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  Abuse Panel Chairman Sees Progress, Pain

Boston Globe
October 22, 2008

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/10/abuse_panel_cha.html

The new edition of St. Anthony Messenger features an interview with Judge Michael R. Merz,

a federal magistrate in Ohio who is the chairman of the National Review Board, the panel that advises the US Conference of Catholic Bishops on preventing the sexual abuse of children. Merz describes himself as a survivor of sexual abuse by a church employee. An excerpt from the interview:

"When you see people who have been so badly hurt by folks acting in the name of the Church, it's a trial, it's a test. It's not ever pleasant work and it challenges your loyalty to the institution. But it doesn't challenge my faith. I'm a cradle Catholic and my family, on my father's side, has been Catholic forever. So it is hard for me to separate my faith and the institution of the Church. I don't know of any other board member who has said, "Well, this really shakes my faith in God." But nearly everyone I've worked with on the National Review Board has felt that this issue challenged their sense of the purity of the Church. It's just tough work. It's not so much that we've had much interaction with abusing priests, but we've seen some of the cover-up stuff that is really unbelievable. You also see an awful lot of pain on the part of bishops who thought they were getting good advice and doing the right thing. And in retrospect you have to ask them, "How could you have thought that?" And many of them are saying to themselves, "How could we have thought that?" So it's live-and-learn in a sense, but learn at what a price. What a price!"
 
 

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