(RNS) The U.S. Catholic bishops' point man on sexual abuse has said that the hierarchy's credibility on fixing the problem is "shredded" and that the situation is comparable to the Reformation, when “the episcopacy, the regular clergy, even the papacy were discredited.”
Bishop R. Daniel Conlon of Joliet, Ill., last month told a conference of staffers who oversee child safety programs in American dioceses that he had always assumed that consistently implementing the bishops’ policies on child protection, “coupled with some decent publicity, would turn public opinion around.”
“I now know this was an illusion,” Conlon, chairman of the bishops’ Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said in an address on Aug. 13 to the National Safe Environment and Victim Assistance Coordinators Leadership Conference in Omaha, Neb.
His talk was published in the Aug. 30 edition of Origins, an affiiate of Catholic News Service.
Conlon said that the conviction of a high-ranking church official in Philadelphia for covering up clergy abuse and the upcoming trial of a bishop in Missouri on charges of failing to report a priest on suspicions of child abuse have contributed to a widespread impression that the bishops “have failed to keep their commitments.”
The bishop disputed that view, but said even close friends “turned almost hostile” over dinner recently when he said the hierarchy has adopted “an entirely different spirit of openness and accountability.”
Conlon told the conference that the bishops still needed to clarify emerging questions about how to deal with issues like child pornography and “boundary violations” in which church personnel might engage in inappropriate interactions with children that don’t yet cross the line into physical abuse.
But he said that the bottom line is that the bishops “are gravely weakened and in need of assistance” in developing policies and changing public perceptions. He told the child safety workers to think of themselves “as an extension of your bishop.”
“Our credibility on the subject of child abuse is shredded,” Conlon said. “You may have a better chance. People – in the church, outside the church, and hanging on the edge – need to know that real progress is being made.”
Judy Jones | Sep 6, 2012 | 12:40am
quoted: “Our credibility on the subject of child abuse is shredded,” Conlon said.
—- For a change Bishop Conlon is right.
And there is no way that they will ever gain their trust and credibility back until all who have protected and enabled predator clergy, and those who have covered up sex crimes against children are held accountable.
It is not time to be trying to gain trust back, it is time to start being honest and stop the abuse and cover up.
Kids still are not safe within this environment, because bishops are still not removing credibly accused predator priests, they still are not contacting the police, and they are still quietly moving them to other locations without making it known to the parishioners or the public.
Judy Jones, (a relative of many who were sexually abused within the Steubenville diocese)
SNAP Midwest Associate Director, USA, 636-433-2511. snapjudy@gmail.com,
(SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,)
John McGrath | Sep 6, 2012 | 2:04pm
Mass resignations of bishops, assignments to poor parishes.
Aloysia Moss | Nov 9, 2012 | 5:55pm
Punish ” poor parishes ” by having them under the leadership of disgraced clergy ????
” Punish ” hierarchs who would not : ” do right , love justice and walk humbly with their God ” by afflicting the community of a poor parish with their presence ????
Outrageous .
This is the same thing as before : e.g. sending criminals to be chaplains at convents .
Whatever does John Mc Grath’s comment mean ?