Word: roman
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Dioceses lapsed into a pattern of denial and deception. They treated sexual pathology as a moral failure and crime as a religious matter. The Roman Catholic Church is a stern hierarchy that has always kept its deliberations secret, policed itself and issued orders from the top. An obedient priest moves up in power by keeping his head down, winning rewards for bureaucratic skills and strict orthodoxy. When Cardinals are created, they take a vow before the Pope to "keep in confidence anything that, if revealed, would cause a scandal or harm to the church." When it came to sex abuse...
...soon as it substantiated a single case of abuse, which was decades old. And when Kathryn Barrett-Gaines and her sister, now in their 30s, contacted the archdiocese in Washington two weeks ago to accuse Monsignor Russell Dillard, 54, the popular pastor of the city's oldest African-American Roman Catholic congregation, of "kissing and inappropriate touching" when they were teens, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick immediately suspended his good friend. Dillard told his spiritual superior he "did not exceed the bounds of propriety" any further than "father-daughter kissing." Nevertheless, McCarrick shipped Dillard off for evaluation at a sexual-abuse clinic...
Good baby steps, all. But growing numbers of Roman Catholics, such as Northwestern University professor of religion Cristina Traina, say that's not enough to make up for the church's "extreme violation" of trust. Many victims accused of suing for the money say that what they really want is spiritual generosity: an apology from the church, acknowledging that crimes were committed and explaining how the church let known pedophiles abuse again. Anger will not begin to heal until prelates from the top down profess genuine confession and true contrition, says Traina. "There has to be a public expression...
...tradition for the two American Cardinals most implicated in the scandals, Boston's Bernard Law and New York's Egan. But plenty of influential Catholics are suggesting that the U.S. church would benefit from penitential resignations at the top. Says an editorial in the upcoming issue of the national Roman Catholic weekly America: "If early on some bishops had been willing to claim full responsibility and resign, victims, parishes, the media and juries might have been less inclined to vent their anger on the church as a whole. That not one bishop (except the two who were themselves abusers...
...bishops stay, Roman Catholics would like their leaders to trade the church's culture of secrecy for openness and accountability. The first obligation, says Bishop Wilton Gregory, head of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, is "to make such matters known." The second is to set transparent rules that hold the church responsible for its mistakes. That clarion call comes from conservative columnists like William J. Bennett, who advises, "Candor and full disclosure are a must if the reputation of the church is to be protected." And it comes from sex-abuse experts like Richard Sipe, who says, "The church...