BishopAccountability.org
	Enough Is Enough: Stop Bashing the Church Telegraph Journal April 22, 2010 http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/opinion/article/1025579 These are challenging times for faithful Catholics, with seemingly relentless and demoralizing parade of new revelations and allegations of clerical sex abuse surfacing almost daily, the cost of hundreds of millions in compensation paid to victims worldwide straining the financial viability of many parishes. Pope Benedict XVI is under withering fire, not for any personal culpability in crimes, but for his allegedly ineffectual handling, even cover-up, of sex abuse files coming under his purview as a German bishop decades ago, and later as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There've been calls for Pope Benedict's resignation and taunts from public atheists like Christopher Hitchens, who wrote that Benedict XVI's "whole career has the stench of evil." Even more over-the-top was British UN judge Geoffrey Robertson last week calling on the U.K. government to detain the Pope during his forthcoming visit to Britain, and send him to the International Criminal Court to be tried for "crimes against humanity." There's no benefit and much downside attached to denying Church failure to address clerical sexual abuse adequately or responsibly for many decades, and evident reluctance of bishops and the Vatican to defrock child-molester priests and religious, or hand them off to civil justice authorities - in depressingly many instances, merely shifting offenders to different parishes. These failures leave an indelible stain on the Church's record, but the Church has now moved pro-actively, last week announcing a "zero tolerance" policy on sexual abuse of minors, which individual bishops will be obliged to implement or resign. Measures imposed include automatic suspension of priests under accusation, immediate reporting to local law enforcement and release of all documentation to civil authorities. The process of laicization for priests found guilty will be speeded up, with the canonical statute of limitations, currently 10 years, abolished. Much "presentism" and 20-20 hindsight characterizes the anti-Catholic feeding frenzy, with ideological Catholic-haters like Mssrs Hitchens and Robertson piling on, gleeful schadenfreude fairly oozing from their pores, exploiting tragedy as license for a field day of Church-kicking and Pope-bashing, disproportionately and selectively given that the horror of child sexual abuse is a problem far from unique to the Roman Church. Despite relentless lurid headlines about the Catholic Church's priest pedophile problem, the Christian Science Monitor, for example, reported that most American churches targeted with child sexual-abuse allegations are actually Protestant, based on United States surveys covering more than 75,000 congregations and 1,000 denominational agencies. It's still atrocious, but a study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice found at their peak from 1965 to 1980, alleged occurrences of minor abuse implicated a maximum four per cent of active Catholic priests, 56 per cent of whom abused one victim. Churches are undeniably sexual predator magnets, with their many children's programs, dependence on volunteer workers, and functioning on a culture of trust, but other institutions with similar environments are not immune - for instance, organized sports, the Boy Scouts, or as has recently come to light, the non-Church affiliated Vienna Boys Choir. No one's attributing general culpability, liability, or "evil" to, say, organized hockey in the wake of the Graham James and Maple Leaf Gardens pedophile scandals - in the latter of which, the Canadian Encyclopedia cites whistle-blower victim John MacCarthy claiming that dozens of young boys were abused and "a lot of people working there knew about it." None of that excuses priestly culpability in such crimes or Church foot-dragging about public airing of its dirty laundry, but arguably the Catholic Church is unjustly taking the lion's share of stick in this ugly business because its size and global presence make it a bigger, fatter, juicier target, already despised by lefty-liberal secular humanist social factions from which cometh most journalists and other media gatekeepers, for its staunch opposition to abortion, gay sex and same-sex marriage, celibacy rules for priests, exclusion of female ordination, opposition to birth control, rejection of civil divorce and vigourous defense of traditional family structures. As former mayor of New York, Ed Koch, who is Jewish, implored in a Jerusalem Post op-ed last week, "Enough is enough. Yes, terrible acts were committed by members of the Catholic clergy. The Church has paid billions to victims in the U.S. and will pay millions, perhaps billions, more to other such victims around the world. It is trying desperately to atone for its past by its admissions and changes in procedures for dealing with pedophile priests.... I believe the Roman Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, not evil." What he said.
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