The Vatican has given the world's Catholic bishops one year to set policies for handling allegations of child abuse, including reporting to police where required by local law. And on Wednesday (May 18), the U.S. bishops released a 300-page report on the "causes and context" of the abuse scandal here at home.
Critics cite weak wording and anemic incentives in the Vatican's directive, and in many respects, those complaints are valid. So, too, are criticisms that the U.S. bishops continue to pass the buck for allowing the scandal to fester.
As a survivor of childhood clergy abuse, the Vatican's directive is welcomed, and for me it feels like a step forward -- a baby step to be sure, but nonetheless a long overdue turn toward the light.
If the Roman Catholic Church is to erase this stain on its reputation, it will have to be based on a complete reversal of its callous shielding of abusers within its ranks. Every pirouette begins
with the motion to turn. And perhaps this could be that movement.
And yet, another part of me -- the child who endured unspeakable abuse at the hands of the clergy -- is wary. I've heard the platitudes too many times. I worry these are empty words. Real reform starts with something terribly basic, just two words: "I'm sorry." And I and other abuse victims are still waiting.
Nearly 10 years after the abuse scandal erupted here in the U.S., the Vatican has been flooded with new information, new warnings and more horrific stories of sexual abuse from around the globe. And yet we're still waiting.
We're still waiting for a real and sincere apology from the pope and the rest of the hierarchy. In its place, the Vatican and the U.S. bishops have offered vapid pamphlets preaching "zero tolerance" -- Band-Aid fixes to the gaping wounds of hundreds of thousands of victims and survivors.
In fact, it seems Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops have learned little, if anything, about the concept of apology. Instead, the church continues to cover up, ignore, and shift the blame.
Hierarchical callousness has real and profound effects.
"Spiritual development of the young remains the foundational mission of the church," said William F. McMurry, a Kentucky lawyer who has represented abuse victims in suits against the Vatican. "How ironic, then, that a church destroys its mission by fostering a culture of child
sexual abuse, yet clings to its mission without remorse. When the fathers of the Church become monsters in the eyes of a child, many are never again able to experience harmony or any connection with God."
It's a story that I and other victims know all too well. Many of us have survived, however wounded. Others have seen their lives and livelihoods destroyed. For some, it becomes too much to take and they have taken their own lives. Still others suffer in hopeless silence.
In the Roman Catholic Church, Easter isn't just a day, but an entire 50-day season of rebirth and renewal. Some of us hope the church is on the edge of Easter renewal; others of us haven't yet escaped the shadows of the tomb.
What would rebirth and renewal look like for the Roman Catholic Church? It would start with a true and sincere apology, accompanied by true and sincere reform, which would show victims that the church does not sanction what it has done.
Two simple words -- "I'm sorry" -- would show the world that the Roman Catholic Church really does care about victims and survivors and the immense pain and harm we have suffered.
Compared to the magnitude of the pain inflicted, the harm done and the lives shattered, one simple phrase is not too much to ask.
Kim Michele Richardson survived a decade of abuse at the hands of nuns and a Roman Catholic priest at a church-run orphanage in rural Kentucky. She is the author of a memoir, "The Unbreakable Child." This column was originally published via the Religion News Service,
Follow Kim Michele Richardson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KimMRichardson
No easy answers to 'cause' of Catholic abuse scandal - The ...
Let’s be honest. We don’t care. A few of our priests raped your kids. We don’t care. It’s a nuisance. They’re only kids. Let’s get back to fighting women priests, condoms, and gays, and fixing everyone else in this world. Now shut up, go home, and don’t bring this up again. God bless, fools.
as such that is seriously problematic. There is not much good to be said about when
looking at it closer, the way it came about, how those old theolgians thought and argued.
It is in many ways just plain abuse and not to mention, just one aspect of it, the
intellectual arrogance of the "moralists".
http://socratesbooks.blogspot.com/2008/11/decent-critic-of-church-religion-and.html
Pope Benedict XVI Fri Jun 11, 2010 11(Reuters)
There are those who will accept nothing less than an admission of a cover up and the lawyers are drooling for this and pushing it so they can file RICO charges. Victims are all too well ready to believe their pain was part of a gobal a conspiracy that reaches to the Vatican.
SNAP has alienated itself from many Parishioners. The fine work they did early in the crisis is negated by increasingly strident calls for apologies of a cover up and conspiracy and VOTF demandsl.
I can't express my horror over what happened in Kentucky or or to Ms Richardson but
Progress is being made.. The numbers of new abuse cases since Jan 1, 2000 are a tiny fraction of earlier eras.
I disagree with SNAP in many areas. Their recent stance to encourage victims to shrug off timely reporting and stating that is normal for reporting to be decades late should be discouraged going forward. Late reporting benefits lawyers and serial predators and SNAP.
Late and untimely reporting runs counter to the message kids are being given in training to report suspicious activity once it happens and not decades later,
Untimely reporting isn't a lucid statement about child or victim psychology.
The studies done by the Catholic Church are an attempt at reform.
Has any attempt at reforming our society been done by any of the other perpetrators of sexual abuse of children?
Here's why. The Pontiff has made several apologies, Victims don't seem to acknowledge them.
>> The Pontiff wrote: “I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way church authorities in Ireland dealt with them. You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry.”
He appealed to priests guilty of child molestation to confess.
Full disclosure, I am an ex catholic, so my apprehension at this statement may simply be my bias coming out.
Am I the only one who finds it kind of insulting that he would mention these offenders' crime against the church (and by extension it's leadership) in the same statement as their (inexpressibly worse, like, inexpressible isn't a strong enough word, worse) crime against the children and young adults that were sexually assaulted? Sorry, but I have to say to Benedict, with all due respect, that the "dismay" and "sense of betrayal" that you "share" is microscopic, completely irrelevant, and frankly, disrespectful to mention in the same statement as the "dismay" (to stretch euphemism to it's absolute limit) that the real victims feel.
Also we are supposed to believe that it is all he can do? (As evidenced by the "I can only" part)
Please tell me that this is out of context, or there is a statement he made as an apology that in no way mentions offences against the church (which I think we can all agree are nothing compared to the actual offences here.)
Considering he wrote his "heretical piece," The Assayer, in 1623, that means it took the church a mere 369 years to apologize. I wouldn't hold my breath.