Every
spring the American bishops meet at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. As
usual, protecting children is not a key initiative for the bishops. The
chairman of their National Review Board stated that the church "continues
to slowly make progress" on the child abuse issue. Although urged not to be
so untroubled about clergy sexual abuse of minors, the bishops spoke little of
holding one another accountable for failures in protecting children.
Besides
their lack of concern about the children, they invited a controversial speaker:
W. Bradford Wilcox, co-author of an article in the Washington Post about
violence against women. Wilcox, an associate professor of sociology at the
University of Virginia outraged every major publication on the Internet by
saying that one way to end violence against women is for women to stop sleeping
around and get married. Sounds like a ridiculous statement but maybe this is
what bishops want to hear. They don’t
want to hear that the problem is actually abusive men, not unmarried women.
Said
Barbara Dorris of St. Louis, Outreach Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network
of those Abused by Priests, “We're saddened but not surprised that America's
bishops have invited a man to speak to them who minimizes and mischaracterizes
abuse.”
Bishops
often consult with questionable "experts," like Paul McHugh who said
“I believe that the belligerent frenzy characteristic of media reports on
priestly sexual abuse has done much damage and needs to stop." The bishops liked him so much they put McHugh
on their first National Review Board overseeing the pedophile priest crisis.
McHugh
previously testified on behalf of the Archdiocese of Baltimore and a priest A.
Joseph Maskell, who were sued in 1995 by two women who claimed the priest raped
them in the 1970s as high school students. The women sought an exemption to the
statute of limitations on such lawsuits, arguing that post-traumatic stress
disorder prevented them from recalling the rape for 20 years. McHugh discounted
the scientific validity of such recovered memory of sexual abuse. The Maryland Court of Appeals sided with
McHugh.
When
the bishops do think about the abuse crisis, it’s about the priests, not the
victims. They send accused predator priests to therapists like Father Benedict
Groeschel, who said in 2012: “In many cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 is the
seducer.” He made the comments while being interviewed by the National Catholic
Register who later removed the interview from their website. Groeschel even had sympathetic words for convicted Penn
State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky: “Here’s
this poor guy Sandusky. It went on for years. Interesting. Why didn’t anyone
say anything?”
The
bishops have a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People but when
someone asked the chairman of their
conference whether all of the bishops are implementing it in their dioceses,
the chairman said, "We are not able to say that."
If we
are judged by the company we keep it is easy to see who the bishops
are—self-serving, misogynists, sympathizers with child rapists and defenders of
criminal clergy. They have a long
heritage of putting themselves and the church first at the expense of children,
families and God.
