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	Bishops’ Report Is More Public Relations Than Scholarship Zalkin Law Firm May 20, 2011 http://www.zalkin.com/Sexual_Abuse_Blog/2011/May/Bishops_Report_is_More_Public_Relations_than_Sch.aspx The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in America are at it again, attempting to defend the indefensible – the sexual abuse of children by their priests. In a report recently commissioned, financed, copy written, and published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the bishops attempt to minimize the collective wrongdoing of the Hierarchy from 1950 through 2010. Through their report, released yesterday, the bishops attempt what nearly every child educated in a parochial school has been taught not to do – make excuses. Enough! The bishops want everyone to know that sexual victimization of children is a serious and pervasive issue in society. Agreed! They also want us all to know that such victimization is present in families, other religions, and institutions where adults form mentoring relationships with children, such as schools, sports, and social organizations. Again, agreed! But let’s be clear, Children were abused by Roman Catholic priests because bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in America allowed men in their service to sexually abuse children. When faced with the knowledge that priests were abusing children, bishops allowed the abusers to continue on in ministries that provided access to children. When the abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests began making headlines across the nation, the president of the USCCB stated what was obvious to all: The bishops were the ones responsible for bringing about the scourge of abuse within the Church. In his presidential address of June 13, 2002, Bishop Wilton Gregory stated: "The Penance that is necessary here is not the obligation of the Church at large in the United States, but the responsibility of the Bishops ourselves. Both "what we have done" and "what we have failed to do" contributed to the sexual abuse of children and young people by clergy and Church personnel. Moreover, our God-given duty as shepherds of the Lord's people holds us responsible and accountable to God and to the Church for the spiritual and moral health of all of God's children, especially those who are weak and most vulnerable. It is we who need to confess; and so we do. We are the ones, whether through ignorance or lack of vigilance, or – God forbid – with knowledge, who allowed priest abusers to remain in ministry and reassigned them to communities where they continued to abuse. We are the ones who chose not to report the criminal actions of priests to the authorities, because the law did not require this. We are the ones who worried more about the possibility of scandal than in bringing about the kind of openness that helps prevent abuse. And we are the ones who, at times, responded to victims and their families as adversaries and not as suffering members of the Church." Now, in their report, the bishops want to place the scourge within a larger social context, seeking comfort in casting stones at others and blaming the social mores of the 60s and 70s as substantial factors in bringing about the abuse of children by their priests. They attempt to create the impression that they have behaved responsibly and followed best practices as they, and society, learned more and more both about the propensity for children to be abused and the harm caused by that abuse. In sum and substance they try to grab the high ground, wanting to appear as the vanguard in child protection. Nonsense! An entity that as part of its standard operating procedure has covered up, and destroyed records of, childhood sexual abuse cannot reasonably expect the public to trust anything it has to say about the historical phenomena of childhood abuse. Yet the bishops collectively hold onto the belief that they somehow have any authority to speak on the issue. The truth is that the Universal Roman Catholic Church has been aware for centuries that its priests commit acts of sexual misconduct. Long before the dawn of the 1960s, a special order of priests, Servants of the Paraclete, was created within the United States to provide assistance to troubled priests. In 1952, Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald, the leader of that order, was already writing to bishops across the United States warning against allowing priests who abused young boys to be left “on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese.” In 1957, he wrote the Bishop of Santa Fe New Mexico, that: “If I were a bishop, I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization. Experience has taught us these men are too dangerous to the children of the parish and the neighborhood for us to be justified in receiving them here....They should ipso facto be reduced to lay men when they act thus.” Rather than rely upon the bishops, or the recipients of their patronage, for an assessment of the causes of sexual abuse of children by priests, one should take a hard look at the grand jury reports on the topic issued in various jurisdictions across the country. Time and again, district attorneys and the juries have pointed out that it is bishops and their closest advisors that allowed priests to abuse children. And it appears that the scourge is not yet over. A grand jury report from Philadelphia issued February of this year asserts that such wrongful action is continuing. That report identified 37 priests within the local archdiocese who despite substantial evidence of abuse remained at that time of the report in roles that brought them into contact with children. It’s time: No more excuses! Rather than throw stones at others and blame forces larger than itself, the Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in America needs meaningful reform. Create a zero tolerance policy, not just for outted abusers, but for the suffering caused by the childhood sexual abuse it allowed.
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