As
a member of the Catholic Church that I love and as a victim of clerical
physical and sexual abuse, I am appalled, embarrassed, but mostly
profoundly saddened by the ways priests, bishops, cardinals and even
popes deliberately and knowingly have mishandled clerical sexual abuse
issues. Instead of being transparent, honest and law-abiding, they
consistently have chosen to cover up these crimes, usually only
releasing somewhat accurate information and evidence and only when they
are dragged into court or forced to do so by laws that bound the rest of
us.
I
don’t believe the bishops, the cardinals and especially the entrenched
bureaucracy in the Vatican and Catholic Church worldwide get it yet. For
more than 50 years they have been aware of the accusations and the
wrenching stories from thousands of victims.