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	Noble and Courageous Survivors, Those Known and Unknown to Us, on This Day, We Offer You Our Heartfelt Concern and Solidarity National Survivor Advocates Coalition August 12 2010 http://www.nsacoalition.org/ The National Survivor Advocates Coalition (NSAC) extends its heartfelt concern to the survivors of clergy and nun sexual abuse today in profound recognition of the severity and callousness of the blow dealt to them by Pope Benedict’s refusal to accept the resignations of two Archdiocese of Dublin auxiliary Bishops named in the Murphy Report. With intention, we do not limit our care and concern for the survivors of sexual abuse in Ireland. We extend it to all survivors and victims of sexual abuse and their families. Especially on this day, we offer you our solidarity. We know and quake at the thought of this unneeded, unnecessary and thoroughly preventable opening of the door to an unadorned staging ground for the potential of horrific flashbacks for those who endured rape and sodomy and ritual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and nuns. We know that this stinging rebuke has the potential to unmercifully rip open deep wounds that riddle psyches and tip into darkness spirits that precariously live each day in uneasy battle with demons of despair. We honor the very breaths that the survivors and victims take on this day. Pope Benedict has the power as the ultimate authority in his Church to refuse to allow the horror of sexual abuse to go on for one hour more in his Church. Instead he chose to flash the brightest of green lights to Bishops who cover up the crimes of sexual abuse by priests and nuns. To say the least, this refusal of the resignations by Pope Benedict torpedoes his June promise at the end of the Year for Priests that “everything possible” would be done to end the crisis. We have come to a watershed moment in the history of the crisis. We have now moved into the era of the big wink. We have a Pope who makes grand proclamations in St. Peter’s Square and then retreats to his Summer palace where eight months after they are tendered resignations that are part of the largest crisis in 500 years in the Church are turned down — and the very act of turning them down is deemed unworthy of papal words, let alone papal appearance. The harsh slap of the refusal of the resignations carries its own sting but the cowardice of the Pope to allow the action to be revealed in the studied backhanded manner it was sinks to a new and dangerous low in the papacy’s dealing with this massive crisis. Pope Benedict did not stand among the people of Ireland nor proclaim from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica that he would not accept the resignation of Bishops. No, he allowed the refusal of the resignations to be revealed in the 17th paragraph of a 20 paragraph letter written by Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin on the celebration of the Sacraments in the parishes of the archdiocese. The resignations that have been refusal are those of Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field. It is these two Bishops who declared jointly last Christmas Eve that they had in that special evening of the year they had “ informed Archbishop Diarmuid Martin that we are offering our resignation to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, as Auxiliary Bishops to the Archbishop of Dublin. The two Bishops said, “As we celebrate the Feast of Christmas, the Birth of our Saviour, the Prince of Peace, it is our hope that our action may help to bring the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ to the victims/survivors of child sexual abuse. We again apologise to them. Our thoughts and prayers are with those who have so bravely spoken out and those who continue to suffer in silence.“ What of these men now that their resignations have been refused? Is the hope of ”the peace and reconciliation of Jesus Christ” to be rolled up like a dirty rug and cast off as though it was an embarrassment to offer their resignations in its name? These two men need not look far for an example of courage to refuse the Pope’s refusal. They need only look into the eyes of the hundreds upon hundreds of survivors and victims who bear the searing wounds inflicted by sexual abuse.
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