BishopAccountability.org
	Still Missing the Point Sun Chronicle June 20, 2011 http://www.thesunchronicle.com/articles/2011/06/20/opinion/9750858.txt It's been 21 years since Frank Fitzpatrick leveled his sexual molestation complaints against former Catholic priest James Porter publicly, setting in motion an avalanche from which neither the Church nor many Catholics have fully recovered. You would think that in those 21 years, the Vatican would be more in tune with modern society and its ideas about sexual assault and the way Church leaders deal with sexual offenders dressed in frocks. But that, apparently, is wishful thinking. Last month, a study commissioned by Roman Catholic bishops faulted not the offending priests for the abuse, nor the Church leadership for its failure to recognize and address the problem, but rather the country's sexual revolution of the 1960s, calling it a "historical problem." The study, conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, added further insult to those who've been victimized by preditory clergy, saying the issue has largely been resolved. But "resolved" is hardly the word many would use to describe the situation, especially in light of the news this week in which Cardinal Sean O'Malley announced the defrocking of four inactive priests after decades-old allegations of child sexual abuse. None of the priests - Robert F. Daly, John Keane, Robert Knapp and Benjamin McMahon - had been in active ministry since the 1980s and most of the allegations occurred years ago - in some cases back in the '80s. So why the long wait in defrocking them? If the priests had been, say, educators, Scout leaders or youth coaches, they would have been "defrocked" long ago. But those who were raised Catholic have, sadly, come to expect little more than lip service in the way the Vatican continues to handle this issue. Anne Barrett Doyle, co-founder of BishopAccountability.org - a website that chronicles sexual abuse cases in the Church - said the John Jay report failed to take the church hierarchy to task for the crisis, and rather seemed intended "to decriminalize the bishops' response to child molestation." The fact that former Cardinal Bernard Law remains in active service in his "retirement" in Rome, is telling enough. It was Law after all, who, after being accused of shuffling accused priests to different parishes rather than calling in the district attorney for a full investigation, chose to blame the media in the wake of the Porter scandal with his now famous quote: "By all means we call down God's power on the media, particularly the Globe."
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