Internationally acclaimed author and artist Michael O'Brien is generous in his comments about what LifeSiteNews means to him.
The Family Reseach Council seems to have pegged the Democrat health care bill scenario especially well in its Washington Update for today. We had to share that with you.
Archbishop Diarmud Martin seems to be taking actions that many other bishops had a very serious obligation to also take for years regarding fellow bishops who were known to be overlooking, permitting or even directly involved in criminal sexual abuse of youths. This would also include the abuse of seminarians, which might not have been criminal but was still grossly wrong.
The often used appeal to collegiality has frequently been abused for things that collegiality was never meant to protect. Some have called it circling the wagons for the bishops to hide unpleasant facts and to protect each other from any possibility of justified personal accountability to the magisterium, the faithful or even the courts.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has set a notable precedent. If his accusations are correct, he may be the first Catholic bishop during all these yeas of sordid sexual abuse revelations who has finally responded appropriately to the vile deeds for which certain Church authorities owe victims and the greater community major personal and public accountability. That is the only way to begin to make real amends, renew the credibility of the Church and provide consolation to the many faithful clergy who suffer unjustly from the scandals.
The wrong approaches so far have to been to bury the evidence, abuse whistleblowers, transfer priests and bishops and give to lawyers and victims multi-millions of dollars stolen from the faithful's gifts to the Church intended only for its spiritual mission – not lawsuits and victim compensations. The bishops have never had the permission of the faithful to redirect their charity to these situations negligently and in some cases criminally allowed by some bishops.
It is up to the miscreant priests and bishops to make major personal amends, not the generous faithful, not by robbing their parishes and treasured Church institutions of their funds. They had nothing to do with it. Personal acts of sackcloth and ashes are called for – even imprisonment, where the complicity is found to be the most serious. Only then will the victims and the world take seriously the Church's true sorrow over these vile deeds.
Steve Jalsevac
LifeSiteNews.com