Deeds, Not Words, Are What's Needed from Church Hierarchy Now

By John Kass
Chicago Tribune
January 23, 2014

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-kass-met-0123-20140123,0,3036389.column

When stories surface of children being sexually abused, most parents have two responses: horror and avoidance.

The interest is obvious. What you learn may protect those you love, and protect others you don't know.

But such stories come with a cost, as if the facts themselves are poisoned, so others avoid them because they carry too much pain.

And maybe that's what the bishops of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago were counting on in decades past.

By now you know the story. Church documents released this week provide details about sexual abuse by priests. And many of those pedophile priests were transferred without warning parents of new churches.

"That's what bothers me," said a Roman Catholic woman I know, a mother who is a parishioner of a Southwest Side church where one of the abusive priests had been sent after initial complaints.

"You'd think they'd tell us? The parents?" she asked. "With our children running in and out of the school and the church?"