Abuse Scandal Stays Fresh in Many Catholics' Minds
By Margery Eagan
Boston Herald
April 13, 2008
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1086771&srvc=home&position=4
Pope buzz? I don't hear it.
Yet my parish was standing-room only, overflowing out the door, not only for five Masses on Easter Sunday but on the three days prior, too: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Two Sundays ago, Boston College scholar and author Thomas Groome talked to parents there about nurturing spirituality in our children, and then ourselves, filling that "longing, hunger and restlessness" that only God, the faithful would say, can satisfy.
This weekend the parish runs a springtime meal at the Shattuck Homeless Shelter. Then it's the St. Francis House clothing drive and the Walk for Hunger.
So the parish is running, thriving, the torch being passed from one generation to the next. But typical of answers I heard this week about the pope's visit Tuesday was one from Luise Dittrich, once active in the church reform group Voice of the Faithful: "What do I think about the pope coming? I'm discouraged. Am I excited? No, because I don't associate him with positive change."
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| Pope Benedict XVI Photo by AP |
VOTF itself recently ran a full-page ad in The New York Times [NYT] "calling all Catholics to transform our church" and asking, "How can our church be a moral beacon when so many bishops who repeatedly transferred known predators remain in office?"
The pope, they argued, should call for their resignations. Other bishops should stop blocking settlements with abuse survivors, support laws eliminating statutes of limitations on child sex abuse and create a national database of credibly accused priests. Repeatedly, VOTF has called for the pope to meet with survivors. But no one expects that to happen this week.
"I know lots of Catholics who are pretty upset, who think nothing has changed," says abuse survivor Skip Shea, author of "Catholic (Surviving Abuse & Other Dead End Roads)."
"The unfortunate thing is that it's still happening," Shea said, referring to criticism of Chicago Cardinal Francis George for failing to act faster against a priest who was arrested two years ago but hasallegedly abused since the 1980s.
None of this argues that there aren't thousands of Catholics, at least 3,000 from here, who arethrilled to voyage to New York for the Pope's Mass this week. But what's clear is a huge divide among those Catholics - those anxious to move on from the abuse scandal, those who've left the church altogether, and those who remain Catholics despite the hierarchy. Basically, they ignore it.
For the latter group, the pope is off his pedestal, though that's not bad. It's liberating, actually. The power of papal admonitions against gays, against birth control - against anything - lose their sting, their authority and righteousness when the Pope himself won't do right by 11,000 American teenagers and children allegedly abused by priests.
His aides even now downplay it all, as if they still don't understand or don't care. Survivors continue to be ignored. And Cardinal Bernard Law continues to enjoy his golden parachute at St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome with a handsome salary and palatial, frescoed apartment.
Meanwhile in Boston, parishes are closed. Heroic parishioners guard round-the-clock against their own parishes being closed, too. Then, as if transporting stolen goods, they sneak in contraband hosts to receive communion.
If there is an upside to this mess, it is this: Catholics need not quake in our boots anymore. We are grown-ups now. We can strive to follow the Christly example, scales fallen from our eyes, seeing the men who run this church for what they are: good and bad, right and wrong, bigoted and enlightened, saints and sinners, some better - and some so much worse - than the rest of us.
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