Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal Leaves Catholic Church Without Moral Authority
It seems never ending, doesn't it? As the NYTimes reports: "After nearly three years of litigation, the Archdiocese of Denver said Tuesday that it would pay $5.5 million to settle more than a dozen lawsuits over sexual abuse by priests.
"The 16 lawsuits and two additional claims against the archdiocese were filed by people who said that as children, they were abused by priests from 1954 to 1981 and that the archdiocese concealed the crimes.
"The settlements bring to 42 the number of abuse claims the archdiocese has settled since 2005 against two priests, the Rev. Harold Robert White and the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie. A third priest, the Rev. Lawrence St. Peter, was accused in a 43rd case that was also settled. The amount of all the settlements totals more than $8.2 million. Two more abuse lawsuits against the archdiocese have yet to be resolved.
"The national director of the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, David Clohessy, cautioned that sexual abuse settlements did not represent “any fundamental challenge to the church’s longstanding patterns of recklessness and secrecy that got us into this mess to begin with.” Such settlements, he noted, enabled church officials to avoid testifying in open court.
And this was just one archdiocese, Denver. The list rolls on: Los Angeles, Boston, Phoenix, Louisville, Charleston..... Some filed bankruptcy: Tucson, Portland (OR), Spokane, San Diego, Davenport....
The horror is not just that clergy abused their young victims, it was the hierarchy's cover-up: transferring perpetrators to other parishes, often without warning the new parish; failure to notify the police of the crime; concealing evidence, etc.
In addition, those victims who came forward were often vilified or threatened by the hierarchy and clergy.
To date, the American Roman Catholic Church supposedly paid out $2 billion in compensation.
Because of the egregious, contemptible, criminal actions of the hierarchy, in my opinion as a Roman Catholic, the church in the United States, and the Vatican have lost any claim to speak with moral authority on any issue. So, keep your hypocritical noses out of the elections.
"The 16 lawsuits and two additional claims against the archdiocese were filed by people who said that as children, they were abused by priests from 1954 to 1981 and that the archdiocese concealed the crimes.
"The settlements bring to 42 the number of abuse claims the archdiocese has settled since 2005 against two priests, the Rev. Harold Robert White and the Rev. Leonard Abercrombie. A third priest, the Rev. Lawrence St. Peter, was accused in a 43rd case that was also settled. The amount of all the settlements totals more than $8.2 million. Two more abuse lawsuits against the archdiocese have yet to be resolved.
"The national director of the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, David Clohessy, cautioned that sexual abuse settlements did not represent “any fundamental challenge to the church’s longstanding patterns of recklessness and secrecy that got us into this mess to begin with.” Such settlements, he noted, enabled church officials to avoid testifying in open court.
And this was just one archdiocese, Denver. The list rolls on: Los Angeles, Boston, Phoenix, Louisville, Charleston..... Some filed bankruptcy: Tucson, Portland (OR), Spokane, San Diego, Davenport....
The horror is not just that clergy abused their young victims, it was the hierarchy's cover-up: transferring perpetrators to other parishes, often without warning the new parish; failure to notify the police of the crime; concealing evidence, etc.
In addition, those victims who came forward were often vilified or threatened by the hierarchy and clergy.
To date, the American Roman Catholic Church supposedly paid out $2 billion in compensation.
Because of the egregious, contemptible, criminal actions of the hierarchy, in my opinion as a Roman Catholic, the church in the United States, and the Vatican have lost any claim to speak with moral authority on any issue. So, keep your hypocritical noses out of the elections.
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