UNITED STATES
Christian Catholicism
Jerry Slevin
‘Top Bishop seeks review of earlier Bishops’ misdeeds too! Why not? Let’s start with Ratzinger, Sodano, Bertone, Levada, Law, Rigali, Mahony, Pell, et al.
Bravo ! Instead of amnesty for old crimes, the top leader of the Irish Catholic Church, Primate Eamon Martin, has said that Pope Francis’ newly announced tribunal, which will judge bishops accused of covering up child sexual abuse, should also investigate abuse allegations relating to events a long time ago. Irish bishops, it appears, are likely still reeling from Irish voters’ overwhelming rejection of the pope’s civil marriage position.
Meanwhile, US bishops seemed typically clueless about the pope’s new decision on bishop accountability. They appear understandably to be preoccupied with the serious criminal and civil law implications for all US bishops of the unprecedented and unexpected recent criminal and civil actions triggered by the Minneapolis Archdiocese’s ongoing rampant and horrible child endangerment record.
Martin rightly noted that child abuse related crimes are serious and are not diminished by the passage of time — certainly not for the survivors. The new tribunal could readily begin by reviewing the International Criminal Court’s online file on ex-pope Ratzinger, and Cardinals Sodano, Bertone and Levada, then move on to readily available records on Cardinals Law, Rigali, Mahony, Brady, O’Brien, Danneels, Dolan, Pell, Murphy-O’Conner, Mueller (Regensburg), et al. and Bishops Finn, Vangelhuwe, Mueller (Norway), Barros, et al. The pope needs to provide a big budget here, as he did to save the Vatican Bank!
The Vatican had told the UN committees, in effect, the pope did not have authority to hold bishops accountable. Now we see otherwise. All it took was a papal decision. Why has this taken decades, if not centuries, when so many innocent children and their loved ones have needlessly suffered?
Interestingly, the Boston Globe’s John Allen in a co-authored column reports support for investigating Cardinal Law now. He notes that Roderick MacLeish, a lawyer whose firm represented hundreds of victims in the Boston Archdiocese sex-abuse scandal, said, ” The first person who should be on the list is Cardinal Law. If this tribunal is going to be meaningful, it has to start in Boston, … ”. On the other hand, Allen adds that Mitchell Garabedian, another Boston lawyer who has represented clergy sex-abuse victims, called the creation of the tribunal “cosmetic in nature.’’ “The members of the tribunal will probably be made up of church officials who had known of the sexual abuse of children by priests for decades yet did not act to protect children,” Garabedian added according to Allen’s report. (emphasis mine)
Nicky Davis, leader of (SNAP) Australia, said, “The most appalling aspect of this announcement [of the new tribunal] is that this move should have been made decades ago, could have saved much suffering and lives lost to suicide, and is treated as something worthy of congratulation.” She indicated that the tribunal ” … certainly should never replace independent criminal or civil investigations or accountability.” She added, “I worry that this panel will be used as smokescreen to delay other much-needed changes until the current crop of officeholders are old enough or dead enough to permanently evade responsibility for their actions.” (emphasis mine)
Ireland’s Archbishop Eamon Martin spoke following the Vatican’s announcement about the pope’s decision, apparently made under pressure from significant negative publicity about numerous allegations, including some about his No. 3, Cardinal George Pell, and Chile’s Bishop Juan Barros, raised prophetically by Peter Saunders and others.
The pope accepted a proposal for such a tribunal that was reportedly pressed by the papal abuse commission that Saunders sits on. The trade off for Saunders, et al., appears to be that the tribunal will be under Cardinal Mueller’s clerical and flawed CDF, rather than under the papal abuse commission, where it belongs with its independent lay members, like Saunders and Marie Collins. Lay oversight is coming, voluntarily or involuntarily — I am confident of that.
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