Church wrong to protect offenders

Editorial cartoon drawn by Ho Yi Lau

Countless members of the Catholic Church have clearly never heard the saying that it is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Numerous reports of child molestation by members of the clergy published in recent weeks have once again embroiled the church in a scandal many thought had passed.

These stories have demonstrated not only the pervasive nature of abuse throughout the Catholic Church going back decades, but have also illuminated systemic efforts by the church to cover up the problem and enable the rampant molestation.

Calling the church’s response stupid would be too charitable.

An unsigned editorial published in the March 26 edition of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano lashed out at The New York Times for having the gall to report on child molestation in the Catholic Church.

The editorial said, “The prevailing trend in the media is to ignore the facts, preferring instead to force interpretations in order to disseminate an image of the Catholic Church as almost solely responsible for sexual abuse.”

This echoed sentiments expressed in a blog post published March 23 written by Timothy Dolan, archbishop of the New York Diocese, who wrote, “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.”

One might expect the “all the other kids are doing it” defense to be used by a teenager caught drinking or smoking pot, but “we weren’t the only ones molesting children,” is a shocking defense to hear from anyone; that it came from a member of the Catholic Church makes it that much more disgusting.

The church and its members must be out of touch if they’re trying to play the victim card under these circumstances. It’s amazing that the Catholic Church, of all institutions, could look at all of the abuse committed by its clergy and at all the evidence that it’s been shielding pedophile priests for decades and enabling the molestation of children and say something along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s bad, but the real crime here is that the media is trying to make us look bad.”

The response from the church seemed like one of those really bad spur-of-the-moment ideas people get when they’re drunk that they realize was horrifically stupid when they sober up the next morning. Yet, instead of sobering up and realizing its mistake, the church decided to go on a bender.

It decided that simply playing the victim card wasn’t enough.  Oh no, it needed some absurd hyperbole to really get people to understand. Then, someone came up with the bright idea of comparing public outrage over its child abuse scandals to the Holocaust.

Daniel Wakin and Rachel Donadio of the New York Times reported that the pope’s personal preacher told the congregation during a Good Friday service at the Vatican that Jews “know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence, and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” before reading from a letter allegedly written by a Jewish friend lamenting current violence against the church.

What makes it even more ridiculous is that the public outrage has been pretty muted.

Given the systemic nature of abuse that has existed within the Catholic Church for decades throughout the world and the church’s concerted efforts to hide it and shield pedophile priests, much greater outrage would be perfectly understandable. Any other group that made such efforts to cover for child molesters would be considered a criminal organization.

Yet the church enjoys complete freedom from legal responsibility for this mess.  It will never be prosecuted for shielding child molesters instead of handing them over to police.  And given its tax-exempt status, we’ve been effectively subsidizing its child molesters for decades.

People should be talking about revoking that tax-exempt status and whether the church should be brought up on racketeering charges for a criminal conspiracy, yet the public response hasn’t progressed much past “shame on you for raping kids!”

That the church has responded the way it has to what has been pretty muted outrage given the nature of its crimes demonstrates either that it’s completely disconnected from reality or that it simply doesn’t care about priests molesting children.

David Brooks is a communication senior and may be reached at opinion@thedailycougar.com