, including the many religious denominations, can be trusted to police itself so I would not take the quoted 34 percent as gospel. However, one would be naive to think that either "the clergy sexual abuse problem is now behind us," to quote Bishop Wilton Gregory's statement of a few years ago, or that it can be blamed on the 1960s, as opinioned recently by retired Washington, D.C. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in a talk given in Auckland, New Zealand. I would be interested in the logic of blaming the 1960s for crimes committed by men who were only ordained in the late 1970s. It is interesting, too, that in the same New Zealand talk, McCarrick was also quoted as blaming it all on the homosexuals. Until the church stops trying to defend the indefensible and scapegoating men of homosexual orientation and starts observing the rule of law and becomes truly accountable for its culpability, this tragedy will go on. Since 2002 when I first became actively involved in supporting adult men and women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse by clergy, I have been appalled, ashamed, embarrassed and angered, and not necessarily in that order. In a National Catholic Reporter Viewpoint article of October 28, 2005, regarding the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, I said that, "Until church leaders admit to the pervasive hubris, personal and systemic, which allowed sexually abusive priests to continue in their perfidy long after their crimes were known by church authorities, it will be difficult if not impossible to reestablish either the institution's credibility or their own. Absent that, reconciliation and healing will not happen." I still believe that to be the case with very few exceptions. Bishop Michael A. Saltarelli's release of twenty names of known clergy sexual abusers in November of 2006, after years of refusing to do so, was done only after another Delaware miscreant, Fr. Francis DeLuca, was arrested in his home town of Albany, New York on sex abuse charges. Saltarelli's action appears to have been done more out of fear of what DeLuca's arrest might mean in legal terms for the Wilmington Diocese than out of any desire to encourage additional victims of those men to come forward. After all, the USCCB mandate for transparency and accountability had been put forward back in 2002. In testimony I gave before the Delaware Senate Committee on March 25, 2007 in support of Senate Bill 29 regarding child abuse, I reiterated that fact saying, "One of the most important sections of this bill is the 'window' for bringing forward suits involving victims who were abused as children many years ago. It will force institutions to make public the paper trail, the records of predators who were known, protected and enabled in their crimes against children, their crimes against humanity, because, make no mistake about it, such acts, such crimes are in violation of every human rights declaration and document I have ever read." Window legislation seeks to correct one of the many egregious legal loopholes used by church officials, their lawyers and their insurance carriers over the past 50 years to shield and protect individual priests who were known to be abusing minor boys and girls in parish after parish after parish. Window legislation, moreover, would be discriminatory to none and applicable to all. On April 24, 2006, I was among those lobbying in Harrisburg during a day long forum organized by a coalition of advocates for childhood victims of crime known as the Child Abuse Reporting and Enforcement Systems. This statewide group, PA Cares, supported bills that would lift the statute on criminal charges for sexual offenses against children as well as waive, for one year, the statute of limitations on civil lawsuits. At a SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) sponsored event that day, with fellow panel members Professor Marci Hamilton, former Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Maureen McCartney, and John Salvason, who heads up the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, I participated in a discussion on why PA laws needed changing. At that same time there was a concerted effort by the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference to oppose any and all changes to Pennsylvania's Senate Bill 1054. In fact, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado gave the homily at the annual Red Mass in Harrisburg for the legal community. This is the same bishop, remember, who fought tooth and nail to defeat the look back window which would have given some measure of justice to hundreds of individuals sexually abused by priests, among others, in his home state. Chaput rationalized his position there by saying the bill was "anti-catholic," when in fact, it was anti-sexual abuser, anti-molester, anti-rapist, and anti-pedophile. His was no accidental choice as homilist in a Harrisburg church five blocks from the statehouse just as lawmakers in Pennsylvania were considering a dozen abuse related bills, given his aggressive denunciation of the statute window in Colorado. Fortunately, for society on the whole, Pennsylvania's laws have been changed for the better, albeit without the church's support. Sadly, however, it has also been without the look back legislation which has been so successful in California. It has been truth telling time for awhile now, but the institutional church seems unable to get its collective conscience around the concept that it would be better to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Perhaps the time has come for the church to look at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission model.
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