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	Pope Takes Steps to Real Contrition Irish Independent March 21, 2010 http://www.independent.ie/opinion/editorial/pope-takes-steps-to-real-contrition-2106183.html IRELAND -- Pope Benedict has taken an important first step in what will be a long road of reconciliation between his church and the Irish people. His pastoral letter, which will be read in Roman Catholic churches across Ireland today, is far from being an adequate response to the suffering caused by his church in recent decades, but it is a start. He recognises the grave errors of his bishops and tells the victims of abuse that their "trust has been betrayed and [their] dignity has been violated". The Pope does not, however, suggest that his bishops should resign, nor does he deal with the culture of cover-up that protected so many abusers from prosecution and exposed so many children to abuse. Bizarrely, he blames the secularisation of Irish society for some of his church's problems and dwells too often on the importance of canon law, as if it were an adequate substitute for the law of the land. The Pope and his bishops need to understand that canon law is a meaningless concept to anyone who does not exist within the narrow world of the church. The only law that matters is the law that can put abusers and their protectors behind bars, where they can no longer pose a threat to the children they preyed upon under the cover of doing God's work. The Pope, too, strays dangerously close to equivocation when he talks of the abuse of children "particularly by priests and religious". It is precisely the abuse by priests and religious that is at issue, and it is the betrayal of trust and of Christ that has made that abuse so exceptionally vile. The Pope, too, seems to think that apologies, acknowledgement and expressions of sorrow will suffice to heal the wounds inflicted by his priests. It will require far more than words of contrition to ease the pain felt by victims: there needs to be a recognition that the church as institution deliberately shielded paedophiles from the law, and those that shielded them must be removed from the church. There can be no escaping the absolute requirement for the resignations of those bishops named in the Murphy report. So far, the only resignation that has been accepted is that of Jim Moriarty. The other resignations must follow. There can be no hiding place, either, for Cardinal Sean Brady. His role in the Brendan Smyth affair is as shameful as it is indefensible, He has admitted his own shame, but once again words are not enough. The church, the Pope and the Irish bishops cannot talk their way out of a scandal that spans the decades and which has blighted so many innocent lives. Real contrition can be shown through real resignations, offered and accepted in the full knowledge that there can be no excuse, no way back for those who shielded child abusers, either through action or inaction.
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