Dette skriver erkebiskop Dolan i New York på sin egen blog, etter først å ha innrømt at Kirken sviktet på dette området tidligere:
The sexual abuse of our young people is an international, cultural, societal horror. It affects every religion, country, family, job, profession, vocation, and ethnic group.
We Catholics have for a decade apologized, cried, reached out, shouted mea culpa, and engaged in a comprehensive reform that has met with widespread acclaim. We’ve got a long way to go, and the reform still has to continue.
But it is fair to say that, just as the Catholic Church may have been a bleak example of how not to respond to this tragedy in the past, the Church is now a model of what to do. As the National Review Online observes, “. . . the Church’s efforts to come to grips with this problem within the household of faith — more far reaching than in any other institution or sector of society — have led others to look to the Catholic Church for guidance on how to address what is, in fact, a global plague.”
As another doctor, Paul McHugh, an international scholar on this subject at Johns Hopkins University, remarked, “Nobody is doing more to address the tragedy of sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church.”
That, of course, is another headline you’ll never see.
Erkebiskopen innrømmer at også Kirken har mye å svare for mht behandlingen av slike saker tidligere, men at de nå (i alle fall i USA) gjør mer enn noen andre grupper i samfunnet.
John Allen skrev også en kommentar i forgårs, der han skriver at Kirken må fortsette å være ærlig mot seg selv, og ikke skjule noen av misbrukene eller tildekningsforsøkene som skjedde tidligere, men han oppklarer mange misforståelser om hva Kirken har gjort og gjør på dette området, og sier bl.a. at etter kardinal Ratzinger (for første gang) fikk ansvar for disse sakene i 2001/02, har han vært svært kontant overfor overgriperne. 80% av prestene der anklagene har kommet til Vatikanet har mistet sine presterettigheter, 60% faktisk uten den kirkelige rettsaken de vanligvis har krav på – fordi anklagene virket så klare, har de bare administrativt blitt avskjediget.
Erkebiskop Dolan reagerer sterkt på hvordan paven urettferdig blir behandlet, og skriver også følgende i sitt innlegg:
What adds to our anger over the nauseating abuse and the awful misjudgment in reassigning such a dangerous man, though, is the glaring fact that we never see similar headlines that would actually be “news”: How about these, for example?
– “Doctor Asserts He Ignored Abuse Warnings,” since Dr. Huth admits in the article that he, in fact, told the archdiocese the abusing priest could be reassigned under certain restrictions, a prescription today recognized as terribly wrong;
– “Doctor Asserts Public Schools Ignored Abuse Warnings,” since the data of Dr. Carol Shakeshaft concludes that the number of cases of abuse of minors by teachers, coaches, counsellors, and staff in government schools is much, much worse than by priests;
– “Doctor Asserts Judges (or Police, Lawyers, District Attorneys, Therapists, Parole Officers) Ignored Abuse Warnings,” since we now know the sober fact that no one in the healing and law enforcement professions knew back then the depth of the scourge of abuse, or the now-taken-for-granted conclusion that abusers of young people can never safely work closely with them again.
What causes us Catholics to bristle is not only the latest revelations of sickening sexual abuse by priests, and blindness on the part of some who wrongly reassigned them — such stories, unending though they appear to be, are fair enough, — but also that the sexual abuse of minors is presented as a tragedy unique to the Church alone.
That, of course, is malarkey. Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.