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CLERGY SCANDALS UPDATE

"The media did not create the crisis: the priests and the bishops did"

TORONTO, March 27, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the April 2003 edition of Canada's Catholic Insight magazine, editor Fr. Alphonse de Valk summarizes developments to date on the U.S. Clergy scandals.

In his article, Clergy Scandals Summarized, Fr. De Valk states, "there have been reports of people-including apparently commentators in Rome-who blame or have blamed the media for this crisis. That is also dangerous nonsense, indicating a state of denial which could be very harmful to resolving this crisis. The media did not create the crisis, the priests and the bishops did. The media reported it."

De Valk notes that the bishops highly publicized meeting in Dallas last year refused to discuss "finding the reasons for the crisis" and "the accountability of bishops". He concludes "No public progress has been visible on this last subject since then".

The tolerance of dissent and the refusal to support Pope Paul VI's encyclical against artificial contraception are seen by De Valk to be large factors in creating the climate in which scandals grew. He states, "Dissent as a cause for deviant behaviour has another side to it, namely, the refusal of bishops to denounce false teachers-which in North America was left principally to Rome. This, in turn, was accompanied by their decision to be silent in the public forum about Catholic sexual and marital moral truths".

The author continues that in both Canada and the U.S. the bishops "threw themselves into the promotion of social justice, hoping to make up for silence on sexual-marital issues by loudly supporting economic and political activity on behalf a large variety of justice issues, national as well as international...The bishops had chosen the easy way out. Works of social justice were popular, opposing the morally permissive society was not".

Another recent article on the issue is by First Things editor Fr. Richard Neuhaus. Neuhaus comments in his February 2003 edition on the resignation of Boston's disgraced Cardinal Law. He writes, "..at the end of the day the fact is that Cardinal Law brought down Cardinal Law…He was too modest in his deference to the 'expert' opinion of psychologists and others who assured him that abusing priests could be safely returned to ministry. (The deeply dubious role of St. Luke's in Maryland and other treatment centers for offenders in this Long Lent, now extending beyond 2002, has yet to be adequately told.)" Canada's internationally influential Southdown Institute, operated by the Archdiocese of Toronto, is also seem by many to be in the St. Luke's category.

Neuhaus derides the destructive, modern "psychobabbled spiritualities" and confused religious culture in North America. He states, "Whether it is a curse or blessing, we do not live in a post-Christian society but in an incorrigibly and confusedly Christian America."

See the complete Catholic Insight article at
http://www.catholicinsight.com/other/culture/scandals.html
See the First Things article at
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0302/public.html

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