Eagan: Francis Gives Hope Amid Doubt

By Margery Eagan
The Boston Herald
December 9, 2013

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/columnists/margery_eagan/2013/12/eagan_francis_gives_hope_amid_doubt



Much of the world has fallen in love with the new Pope Francis, who’s asked his priests and bishops to stop obsessing over sex and start obsessing over injustice, income inequality and the plight of the poor. To long-suffering American Catholics, Francis’ humble, holy example has been welcome and totally astounding.

But the romance was anything but hot when it came to Thursday’s announcement of a new Vatican commission on the sexual abuse crisis. Our own Cardinal Sean O’Malley, reportedly close to the pope, is the only American among the eight cardinals advising Francis. But O’Malley had barely finished his Rome press conference on the plan’s particulars when it was trashed as half-baked by organizations representing victims of sexual abuse and by some of those same long-suffering Catholics whose skepticism is well-earned.

“What I am hearing is probably much ado about nothing,” said Stephen Sheehan, a devout local Catholic who’s worked with numerous survivors of abuse.

Toothless. Window dressing. A publicity exercise with suspicious timing: The announcement came just a couple of days after a United Nations panel asked the Vatican for details on the sexual abuse crisis, and the Vatican refused.

More troubling:

• There are no survivors included on this commission. Prime “experts” are victims themselves, not priests and bishops “who’ve been the abusers, enablers, and deniers of clergy sexual abuse for centuries,” says Road to Recovery Inc., a nonprofit charity that assists victims of church sexual abuse.

• There is no mention of holding bishops accountable — a particular complaint of local co-founders of BishopAccountability.org, a disturbing website detailing continuing misconduct by church higher-ups. For example, two years ago a Kansas City grand jury criminally indicted, for the first time ever, a sitting bishop, Robert Finn, for failing to report child pornography found on the computer of a local priest. Instead of reporting this to police, as the law and the U.S. bishops now require, Finn merely relocated the priest, just as Cardinal Law did here for decades. The priest, now serving 50 years, continued to take lewd pictures of children. Finn was convicted and sentenced to two years of probation for doing nothing to stop him — a full 10 years after the church vowed to end this mess. Worse, he has refused to resign.

Unfortunately, O’Malley was not asked Thursday about Finn. He was asked whether the commission would look for ways to hold bishops accountable. “I don’t know,” he said. He also said the commission would advise on pastoral, not judicial or criminal functions, which seems to mean: Guys like Finn can stay.

But newly buoyant Catholics can take heart in this much: “The opportunity is there,” said Sheehan, for reform. The fact that Pope Francis is taking action means he’s with the reformers, not the deniers or downplayers of the abuse scandal. And it’s possible that this keenly astute pope — hearing so much criticism about a commission with little, if any, independence or objectivity — will do again what he’s done repeatedly in his 9-month-old papacy: reverse course, and totally astound us all again.