Deaf, Dumb and Blind

National Survivor Advocates Coalition
November 15, 2012

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/editorials/

A star is rising in the East.

 That would be Australia where Prime Minister Julie Gillard announced this week a royal commission would investigate sexual abuse and the institutional response to it.

 She said the royal commission, the highest level of investigation in Australia, was not targeting any one church but you’d have to be deaf, dumb, blind and dead not to realize the trigger for this monumental action was the series of revelations regarding pedophile priests in the Catholic Church.

In making the announcement, the prime minister, Ms Gillard said: “There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil. I believe in these circumstances that it is appropriate for there to be a national response through a royal commission.”

Senior Police Office Peter Fox said in a letter to the New South Wales state Premier Barry O’Farrell, “I can testify from my own experience that the church covers up, silences victims, hinders police investigations, alerts offenders, destroys evidence and moves priests to protect the good name of the Church.”

Predictably, the ranking prelate in Australia, Cardinal George Pell said the Church had already acknowledged its “shame”, the extent of abuse by priests had been “exaggerated” by the media and by the “percentages” the number of child preying priests in the Church would prove that priests of the Roman Catholic Church would not be the only culprits among the members of the churches, charities and schools to be investigated.

First, great credit goes to the bravery of the victims who have come forward. Without them it’s unimaginable that this day would have dawned.

How harrowing  will be the truth the commission will uncover time will inform us but there are allegations in the State of Victoria that the abuse in institutions there included gang rapes, beating and unreported deaths.

Thankfully no deadline has been placed on the commission’s work.

We sharply contrast this development in Australia along with the deaf, dumb and blind act  now on stage at the United States Conference of Bishops’ meeting in Baltimore.

That would be deaf, dumb and blind to the presence of criminally convicted Bishop Robert Finn of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.  Finn is convicted of not reporting, as a mandatory reporter in Missouri, suspicion or knowledge of the child pornography activities of his priest Father Shawn Ratigan.

Not one bishop has raised a public comment, let alone placed a resolution before the USCCB to remove Bishop Finn from the premises, bar him from any future meeting of the USCCB, call for his resignation or lobby Pope Benedict to replace him.

The creator of the petition, which has garnered nearly 109,000 signatures from rank and file Catholics, Jeff Weis of Kansas City, was scheduled to try and deliver the petition yesterday at the location where the bishops are meeting.

We salute Mr. Weis for creating the petition, working to have knowledge of it spread, and for taking the time off from work to travel to Baltimore to place it as close to the bishops’ faces as he could get it. 

We suspect that was the length of a hotel lobby and a hotel ballroom away from the men who could if they wanted to take the honorable course and fraternally correct their brother bishop and then the giant loophole in the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that opens an enormous escape hatch for bishops.

What bishops need is the courage of victims.

Contact: KristineWard@hotmail.com