[letter to the Editor] Unfair to Use Church Scandals to Attack Bishop

Providence Journal
May 21, 2020

https://www.providencejournal.com/opinion/20200521/522-letters-defending-bishop-tobin-thoughts-on-unemployment-benefits-governors-priorities-misplaced

My friend, George Welly (“Bishop should not ‘hide behind’ Roger Williams,” May 20), irrelevantly bringing up past church scandals in reaction to Bishop Tobin’s question on how Roger Williams would view current virus-related state restrictions on worship service attendance represents a regrettable but all too common approach. Instead of engaging in an actual topic raised by the bishop, some have found in the scandals a convenient club to unjustly hit him, probably because they disagree with him on some moral issue.

Bishop Tobin presides over a diocese that calls the police after every abuse accusation that is reported to it, and he comes from a Pennsylvania diocese that issued a report about abuse there in which the bishop was neither mentioned nor for which he was even interviewed. Nor was he, as auxiliary bishop there, charged with investigating such cases.