Peter Grant hammers the Catholic hierarchy for its latest massive moral failing:
Every Chilean bishop offered to resign Friday over a sex abuse and cover-up scandal, in the biggest shakeup ever in the Catholic Church’s long-running abuse saga. It marked the first known time in history that an entire national bishops conference had offered to resign en masse over scandal, and laid bare the devastation that the abuse crisis has caused the Catholic Church in Chile and beyond… The whole report hasn’t been made public, but even the highlights Francis included in his footnotes were astonishing. The gravity of the accusations appeared to lay the foundation for a full-scale Vatican investigation of Chilean dioceses, seminaries and religious orders. Such an investigation was ordered up after a similar 2010 summit that Pope Benedict XVI called for Irish bishops over their dismal record dealing with abuse.
Let me be absolutely blunt about this. The Catholic Church, as an institution, and its bishops acting as a collective, have lied, are lying, and will continue to lie to the people of God about this problem. They have no interest whatsoever in resolving it – only in protecting their own power, and the institution of the Church as a whole, and its power and prestige in society. They do not care about the individuals involved, or the victims . . . or the good clergy who have been tainted with the stench of this scandal.
How can I say that? It’s very simple. Actions speak louder than words – and lack of action is, in itself, an action. The Church, in the United States, in Chile, in the Vatican, and elsewhere, has taken little or no effective, meaningful action against those who were ultimately responsible for this scandal – namely, its bishops and administrators, who routinely concealed the extent of the problem, shuffled offenders around among themselves, and allowed them to continue to offend, rather than deal with the matter. Even after the scandal blew up, many leaders of the Church continued to try to defend their offices and the institution of the Church, rather than admit that the situation was absolutely indefensible. Many of the worst offenders were whisked off to Rome and given sheltered employment there, safe from extradition or any legal consequences of their neglect. Many are still there.
The Church has also failed to act against the breeding-grounds for so many of these problems – its seminaries.
Let this be a lesson to you. No organization is safe, no matter what is professed intentions are. If you do not actively seek to eradicate evil from creeping in, it will do so. There are worse things than SJWs.
Do not seek to defend the Roman Catholic Church. It has manifestly become an institution utterly riddled by evil. Pray for it, demand its reformation, work to restore it, as you see fit, but do not think to defend it. There is no defense of what it has become since the cancer of Vatican II.