No More ‘daddy’s Boys’

Boston Herald
June 2, 2014

http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/editorials/2014/06/editorial_no_more_daddy_s_boys

Pope Francis plans to meet soon with a group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse, he told reporters last week. A welcome gesture, though his predecessor made similar overtures.

But during that same meeting with reporters the pope made clear there will be no preferential treatment for church higher-ups on matters related to sexual abuse — and three bishops are currently under investigation by the Vatican. That may carry even more weight for some Catholics, particularly here in the Archdiocese of Boston, who have long lamented the too gentle treatment extended to high-ranking clerics.

Most offensive, of course, was the pillow-soft landing that was extended to Cardinal Bernard Law after he left Boston in disgrace over revelations about his handling of abuse complaints over decades. He “retired” to a prestigious basilica in Rome.

Bishop John McCormack, who for years served as Law’s point man for those complaints, was left to minister to his New Hampshire flock until his retirement in 2011, despite a record of coddling priests who should have spent their days not in comfortable rectories but behind bars.

The list of those in positions of power who turned a blind eye or even conspired in cover-ups seemed, tragically, endless. And so the pope’s insistence that going forward there will be no special treatment — no “daddy’s boys,” to use his perfectly apt phrase — was refreshing and overdue.

“In Argentina we call those who receive preferential treatment ‘daddy’s boys,’?” he said. “There will be no ‘daddy’s boys’ in this case. It is a very serious problem.”

“There are no privileges,” he added. Nor, when it comes to the protection of children from sexual predators, should there ever have been.