Pope Recognizes Irish Sex Abuse Scandal
This is a very necessary piece of news for healing — both for the victims and for the Church:
Pope Benedict XVI has upbraided Irish Roman Catholic bishops over their handling of child sex abuse scandals.
He condemned abuse of children by priests as a “heinous crime”, and said Irish bishops must act to restore the Church’s “moral credibility”.
During two days of meetings at the Vatican, the Pope reprimanded the bishops for a “failure… for years to act effectively”, a statement said.
Last year the Irish Church admitted covering up abuse for decades.
Two state-ordered reports revealed how abuse was rife in many Irish Catholic-run children’s institutions, and how priests who were accused of abuse were just moved by bishops to new parishes.
Who knows how all the cover ups started — I imagine it was a combination of cronies covering for one another, refusing to believe that the accusations could possibly be true, and not wanting to believe them to be true turning the other cheek. It is essentially a whole web of lies, lies people wanted to believe, that spiraled entirely out of control.
This could bring up some debate concerning whether or not Priests should be celibate — it makes sense that celibacy should have a role in the Church, but certainly it has become clear that some of the clergy cannot even keep their hands off of even children, and we have borne witness to gross crimes as a result.
The Church lost so much of its honor by not coming clean about this.