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post-gazette.com/pg/10108/1051048-109.stm
The outrageous comments just keep coming, even though our church has done more than any other institution to prevent child abuse, says Pittsburgh BISHOP DAVID A. ZUBIK
Sunday, April 18, 2010
I was wondering how bad it could get. Then Sally Kalson began her column in last Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with the following:
" ‘When I was growing up, just about every parish had its pedophile priest and everybody knew who it was,’ said my friend Carrie, who attended Roman Catholic schools just outside of Pittsburgh in the 1960s."
I didn’t have to wonder any longer.
That charge was the lead in Ms. Kalson’s column and a slap in the face of the 342 priests of this diocese who serve so faithfully with me. It was an attack on my flock, the nearly 800,000 members of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. It was never qualified, never modified. It simply was there in print as fact.
If you crunch the numbers of priests and parishes at that time, Ms. Kalson basically let the claim stand unchallenged that roughly 60 percent of the priests serving in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s were pedophiles.
Slanderous and outrageous? Sure. But that’s how bad it has become.
We have been inundated daily with stories, both obscure and sensational, from everywhere concerning allegations of abuse by clergy. It might be a story from India, Germany, Norway or Spain. It usually involves decades-old allegations.
Responding to the various stories is like herding cats. You answer one and immediately another takes off. But by the time you have responded to the first story, it has already become part of media shorthand and fodder for columnists. And on and on it goes.
…]
What is most disconcerting, however, is that in this recent spate of allegations, everything the church has done over two decades to address this tragedy has been completely ignored – and Pope Benedict XVI has been portrayed as somehow a co-conspirator in protecting guilty priests from punishment.
The Holy Father, in his papacy and when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been a leader in making certain that the “filth” – his word for those who would abuse children – would be cleaned out of the church.
…]
In the midst of all the slanderous news stories over the past month, the findings of the most recent annual audit – conducted by an outside investigative agency made up primarily of former FBI agents – were released and ignored by most media.
The audit noted that U.S. dioceses last year invested more than $21 million for child-protection efforts, such as training programs, background checks and staff support. It said clear mandates and procedures for reporting suspected abuse have been put in place.
Almost 6 million children (96 percent) in Catholic schools or religious education programs, underwent safe-environment training last year. And the audit found that background evaluations were performed on more than 2 million priests, deacons, seminarians, educators, employees and volunteers.
In the Diocese of Pittsburgh, well over 40,000 priests, seminarians, religious, teachers and volunteers have been screened and trained. And by the way, our guidelines on those who must be screened far exceed the demands of Pennsylvania law. We have lay eucharistic ministers who have served for decades yet still must undergo screening from secular authorities and training.
The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” has provided the guidelines-with-teeth that make the response of the church the singular most effective and widespread program in the United States to address and counter the tragedy of abuse. It has provided the model for addressing this issue to the church – and secular organizations – throughout the world. And it has done so because the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, was instrumental in making certain that the charter – and the norms of church law that enforce it – were approved and implemented.
As Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz recently noted, “Pope Benedict, both before he became pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue. He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims. He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization.”
Pope Benedict XVI is not the cause of the tragedy of abuse or how it was handled in the past by the church. He has been a critical part of the solution.
It might be too much to hope for that we have seen the last of the outrageous charges, the last of the unwarranted attacks on the Holy Father, the last of the slanderous generalizations about the priests of Pittsburgh past and present.
But I do hope there will be a little more care taken before we give credence to every charge, along with a little more responsible thinking before dragging through the mud a church that has done more to address this horrible tragedy than any other entity.
David A. Zubik is bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Read more: post-gazette.com/pg/10108/1051048-109.stm#ixzz0lYNgrxU0
The outrageous comments just keep coming, even though our church has done more than any other institution to prevent child abuse, says Pittsburgh BISHOP DAVID A. ZUBIK
Sunday, April 18, 2010
I was wondering how bad it could get. Then Sally Kalson began her column in last Sunday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with the following:
" ‘When I was growing up, just about every parish had its pedophile priest and everybody knew who it was,’ said my friend Carrie, who attended Roman Catholic schools just outside of Pittsburgh in the 1960s."
I didn’t have to wonder any longer.
That charge was the lead in Ms. Kalson’s column and a slap in the face of the 342 priests of this diocese who serve so faithfully with me. It was an attack on my flock, the nearly 800,000 members of the Diocese of Pittsburgh. It was never qualified, never modified. It simply was there in print as fact.
If you crunch the numbers of priests and parishes at that time, Ms. Kalson basically let the claim stand unchallenged that roughly 60 percent of the priests serving in the Diocese of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s were pedophiles.
Slanderous and outrageous? Sure. But that’s how bad it has become.
We have been inundated daily with stories, both obscure and sensational, from everywhere concerning allegations of abuse by clergy. It might be a story from India, Germany, Norway or Spain. It usually involves decades-old allegations.
Responding to the various stories is like herding cats. You answer one and immediately another takes off. But by the time you have responded to the first story, it has already become part of media shorthand and fodder for columnists. And on and on it goes.
…]
What is most disconcerting, however, is that in this recent spate of allegations, everything the church has done over two decades to address this tragedy has been completely ignored – and Pope Benedict XVI has been portrayed as somehow a co-conspirator in protecting guilty priests from punishment.
The Holy Father, in his papacy and when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has been a leader in making certain that the “filth” – his word for those who would abuse children – would be cleaned out of the church.
…]
In the midst of all the slanderous news stories over the past month, the findings of the most recent annual audit – conducted by an outside investigative agency made up primarily of former FBI agents – were released and ignored by most media.
The audit noted that U.S. dioceses last year invested more than $21 million for child-protection efforts, such as training programs, background checks and staff support. It said clear mandates and procedures for reporting suspected abuse have been put in place.
Almost 6 million children (96 percent) in Catholic schools or religious education programs, underwent safe-environment training last year. And the audit found that background evaluations were performed on more than 2 million priests, deacons, seminarians, educators, employees and volunteers.
In the Diocese of Pittsburgh, well over 40,000 priests, seminarians, religious, teachers and volunteers have been screened and trained. And by the way, our guidelines on those who must be screened far exceed the demands of Pennsylvania law. We have lay eucharistic ministers who have served for decades yet still must undergo screening from secular authorities and training.
The “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People” has provided the guidelines-with-teeth that make the response of the church the singular most effective and widespread program in the United States to address and counter the tragedy of abuse. It has provided the model for addressing this issue to the church – and secular organizations – throughout the world. And it has done so because the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, when he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, was instrumental in making certain that the charter – and the norms of church law that enforce it – were approved and implemented.
As Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz recently noted, “Pope Benedict, both before he became pope and since, has done a great deal to confront the issue. He changed the policy that kept allegations of abuse within the authority of local bishops, and he acknowledged that the local option had encouraged shifting abusive priests from parish to parish, thereby hiding their sins from potential new victims. He also met with abuse victims and recognized their victimization.”
Pope Benedict XVI is not the cause of the tragedy of abuse or how it was handled in the past by the church. He has been a critical part of the solution.
It might be too much to hope for that we have seen the last of the outrageous charges, the last of the unwarranted attacks on the Holy Father, the last of the slanderous generalizations about the priests of Pittsburgh past and present.
But I do hope there will be a little more care taken before we give credence to every charge, along with a little more responsible thinking before dragging through the mud a church that has done more to address this horrible tragedy than any other entity.
David A. Zubik is bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh.
Read more: post-gazette.com/pg/10108/1051048-109.stm#ixzz0lYNgrxU0
