Most of the news in the Catholic world has been about the increasingly expanding sexual abuse scandals throughout the Church.
This crisis is undermining the credibility of the Church on a wide variety of issues and is providing plenty of ammunition from its many detractors.
The crisis is of such a type that it is nearly impossible for the Church to defend itself from the more vicious attacks and misinformation that is currently flooding the world media. Certainly, the Church hierarchy has a responsibility to own up to its failures; however ,the Church also has a responsibility to correct lies, exaggerations, and libel.
Unfortunately, any attempt to do so appears primarily as sour grapes, and there is no way to effectively overcome this obstacle. It is incredibly frustrating to have the Church under attack by enemies with ulterior motives who, nevertheless, have legitimate criticism of horrendous acts. these acts are SO horrendous that nearly any exaggeration seems unassailable in response. Genuine evils were committed by Catholic priests and bishops, and this undermines the ability of Church hierarchy to respond to this smear campaign.
This scandal is also creating great danger for the Church, as its enemies are using it as an opportunity to attack it in many ways. Lawsuits, public denunciations, and even violence are being justified against the Church and its hierarchy.
This is a scary time for Catholics world-wide.
I am puzzled as to why lawsuits would be unjustified. I mean, if the church did knowingly place a known pedophile in contact with children without alerting law officials, that is gross negligence that seems like grounds for a lawsuit. It is firmly within the realm of what is unto Caesar.
ReplyDeleteUmmm... I don't think that I said that any lawsuits were unjustified. In fact, I welcome them (so long as they are legitimate claims). I want to see the priests who abused and the bishops who covered up for them punished to the full extent of the law; I also want to see the victims of these heinous crimes compensated to the fullest extent possible.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I also want the actual problem (homosexuals in the priesthood) to be addressed or the problem will continue. I also would like to see a more honest and fair treatment of the Church in the media. For example, the Church classified pedophilia and sexually predatory behavior as incurable by the late 1970s, whereas the APA did not come to same conclusion until 1996.
I understand that it is not reasonable to expect the media (which, in general, holds a Modernist and anti-Catholic worldview) to be fair, and I certainly understand their gleefullness in exploiting this tragedy for their own ends. I also understand, rhetorically, why the Church is really unable to offer any sort of acceptable corrections (this was the main point of my post).
I am simply commenting on the fact that it is unfair for the Church as a whole to be smeared with the actions of a small group. And for that group (homosexuals within the Church) to be completely ignored as the culprits.
It is frustrating to sit back and watch all the wrong people blamed and all the wrong conclusions drawn from the crisis.
It would also be nice if the media was more interested in this corruption in other areas (particularly our public school system). I am disturbed that we seem to celebrate the inclusion of sexually unstable individuals in secular roles, but criticise their presence in the Catholic Church. The problem in America's schools is so pervasive that it can be through a willful act of ideological blindness that it is so consistently ignored by the media.
I would accept the turmoil of the Church more readily, if I believed that the lessons learned would inform wider policy, but again, it seems to be the case that the wrong conclusions are being drawn from this debacle.