Letter to the editor: The Catholic Church must wrestle with the demon of pedophilia

IOWA CITY (IA)
Little Village Magazine

October 22, 2018

Americans in the Trump age are accustomed to atrocities flashing across editorial space and vanishing into the next outrage, but there are exceptions in longevity. Critics and accusers of the Catholic Church, while it remains a viable institution, must wrestle with the demon of pedophilia. Cardinal Wuerl, archbishop of D.C., recently resigned from some of his exalted church offices, facing grand jury findings that he presided over cover-ups for pedophilic priests.

Defending him in public interviews, his friend, John Carr, a big churcher and listed by Georgetown University as “adjunct professor in the Department of Theology,” reports that Wuerl was “better than most on sexual abuse…” but acknowledges that the Cardinal’s version of “better” still compels him to resign and the Pope to accept his resignation. Carr expresses his own regret but not any injustice. And to the credentials of this spokesman, we must add one more: he himself, when young, was a victim of clergical perverts and of the system that protected them

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