Should US Bishops like Irish Resign over Abuse Scandal, USA Today, December 25, 2009

Should U.S. Bishops, like Irish, Resign over Abuse Scandal?

USA Today
December 25, 2009

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2009/12/sexual-abuse-irish-bishops-catholic-church/1

Four Irish bishops have now resigned in since Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin apologized to the victims of child sex abuse during a press conference at the Archdiocese of Dublin in November 26, 2009.
Photo by Peter Muhly, AFP

Four Irish bishops have now resigned within weeks of a scathing report that they knowingly sheltered sexual predator priests from the laws of church and state.

The 720-page report into abuse cover-ups in Dublin from 1940 to 2004 became public in late November. Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin (shown above), who was brought in after the period dealt with in the report, made it clear that the old ways of protecting priests, not children and teens, were inexcusable.

Two bishops resigned earlier this month. Two more resigned during Christmas Mass, offering apologies to victims and all Dublin's one million Catholics.

Here in the USA, however, only one bishop resigned in acknowledgment of mismanagement.

Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston, where the scandal erupted here in 2002, in the face of demands from his flock and his priests. Two bishops were ousted because they themselves were credibly accused of abuse -- Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee and Anthony O'Connell of Palm Beach, Fla.

U.S. Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston over his role in the clergy sex abuse crisis, prays during a Mass at the St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, Sunday, April 10, 2005.
Photo by Anja Niedringhaus, AP

But while the abuse crisis on US shores has largely subsided from the headlines, groups such as BishopAccountability.org continue to call for scores of bishops to do more than apologize for mistakes.

They call for individual accounting for all the records of how abusive priests were dealt with and for bishops to face the canonical and legal consequences of their mismanagement, above and beyond apologies.

At the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, executive director David Clohessy observed when the first of the four Irish resigned:

We hope his resignation will bring some comfort to the thousands of suffering Irish clergy sex abuse victims and hundreds of thousands of betrayed Irish parishioners. But this should only be the beginning of systemic change within the corrupt church hierarchy.

Do you think the actions of the contrite Dublin bishops will have an impact in the USA? Should they?