Bishop: Catholic Church's credibility on abuse 'shredded'

[rug]

By David Gibson, Religion News Service
Updated 7m ago

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 affiliate of Catholic News Service.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-09-05/bishops-abuse-catholic-church/57608162/1

There's a start.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

1. I am alluded to in the story

Bishop Conlon is quoted as saying

The bishop ... 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."

I was one of those friends, and I must say that the conversation got really heated. Bishop Conon really did not want to accept the quite obvious fact that the bishops largely brought their credibility problems on themselves. If they had accepted responsibility, and acted promptly and effectively, they would be credible when they said they were dealing with the pedophilia mess. As it is, the hierarchy, from the Pope on down, refused to admit that they were in any way responsible for any problems.

The thing that irked me, more than anything else, was Cardinal Law being allowed to retire gracefully in Rome rather than face a Massachusetts court. Law has never admitted to doing anything wrong. Yes, when he resigned as Archbishop of Boston, he gave a rather mealy-mouthed apology, "To all those who have suffered from my shortcomings and mistakes I both apologize and from them beg forgiveness."

[rug]

2. Wow. You must have made an impression.

This is quite a candid admission he's made.