WHAT IF THE CHURCH HAD REPENTED FOR CHILD ABUSE AS PENN STATE HAS DONE?
Today Penn State University accepted severe sanctions from the NCAA for the child abuse that was covered-up within its athletic program. As reported by the Washington Post you can read a copy of the consent decree here at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/ncaa-sanctions-penn-state.html
As I point out in my book When Priests Become Predators, which is being released in September 2012, the cover-up by the Catholic Church of child sexual abuse within its confines was handled entirely differently when that scandal broke in 2002 and spread nationwide in the church.
You can substitute the Roman Catholic Church for Penn State at various points in the consent decree and contrast the remourse it evidences for the continued cover-up and sham contrition shown by the American bishops.
At page two of the consent decree it reads that there was “a failure to value and uphold institutional integrity demonstrated by inadequate, and in some instances non-existent, controls and oversight” at Penn State. As I discuss, rules to keep children out of the bedrooms of predator priests were either ignored or did not exist in the church.
There was at Penn State “a failure to maintain minimal standards of appropriate and responsible conduct.” Similarly, both bishops, their managers and co-worker priests also failed to maintain any minimal standard to protect children from sexual abuse.
And there was at Penn State “a lack of adherence to fundamental notions of individual integrity.” Shamefully, as I discuss in my book, bishops as heads of their organization also did not demand of their employee priests that they “serve as positive moral models for students” who became their victims.
The Church and Penn State concealed and aided and abetted child abuse “to avoid the consequences of bad publicity.” The difference is that when Penn State got caught in the act, it fired the persons responsible and accepted the consequences for its misconduct and a severe punishment. The church on the otherhand attacks those survivors who seek justice from it and makes them relive their ordeal at its own hands.
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